Feedback on Election Shennanigans

[Dreams]

It sucks that this happens so often. But it is also probably not feasible for DMs to oversee every election to make sure this doesn't happen. Even if they do, and spend all of this time that could be spent elsewhere, they're very likely to miss some.

Simple solution: Script so that players are unable to do this in the first place.

If a player account (or linked account/CD Key/whatever tracking metric) has voted within the last IG 6 months, then they could be unable to vote on any other election.
or
Let players choose a single character that is able to vote, only that one of their characters can vote. Have a cooldown of 6IG months/year, whatever.

This has gone on for years, I think it might be too optimistic to hope that people will read an announcement and change their behaviour.

[Nevrus]

10 hours logged on the character in the last RL month. Catches even casuals, prevents people that barely play from being political tools.

[Red Ropes]

Hard agree about the idea of mechanical safeguards.

I think you should be limited to one vote on one character.

Have a distinction between an active citizenship with a vote and one without.

Make it so people lose citizenship sooner with inactivity and have it based on something other than logging in.


Make a cooldown between switching to new active citizenships and make it so when you roll your active character you can choose a new citizenship sooner.

Some sort of cool down, some sort of recognition of CD-key and characters.

[Sea Shanties]

This may sound off topic but I think it is actually related: I think storage should be available to all characters at various banks and be removed as a citizenship perk.

I think characters who don't particularly care about politics become citizens for the 12 slots of storage (especially if an alt) and then when voting time comes they vote because they can, not because they care.

[Cerk Evermoore]

I see this change as super interesting because it crushes incumbants. But from an RP prospective it saddens me because term limits do not fit the setting. and it is disappointint exploitation forces another barrier between legitimate realistic rp and the playerbase.

[Gobbo Champion Inc]

Measures to limit the amount, or time a politician can stay in office is hardly just a contemporary phenomena. I would go as far as to say that democracy is more immersion breaking in the FR, then measures limiting the power of elected officials. Especially Cordor and the Andunorian district powers could easily decide to prevent threats rising against them be limiting the number of terms a character can hold office in a row.

[Huschpfusch]

Totally looking forward to the announced changes! Hope this will stop inactives interfering and people who use multiples.
Would like to see political participation limited to one designated char/mainchar per account also. But then people who hop char to bend RP everywhere would just get multiple accounts... so don't know how to solve that...

[Kuma]

there's at least one prominent plutocratic electoral state in FR with term limits (Sembia); none of this is immersion breaking or anachronistic, save perhaps for its blanket imposition across every settlement in the same way

reading into it, there's also another straight up senatorial democratic state with three year terms who elect their leader (Turmish), and many dales and towns not part of greater states (which is actually what we're closer to on Arelith, we're literally just individual towns or even parts of towns) elect term-based leaders from among their people, whether with full enfranchisement or not.

[A little fellow]

I'm confused as to how the apparent answer to players logging in old characters they don't play just to vote for their OOC friends is to add fixed term limits. Punishing players that are dedicated to the position enough to stay longer makes very little sense to me as someone that held a settlement leadership position for a good length of time in the past. From the sounds of it DMs will have the tools to investigate players who attain that position through OOC foul play, and measure the players investment into a settlement leader character. If a settlements community thinks a leader is a bad actor then they can voice that opinion both IC and OOCly and I would support leaders being removed based upon the findings.


Not to mention on another extent, this goes against the history of .... most all the settlements on the server? Brogendenstein's path to becoming a Thane has a rich history which creates RP and gives the settlement depth, and I am sure it is the same for Myon's Coronal. All in all this seems to me like a very reactionary approach to something that could be solved without doing harm to the places and people who make Arelith such a great server, and that would be a shame in my eyes..

[DangerDolphin]

Term limits won't be a big deal I don't think, it will just mean that the leadership will bounce between two or three popular people in the same circle instead of one.

The way I read the original post was that settlements were becoming stagnant and that was due partly to inactive alts voting. The new mechanics were to alleviate this - but stagnant leadership seems like a problem by itself.

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

Unless leaders are using exile power to keep things stagnant, I am kind of on the fence about the issue.

