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Ekcin

Let deeds change to democracy on long mayor's absence

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As the title says. Sometimes the mayor of a populated deed leaves it for any reason, leaving the villagers behind. The only way for them to get rid of an absent mayor is letting the deed drop, with all unwanted side effects. They can only refound once the mayor's buildings are gone which may take a while. It would therefore be sensible to let the deed become a democracy once the mayor was absent for, say, a year, maybe half a year. The remaining villagers can then appoint another player as mayor without the need to disband.

 

Edit: To clarify, this is in no way meant to unseat a sitting mayor in a deed with upkeep fund provided before leaving. It only deals with deeds which would disband without the villagers keeping the deed up, leaving them in a limbo, and lacking crucial interventions only a mayor is allowed to. The idea is mainly drafted after the solution the devs created for deeds with a permabanned mayor. There is no reasonable ground why rule abiding mayors and their villagers should be treated worse than those with a mayor who earned a permaban. 

Edited by Ekcin
Clarification on request of a commenter
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Spin off idea: Mayor is gone for 1 month, lets citizens choose an option "rebel", which will fire off an email to mayor. If mayor still have not logged on in one more month after "rebel" started, then citizens can elect a new mayor.

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I have run across this problem on Cadence. My character is a citizen of the deed where I have parked my cart (I deeded, then sold it to the new mayor, who kept me on as a citizen).  I was away for a while, and when I got back my already low quality cart is too low to use, but I can't repair it because the mayor made permission changes and I don't have permission anymore.  Can't fix it, can't drive, can't get in contact.  A switch to a democracy would at least let me get my gear out of town  😄

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10 minutes ago, TheTrickster said:

Can't fix it, can't drive, can't get in contact.

For this particular problem, I am guessing a GM would help you move the cart outside the deed area, so you can fix it up again. Emphasis on "guessing". That said, with a change like this, there would be no need to bother a GM in the first place, so that would be nice :)

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sounds like a reasonable solution, and the rebellion option is cool as well. meanwhile, I'll stay very happily a hermit and shun villagers :)

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Not a bad idea at all. We had a similar situation in EQ2 with my wife. 

I was a guild master of a guild of over 360 characters but we stopped playing. Guild members had no way to contact us outside of the game so they made a petition to SoE who in turn sent me an e-mail to say that if i don't log on within next 2 weeks, the GM position will go up for voting amongst guild members. 

I have replied that i can't play the game for "reasons" so just go ahead and run the vote poll now which they did and everyone was happy.

If i didn't reply, 2 weeks later it would happen anyway.

 

Guild progress and guild house which everyone worked for wasn't lost.

This is a good thing to do because people could lose a lot of time and effort simply because a deed mayor/guild master loses interest in game or got hit by a small boy on a big bike or they lost internet access and so on.

 

I approve this suggestion.

Edited by Locath

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This is trifficult.

 

The mayor paid for the land, and probably for all or most of the upkeep. It wouldn't be right to take control of that away, just because the mayor was absent for X months.

 

However,  if you modify the proposal to only kick in once the upkeep has entirely expired, then the mayor has, by their absence, already lost everything, including the money they paid when founding or expanding the deed. In other words, they no longer have any claim on the deed. Having said this, it's still tricky and difficult because the game doesn't let you re-found a deed once it disbands. Building ownership is a huge problem. Disbanding the deed has to be stopped.

 

The solution might be a collective buyout. Once the upkeep has fallen below 30 days (or possibly a lower number), and the mayor has been absent for a significant time (argue here about details), then the players may collectively spend a sum of silver that will go into the deed upkeep fund (perhaps 3 silver, or 3 months' worth of upkeep), and if the mayor doesn't return and put an equal sum into upkeep before the upkeep would have run out, then the deed would become a democracy under joint ownership of those players who had paid.

Edited by Sheffie
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1 hour ago, Sheffie said:

This is trifficult.

 

The mayor paid for the land, and probably for all or most of the upkeep. It wouldn't be right to take control of that away, just because the mayor was absent for X months.

