Politician Archive
Thread: What do you feel that the current state of the Profession is?
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SamRebo
Fri Mar 04, 2005 12:49 am
#1
Open discussion. What do you feel that the current state of the Politician Profession is? Do you feel that it currently functions as intended to? What are some issues that we have had addressed? What are some things that we need fixed?
I'll kick it off. I feel that the Politician Profession is a very important aspect of SWG. Without the Mayor, Player Cities could not function. It is a position of responsibility, that is for sure. Not any player can be a Politician, you have to have the right personality, maturity, and commitment level for the job. Being a Politician is a source of great pride to me, and the city that I govern, Kor Spera on Naritus, is one of my proudest acheivements ingame to date.
From a game mechanics standpoint, there are a lot of things that I am unhappy about with Politician as a class, and the way that it impacts Player Cities. City costs are a massive concern to me. Cities can in no way be even close to self sufficient. Sales tax has been broken since Publish 9. We are in Publish 13.1. Yikes! Even with Sales Tax, I feel that there needs to be some other kind of relief to city costs. Mission terminals giving some of the reward to the city treasury is one way. With the changes to the GCW, Faction terminals could be very popular now. In a Improved Job market, it is possible to get 12-15K missions. That could be quite a draw. Another thing that they could do is grant some kind of cost reduction to Master Politicians.
For a long time, one of our issues was that we felt that skill point requirements needed to be lessened, since the 77 point cost was pretty taxing for the abilities that we got. The answer was to remove the skill point costs from the profession altogether, a issue that divided the community and still is debated even now. On one hand, I will admit that getting skill points back was most welcome, however my fear is that Politician has been in effect knocked to the very bottam of the priority list. Does zero skill point costs justify the current state of the Profession? Is the ability to spend 250 points however we like ontop of Mastering this Profession take away our right to push for reforms? Has Politician effectivly been elimnated as a regular "Profession"?
Meanwhile, we wait. And wait. And wait. The best that I think we can hope for is that Sales tax will get fixed, probably by the Combat Balance. Other than that, will we get anything else? I would be suprised if we did. I wonder if the Dev's understand our issues, or get enough feedback to know what we would like to see. Do we have a voice? And is it heard?
Are we still a Profession? Are our concerns for wanting reforms even valid? We are unlike any other profession in this game now. Yes I know that the Pilot Profession has zero skill point costs as well, but I would like to point out that Pilot is the foundation for a whole expansion. Since the creation of the profession, the only changes have been:
1: The addition of Garages
2: The removal of /Citywarn
3: The changes to the election system (3 week cycles)
4: The elimination of skill point costs.
If I have left something out, please correct me. In the meantime, the majority of our issues, even when posted on time, have largely been ignored. Master Politician still yields nothing in the way of perks or abilities. Broken features remain broken.
So what can we do? Can we find a way to make our voices heard and make some positive changes? Or is the battle over, and should we accept the profession for what is is now, because after all, it costs nothing to Master other than a few credits.
MDEUK
Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:21 am
#2
Hi!
Interesting post and you raise a lot of good points. I share many of your frustrations...
As a former Master Politician (I was founder of Darkfire on Tatooine on your server) I think that Politician is one of the most rewarding and most frustrating professions!
The problem is, it affects such a small number of players that it is unlikely to get much love from the Devs.
Right now, I do not think that it can be considered a real profession because it does not use any skill points. I understand the decision to remove the skill point requirements, but this has relegated it to being a similar to a Guild Leader.
That said, I think what has undermined Player Cities and the profession is the number of dead cities - citizen swaps and the new changes to property maintenance have meant that a 'dead' city can stay on the map for a very long time, denying others the chance to build a city.
I recently (on another post) explained how I was stalking the leadership of one of the major cities on Tatooine on Bria.
This major city near a POI did not have any active people in it for over 4 weeks. The mayor did not log on in that period, and only one member of the militia logged on and responded to someone asking if they could live in the city by saying:
"we have a lot of dead houses and no space, so you cannot really move in..."
So, here we have a major city near a POI with no active players, not taking new citizens but preventing another city from springing up?
I have starteda new city on Corellia and we are growing fast, but will not be able to expand and get a shuttleport because there are already too many large cities.. But most of these cities are dead and are not taking new citizens?!
In my mind, this is what has lead to the demise of player cities, and the undermining of the profession - in the old days I used to wear my Master Politician tag with pride. Now, when you see a Master Politician it means nothing.
I think that a MAJOR revamp is needed.
1. People should only be allowed to have ONE DECLARED RESIDENCE PER ACCOUNT. This would kill off citizen-swapping and make cities more dynamic.
2. Master Politicians should have some additional perks - perhaps reduced building maintenance and the ability to buy / sell non-GCW faction.
3. Citizens should drop off the register if they are not active for 4 weeks, regardless of their housing siutation. This would give new cities are chance to grow.
What does our Correspondent think about this?
