At our second meeting on Oceania, proposed by myself and agreed by group consensus of attending governors we asked that:
1. The 2 million charge for the town buff be paid ONCE per election cycle when the new governor came in, OR, paid again
if the buff was changed to another type after it was initially set. Once the buff was set it would remain indefinitely until the new election or until changed.
2. Citizens of the town would be able to utilize the buff for free from the stone and it would last for 24 hours. (as is)
3. Non-citizens of a town could also utilize the buff by paying a fee of 20,000 gps per buff to the town herald.
4. You could obtain multiple buffs on the one character from additional towns for the same fee. Buffs do not go OVER cap so multiple buffs shouldn't be an issue, plus the more 'buffs' a character elects to buy the more money is available to the town.
5. We also asked that a way be provided to actually 'see' how many citizens a town had. There is no way to tell, and no way to know if the town has any citizens save for the governor and those who voted for them. I know my town has 3 citizens, the governor (me), and two of my alts on my other two accounts. Wouldn't have a clue if there are any others, so what is the point of my paying out over and over again for a trade deal/buff that ONLY one of my chars will in all likelihood use? Given not a single cent has been donated it appears that my town of Vesper on Oceania is a ghost town
This would have the benefit of:
1. Saving the governor 2 mil a week, which is pretty much what is happening now. People do not donate, so to have the trade deal set is pretty much falling on the governor to pay it and maintain it. I know I paid once but am not prepared to keep paying, on small shards like ours there are just NOT enough players to make 2 mil a week viable irrespective of taxes on any donations. My town doesn't pay taxes as basically NO ONE donates anything to be taxed. Maybe on Atlantic or if the governor was part of a huge guild that all wanted the same 'buff' it may be viable but the consensus on Oceania was that as it is now NO governor is prepared to bother with it due to the weekly expense.
2. It allows governors to work together so that the maximum choice of 'buffs' is available across a shard, and players would learn which town offers what buff. These could be changed across towns every cycle or yearly or whatever the governors decided so that a fair distribution of 'the more sort after buffs' was allocated. It could be advertised on the shard forum, what buffs are set in what town each quarter so that players knew where to go for what buff.
3. It creates a HUGE gold sink, as non-citizens of a town who want the buff offered by that town would pay the buff 'fee'. Multiple buffs per character would generate a huge gold sink. ie if a mage class character was off to do a peerless they may wish to have an additional 5% sdi, +2 MR, +3 intel, +3 str and +1 faster casting. This would cost them 5 x 20,000 (100,000) if they were non citizens of the towns, or 80,00 if they were citizen of one of the towns. Obviously most players are not going to pay that every time they go out, but for the tougher bosses, or arc event bosses the more buffs the better. We believed players would be happy to pay for at least one buff on a char for every day fighting if it wasn't offered free by their town of citizenship.
4. Every player could get a buff at any time if they don't have to be flipping citizens of the town because they could 'shop towns' for their buff. ie my Warrior can be citizen of town 'x' but town 'x' has a mage buff set by the governor, when my warrior wants the SSI and HCI buffs offered by towns 'y' and 'z'. This way I can support my town but still benefit from a buff and contribute to the coffers of the other towns.
The KING present at the meeting told us he would get back to us on these requests.
At our third meeting a few days ago, we had the 'same' new information regarding the dropping of taxes.
We were advised that
- The taxes on donations would now be stopped.
- That they wanted us to donate: 5000 boards, 250 sand, 100 granite and 100 ingots so that a 'new' governors office could be built.
- That the town Herald would now be taking donations for the above. (tested this after the meeting to find they don't take the donations, but only gold or checks as previous, so epic fail there).
- Once donated we were to email our EM to advise that they could build the office.
So by governor consensus we came away with the following impressions:
- The Messenger who arrived to advise us of the above had NO information on our previous requests, either yes, no or even if they had been considered.
- The 2 mil per week per trade deal is still active, so basically no change and no one governor on Oceania is prepared to continue with 2 mil per week.
- Stopping taxes is a moot point as no one was donating anything to be actually taxed. Tax on 0 = 0
- No idea why we 'want' an office, perhaps if there was some better way of obtaining funds there may be a need on a role play basis. We asked what the point of a governor's office would actually be, and the messenger couldn't tell us. We assume possibly a place to put message board to consult with our lack of citizens perhaps? There was no indication of what we could actually 'do' with an office, deco, etc ??
- We can't donate the stuff they asked for so no one will be emailing the EM any time soon to come build the office anyways.
All we know is that on small shards (the majority) the way the whole system is set up at the moment seems to be an EPIC fail. Our suggestions above could make the system viable but so far we have heard zip, zada, nothing even though we were told by the King that he would get back to us shortly. The changes announced this week by the Kings messenger have changed the opinions of the governors of Oceania not one iota.
No improvement to the system can be seen at all.
MissEcho
Governor of Vesper, Oceania shard.
