Politician Archive
Thread: *** Fresh*** Top Five Issues..(list)
I would like to welcome Bajeezus as our new corrispondent.. It is good that we have someone that has had his eyes on the prize since the begginging...
so far every post he has posted on peeps start with the questions which has got to be hard for him to follow up on... so lets make a fresh list of concerns.. and things that we feel our profession needs ..
again .. these should be issues and not BUGS.. the bugs we have several avenues to let the appropriate people know.. issues we have one... our corrispondent..
so as our city goes this is what i think the top five are... please respond with yours..
1. Content.. there needs to be something to make mayor more than just the guy u have to get to give u zoning right.. as bajeezus said in another post.. our profession has and should have the capabilitie to build something that will last throught the life of this game..
2. Specializations.. no they are too spendy for what you are getting.. either benifit needs to be bumped up or the price needs to come down.. personally id like to see increased benifit.. something that would make peeps say .. Hey.. if i want this better i should go here.....
3. Placement issues.. some of the buildings are easy to place some are near imposible.. city structures should have the ability to level terrain.. if we are making something to last the life of the game.. sure would be nice to make it not an eyesore.. (when u get 0 0 0 4 u will understand part of this point)...
4.. Added structures.. city walls ... pavement... more statues.. garages.. etc.. (i want one of those huge arches in theed ^^) even a few generic civic buildings that can be used for random purposes.. (expo centor, museams, schools..)
5. Militia.. ok .. so there is a griefing issue.. here and things need to be "tweeked" a bit.. this is one of the priority issues for many cities.. my city personally being a crafting/entertainer city doesnt have much problem with griefing but i know of several on my server alone that do and have no way to handle them..
well.. this is what i have and hope it helps..
Dvnce
Master Politician
Metropolis of Skara Brae
server Gorath ...
oh forgot to add to my number 1 part.. with the content.... also for city content .. mayors need a way to be able to focalize their city toward one faction too... our server has several imperial and rebel strongholds.. but unless you see the bases.. or the land mine warnings you have no idea what faction they are with.. many cities would love the ability to have faction based buildings banners, decorations and what nots.. for their city ..
I'll get a whole new sticky thread up to begin collecting issues en masse tomorrow. I knew I would have a lot of posting in the form of introductions and greetings and so on today, so wanted to leave myself some room to breath today.
But I do want to reply to your post and show you a bit of my philosophy on things:
1. Content.. there needs to be something to make mayor more than just the guy u have to get to give u zoning right.. as bajeezus said in another post.. our profession has and should have the capabilitie to build something that will last throught the life of this game..
I see politician as primarily a "sandbox" profession, which means we have been given the playspace and some toys to play with, and its up to us to build our world from it. Given that, we do need more toys.
As it stands, politicians place buildings, grant zoning permission, and set taxes. I would like to see additional gameplay focused on player-to-player dynamics, and maintaining the foundation that we have as a unique profession. To me, this does not mean asking for politician missions, special politician quests or content such as that. Mainly, I would like to see politicians given more ways to interact with each other and each other's cities. As it is, we are all entirely focused on domestic policy. We need to add a bit of internation relations to spice things up and give politicians some more player-to-player based gameplay.
2. Specializations.. no they are too spendy for what you are getting.. either benifit needs to be bumped up or the price needs to come down.. personally id like to see increased benifit.. something that would make peeps say .. Hey.. if i want this better i should go here.....
I want to make sure that there is consensus on this before we go asking for chages. You know the devs are going to want to start out conservative and loosen up if necessary rather than vice-versa. The specializations are a great concept, we just have to get them to the point where they are useful and fun to use.
3. Placement issues.. some of the buildings are easy to place some are near imposible.. city structures should have the ability to level terrain.. if we are making something to last the life of the game.. sure would be nice to make it not an eyesore.. (when u get 0 0 0 4 u will understand part of this point)...
Large gardens are extremely difficult to place, yes. Was just trying to find a place for a large dantooine meditation garden in my city. Also, shrubery sticking up through our gardens and structures is unattractive. How high a priority is this?
4.. Added structures.. city walls ... pavement... more statues.. garages.. etc.. (i want one of those huge arches in theed ^^) even a few generic civic buildings that can be used for random purposes.. (expo centor, museams, schools..)
I'll have to see how far they are from doing these things. Is this something we can hope to see soon or more of a long-range goal. I'll try to find out. I hear a lot a requests for pavement.
5. Militia.. ok .. so there is a griefing issue.. here and things need to be "tweeked" a bit.. this is one of the priority issues for many cities.. my city personally being a crafting/entertainer city doesnt have much problem with griefing but i know of several on my server alone that do and have no way to handle them..
