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Do you actually want the other non-voting election methods?
Nerror
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
What with Steven saying we won't get any other election method than voting at the start of alpha 2, it got me thinking about if I even care if they ever implement the other types.
It's a bit of a mixed bag for me, tbh.
The Economic node one, where the mayor is determined by the highest blind bidder is the least interesting to me. And the biggest downside is how it incentivizes RMT.
The Military node's trial by combat might be fun, but it really comes down to how well they implement it obviously. It's probably the one with the least downsides of the three non-voting methods I think, if they nail the implementation.
The Divine node's PvE favor based system is something I on the surface would be more likely to be successful at with my playstyle and time I can spend on it, but it also sounds exhausting and grindy if you want to be mayor more than one month in a row. The constant grind might kill the enjoyment for me, and there won't be much time to actually spend on being a good mayor, and dealing with all the politics.
All three methods suffer from the same thing, which is that the election methods require little to no political and leadership skills. Odds are we'll get people who are good at doing one of those three things, but suck at doing the actual job of being a mayor.
Obviously, we'll test it and see how it goes, but my current feeling is that I would be ok if Intrepid end up completely dropping the non-voting election methods.
Thoughts?
It's a bit of a mixed bag for me, tbh.
The Economic node one, where the mayor is determined by the highest blind bidder is the least interesting to me. And the biggest downside is how it incentivizes RMT.
The Military node's trial by combat might be fun, but it really comes down to how well they implement it obviously. It's probably the one with the least downsides of the three non-voting methods I think, if they nail the implementation.
The Divine node's PvE favor based system is something I on the surface would be more likely to be successful at with my playstyle and time I can spend on it, but it also sounds exhausting and grindy if you want to be mayor more than one month in a row. The constant grind might kill the enjoyment for me, and there won't be much time to actually spend on being a good mayor, and dealing with all the politics.
All three methods suffer from the same thing, which is that the election methods require little to no political and leadership skills. Odds are we'll get people who are good at doing one of those three things, but suck at doing the actual job of being a mayor.
Obviously, we'll test it and see how it goes, but my current feeling is that I would be ok if Intrepid end up completely dropping the non-voting election methods.
Thoughts?
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Comments
They represent how things work in real life too, some are dictators, some have a lot of money to buy their position or control from outside. And some are good at doing things but not to use words to manipulate others.
All 4 of them can lead to having a mayor who is not good at organizing and citizens will have ways to prevent them destroying the node.
I don't care, personally.
I think they are all quite weak. Economic obviously encourages RMT. Divine encourages account sharing. Military encourages collusion and bribery (which also encourages RMT).
That said, the vote is also not perfect in an MMORPG setting.
Scientific- simply vote their candidate in (more people=more votes)
Economic - zerg guild pools their gold to one player
Military - zerg all other smaller groups to death
Divine - Flag/declare war on any opposing party trying to build favor to slow them down or prevent them.
All other node elections are already based on how many friends you have, so I want at least one to NOT be about that.
Personally i think millitarry should be a 1v1 tournament instead of a battle royal just becasue you can cheat the systhem less.
And I get that you might just be saying "I want fun ways to make the strongest strategy or power house dominate the political tone of at least some node types, rather than non-gamified politics," and that's definitely an intriguing prospect to increase variety across the community interactions.
Just pointing out that Highest number of supporters =/= highest number of friends.
I've just been having this discussion with a friend I've been informing about Ashes, and my biggest conclusion here is: No matter what the outcome of the design decisions or these discussions will be, these will definitely be debates the community will have on a monthly basis once this game releases.
It would also make sense to have a government that's built on "the strongest person around gets to tell others what to do".
If it's champion-based PvP I think it could be interesting. Note I don't necessarily think it'd be good, the devil's in the details here, but it'd be extremely interesting for it to be this way as it means any random citizen can come up to wrassle the mayor, and it would lead to a different kind of culture overall. Making it anything else is kind of boring honestly, I agree that having something purely determined by individual strength adds flavor in contrast.
Military nodes being, potentially, controlled by sole tyrant travelers would add so much fun to the servers. And if one of those tyrants uses his power for absolute good - that's a huge piece of game history to tell, and a potential attractor to the server as well.