SamRebo
Fri Mar 04, 2005 11:08 am
#3
Here's a few ideas that I had that would be great to enhance our profession.
#1: Give us additional ways to pay city maintanance. A kick back from terminals and trainers, or a "Tax Rate %" that we could set for payouts.
#2: Give us additional parks and decorations. The ability to decorate our cities is one of the best things about us, IMO.
#3: Give us some kind of skill mods that increase as we level. Ideas are:
a: The ability to avoid contraband scans due to "diplomatic immunity"
b: Maybe the ability to reduce city costs as we advance in level, to a possible 25% Reduction at master
c: Give us a discount on purchasing Event Perks, to show our political connections.
d: Give Politicians the ability to book passage to any planet from any starport using public transportation, and grant them the ability for "insta travel without wait." (I know that this has lost relevance with JTL and decreased Shuttle waits, it's just included as a example)
e: Allow Politicians the ability to modify the Sorosub Yachts with components, and upgrade them. The Yacht has a place for gun turrets already, so the ability to modify it must be in the back of the Dev's minds already. Either don't give it as much mass as the Master Pilot ships, or link it to Master Pilot as well. As for what level of Politician is needed, I would love to see it as a Master perk myself, but maybe it would need to be a Tier 4 ability. Definatly not something granted at Novice Politician.
That's a few ideas off the top of my head.
MDEUK
Fri Mar 04, 2005 11:17 am
#4
SamRebo wrote:
#3: Give us some kind of skill mods that increase as we level. Ideas are:
a: The ability to avoid contraband scans due to "diplomatic immunity"
b: Maybe the ability to reduce city costs as we advance in level, to a possible 25% Reduction at master
c: Give us a discount on purchasing Event Perks, to show our political connections.
I love those ideas - very good, although d: and e: are a little way out thereas they involve JTL code which is separate from the ground game 
SamRebo
Fri Mar 04, 2005 11:53 am
#5
Yea,the Yacht idea is a kind of selfish one, I want my Yacht to be fast, lol. Still, it would be pretty darn cool
Pappi
Fri Mar 04, 2005 2:17 pm
#6
MDEUK wrote:Did you ever get to use /citywarn?Man, that was fun - the first day that we established Darkfire, some clown called Tecto was trashtalking a bunch of us. Our Head of Militia /citywarned him and gave him 30 seconds to leave the city.So what did he do? He pulled a put and tried to set it on our militiaman, who prompty hit him with a /flamsingle2!They were the days! Didn't last long though - the devs canned /citywarn a few days later!
citywarn was useful, no doubt about that. someone who was being a jerk in the city learned his lesson after almost all of his stats bars got diseased after he refused to stop... out doctors had to drag him outside of the city, place a camp, and gradually heal all his wounds
while most mayors did use /citywarn appropriately, some folks abused the power (not only the account on someone warning a CSR, but there were many cities that would citywarn people still in transit and shoot them before they even finish loading. that was when "closest cloning center" still counted player cities ones, and since folks can be repeatedly warned it caused all kinds of griefing. I've made quite a few suggestions and stressed the importance of city defense, but I've never received any comment from the devs about it after the fanfest.
MDEUK wrote:1. People should only be allowed to have ONE DECLARED RESIDENCE PER ACCOUNT. This would kill off citizen-swapping and make cities more dynamic.2. Master Politicians should have some additional perks - perhaps reduced building maintenance and the ability to buy / sell non-GCW faction.3. Citizens should drop off the register if they are not active for 4 weeks, regardless of their housing siutation. This would give new cities are chance to grow.What does our Correspondent think about this?
1. not really feasible, only because there *are* folks who play on multiple servers (namely me), and I do actively participate in more than one city (as well as being mayor of one).
2. master politicians should definitely have perks. I've suggested quite a few in my documents, such as fixing up and bringing back the dual specializations, city maintenance reduction, extra decorations, etc.. I have not pressed them as hard on this as the sales tax issue (which I consider one of the most "fix me now" issues in the profession), and I haven't received a response on it.
3. I do support something along that line, however the house should not remain in place since a lot of cities are running out of room for growth. I really liked the idea GreenMarine brought up at fanfest (with the eminent domain and allowing mayors limited abilities to move houses), but I haven't heard much about it since then. I did stress the growth issue (both the lack of spaces for growth in the city, and the city caps being taken by ghost towns) to the devs, and the purge they suggested (details withheld due to NDA issues) will hopefully clean out some of these dead houses. I also suggested to them that instead of purging only inactive account, something should also be done with active accounts with inactive characters to deal with server lot/citizen trade. I will update you guys on it as soon as I get permission to.
unfortunately, what I think (and occasionally what I post) doesn't affect what happens in the profession.
Pappi
Fri Mar 04, 2005 2:25 pm
#7
personally, I think letting folks build too close to a POI was a mistake. there should've been no-build areas around POIs, similar to NPC cities.
