Politician Archive

All,

I'm Mayor of Mos Pax on Tatooine/Valcyn, and in the past few days of governing my city, I've found some aspects of our interfaces are inadequate or inconvenient. Hopefully many of these are simple enough that the dev's can implement for us. Feel free to add to my thread, but keep it simple... no posts about entirely new city administrator classes or the like.

I realize I'm asking for some things that other mayors have asked for, hopefully the dev's will take these as popular ideas!

1) As mayor and city planner, I need to be able to see who owns what structures. Some of my citizens like to rename their houses to weird names, which is fine by me. However, I was doing a survey last night and trying to compute what my maintenance tax could be on a person by person basis. I now have a few houses that I have to guess as to who owns them. That's just with 24 residents... try it with 150 and I bet we'd be confused very quickly. I therefore request that if a structure is inside my city boundary, that I be able to examine it and see ownership. The "new structure in your city" email doesn't cut it.

2) I'm not typically one for vanity, but my position of Mayor does push me up the chain in visibility a bit. I wear my "Novice Politician" tag while I'm playing, but all that indicates is that I have the skill. I'd like a "MAYOR" tag as well - like the HELPER or AFK ones. And since I'm a Master Smuggler as well, it would be great to have variants on the tag... like "CRIMELORD"

3) The City Chat channel idea posted earlier is a great idea, and we definitely need more ways to communicate with our citizens. The email to "citizens" seems to work fine, and I'll be using that for sure. A city chat would be even better, since there's multiple guilds in my city as well as unguilded people.

4) Looking at the interface on the voting terminal, I can see that there's nobody running against me. Therefore I can't see the vote count, to tell if anyone hasn't voted. It's not immediately clear that when you declare residence, you automatically vote for the incumbent? If so, this isn't a big deal. If not, then I need to be able to see who voted for whom.

5) The city hall having one door bugs me. I realize changing the architecture now is probably tough, but why doesn't the city hall open outward in all 4 directions? The city doesn't necessarily face one direction, so why does the hall? I would like at least one more entrance on the backside, so the people who live on that side don't feel like they've been pushed to the back.

6) I had a citizen accidently place his house outside the boundaries of the city on at least 3 occasions now. We need to see the boundary on the placement view, perhaps as a shaded area of ground or a different color line, like red.

7) Mob lairs are making placement of buildings tough sometimes. They create a huge nobuild area around the spawn, which has confused people trying to place their houses near the edges of the city. I've had to clear out at least a dozen spawns since I became mayor, just to make sure my citizen could build where he wanted. Can we not have mobs spawn close enough to cause a nobuild inside the city?

8) I would like a full overhead view of my city. The Control-M map doesn't show all my structures, since they're far enough way to go out of view. I would use this to take a screenshot and post it of our layout in order to encourage certain people to shift the position of their houses. Prehaps putting the names of the owners of the structures here would be good, too.

9) I would like to be able to place "markers" in my city that have the same footprint as the bank, cantina, hospital, shuttleport, etc. This would create a nobuild zone in the spot and better assist us in planning the exact layouts of our city. Right now I'm leaving a big buffer around the city hall itself, since I have no clue how big the bank and gardens will be. I hate to ask people to move their houses, but if it comes to that I will.

I realize there's more, so feel free to put your ideas in my thread even if they're posted elsewhere! No bumping needed if the ideas keep flowing...


Metaphrax
Mayor of Mos Pax

wow.. nice post

I love the boundary. that way we can tell (or only the mayor can tell) where the city limit will be.. this help placement a lot.

Right now I am planning to place things for people to get our city situated.

The chat function is a great idea.. love it.

Able to see owner structure is another great idea..

I need details on who is paying what taxes would be kinda nice (break down)

Blank marker for expansion inside the city would be GREAT... like you can "pre-place" items.. but it will not be "activated" until you reach that rank... I love it!

Metaphrax, those are some great ideas there, especially the one about having a full map of the city. My video card doesn't draw objects too far away so it's a problem.

I have an idea, it's not really a mayoral tool, but it would be very cool.

Since we can have mission terminals, why not have mission giving NPCs? I think it would add great atmosphere to a city and we all know how easy it would be to provide missions to the NPC. Not only one mission giving NPC, how about townspeople that are NPCs? We could add small 'mobs' of NPCs to the city center just like other cities (especially anchorhead).

Completely agree with all of these, especially #9...City Planning has thus far been a HUGE thorn in my side!

What is the point of /grantzoningrights, if I can't actually SPECIFY where the houses/city improvements will go?

It'd be excellent if /grantzoningrights could actually be a deed that would call up the overhead map, and place the 'red cordoned off area' up...visible to the /grantee. Example: Citizen-To-Be asks me where to put his home up; I ask him what size, then I use a 'Zoning Deed', which is the same size as his home/improvement. When the new citizen uses his/her deed...everything is red (unbuildable) EXCEPT the area I have zoned for him.

Ah life would be SO SIMPLE THEN!

Excellent ideas, Metaphrax, everyone else...let's keep the ideas flowing for whenever we get a new correspondent (we will miss you sorely, Plinka!)

Karenna, I placed everyone's house myself and then transferred ownership to them. Made it so much easier.

I hadn't thought about that /slapsself But then, I t wouldn't matter for me, since I've maxxed out by lots.

Still would be a very useful planning tool for the Mayor, especially those structures which can ONLY be placed by certain folks...Cantina, Med Center, etc...