That's a story I definitely want to tell. Someone whose will to change things is so strong they train nonstop to beat the crap out of some dumb tyrant and run a tight ship ever since, without needing to convince 1000 people to make accounts and join a guild. That could be a very strong differentiator for Ashes, and I feel like Intrepid is underusing the potential that this model could hold as a result. If you want to be bold and innovative, you need to think outside the guild box.
if the military vote ends up being a zerg vs zerg, then might be similar to the democratic vote. The difference being that skill and gear can grant you more "weight" to influence the result.
If they wanted to add some PvX chaos into the whole thing, stolen glint could be used as well at one fourth the value perhaps. The downside to that is it reintroduces RMT again, since stolen glint can be traded.
As discussed above, there are ways for large groups to attempt to manipulate all the different methods, but I suspect that the direct elections would be the easiest to manipulate so I am glad we have the other methods as well. It will be fascinating to see what happens over the course of time.
The concept of mayors and their selection is just one of the many delightful innovations which AoC is giving us. Incidentally, these innovations are what make other discussions of server mergers, player retention and comparisons to other games somewhat irrelevant.
But on the personal side of the subject, I don't really care about it.
Note that I’m not strictly complaining about this. In fact I can’t wait for another game where guilds actually mean something; I just think that the only true elections will happen in very small, backwater type nodes that are lower level/don’t have a huge strategic value.
I see the Pros and Cons here, i think.
Voting sounds pretty clean to me, but it is kinda same as prone and vulnerable to "Corruption" as bidding with the highest Money - and also same as flawed as in Trial by Combat. Well i guess in the latter i just mentioned People with superior Reflexes and Skills may find some fun in.
" If " - and that may as well be the Case,
the Person with the highest Money as a Bidder for becoming Mayor is very good at gathering Money : it might benefit the Node real good.
I am aware i sound naive. It "might" benefit the Node. If such a Mayor will care for his Node and be it only for the Money he can make from it, is a different Page. ^.^
I forgot the fourth Option if there is any. Oh dear. And this as someone who is so incredibly thirsty for Knowledge about Nodes. x'D
I doubt there will be such a case that node is " too far off to ever gain the population to grow past stage 3".
Players will want to have freeholds and some will want to be mayors and if a node can grow, will grow.
I think no matter what method you come up with numbers will almost always prevail. You will still have multiple large organizations who compete with each other.
However, this system provides differing methods. The variety will suit multiple types of player organizations. If you only have a single method, then all player organizations will conform to that and will be run and structured the exact same way.
They're all just varied ways to create drama anyway, as we understand them now.
Since they're all easily gamed too, it's wasted potential, to me.
This may be true.
Or it might not. What does the mayor do? They make decisions on node development, such as which buildings to build and upgrade. They make decisions on node diplomacy, who to declare a persona non grata, and similar things. Many of the decisions, particularly the important ones, require substantial agreement of the citizens of the node.
Some people may enjoy being mayor, a lot of others will consider it to be too much thankless work and a lot of bother. But I am interested to hear which of the Mayoral decisions you all think would be worth a guild investing a lot of effort into so they can choose the decision.
You need to be more specific. What part is "bad design"? How should "most skilled" be defined? What actions make you the "most dedicated".
There seems to be an assumption that the largest guilds are the lowest skilled, when it's usually the opposite. The best players often attract others to them and their numbers grow. At the same time, the best players will commonly like the resources and opportunities provided by some the most successful guilds and will seeks to join then. Not much you are going to do about this. It's predictable human behavior.
What you can do, is attempt to create a variety of cultures by incentivizing certain types of players to group together. You can use incentives as levers to make that happen.
You will never create a system that can't be "gamed" and you can't make it fair (what ever that means). What you can do is create a variety of political and social environments that players can choose to exist in.
Seriously, when I heard they changed the system to this mass PvP event I was so disappointed
I think these kinds of conflicts amonst players as well as within them is exactly what we would want to see if the world ought to change continuously.
Most dedicated to the religious organization that resides in the node. Whoever has achieved the top rank within that org and maintains it. Why are you so defensive about zerg guilds? This isn't about them being low skill, it's about wanting node types to actually mean something and be unique, that includes their election processes.
Only a Sith deals in absolutes.