Proposed Governor Vote System Change

Tjalle

Archangel said:

Each account should be able to vote only where said account has a house. Period.

This makes the most sense.
It would improve a system that as it is, is easily corrupted.

Yoshi

Archangel said:

Each account should be able to vote only where said account has a house. Period.

“This does mirror real life general election rules”

Merlin

Yoshi said:

Archangel said:

Each account should be able to vote only where said account has a house. Period.

“This does mirror real life general election rules”

Except that it doesn't.  House/property ownership was removed as a voting requirement by a Constitutional amendment. 

Tjalle said:

Archangel said:

Each account should be able to vote only where said account has a house. Period.

This makes the most sense.
It would improve a system that as it is, is easily corrupted.

Removing cross shard voting will result with more corruption. It will give rise to people winning governorships simply by having the most accounts open.  The current system requires deal making across shards, which helps prevent one guild (or one person) from achieving control.  In effect, winning a competitive race requires a wider reach and building a coalition.  

JohnKnighthawke

Outside of roleplaying with the King at the King's Council meetings, Governors have a limited role. Someone else has outlined what the 'powers' are pretty well earlier in this thread I believe. The mechanic by which an EA-affiliated person with EM-type powers (known as a Player Event Coordinator) could assist in the running of in-game events is long-since gone and never was limited to Governors to begin with (though the Great Lakes Governors made extensive use of it). Further, any player can host an in-game event, not just Governors.

It has always struck me that too many people who seek this role are not interested in RP (which is the primary purpose of the mechanic at this point) and primarily are interested in it for other reasons which have little to do with the actual role of the governor.

I simply find it reasonable to think that, when the consequences of these elections will fall primarily on the shard the election takes place on, the decision should be made primarily by the folks on that shard. No system will 100% ensure this (for example there's no way to fight people with money to spend who are willing to pay for more and more accounts just to vote, but that's true now too), but my proposal will at minimum ensure that players need to make a choice as to which shard a given account of theirs is mostly associated with.

magrodnyc2

lot of people dont care about the GOV job or anything realted.
On Atlantic and couple other shards , we had situations where the new Gov was elected by enemy PVP guild or just random Trolls that changed the city buff to something that no one use, causing a lot of headache, forcing people to change towns, which they have to wait 7 days (really dont know why this long). so now, past couple elections people vote fir A or B, just to make sure that person will keep the town bonus.   I already suggested that all towns should have a drop down menu with all buffs and let the player choose what he want, than people would care less for been a citizen of wtver town.

keven2002

JohnKnighthawke said:

Outside of roleplaying with the King at the King's Council meetings, Governors have a limited role. Someone else has outlined what the 'powers' are pretty well earlier in this thread I believe. The mechanic by which an EA-affiliated person with EM-type powers (known as a Player Event Coordinator) could assist in the running of in-game events is long-since gone and never was limited to Governors to begin with (though the Great Lakes Governors made extensive use of it). Further, any player can host an in-game event, not just Governors.

It has always struck me that too many people who seek this role are not interested in RP (which is the primary purpose of the mechanic at this point) and primarily are interested in it for other reasons which have little to do with the actual role of the governor.

This is what I was thinking. The biggest "thing" the governor can do is pick a town buff but outside of that it sounds like just a lot of RP with zero actual impact to most. Rather than change anything to how voting is done, maybe they should just assign a buff to each town based on it's history (ie Moonglow would have some sort of magic buff like SDI or FC). At that point whoever ran (and won) at the very least couldn't grief from their position.

Archangel

hmmm, srry to spring this upon you so short notice, but.... RP is an integral part of the game, and many people play for it, not giving a darn about gains or whatnot. RP is a thing.

keven2002

Archangel said:

hmmm, srry to spring this upon you so short notice, but.... RP is an integral part of the game, and many people play for it, not giving a darn about gains or whatnot. RP is a thing.

I think you might have misunderstood my comment (or maybe I didn't do good enough finishing it out) so allow me to clarify; by removing the ability to change the town buff it would also, at least in my opinion, heavily reduce anyone not looking to RP from running for governor. 

Side note - I don't think the sarcasm was necessary and honestly misplaced. Doth not worry mighty wiz-nerd; I woth not attacking thee role play!

Pitr

Pawain said:

Agree, 1 shard per account.

I agree!

Pitr

Pitr

From my perspective, being a Governor allows you to create a City Council, a Royal Guard Regiment... and a unique story line linked to the citizens and to the shard.

