Politician Archive
Thread: This week in politics 2/2/04
This is a very hard issue to try to resolve. Because if someoen else has a go at becoming mayor and decides to run against the current mayor then no one will vote for them if it means the city will loose all buildings and skills that the city currently has. When a mayor takes over in the real world they dont have to dig up the police station/train station/hospital ect, they are already there for the new mayor. The penalty for giving up the politician skills for alot of items is that you wont be able to move the bank/shuttleport/cloning center ect unless you have the skills to place them again.
Personally I think there needs to be an extra bonus for master politicians. For example at Master all of your city structures and costs have 25% deducted from them, This would encourage people to get to master and stay master, because currently the only thing you get at master status is a tag. It could even be implemented into all the politician skills, each level 4 skill could grant you 5% off your maintenance and costs, then at master you get another 5 or 20% off as well as unlimited decorations and additional city structures(maybe a starport? /me begs for starports)
This is the weekthree for "This Week in Politics."
I'll make a new thread each Monday for use throughout the week for youto let me and the rest of the Politician community hear how things are going in your city, events planned, tips you might have learnedlike ways ofusing specializations efficiently, new facilities being placed, any interesting dynamics like mergers with new partners to grow your cities or issues of disagreement between your citizens, anything having to do with your politician skills, new skills, skills sold back, newissues, frustrating bugs, or just a quick status report. It will be easy for me to keep up with a digest version ofthe goings-on of the community this way, and perhaps a way for you all to get to know each other as players dedicated to the concept of building communities in the Star Wars universe.
This week was not a busy one for me in governing the city, but I did do some testing on my live server just so that I would have first-hand gameplay knowledge from which to answer one of the most frequently asked questions on this forum. The question is, will my city's specializations and facilities continue to function if I drop the associated skills?
My understanding of the answer to this question has always been that, yes, your specializations and facilities will continue to function, even after you drop the skills first used to implement those specializations or place those facilities. And now after my experience last week, I not only know how it is supposed to work, and how I have been told it works, but I know from my own gameplay that this is the way it works. I dropped Fiscal Policy IV after having implemented Research Center the previous week, and it does appear that Research Center is still functioning.
While this may be a boon to many politician and mayor players, who have the option to free up skill points to use in other professions and still keep the benefits of their previously held skills, I think there is a clear design issue here. The politician's number one issue on the Top-Five was that there is little benefit to the politician skills, that there isn't enough gameplay involved in the profession to warrant the expenditure of a full profession's allocation of skill points. In my opinion, being able to drop the politician skills and keep the benefits gives players even less reason to hold the skills, although I wouldn't necessarily be in favor of forcing players to keep the skills unless the skills are enhanced with enough additional abilities and interesting gameplay options to make them intrinsically interesting and to make players willing to keep them for the fun they offer, not forced to keep them in order to keep their city functioning.
I'd like to hear from the community, and this is something that I will communicate back to Thunderheart and the dev responsible for our profession: Have you sold back politician skills related to city benefits or features that your city continues to utilize?
This is a very hard issue to try to resolve. Because if someoen else has a go at becoming mayor and decides to run against the current mayor then no one will vote for them if it means the city will loose all buildings and skills that the city currently has. When a mayor takes over in the real world they dont have to dig up the police station/train station/hospital ect, they are already there for the new mayor. The penalty for giving up the politician skills for alot of items is that you wont be able to move the bank/shuttleport/cloning center ect unless you have the skills to place them again.
Personally I think there needs to be an extra bonus for master politicians. For example at Master all of your city structures and costs have 25% deducted from them, This would encourage people to get to master and stay master, because currently the only thing you get at master status is a tag. It could even be implemented into all the politician skills, each level 4 skill could grant you 5% off your maintenance and costs, then at master you get another 5 or 20% off as well as unlimited decorations and additional city structures(maybe a starport? /me begs for starports)
I have to admit, I'm a bit paranoid about selling back skills... it seems like we need them at every turn, and I can't afford to (or watch a mass exodus).. we have too much turnover (or at least, enough where I have to move stuff around *way* too often).
...but I'm also hanging at 2/2/2/3-4 .. not sure the benefits of the last 2 boxes on the first three trees considering our present composition...
Ostium Vepres has only expanded by one or two citizens. A situation came up involving a neighboring guild that took up residency just outside of the city limit. Obviously to utilize the shuttle. There was also talk amongst my citizens that the guild was recruiting from our shuttleport (We are a PA controlled city and find it rude for other Guilds to abuse their shuttle rights in such a manner) as well as being rude. I did some investigative work and finally found the name of the guild's leader. Once he logged on, I spoke with him personally about the situation. He denied any wrong doings, but with a little coaxing and assistance I convinced him to pack up his guild hall and installations and move to a location further west.
