Politician Archive

Here is what I intend to send off to the devs and Thunderheart. Throughout writing these up, I had to balance the enormous output of suggestions and creative solutions as well as the complexities of our positions on these issue with the need to make this submission very clear, very concise, and easy to read and digest for our overworked devs. Give a read, and I'll meet you again at the end.

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#1 Ongoing Gameplay, Skill Value, Master Abilities

By far, the issue of greatest concern to the Politician players is the lack of ongoing gameplay valuefor their skill-point investment in the profession. Many Politicians see no lasting value in many of the skill boxes,once the initial facility placement granted by the skill has been completed and the master politician badge has been earned, and plan to sell back most of the profession's skills in exchange for skills in other professions which do provide ongoing gameplay opportunities. The profession is seen by many as a skill-point sink.

The Master Politician Skill is completely empty.

There are many, manysuggestions for providing the politician profession with ongoing gameplay and better value for their skillpoints, but they primarily break out into the following categories (with examples):

• Communication




• City Message of the Day


• City Chat Channel


• City Bulletin Board Terminal (citizens posting announcements to each other)


• City Maintenance Benefits




• Balance the specialization costs


• Provide maintenance fee decreases with skill progression


• City-to-City Politics




• Planetary council


• Diplomacy


• Faction Politics




• Declare city faction


• Placement of faction recruiter


• Ability to pool citizen's faction points


• Political Powers and Abilities




• Buffing citizens with "morale raising speeches"


• Improve faction standing with NPC groups on behalf of other players (/intercede)


• Improve faction gained by group from combat and missions

#2 City Financial Reports

ThePoliticians need detailed financial data in order to administer taxes, make good decisions about expenditures, for accounting to their citizens and for budgeting.

The kind of reports the Politicians would like to see:

• Tax Report: Individual line items for the income from each form of tax.


• Donations to treasury: Names of contributers, confirmation of contribution to contributer,a record.


• Expenses: Individual line items for expenses (streetlights: 20,000; statues 40,000; etc...)

We would like to see these reports available both on the city management terminal as well as via email, with an option to turn the email reports on/off.

#3 Miltia: Defense of the city

With the militia ability to warn removed from the game, the politicians have three main concerns or threats that they have no way to defend their cities against.

• Verbal/Emote spam griefers: A /cityignore feature has been a very popular suggestion, which would allow a militia member to remove a player's ability to chat or emote in spatial within the city limits.


• Unattended Pets: Pets with harassing names, large size, earth-shaking effects, can be left in the city to disrupt the citizens' business and activities. We need a way to move unattended pets out of the city or to store them back to their owners' data pads if the owners themselves are not present.


• Factional Activities:




• Faction-city mayors want the means to remove opposing faction covert players via the militia system, with overt faction militia members able to act as covert detectors.


• Neutral city mayors want a way to remove any overt faction members who may be turning their cities into battlegrounds or targetting their TEF'd citizens, with the ability to use a form of /warn on overt faction players only (thus putting only players who have already consented to one form of PvP in danger from potential miltia-based PvP).

A return of the the warningsystem in some form was an extremely popular suggestion, usually accompanied by suggestions to increase the warning time to provide enough time to get away, and to providea safety zone of some kind around POIs.

#4 Garages

The Politicians would like to be able to place garages in their cities.We would like to be able to allow our citizens and visitors to base themselves completely out of our player cities without running back to the established cities every few hours to maintain vehicles. What is the status of implementation of garages for player cities?

#5 Resignation

The fact that default votes go to the incumbent makes it very difficult to arrange for a friendly succession from one mayor to the next. As long as there is at least one candidate in addition to yourself, you should always be allowed to remove your name from an election at the voting terminal.

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There they are. Let me know what you think. I will leave them here overnight, and read your comments. If all seems right, I'll send it off in the morning. I'll make little fixes here and there if necessary, and take any comments into account, but I've been living with your suggestions over the weekend, and there does come a point where one voice has to say what it is we need to say, and the rest of us have to be willing to stand behind that. I did include the garage issue, despite lots of suggestions to replace it. But replacing the popular #4 choice would require another whole procedure, in my mind. Remember also that this is not like a message ina bottle, a one-time opportunity to transmit an emergency rescue message. I'm in contact with Thunderheart and the devs in charge of player cities andthe Politician on a regular basisregarding ongoing issues, I'll have a chance to respond to them regarding any initial comments they have on our list,and this is not or "last chance" or anything like that. This isjustthe beginning of what will be a long process of making this professionas good as it can be. The power of this list is in the fact that you all generated it, and it is that combined voice of this community that the devs will pay heed to, not one voice alone.

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Edited on 2/25/04 to include the partial response to our top five:

• Player-City Garages will be a part of publish 7 if possible(publish 6 is currently on TC) but definitely by publish 8, so we are looking at something a bit more than a month away for implementation of basic function player garages. There are interesting things coming along for garages and crafters, although too far out to give details now, linked to futureplanned vehicle enhancements.

• Player-city financial reports, your number two issue, is also considered an issue by the developers, so look for some news on that feature in the near future.

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1. Master Politician abilities, "Industrial Society" and "Scientific Society". They were there at player-city implementation time, and were removed soon after. They do not appear at this time on TC, and they abilities are not available (I mean that the abilities themselves are missing as well as their appearance in print on the skill sheet). Politicians usually shed as many of their skills as possible after either mastering the profession for the badge or placing the facilities they want to place. Most usually settle in at something like 0, 1, 2, 0 or 4, giving them the ability to manage militia, place skill trainers, and then some keep the ability to move and place city decorations, some don't. No abilities in the Master Politician skill box are a big problem.