Just like we don't need DMs to create plots, though ir definitely can help, we do not need district leadership to start working towards the betterment of a settlement. Often the new leadership are a group of outsiders/"insert faction here" just moving in vs and organic integration into a district. Not saying there is no place for that, but how can you expect stagnant voters to vote for someone else if they have not proven their commitment to the district? Stability is considered a good thing in communities and you can't expect characters to just "switch it up" without some kind of roleplay basis to do so.

Like i don't even know if my vote counted with recent string events even though i voted with my current main. (There was no re election, in fact i ended up informing the new leader of their position they were unaware of).

And to be honest I kind of look forward to the roleplay this new leader will bring. But i feel like said roleplay could have been developed well before the election. No judgement for it not happening, but i never ever heard of the guy before the election and it very much is a faction moving in. Which isn't wrong, I just do not see the need to force the stagnancy out of an election when I feel like proper RP could have eventually done the Same thing. That being said, I have no clue what the magnitude of "stagnant voters" were or how broad the brush whst wss classified as voting shenagins or if it target all sides, etc. So I could be wrong, and maybe this was completely necessary.

[JubJub]

I am glad election rigging and such is finally being looked at but term limits won't solve the issue, if cliques are keeping their man in power it just seems like that clique will just keep putting different people up thus keeping their people in power. People will simply try to determine the minimum amount of rp and logging in they need to do. I think this change just makes DM's have to make more decisions on how much rp is enough rp to be considered vote eligible, looking through logs, etc. If I log on 5 minutes a day and stand in the hub saying hi to folks and then log off, is that enough rp to vote? I just worry dms are going to have to sit there and be made to judge how much rp one must do or what's considered rp.

The way to fix the issue is 1 vote per cd key total, not 1 vote per city but 1 vote. So players have to decide what city they wish to support. When you become a citizen you get option of is this the city you wish to support, and if you say yes then it's the only city you get to vote in. If you decide to move to bendir and become a citizen there then a year wait before you can vote. If you decide I don't want to vote in cordor anymore but I want to vote in the UD, again should be a 1 or 2 year wait. Will this stop people ooc saying lets all make drow so we can win the election down there, no. But it will put an mostly put and end to keeping toons in locations simply to vote. It would put an end to things like me becoming chancellor of cordor and logging on my drow to ensure my friend stays in power in the UD etc..


Also if am chancellor of cordor and hit my term limits, would that prevent that character from ever running again for chancellor or could that toon wait an election or two and then run again? Could my buddy and I keep swapping chancellor and vice chancellor positions? Thus making it I am chancellor for one term, don't run next term, and then run again the year after? What if I am assassinated while in office, does that count as a term? People will always look for loopholes and the gray areas.

[Cerk Evermoore]

Also the entire Harper voting thing should probably be looked into. Not that I think it is being abused, but it does seem quite ripe for exploitation.

[magistrasa]

I'm one of the roleplayers that juggles alts that are invested in their own stories and factions, so I personally am against any measures to limit elections to one voting citizen per CD key. I feel like it's not overly demanding to just leave things to DM oversight - there's only so many settlements, and elections have wide gulfs of time between them, so it's not like a DM's entire time is going to be dedicated solely to the monitoring effort.

Other than that, I like term limits, and I am looking forward to culling the zero-roleplay alts from the system. Great update, elections are too often a source of consternation and accusations of metagaming, and I think if anything this will encourage people to participate in the system. Too often do I see people with the ambition to lead, but they're discouraged by OOC coordination and vote logging that they have no opportunity to influence, and they decide not to bother because they know they're not going to win.

The only area I can see term limits really not being good for is the Devil's Table. It's going to worsen an already awful and unstable system. Please, for the love of God, get rid of the councilor system.

[JubJub]

One of the complaints is DM's get involved in too much stuff, discord etc or have to make too many decisions. I just think they have enough policing to do already without tossing elections and deciding on whats enough rp on their plate. I mean do DMs want to have to decide you only played that character for three hours but in those three hours the character was really busy and doing a lot but this person was on for three hours but we feel they didn't do very much? Or a blanket 6 hours but then what if I stand about and do nothing for 6 hours and someone who only logged in four was fighting off attacks, stocking their shop. helping new arrivals and such. I just feel this creates a bigger headache for dms.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

I don't think the punishment for this kind of behaviour is strict enough, even with irongron's suggestions of stripping players access to settlement systems.

