Politics

[eggplantboy]

Hello,

I realize that this is probably already planned for some distant future date, but I\'d like to humbly request that politics be implemented sooner rather than later. Reading about the political system on the main site and looking at the options for political philosophies during character generation got me very excited. Politics would make for some very interesting roleplaying!

[zanzibar]

I\'ve been asking for political intrigue for a while now.  It would be a much more constructive source of conflict than personal grudges. :-D

[Cyl]

wasnt there an octarch election once, ...

[Zan]

I don\'t see how the Devs need to implement politics. Wouldn\'t such a thing be up to the community? They already gave information about the system out and as Cyl said we\'ve had elections for an Octarch before. Sadly that Octarch soon resigned because she was pushed into running in the elections. Nothing is stopping people from starting up new elections, getting an Octarch and some Vigesimi out there.

This would be something that is in our hands, I believe.

[yayoo]

When was the last Octarch election?Will there ever be another one?

[zanzibar]

Originally posted by Zan
I don\'t see how the Devs need to implement politics. Wouldn\'t such a thing be up to the community? They already gave information about the system out and as Cyl said we\'ve had elections for an Octarch before. Sadly that Octarch soon resigned because she was pushed into running in the elections. Nothing is stopping people from starting up new elections, getting an Octarch and some Vigesimi out there.

This would be something that is in our hands, I believe.

OK.  Give an example of how players would do this.

You\'d need to have a group of players organizing it who were ~in~ on it.  Further, you\'d need everyone else to be i) aware of it, and ii) in a position to pick a side.  Further, picking a side would have to actually be meaningful to the \"outcome\" of the conflict.

Besides a guild war or an election, neither of which are that fun, I don\'t see how you\'d do it.  So if you know something I don\'t, please share.

[Nikodemus]

If we wan\'t to have meaningfull elections, they have to actually mean somethink. It would be cool from rp point of viev to have octarch which isn\'t dump NPC, but it is where it ends. The Octarch means nothing and the only difference beatwen him/her/kran is the title. If we want to have politics, we need to have goverment, people who will do this what goverment plan, not because they are supposed to rp, but because they have to in order to get somethink.
Simply, a person wont say: I can do what i want, you can do nothing to me coz i can refuse a duel or log off. It won\'t be simple as that. Even if someone will behalve in such ooc way, that person will regret that. And it won\'t be ooc punish, but ic punish.

[Karyuu]

We need more content in-game before any government can manifest itself. As Nikodemus stated, there need to be chances for consequence of disobeying orders and laws, there need to be headquarters, a lot more land, a whole lot more land, etc. Something serious is just not feasable until PlaneShift is in a more complete state.

[eggplantboy]

Just curious - does anyone know what the plans the devs have for \"politiking\" in PS?

[Zan]

There was one mistake made in the previous elections and that was that it was ripped out of the game too much.

If there are to be some new political changes around Hydlaa, and I have a feeling there will, then it shouldn\'t be seen just as a fun event but as the beginning of a major change in the game\'s community.

I disagree that we need to wait for more things to be implemented, yes of course the bigger the game gets the more important leadership gets. However I think there can be some established leadership even with the content we have today. There are things that can be done already.

As for those people that defy political decisions in an ooc way ... you can\'t harm them, that\'s true. They can\'t harm you either though. Just ignore them and they\'ll go away on their own. Those people crave attention and when they don\'t get it they leave. If there are people that defy you in a roleplaying way ... well now then we just got started

[Stephen McNaire]

I think you missing one idea. People keep complaining that Advisory points are a bad method for picking GMs, so why can\'t the Vigesimis be the GMs? Bear with me, here\'s my thoughts:

Ok, we have GMs now and they do allot of work that\'s rather like government. We could make it so say every 3 months they have to have an election, but it can be triggered earlier by receiving so many complaints from players (able to be vetoed by the Octarchs). In order to run against a current GM, you have to get say 30 people to nominate you. So a candidate has to be well know to even think about running. A signboard is placed by the fountain with the candidate?s names and perhaps times and places to meet them. Or maybe just general info. On Election Day we all go to the local pub to vote, one vote per account, not character. To prevent cheating we\'ll be strict; caught cheaters will be kicked off the server permanently.

I think there would be allot of benefits to this. This would make sure that the GMs are actually working PS, if no one knows about them, who\'s going to vote for them? So if a GM wants to stay a GM, he\'s got to be doing allot for PS or he risks losing his position.

To protect PS from the players taking irresponsible control and running amuck with the game, the Octarchs could be the official electives of the PS team. Octarchs have jurisdiction over the GMs, if a certain GM gets out of hand, the Octarchs can do a majority vote to strip him of his rank and then pick a new candidate and it starts all over with the players picking theirs.

Anyhow, in my rambling way, this is my thoughts. To have the GMs who do basically governmental work to be the government.

[Karyuu]

There is a reason why the great majority of GMs have one account for their GM character, and a completely different account for the character they like to actually play with. The GMs who don\'t have a character they actually play with, tend to not act as anyone but a GM. They are the OOC policemen. What they do, renaming, unsticking, teleporting, mediating conflicts, banning, kicking rude players, is strictly OOC - to try to explain these things roleplay-wise would be a mess. A GM doesn\'t get picked for the job due to popularity, and keep it for the same reason. He or she is picked because he or she is generally considered a reliable, trustworthy, helpful, and efficient individual. To change how this works would be to change the entire GM system - and I\'m not so sure it would be for the better.

Advisor points are not the method for picking a GM - read a thread Pestilence made and notice GM and dev replies. There are many other factors that play into the decision. I think politics should be left to actual players - GMs are generally busy trying to keep a clean, relatively calm atmosphere, and developers themselves rarely go in-game because they are too busy working on it ;)

[Stephen McNaire]

*Shrugs* Ok, just a thought. I understand that being declared GM would crimp your social life in both ways.

[Karyuu]

Certainly nothing wrong with sharing thoughts and suggestions :P Though indeed, once you\'ve been given an actual duty, playtime tends to decrease.