MDEUK wrote:This major city near a POI did not have any active people in it for over 4 weeks.
this was part of the reason they removed /citywarn, as devs said cities with a POI within its borders can deny people access to the POI by using /citywarn. it's a shame that a few kiddies misbehaving can do so much damage to the devs' trust in our profession
SamRebo
Fri Mar 04, 2005 3:54 pm
#8
Yea Deltayn, I did get to try /citywarn out. A RL friend of mine that I know really well had logged his character out in the middle of New Deeja whenI was Mayor then, and we /citywarned him, beat the crap out of him, and took screenshots and put them on our forums.
It was a pretty good laugh, that's for sure.
MDEUK
Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:05 pm
#9
Pappi wrote:
unfortunately, what I think (and occasionally what I post) doesn't affect what happens in the profession.
Hey Pappi!
Thanks for your comments.
I'm sure that the Devs do pay some attention, but I don't think enough people get upset about the Politician profession or player cities.
That aside, what do you think the future holds for us politicians? You can PM if you prefer! 
Jutewr
Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:23 pm
#10
MDEUK wrote:
I think that a MAJOR revamp is needed.
1. People should only be allowed to have ONE DECLARED RESIDENCE PER ACCOUNT. This would kill off citizen-swapping and make cities more dynamic.
2. Master Politicians should have some additional perks - perhaps reduced building maintenance and the ability to buy / sell non-GCW faction.
3. Citizens should drop off the register if they are not active for 4 weeks, regardless of their housing siutation. This would give new cities are chance to grow.
1. Eep! Please no lol. My sister and I play on the same account, and each of us has our own city. This would be a game-breaker for us.
2. I like it.
3. Hmmmm maybe more time, 4 weeks is fairly short. But this still wouldn't remove their houses, which is also part of the problem.
shadowdefender
Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:44 pm
#11
I too have mixed emotions about no skill points for the profession. Yes it frees me up to pursue other things but it also made me feel that we would no longer receive the dedication from the devs that a legitmate profession would get and so far that fear has been true.
I would like to see the following things:
1. Working taxes - sales, property, income, income from trainers, mission terminals - I would also like to see a radial on the town hall terminal that would allow me to see how much from each one of these taxes I am generating.
2. City chat - I feel it is as important as guild chat especially if there is more than one guild in a city. It helps foster community.
3. Make the militia more than zone commissioners - right now they are useless.
I would like to see the following things:
1. Working taxes - sales, property, income, income from trainers, mission terminals - I would also like to see a radial on the town hall terminal that would allow me to see how much from each one of these taxes I am generating.
2. City chat - I feel it is as important as guild chat especially if there is more than one guild in a city. It helps foster community.
3. Make the militia more than zone commissioners - right now they are useless.
Traie
Fri Mar 04, 2005 5:49 pm
#12
MDEUK wrote:
1. People should only be allowed to have ONE DECLARED RESIDENCE PER ACCOUNT. This would kill off citizen-swapping and make cities more dynamic.
It's extreme, but I concur. I've said it many times before and I'm sure I'll say it alot more - the devs have said various ways that they wanted to reduce strain on the servers. What adds more than anything else? "Dead" characters made for cross server trades. There is one "ringleader" who could have several "dead" characters on their server.
More characters on the server = more strain on it.
I'll admit, I've lent my "extra" toons for some server trades to buddies of mine over on swgcraft.com's forums. And then there was that other guy who contacted me. I generally tend to log the other toons in every couple of weeks, but lapsed for about a month once. When I logged back in on one server, I found that this guy had quit the game like three weeks earlier but neglected to tell me. So his server had +1 toon with buildings and stuff eating server space.
But this idea would cut down on it, at least somewhat. And I agree that Politician's and Player Cities need a revamp to cut down on them. And possibly some way of keeping tabs on and voting out the "immature" politicians. We should have some un-godly powers and responsibilities as mayors. I think all mayors should be able to vote another mayor out of office. That'd be hard to say was griefing. The planets/galaxies mayors get together, gather facts, do some investigating, then vote whether or not a certain mayor would remain in office. If the vote is only between mayors, it'd be extremely hard for one group to gain control of a majority of the cities. Thus anti-griefing. Plus it'd add a bit of lobbying and other aspects of a politicians life to the game. Thus encouraging more role-playing.
Pappi
Fri Mar 04, 2005 6:50 pm
#13
MDEUK wrote:
Pappi wrote:
unfortunately, what I think (and occasionally what I post) doesn't affect what happens in the profession.Hey Pappi!
Thanks for your comments.
I'm sure that the Devs do pay some attention, but I don't think enough people get upset about the Politician profession or player cities.
That aside, what do you think the future holds for us politicians? You can PM if you prefer!
they do pay attention, but they have their hands full.
there isn't anything I can tell you that I can't post on the forum
I believe that politician can be a fun and viable profession, however the current skills are related to starting a city and not so much for maintaining one. the devs mentioned profession revamps after CU and GCW, so we'll see how far we are down the list I'll definitely be retired by then, but hopefully I'll still be playing the game.
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