Last week I mentioned that my city hit its decoration limit. Well this week I noticed that a few of the decorations I have placed over time are missing. There was a light post for instance that I know I placed, and then a day later it was gone. Doing a count of all still standing decorations there are a total of 4 of 40 that have gone MIA. I understand that it is possible to remove a decoration without actually removing it from the city's limit, however I have always been careful to choose the "Remove" option rather than the "pick up" option.
So I must blame some sort of bug on this one.
I decided to visit some of the other cities off world and see how Ostium Vepres compares. I have to say I was marveled by GHOSTTOWN'S ingenious defense design, but was slightly perplexed as I was badgered by the locals as they spammed me with duel requests and accusations.
Apparently a nuetral aligned rodian carrying a mandovial is a security risk.
May favorite city of course is ARCH MESA. But since they have the beautiful natural arches of Tatooine to help out their design, it's more the location that makes the city what it is. Not the layout. But they already knew that (hence calling it ARCH MESA).
I have been Master Politician for some time now and have allways thought about selling back the skills to become only 0124 Politician. I do like the "Master Politician" profession tag under my name.
It's a very useful tool to show that I'm the mayor since we don't have a Mayor Tag (like a badge or traditional signes in RL) and I just love to see it ... but I'm also thinking about getting back more Merchant skills to place Vendors across the City, customize them and give them speaches to say so that I can effectivly spread "city rumers" or manage 24/7 city quests and events (features that the politician profession doesn't provide us with). And I don't want to give up my Master Musician who is quite vital to keeping the Cantina "populated" and a place to visit.
As said before, I do have a second account, but my second char is taking a different role and will probably be combat only as a change so I can effectivly take "time off" as a community manager.
2nd - This week in Kheraba
There's more player action in the city again. People are either getting tired of Hologrinding (some do quit though, because they've lost the "fun in the game" through the sensless grinding) - or they've managed to get their FSCS (Jedi in Kheraba
). Yesterday the Cantina was full without warning, wonderfull RP between players and I could spread some rumers to a Quest I've set up ...I've dropped chance cubes in several civic structures and houses of players I got admin access to ... named the Cubes "Datacube 1/8" with a Hint leading to a webpage (if you gather all 8 Hints) and a tip to where you can find the next Cube (e.g. look in the building behind the "round fire" ... although we don't have a round fire it's called that way
... look in the house where droides used to be made ... dive in Choimerrs Fountain ... etc.). Already got one response ... the first 3 will get a Life Day Orb.We're experimenting around with an alternative to the /citywarn that we used to use as a RP-tool to declare "bad guys" (the hutt sympathisants in our "red light district - only with verbal agreement) and fight them to keep the city "safe" or because they're smuggling drogs (we had /contraband much earlier devs
). We're getting together 2 (or more) lists of groups that are willing to fight each other ... are setting together a centraly orginazid "/duel macro file" that every player of a certain group gets that chalanges every oponent to a duel or accepts the duel comming from them. This way we should be able to create variouse sympatisant groups that can attack each other in a RP sense without the restrictions of only 2 factions or PA-less members not being able to fight in a PA-War.
He said he thought he had calculated it out right, but we guess he didn't. So, we're helping him get his stuff together. One of the sad things lost in this was his collection of every kind of armor in the game (excepting RIS). We'll help him reacquire it soon, we hope.Dropping skills and keeping the benefit:
I disagree that the city should lose a benefit such as specialization, due to the mayor dropping skills. I would like to step down as mayor at some point. My citizens are quite unlikely to vote for someone I endorse, unless they're assured they won't lose our city specialization. I think removing benefits will discourage new politicians.
Transfer of power:
Mayors should be allowed to step down by transferring power to another politician who is willing to accept the job.
Three week timer on citizen check:
Until SOE can absolutely guarantee that they have fixed every bug associated with city updates, I'm against any timer being put in place. If the account is active, the person should remain a citizen. Inactive accounts have reason to be deleted from city rolls, but not active players. I realize this continues to allow cross server trades, but they will continue anyway. It takes 2 minutes every couple of weeks to log into a cross server account. I don't see a timer fixing "ghost" citizens who exist under these agreements. The people most affected will be those who simply cannot log in for an extended period of time due to jobs, illness, broken computers or other such events.
My city continues to prosper, even though we're located on out-of-the-way Talus. We've had our ups and downs but citizen committment seems to be strong and we have a lot of activity in the city, particularly during the evenings and weekends. I've been mayor since the first day player cities were possible, and at times I grow somewhat weary of the roll. Having a vice-mayor is something I would like to see discussed in the future; an appointed position with duties that can be given or taken by the current mayor.
Knew it was comming but was still hoping for a miracle. The city has taken the shape that I had pre-planned. (finally got the last of them early house dropers to move) Overall I am very happy at how the city has progressed.Got skill training box this week and still moving forward. Trying to get a better feel on where to place fountains and statues ect...