Politician Archive

Wow, this is a big hunk of game design here folks. This isn't a little issue like, "my dancer falls down too often." We can't ignore the fact that this is the number one issue, by a long way, for this community of politicianplayers. You feel that your investment of skill points makes you little more than a facilitator or placeholder for player cities, with little opportunity for gameplay or reward. In part, this is because we are a unique profession, the one profession with the capability to build permanent communities in the Star Wars Galaxy, which is an amazing and wonderful concept. Much of our gameplay consists of working with other players to get them settled into those communities, not necessarily hitting hotkeys and doing missions for XP and loot. But I consider all of that to be the great strength of the politician profession, not something that I want to undo. I wouldn't be interested in playing as a politician anymore if we were suddenly transformed into another XP grinding, mission-terminal-running profession.

I think we have some very specific challenges we can work on:

1. Making each skillbox valuable. Right now many of the specialization skillboxes are not valuable due to imbalanced costs of the specializations. Give playersreasons to acquire and keep the politician skills. Many politicians plan to either not advance past a certain point or to go for master and then sell back skills immediately. How can each skill-box be made valuable in an ongoing way.

2.Something for the master skill. Give the master skill box something special, a valuable reward for the politician and his constituents for investing and organizing toan incredible degree in order to advance to this level.

Beyond those specific goals, I know many of you have long-term profession design and feature ideas. I've seen them all over this forum, and in many cases I've said, "hold that until the submission thread." Well, here it is. I posted my Diplomat system in this spirit, and I invite you to cut and paste your old favorite concepts to this thread, or dream up your own ideal Politician Skill Tree. Here's something I posted in response to a question about the actual development viability of something like the Diplomat abilities:

"Thebig design concpets can be included in our top-five list in this way, by simple telling the devs that politicians want some big changes, and that at some point down the line we want ways to be able to interact with other politicians, to expand our gameplay beyond facility placement and permission granting. When they get around to asking us, "ok, how do we do that?" we've got a whole forum full of examples and answers for them."

So, answer my specific points, and then feel free to wander off into your most elaborate wish-list kind of stuff. We'll capture the spirit of these pie-in-the-sky posts one way or another for our submission to the devs on Friday.

Here's something from Reavus that I knew I wanted included in this thread.Forgive me for reposting it myself, Reavus instead of waiting for you.

/citymotd (City Message of the Day)

• Create a new politician command /citymotd (city Message of the Day) which allows mayor to set a greeting or warning message which is displayed to players when they enter city limits
  
• Following the greeting message a line or 2 of statistics should also be displayed detailing total # of players citywarned, citybanned, cityignored and # for TODAY, # of militia members, and mayor's name

1. /citymotd (City Message of the Day)
   
   
   
   
   • Create a new politician command /citymotd (city Message of the Day) which allows mayor to set a greeting or warning message which is displayed to players when they enter city limits
     
   • Following the greeting message a line or 2 of statistics should also be displayed detailing total # of players citywarned, citybanned, cityignored and # for TODAY, # of militia members, and mayor's name
     
   
   
   Example:
   

   
   
   You are have entered Death Valley (Stronghold), Mayor: PlayaKilla
   
   MOTD: Enter at your own risk. Law breakers will be shot.
   
   TOTAL: 100 people have been city warned, 50 city banned, 10 city ignored
   
   TODAY: 5 people have been city warned, 1 city banned, 0 city ignored
   

   
   
   

   (To ease the load on the database the totals are updated once a day and the today stats every 6 hours)
   
   

   FYI: Stats on a city, such as this, was something that was originally promised us by the devs so that players could judge for themselves whether or not they should enter a city or not. By entering a city you are giving your consent to be judged by their rules whether they be fair or not. This is implied consent.
   
   
   

2. CityChat
   
   

   There's group chat, and guild chat so why not a city chat? Not every city is a guild city (nor should they) so it only makes sense.
   

Ooops, we must have hit "submit" at the same time on this one.

I had been thinking of the city-message-of-the-day ability as a Master level ability. It would certainly be the kind of high-profile and very useful ability that would make me want to acquire and keep the master skill-box.

Wouldn't the Diplomat concept put forward by Bajeezus fall into this category of Politician Gameplay?

If so, I would suggest throwing that in the mix of ideas to appear in this thread for consideration.

Can we get a repost or a link to that thread here? Or should it be sepparate?

- Acroyear

Bulletin Board Terminal

• allow the placement of a new terminal type in city hall; the bulletin board terminal
  
• the ability to place the bulletin board terminal could be a master politician ability
  
• allow citizens (for a set fee) to post general mail messages on the bulletin board
  
• messages would include a subject, message body, waypoint attachment (optional), and indicate poster name
  
• suggested messages for posting on the bulletin board:
  
  
  
  • requests to buy items/services
    
  • looking for groups
    
  • looking training partner
    
  • advertisements for vendors
    
  • advertisements for outings and events
    
  • politician soliticitations for office of mayor
    
  • want ads, classifieds, personals
    
  • and more...
    
  
  
• posts would be expire after one week
  

There are 3 issues I see affecting politician. First, the skill boxes, master is worthless and the cost/benefit of having the skills isn't there. Second, there are no politics in the game. Third, cities need to be improved to make being a politician more fun.

Fixing the skill boxes has to be the number 1 priority. I started a post about what I think we should get at master, here is what I think:

1. Master politician gets discount on maintenance fees. 10% would be fine, 20% would be great.

2. Master politician gets to pick two city specializations, not the crappy hybrid ones.

3. Master politician gets to place some kind of special civic building or statue, and it will only stay in place as long as the mayor in office is a master.

