[Township] How should we prevent town decay?

[Kainzo]

Currently - if a town stops posting updates on the forums - it gets moved to the graveyard - if it sits in the graveyard for too long - we take down the rings and let the town go to dust.

However, a lot of this could be resolved if the town never hits the graveyard and continues to flourish - in your opinion - whats the best approach to keep towns active / have a good leadership set up.

I know that if the SIC and mayor are dropping the ball - the town will probably die - but if both quit without appointing a new mayor - who should get the town? What kind of vote should take place?

 

[Raetac]

Well I think the criteria for selection should be as follows..

1) Actual online activity. Could be viewed as Ingame or Forum based. Daily would be highly preferred but no less than every third day. Once a week isn't good enough.

2) Online communication is a must, the candidate has to know how this is done.

3) Drive to succeed.

4) Personality to take on leadership, not essential as one can learn on the job as it were.

 

[Malphugus]

My 2c:

Post on the town forum, and signs in the town, saying: Town in danger of destruction. Citizens must appoint a new Mayor by [Date] (say 4 weeks?) or the town will be vaporised.

Leave it up to the citizens to discuss amongst themselves.
If a new mayor hasn't been appointed by that date then give the citizens say a week to vacate then nuke it clean off the landscape. Or maybe just tear down rings and unprotect the area and chests (if possible) so looters can have their way with it.

Maybe also: take a poll once a Mayor has been decided upon. Just to check that a majority of the citizens support the decision (i.e. it isn't just some shmuck saying 'Ive been appointed' so he/she can enforce their will on the other citizens)

 

[wolfgang784]

Most active person in the town should get mayor, if a decent amount of them are still active then have a little vote.

As for stopping towns from dieing in the first place, the best way would to be increase the base number of players needed to start a town I think. You can get 10 players is like a week if your lucky, maybe longer if nobody leaves existing towns, but then most of those new players leave the game for some reason(best server there is, why leave? wtf?) and the town can't grab enough active people.

So if you don't want to increase the base number of players needed, a better idea I just thought of was even after they have 10 people, monitor the active members for, say, 2 weeks? And at least 10 members needs to log on every 3 days for those 2 weeks or they don't get town status. This forces the towns members to be active if they want a town, and the random people just checking out servers never stay for 2 weeks. This is the best option in my opinion. 10 ACTIVE, ACTIVE being the key word, is a good count for a town, not 3 active and 30 in-actives.

As for existing towns and kingdoms, the 3 day policy should also be implemented. As I understand it, right now someone isn't considered in-active until they have been offline for 2 weeks. That is much to long, and so is a week. They should not be counted for citizenship after 3 days as well.

These 3 options will eliminate a lot of current towns and dozens of potential ones. Especially 2nd and 3rd options, those will force the players who will actually participate actively in the server to band together and form a town of super active people or to keep 1 large, awesome, amazing kingdom and abandon the less active towns.

Really though, a lot of towns could be eliminated with this. My favorite is the 2nd.

 

[Capn_Danger]

Three days isn't a very long time. We need to make things easier for people to form a successful town, not harder.

What Kain said is true, towns need good leaders. You need someone who is:

1) Reliable
2) Mature
3) Online often
4) Is very involved in the community of his town
5) Able to coordinate/ inspire citizens to work on town projects
6) Willing

It is essential to have someone who fits these characteristics. If a town cannot produce a suitable leader on their own, I believe that the server staff and mods should step in and appoint a willing candidate, even if they are from another town altogether. The citizens might be given a vote between several potentials.

Having a moratorium on new towns would concentrate players into already existing towns, giving them a chance to grow and flourish. A large portion of your citizens WILL go inactive, they will move on to other towns, or other servers. You'll get a few stalwarts and long-time members, but in general towns must regularly recruit to maintain an active player base.

The other idea is to distribute mayor powers and responsibilities, the SICs should get access to most of the same abilities the mayor has, if the mayor allows it. Larger towns need more than 2 people to keep things running, really there should be someone who can make decisions and perform LWCs/ regions online 24/7. In Skyforge I have a Town Council set up, which is basically a handful of SICs. It would be handy if they all had regions abilities/ LWC, which is the bread and butter of town administration.

 

[Draskuul]

I like most of the ideas I've seen so far. One exception would be in the time for a person to be considered inactive. Some of us have jobs, families, etc, and going out of town for a week on business or vacation shouldn't be enough to put us inactive.

I like the idea of expanding SIC to a council with most of the mayor's abilities. The most active of the council would become the new mayor should the mayor suddenly go inactive. Lacking a proper SIC or council a combination of activity and tenure should probably used to pick a mayor from the citizens.

I particularly like the idea of more stringent requirements for starting a new town. I haven't been here long, but I've already seen far too many new towns formed for our population count. There just aren't enough people on HC yet to support this many towns, thus they are destined for failure.

There should be more encouragement towards building up an existing town rather than starting a new one. Perhaps expanding rings further with higher population (beyond the existing tiers). The idea of a council could do that. People want opportunities for advancement. Whether a town has 10 players or 50 there are still only two real seats of power--mayor and SIC. A council would alleviate that cap.

 

[Diavolo1988]

I agree with what Capn is saying. Our system with the city council has worked tremendously well in having someone capable of awarding plots and stuff online most of the time. However, only Capn has access to giving people permissions in the town. (which might actually be a good thing, since then the least patient people wont join us since they have to wait till he comes on before they can build anything) but most of the time that is a bad thing, since everyone becomes busy once in a while. (e.g. is capn is very busy one week it might take a while before new citizens get permissions)

An other thing about towns going inactive and stuff, what about the holidays? Every summer and easter holiday I go to places without internet. Easter isnt that bad since its just one week, but in the summer Im gone for about a month. Im guessing its not just me who might take a months break during holidays. Currently I think people are evicted from their homes for inactivity a bit too soon (unless they have an empty plot or cobble cube). I dont really know a good solution to this unless that people who go away for a good amount of time could send a pm to the mayor on this forum letting him know they will come back after a month or so.

 

[Capn_Danger]

I dont really know a good solution to this unless that people who go away for a good amount of time could send a pm to the mayor on this forum letting him know they will come back after a month or so.

People should just put a sign up on their property saying

On Break
Back after
3/25/11

Or what have you. That way there's no possible confusion.

 

[wolfgang784]

Yea, people go on vacation, but if your going on vacation or a business trip it's not hard to log on for aprox 30 seconds to place a sign saying "away on a trip, be back -insert date-" like the guy above me said. You don't just log off a game you plan on playing for a week out of nowhere, you tell people, like your mayor.