Politician Archive

My guild just got betrayed in the worst imaginable way by the Mayor of our Player City.

First, he tried to sell us out to our arch-enemy guild by giving them militia rights to our city, the password to our voicechat server, and fingering a spy we had installed in their guild. When we caught him,*** kicked him from the guild, and started the process of voting him out, he began dismantling our city (a metropolis/stronghold with 90 real residents (no cross server residents)), including the shuttleport, many statues and other decorations, and finally, the city hall itself. He also jacked the taxes on the city, nearly destroying my house and everything in it (including resources that took me months to collect). Finally, after destroying OUR city hall, he placed a city hall of his own, thereby filling the planet back to the city cap so we could not replace it. Needless to say, this jerk ruined tons of effort that my guild put into building this city, nearly destroyed months of my own personal effort, and did so all in the space of a few hours.

So my point here is that there needs to be some safeguard to prevent a Mayor from doing this kind of crap. For example, a Mayor should not be able to destroy critical city structures without some checks and balances, such as:

1. Approval by a substantial percentage of residents
2. Notification to all residents that the Mayor has attempted to destroy a major city structure, and a one week delay for people to vote him out and cancel the action.
3. Not allowing the incumbent mayor to change anything when there is another candidate running for mayor with a significant share of the votes (like 25%).

***We were actually informed of his plans by a member of the guild he was trying to sell us out to, even though he probably hates us more than anyone on the server, obviously realizing that even WE didn't deserve to treated like this by our own mayor.

While I do agree that this sort of behavior is abhorent...

You DID elect him.

For the time being I think this should serve as an important lesson to everyone... only elect a Mayor that you KNOW will act in a mature and responsible way.

Maybe sometime in the futurethey will get around to changing it, though i seriously wouln't hold my breath for SOE to do ANYTHING to fix Politician. Cities already tie up all the skill points and destroy all the cash that they were designed for, while providing a great little markeingfeature check-box.

Blocking access to the city hall or destroying it should most definitely not be allowed.

You have to leave the mayor with some power though, lol, we can do precious little enough as it is!

The cityhall I can agree to, the mayor have no reason to destroy it. So that you can have a vote on.

But limit us in rearrange the town, with votes for each thing would be the end, whats the point for being mayor except for moving things between locations when the citizen want to. A total waste of skillpoints.

Only real safeguard would be selecting a mayor that you can trust, I cant see a way to limted the powers off the mayor so he cant destroy the entire town without making the prof worthless.

Did I mention that the jacked-up taxes are still in effect on all vendors in this ex-city, even though the city is no more?

Well having read some of DB's positions on the issue that happened

They found out their mayor was conspiring against them with a Rebel. So instead of working to put another mayor in by election they kicked him from the guild without confronting him (that may have happened in guildchat, dunno about that)

The fact that he was arbitrarily kicked from their guild without what I would call some sort of due process I think lies at the heart of the matter.

So while rogue mayors are a problem, the guild could've just elected another mayor next election rather than making it the issue it obviously was. On DB's part I'd call their move premature and not well thought out.

As it is, they've created an issue (both DB and their mayor) that I've heard of before, just never in a city this size. Because it has happened before I suspect the Dev's have thought of this occurring by now and decided to not code against it for the time being.

As the guy playing devils advocate is asking, how do you code this in such a way as to not make it hard for people playing the politician class.

Simply require a few days to a week's delay in any decision to remove the City Hall, with the alternative of affirming the decision by vote of 1/3 of the city population. How often do cities need to move their city hall?

As for the specific facts...he would have been kicked regardless of any due process. Either he was going behind our backs by using our city and our guild to grief another player for his own personal benefit, (which is basically what he claims he was doing, and which is total BS if you read the chat logs), or he was selling us out. Either way, he broke our trust, and our guild is built on trust. I agree it would have been better judgment to try and vote him out first and then kick him, but he would have caught on anyway--I'm sure the end result would be the same.

"2. Notification to all residents that the Mayor has attempted to destroy a major city structure, and a one week delay for people to vote him out and cancel the action."

I should add, on the DB issue, that I am really sorry to hear what happened, especially on our server. I guess that is the nasty side of politics.

Yes, we did elect him, but that shouldn't give him license to unilaterally grief 50+ players. SOE has included all sorts of nearly game-breaking safeguards to prevent individual players from griefing other individual players. They have done nothing, however, to prevent a single crackhead from simultaneously griefing dozens at once.

I think since they have ballot boxes now that perhaps they should require that certain actions be voted on and be approved before the Mayor has the right to take those actions. For instance: The Mayor wants to raise your income tax in the city from 0 to 2000, that should require a vote, if he wanted to raise it from 0 to 150, then no, that wouldn't require a vote. Drastic changes in taxes should have to be approved by the citizens before set into action. Just my opinion though.

Please understand that Im playing Devil's Advocate here (since in reality I actualy despise people who would do something like this)...

The problem with limiting the Mayor such that he cant remove structures etc without permission would basically make an already pretty worthless class almost unplayable.

My city, Asylum, has close to 100 citizens, with more moving in. If i needed to win some kind of vote each time i wanted to make a city changing decision I would basically be hamstrung.. nothing would get done. It is a very full time job being an effective Mayor now... any more obstacles and you will rapidly find noone willing to sacrifice the 70+ skill points.

Lets face it, it didnt even dawn on the devs that players might eventualy want to step down from the Mayor position... and that should have been alot easier to code and deal with than rogue mayors misusing their elected powers.