I think they should be given temporary bans.

This is some of the worst type of behaviour you can have in Arelith. Some people point to trolls, PvP-junkies, etc., but really, some of the most awful types of players are the entrenched, impregnable cliques that believe fundamentally they deserve to be in charge.

Forcing these people who behave in this kind of revolting behaviour should be forced to take a little vacation *in addition* to not being able to interact with settlement systems.

[Subutai]

I don't think the punishment for this kind of behaviour is strict enough, even with irongron's suggestions of stripping players access to settlement systems.

I think they should be given temporary bans.

This is some of the worst type of behaviour you can have in Arelith. Some people point to trolls, PvP-junkies, etc., but really, some of the most awful types of players are the entrenched, impregnable cliques that believe fundamentally they deserve to be in charge.

Forcing these people who behave in this kind of revolting behaviour should be forced to take a little vacation *in addition* to not being able to interact with settlement systems.

I don't disagree with this. While I wouldn't say someone should be banned for a first offense (and off topic, I'd also argue that a first ban for any violation should never be a permaban), I do think that after a warning, a temporary ban wouldn't be out of place.

Getting ganked in PvP is pretty easy to roll with, one way or another. If it's some cheap PvP without RP, it's easy enough to RP like any kind of PvE death, or even just ignore it, and move on. If it's a troll, it's frustrating, but just one or two players to report and ignore. If it's cliques dominating elections, though, he can kill RP for the entire settlement. It can lock people out who would be really good for RP, and lock people in who do nothing to make things fun for anyone.

To be entirely honest, even people who are off ERPing in private aren't ruining other people's RP. Sure, we might not want them around clogging up the server, but their ERPing ways aren't actively detrimental to the enjoyment of everyone else. That's the case with clique-based elections where people log in out of nowhere, vote for their buddy, and log out. People who aren't participating run things there, and that means the people who are actually RPing in that settlement, or want to, are forced to sit on the sidelines while someone in charge does nothing, or tries to force out people who aren't in his posse.

I don't know how much election rigging is actually going on, but I'm with Seven Seas. All the different issues that get brought up on the forums that DMs say will result in a temporary or permanent ban seem like much less unhealthy things for the server than this kind of active RP prevention that, by its very nature, affects a significant number of players even when it's only done once.

[Ebonstar]

I like the one vote per CD Key option.

If you are involved in a settlement with your main toon, your alts no matter how many or how few are just that alts. They are for jumping about doing things at times when your main cant or wouldnt. However settlement politics are not something an alt should be involved with.

if you leave a settlement you wait a ig year minimum, maybe even two before being able to vote for a new one, and still stick with the 1 vote per cd key.

Alts have no business voting period, for they are time fillers generally. Some are those who were mains that are now in the closing legs of all stories and basically retired. They shouldnt be able to just show up when while on your new main, you hear the election is happening.

Those who meta with OOC and discord vote farming, should have their votes stripped and not be able to particiapte for a real life year. Then they actually feel the punishment for being asshats.

And to fix the OOC getting a group of new toons to take over somewhere,( which has happened), make it so citizens have to be current and playing for an ig year before they can call for an election. This would stop the powergrabs.

Term limits are fine, but should have a way with a majority vote to extend to one extra term, in case something ongoing just isnt tied up yet and needs time for conclusion.

Also make it so if you have reached those limits, your toon must not be in a top level post for two terms or whatever the limit is set at, after the fact will end the flip flopping of a small group just handing control over between themselves.

[Royal Blood]

I don't think it will change anything. The cliques that hold onto places will just elect their buddies new character because letting an outsider in might dare to shake up the status quo.

Further mechanics to stop inactive people from voting is cool. It's frustrating to put in IRL month or so into building a campaign IG just to have nameless faces you never see hop in to vote for their OOC pal or start playing just at election time scraping by just enough to activity to validate voting then vanish.

I think what this tries to solve is the feeling that nameless faces win elections. But we have Suh diverse time zones I don't think these new mechanics will change that. For example there are 4 days out of the week where I will never be online in the afternoon due to work. To people who can only play in those timezones I might be a nameless face even though I am quite active.