As something we had that was then taken away, this will always be a high visibility item. In terms of being able to create our own little communities with their own individual flavors, this is extremely important and worth fighting for.
Thanks for the post, Dvnce. We'll get them whipped into shape in no time.
It is great seeing our communitie leaders stepping up to help our new corrispondant.. if we all work to gether and be constructive.. we will see great things with our profession.. if Bajeezus is making a sticky .. ill wait to post till tomarrow on this issue..
/cheers Dvnce
To followup on your Sandbox philosophy, I agree completely. Your direction seems to be along the line of diplomacy between other cites. Perhaps if Trade and Resources were totally revamped this may make sense. (Trade embargos would be fun!) It is still too early to give up on the domestic capabilities. Garages are in the works as we know, how about a Coliseum for the larger cities (for PvP competitions?).
Beyond the physical building tools that are being lined up, I would likethe Development Teamto seriously consider providing the tools to generate a lite version of Event Coordinator functionality. Perhaps Mayors could use this once per week to be able to actually use the tools to create an operational fiction around their cities.
RE: pavement. It's not one of my Top 5 issues, but it is very easilyfixed. Just have the devs add a few more 'gardens' to the menu that are called..you guessed it...pavement. Gardens will need looser placement rules as well, perhaps flattening of terrrain if possible.
I think we need to move forward on two fronts just as the DEV team does. On this forum we need to focus on two things seperately and try not to confuse them.
1. Fix the items that do not work as designed or intended.
2. Add thetools that will make the Politician profession and Player-Cities worthwhile for the long-run.
Issues like Shuttle Fee resetting to 100 after every server restart, inability to heal correctly in a theatre, Mayor: Null, and many others are examples of what needs to be fixed. These are bugs.
The topics we usually raise as "Issues" but are really requests for future or corrected content would be items like increase in decoration limit, addition of pavement, /Citywarn (of course), a better way for a Mayor to step down, and the many other ideas that populate the threads here.
I totally agree with your sandbox analogy. I don't want any kind of Politician missions. I want the tools to expand on the world I'm creating for my citizens and friends. Please keep fixes and future tools seperate as they are both important. If you add the tools without the fixes the cities will have broken systems with new content. If you just make the fixes without adding new tools then Player-Cities will be stagnant and you will have a whole class of bored players.
I've read too many posts from players saying, "Why are you introducing new content when there are so many things to fix." If the Dev Team spent all their time chasing balancing issues they could spend the bulk of 2004 on Droid Engineer and Carbineer alone and never work on anything new. What we need for Politician (and for any profession really) is a simultaneous list of items that need to be readdressed and altered, and work done toward new and exciting game features to keep us all here. I'm confident that the Dev Team knows this and is moving forward in this matter. I just want the players to see it this way, and I would like us on this forum to take the lead in submitting our ideas in these two different manners. If Thunderheart still wants a Top 5 overall thats fine. We can look at the outstanding issues from both lists and decide on if a Fix outweighs a Content issue or vice-versa.
Hope this helps you, but this is how I see it.
--Hail there! Although my little city is only an Outpost, I come from a background in UO of a large guild that over four years hosted several events which involved other guilds and/or groups paying an entry fee to participate, of course with a nice prize for the winner (as well as all participants). These events were some of the most fun we had after the "game mechanics" became rather tiring.
--There are two in game functions already existing that could be adapted for letting a city mayor organize, publicize, and hold events.
1) The first is the bazaar terminal. There could be a "city" type ofclassification added. Events could be publicized there, and if entry fees are required, the entry fee could be posted there (giving the customer a "ticket" of sorts). ....side note: Another possible use for bazaar terminals is a "recruiting" function, which would require a fee (like a classified ad). This would get rid of all the spam items for sale that are merely there to advertise a city seeking settlers (free speeders, houses, etc. to new settlers!).
2) The second existing game function is mission terminals. If your city has a mission terminal, there should be some way for the mayor to define missions. for example, races are popular. The mayor could input a series of waypoints, and the holder of the "ticket" purchased in the bazaar must complete the course and return to a designated waypoint. These might even include off world waypoints. Another popular contest is "scavenger hunts". The participant with the ticket would have to acquire a list of items, and could be assisted by members of their group. You may theink these are dopey kids games, but believe me, when the missions are complex and the stakes are high, excitement builds!
If the mission terminals are used for contests, there would have to be a "trigger". IN essence, all the groups have purchased their tickets at the bazaar, the leaders gather at the mission terminal. For starting the event the mayor "triggers" the mission terminal so the leaderswith tickets can obtainmission details at the same time.--also there would have to be a way for the mayor to "load" the prize into the mission, to assure participants that they will not be ripped off.