Archangel

keven2002 said:

Archangel said:

hmmm, srry to spring this upon you so short notice, but.... RP is an integral part of the game, and many people play for it, not giving a darn about gains or whatnot. RP is a thing.

I think you might have misunderstood my comment (or maybe I didn't do good enough finishing it out) so allow me to clarify; by removing the ability to change the town buff it would also, at least in my opinion, heavily reduce anyone not looking to RP from running for governor. 

Side note - I don't think the sarcasm was necessary and honestly misplaced. Doth not worry mighty wiz-nerd; I woth not attacking thee role play!

Beg thine pardon respectable sir, see arth correkt!

Pawain

Oops I better be careful with number 5 up there.

The_Higgs_1

Like i said years ago, they need to remove the town buff system from governors.  Make it a gold sink for whatever buff you need.  Thatll solve the voting nonsense and help remove duped gold from the game.  Easiest two for one in the history of UO.  

Seth

Yoshi said:

Archangel said:

Each account should be able to vote only where said account has a house. Period.

“This does mirror real life general election rules”

Yay, I own 4 houses.
4 votes for sale, any shard!

JohnKnighthawke

By the way, for the folks saying that a property requirement would match RL election rules, assuming you mean for most national-level elections within the United States of America, then the answer is no. I can't technically tell you that some states or localities aren't trying something like this but the last time I looked into it, the answer was still no.

As to whether or not that would make sense for these elections, I have no thoughts on the matter specifically because I'm focused on advancing my own proposals.

Merlin

I voted more than 90 times across four shards in ten different elections this past week. 

In that process, I made new friends on other shards, was invited to other guilds Discord servers and helped coordinate a few electoral victories for friends.  During this cycle, I saw more comradery and willingness to exchange votes from one shard to another than in quite a long time.  Everyone was willing to help with ingots and gating.   Everyone was grateful and extended invites to guilds and other groups.    It was probably one of my favorite election cycles. 

The changes being proposed in this thread would eliminate the possibility of that happening in the future. 

I urge the developers to reject any of the changes proposed herein. 

Yoshi

"I also sold myself out, made some gold exploiting the loophole of being able to vote on a shard I don't even play, I just had to log in and they gave me the ingots at the merchant, and made some new quote Friends unquote.

I don't live in US, but i was under the impression you could not vote in more than one state, sorry for the error, didn't know each person could vote in every state in a general election"

McDougle

We demand governors for fel cities 

Seth

McDougle said:

We demand governors for fel cities 

We need a governor in shadowguard, he has power to reward cameo to supporters...

JenniferMarie

This will probably be a very unpopular opinion - and I recognize that it may get a lot of flack - but ...

My personal suggestion for governor elections is that the ability to reject/claim town loyalty should be suspended 7 days before the nomination period begins, opening back up after the elections are over.

This would prevent the cross-shard and same-shard bribing.

It would result in a three week suspension in the ability to reject/claim town loyalty only twice a year and allow for less toxic "campaigning".

JenniferMarie

Pawain said:

keven2002 said:

Still wondering why being governor even matters (aside from having the town buff); maybe I'm missing something.

Does being a governor allow you to have EM like abilities to run events (ie place decorations that cannot be picked up and create a prize) or are they just like every other player run event? My understanding is that it's the latter (I believe it was once a colab with EMs but has long since stopped?). 

Governors get to sit at the table with the king during meetings. They can bestow titles upon citizens. They choose the town buffs. They control the content of the city news. They can put a poll on the town stone.

I think that is all.

All of what Pawain said, but I also believe that governors are encouraged to create at least one player-run event during their term. (At least on my home shard.)

JohnKnighthawke

JenniferMarie said:

This will probably be a very unpopular opinion - and I recognize that it may get a lot of flack - but ...

My personal suggestion for governor elections is that the ability to reject/claim town loyalty should be suspended 7 days before the nomination period begins, opening back up after the elections are over.

This would prevent the cross-shard and same-shard bribing.

It would result in a three week suspension in the ability to reject/claim town loyalty only twice a year and allow for less toxic "campaigning".

My fear for this, by itself, would be that it doesn't actually remedy the issue I see, but rather just force folks to plan further ahead.

JenniferMarie

JohnKnighthawke said:

My fear for this, by itself, would be that it doesn't actually remedy the issue I see, but rather just force folks to plan further ahead.

John, we both know that a lot of UO people can't plan that far ahead.