My other concern is what if you have no OOC presence yet people are tired with another group and come in on inactive characters and vote and vote for you anyways? Or someone tries to sabotage you by commiting voter fraud on your candidate. All that canidate could say is I never asked anyone to do this. Then the DMs won't believe them assuming they used discord and a perfectly valid character gets tossed out of the election due to purposeful fraud committed by other people the candidate had no control over.


My concern is the mechanic can be used to flag legit players by making them appear bad by people they have no control over choosing to contimnate the election in their favor.

[Morgy]

There needs to be more significant punishment for people metagaming this way. I do not think we need these kind of selfish players on the server.

Exactly what proportion of the player base are we talking about here?

[Zavandar]

imo drop them to 10 rpr. The criteria for 20 (as I understand it) is always remaining IC and this behavior does not meet that.

I don't think that the incoming changes will be harmful; things will either stay relatively the same, with cliques rotating people (as some people fear), or things will get better and there will be less stagnation. The settlement system can be used to generate a ton of RP and you don't need all the time in the world to do it either

I am also on the fence about keeping voting to once per CD key. I kind of already personally do that (I don't have the time/energy to get too involved in multiple characters, let alone in a political fashion), but I can understand how it might negatively impact some otherwise well-meaning and totally legitimate players.

[Reallylongunneededplayername]

I wager there are quite a lot of them, It's an issue that has been older than the election system.

Folk keeping certain characters shelved and as soon their club needs them they switch on, Eighter for winning elections, PvP or RP support.

They are easy to spot though, If there is a faction that had been low on numbers, Let's say on average there are like 3-5 active but as soon an event takes place where PvP is involved their numbers suddenly rise 8-12 and you have trouble remembering half on them to be on the playerlist. Then you found some.

[Cortex]

It should be limited to one vote per CD key and physical player, no matter the settlement, here's why:

For the sake of examples and not pointing fingers at anyone, I'll be using dumb fake names.

Sunday Clique has players both in Autumn Village and Summer Town. Sunday Clique doesn't like the IC group Bladeboys. Bladeboys try electing their guy in Autumn Village, but Sunday Clique has characters and OOC support to vote them out. Bladeboys instead try getting their guy elected in Summer Town, but again, Sunday Clique doesn't want that, and gets their OOC web to vote them out.

None of those characters need to be inactive (and thus vulnerable to the new ruling) for the above to occur, only people of the same clique that play characters in both settlements, in a very nepotistic and inbred situation.

[Ebonstar]

It should be limited to one vote per CD key and physical player, no matter the settlement, here's why:

For the sake of examples and not pointing fingers at anyone, I'll be using dumb fake names.

Sunday Clique has players both in Autumn Village and Summer Town. Sunday Clique doesn't like the IC group Bladeboys. Bladeboys try electing their guy in Autumn Village, but Sunday Clique has characters and OOC support to vote them out. Bladeboys instead try getting their guy elected in Summer Town, but again, Sunday Clique doesn't want that, and gets their OOC web to vote them out.

None of those characters need to be inactive (and thus vulnerable to the new ruling) for the above to occur, only people of the same clique that play characters in both settlements, in a very nepotistic and inbred situation.

agreed

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

It should be limited to one vote per CD key and physical player, no matter the settlement, here's why:

For the sake of examples and not pointing fingers at anyone, I'll be using dumb fake names.

Sunday Clique has players both in Autumn Village and Summer Town. Sunday Clique doesn't like the IC group Bladeboys. Bladeboys try electing their guy in Autumn Village, but Sunday Clique has characters and OOC support to vote them out. Bladeboys instead try getting their guy elected in Summer Town, but again, Sunday Clique doesn't want that, and gets their OOC web to vote them out.

None of those characters need to be inactive (and thus vulnerable to the new ruling) for the above to occur, only people of the same clique that play characters in both settlements, in a very nepotistic and inbred situation.

Agreed. This removes grey territory and fals assumptions. For all we know the ones ehobwon after elections got fixed could meta just as much (or maybe even more). We will never truly know.

However, as good as one vote per cd key sounds. Does that mean we will have more than one class of citizen? As every character will want their own citizen storage or do we limited alts to denizens?