For politicians we need some politics. Right now with how empty this profession is, I have never had anyone run against me. So there aren't any in town politics, so lets create some dealing with people out of town.

Idea #1 NPC politics

Have npc characters come to town that create different political opportunities or problems. Have the leader of the local thugs or spice fiends come to town and look to be bought off. Or have a small mission of negotiation to keep them from camping your city and being a nuisance.

Have leaders of trade federations or unions show up in town. If you negotiate successfully with the brotherhood of shuttlepilots you get a 4 week reduction in shuttleport fees. Negotiate an excellent contract with the cloners and get a reduction in cloning fees. Botch things up and fees go up.

Idea #2 Intercity politics

Give us the ability to interact with other mayors. Let us negotiate treaties or have hostilities with other cities. Make us negotiate direct shuttle flights between NPC cities. Discounts on services in other cities. If we can have guild wars, why not city wars?

Idea #3 Faction Politics

If you are a mayor and part of a faction there should be some kind of repercussion. If you are a rebel have a rebel field commander come by and ask to put up a base in or near town and ask you for help. If you are a rebel you have to deal with the imperial governer once a month and keep him off your back, or AT-STs and stormies spawn in town. If you are imperial you get nice visits from the governor. You have to deal with raids/vandalism from rebel NPCs.

Last of all I think cities themselves really need to be looked at.

1. Give us structures that will make a city more unique and not just a gathering of houses. Special house styles that can only be placed in cities. Pavement, city gates.....

2. City structures need more reason to exist. Right now there is no benefit to a cantina/hospital over a house. There is no benefit to a merchant tent over a house. Reduce the benefits of houses so that having city structures is worthwhile. This may be extreme but I would suggest

a. no wound healing in houses has to be hospital

b. no BF healing in houses, has to be cantina

c. no vendors in houses unless house is inside city limits (this one is really over the top and will never happen)

Some great ideas Mkappus!

And you are exactly right with your observations/ideas regarding city structures and master politician!

---

Mkappus wrote:

Last of all I think cities themselves really need to be looked at.

1. Give us structures that will make a city more unique and not just a gathering of houses. Special house styles that can only be placed in cities. Pavement, city gates.....

2. City structures need more reason to exist. Right now there is no benefit to a cantina/hospital over a house. There is no benefit to a merchant tent over a house. Reduce the benefits of houses so that having city structures is worthwhile. This may be extreme but I would suggest

a. no wound healing in houses has to be hospital

b. no BF healing in houses, has to be cantina

c. no vendors in houses unless house is inside city limits (this one is really over the top and will never happen)

---

Keep the ideas coming!

How about taking that message board one step further and allow it to act as a vendor of sorts as well...

Ie, JoeBob McKenzie needs 1000 wooly hide.... He would deposit a payment and a fee for the service with the bulletin board/droid/service/vendor whatever...

SallyMarie HunterChick takes the message, (like an explorer mission) hunts the hides and returns for her Payment.

JoeBob later returns and picks up his wooly hide....

This would make a stronger reason to visit a city and would help boost the economy of products for vendors... Ie, if you are an armorsmith, you could easily go to a corellia city and get wooly hide from newbie hunters via this method...

Well I have an idea that would more or less rework the skill tree and arrange it so that the higher skills aren't as useless as they are now. I mean why master the militia branch (well except for warmaster) if you plan on being a research city? So basically the 4 tiers would be rearranged thusly

Civic Structures SpecializationsUrban Planning Diplomacy

can place a shuttleportcloning specialization?keep this tier the same not quite sure

can place a cloning facstronghold spec?what to put for this

med centers can be placed research spec? but it allows the diplomat

cantinas can be placedentertainer/healing spec? idea Baj has.

I just hope thatthis doesn't get squished or something like happens in some other forums I go to. If it does then I"ll just explain it in another post. I don't really know what should go in the 4th tier but since Bajesus has an idea for Diplomat I figured that could be the tier to master in order to go elite, if you guys have any ideas or think some things should be moved around feel free.

And as for accolades, I really like the idea of special home types that are only placeable inside of a city. As it stands my city doesnt look any different from a PA town except for the giant skyscraper in the middle.

I like the MOTD idea.

I like the bulletin board idea.

But these things don't make anyone want to come to us. People seek out doctors (heal me, give me a buff), entertainers (heal my BF and mind, possibly even entertain!), weaponsmiths (make me a new gun), even image designers (make me look different). What do people seek politicians for? /grantzoningrights? To place a statue or park in front of their house? We need more meat. People should be coming to us for a reason.

Goliath (Mkappus) was on the right track here. What do politicians do? Offer incentives, offer protection, negotiate, make treaties, trade agreements, alliances, etc. We need to somehow be able to do this. People should be coming to us and saying, "can you help me with this problem I have?" Right now it's just, "can you place a park here?" That's fine too, that's a mayor's job too. But we need a reason for people to come to us.

Otherwise, you are correct, everyone will get to Master then pass the Mayor's job to another. There is no incentive to keep it. I know that I plan on dropping it.

Dur, I forgot about the militia...*smacks himself in the back of the head* That can be a lvl 1 diplomat skill.

Oh and I might as well mention this, would it be so bad to have our skill points reduced from costing the starter 77 to the elite profession's req? Our skills are used for the better of a city, for others and not ourselves. Don't get me wrong I like that and enjoy being the guy in charge of arranging and beautification(I am an architect major so I may actually become an urban planner) however when I master politician I"m going to have to loose some skills that I really need. I dont mind loosing those, but even if they give us incredible content in half a year or so down the line I'm mainly giving up what I can do to build up what others can for no real reason outside of masochism and wanting to help others in their gameplay.