2. Our Top-Five issues. I think Politicians are the only profession to have NEVER received a dev response to their top five. The Politicians worked hard to assemble their top five, and deserve a response of some kind. We've had a response to one of our top-five, Garages. You asked me a while ago for a definition of "Resignation", did the devs have any response to that? The missing Master Politician abilities would address one aspect of our number one issue.

3. Our Top-Ten Questions. I can bump that up, and I included them in an email to you.

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In addition I made a request for a drop-in at our forums, and provided one link: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Politician&message.id=27643 to a thead on the 6-week citizen activityrequirement that I know you would like to have more details on.

Thunderheart has responed, and let me give you the low-down:

1. Missing Master Politician abilities: To be added to a list he is creating of all profession's top issues to be sent to the devs.

2. Top-Five:

1. Politician Gameplay Value, Master Abilities: New Response: Missing Master abilities will be included in profession issue list being generated now. Feedback previously received on "pie-in-the-sky" proposed features is that they are interested, and would love to be able to revisit ideas such as these when there is more time in the development schedule for them. No feedback on a list of suggested balance fixes for the city specializations.
   
2. City Financial Reports: As already reported, this is in development.
   
3. Militia and /warn: New Response: city warn feature going into "in-concept" soon. No date or commitment on schedule.
   
4. Garages: Implemented on TC, to be released to live next update.
   
5. Resignation: The devs are aware of our request and asked a few weeks ago for a definition of what it was we were asking for. No further response since then.

3. Top-ten questions: Meant as an "extra", a bonus for the players for when there is time in his schedule to do something that is less high-priority than things that directly impact the players and the game. He will continue to roll out answers to the top-ten lists, but there are 38 profession, with ten questions each. This is something he is willing to do on his own time, at home, etc, but can not be considered alongside development of the game in terms of prioritization.

There you go, folks. I will bring news of any response or schedule for fixing our missing Master abilities as soon as I get it. We now stand at three out of our top-five issues addressed at some level ranging from in testing to in concept.

Additionally,Thunderheart was very interested in our efforts on the issue of city involvement in the factions, and said that he would like usto work on a formal proposal that we could give him to submit to the devs in April. Jester, the GCW correspondent, made responses to each of the suggestions you made, and I will post that list along with his suggestions at the beginning of next week, along with a new thread for us to turn that list into a proposal over the next few weeks.

We'll be keeping our eyes out for that city /warn in-concept thread and we can dig out our old, dusty threads in response.

Message Edited by Bajeezus on 03-23-2004 11:08 AM

Howdy Baj.

Looks good...lets go with it.....BTW, is there a way to bribe....errrrrrrrr incent, those Devs in charge of player cities to get some of this into the test center sooner then later...

Looks good... but can you stress the Master Politician skill box fix in point #1? Thanks.

Great job Baj, the only alteration to the list that I feel is warranted is moving Player Garages to the number 5 spot and upping resignation to number 4 since we know garages are on the way. Other then that it's looking good. You deserve that non-existent paycheck and maybe even a gold watch 50 years down the line

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Shaedar wrote:
Looks good... but can you stress the Master Politician skill box fix in point #1? Thanks.

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Right you are. I had it in there, and must have cut it out somehow. It will get back in.

I think you have done a good job on this, and represents the majority of the community's opinions, issues, and submissions. I'll endorse it.

i hope this isnt too late but ...

/cityignore should work onRESIDENTS as well as non residents so that the mayor and or the militia have the abilitiy to "police" residents as well as non residents

the system allows for this sort of command over residents because if a mayor abuses it he can be voted out in the same way that he might abuse the treasury or the tax system

i hope you can add this, i cant see anyway in which it might go against anything and fits nicely with the general concensus about /cityignore.

thanks

Looks awesome. I think you have done a great job of keeping it concise. I would love for you to include that whole post on the diplomat skills, I thought that was incredibly well thought out, but I can see where you can't make things that lengthy.

Except for "loosing" a slot for the already promised feature of garages ... I'm very happy with this Top 5 ... it really went smooth, fast and specific from start of discussion to setting down this very nice list ... great work Bajeezus, and all you politicians that helped gather the information and ideas needed for him to do such a spectacular job.

The only thing that a lot of people also wanted was a form of bazaar, maybe that could still be squeezed into the #1 list

Great job Bajeezus! I've really enjoyed the discussion and debates this past week in trying to get the Top 5 together and I'm glad that a few of my own suggestions made it in. I definetly concur on this.

As a closing note to your Top 5, would you mention that there were many other "pie-in-the-sky" ideas on improving the politician profession as well as player cities that didn't make into the Top 5? Perhaps invite Thunderheart to drop by and possibily comment on some?

In the future, I'll be sure to push my other ideas (NPC militia and city wars) more in the future and hopefully get more interest and discussion going.

it's nice to see it all come togeather finally, good work.

make sure you twist there arm about trying to get it in soonish (within 6months soonish )

have fun Baj!

It may be too late, but I'd like to make one small suggestion. In addition to the faction recruiter and trainers, I'd like to be able to recruit spynet operatives or information brokers or whatever it is that Bounty Hunters use.

Excellent job on collating everyone's thoughts in such a concise manner /cheer