 

However,  if you modify the proposal to only kick in once the upkeep has entirely expired, then the mayor has, by their absence, already lost everything, including the money they paid when founding or expanding the deed. In other words, they no longer have any claim on the deed. Having said this, it's still tricky and difficult because the game doesn't let you re-found a deed once it disbands. Building ownership is a huge problem. Disbanding the deed has to be stopped.

 

The solution might be a collective buyout. Once the upkeep has fallen below 30 days (or possibly a lower number), and the mayor has been absent for a significant time (argue here about details), then the players may collectively spend a sum of silver that will go into the deed upkeep fund (perhaps 3 silver, or 3 months' worth of upkeep), and if the mayor doesn't return and put an equal sum into upkeep before the upkeep would have run out, then the deed would become a democracy under joint ownership of those players who had paid.

 

Another thing to consider, pay the mayor back the upkeep they invested so if and when they return, they aren't a stranger on a deed they paid for.

 

Multiple ways to approach this but this is an important part of the suggestion to think about.

If my deed is 100s per month in upkeep and i can't play, tough.

If my deed costs 100s per month and i have put in next 30 years worth of upkeep but after a period of inactivity someone else can disband it and cash out... not quite as fun. 

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2 hours ago, Locath said:

Multiple ways to approach this but this is an important part of the suggestion to think about.

If my deed is 100s per month in upkeep and i can't play, tough.

If my deed costs 100s per month and i have put in next 30 years worth of upkeep but after a period of inactivity someone else can disband it and cash out... not quite as fun

or even worse like in the example given by trickster.

5 hours ago, TheTrickster said:

(I deeded, then sold it to the new mayor, who kept me on as a citizen

so you sold a deed and got paid for it, now you want it back for free, including anything that person who bought it from you owned since you sold it. that is horrible.

Edited by Tpikol

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3 hours ago, Locath said:

 

Another thing to consider, pay the mayor back the upkeep they invested so if and when they return, they aren't a stranger on a deed they paid for.

 

Multiple ways to approach this but this is an important part of the suggestion to think about.

If my deed is 100s per month in upkeep and i can't play, tough.

If my deed costs 100s per month and i have put in next 30 years worth of upkeep but after a period of inactivity someone else can disband it and cash out... not quite as fun. 

 

The way my suggestion worked, the original mayor wouldn't have any upkeep left, at the point where the deed becomes a democracy. In other words, they would have lost their deed anyway, by that point.
Assuming they owned any buildings, they'd actually be better off with my proposal, because their building would still be on deed, and would have decayed less

 

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10 minutes ago, Sheffie said:

 

The way my suggestion worked, the original mayor wouldn't have any upkeep left, at the point where the deed becomes a democracy. In other words, they would have lost their deed anyway, by that point.
Assuming they owned any buildings, they'd actually be better off with my proposal, because their building would still be on deed, and would have decayed less

 

but when the upkeep is gone there is no deed, and if i the person losing their deed had valuable items inside buildings only the mayor could access, now the new mayor owns it all.

 

if the absent mayor comes back after the deed disband but before the buildings decay, their items are still protected. in your system they wouldnt be.

Edited by Tpikol
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I wasn't suggesting anything that would change ownership of buildings. Everything that was protected in a building before the deed became a democracy would still be protected, and each building would still belong to the same person.

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3 minutes ago, Sheffie said:

I wasn't suggesting anything that would change ownership of buildings. Everything that was protected in a building before the deed became a democracy would still be protected, and each building would still belong to the same person.

mayors can always destroy buildings, thats the diference. the mayor doesn't need ownership.

Edited by Tpikol
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In fact, the idea does not target mayors who paid upkeep for years in advance, and only by chance took villagers. Those mayors must not be driven out of their role and their deed. The frequent case is that the mayor vanishes, the villagers go on paying upkeep to prevent falling of the deed. That is where my proposal applies.

 

It may be difficult to decide who paid for upkeep (as everybody can do so). But one could let the democracy case apply only when the upkeep fund

[Edit]minus the upkeep due in that period is lower than it was when the mayor last logged in, or was, say, 3 months absent. The situation in the cases I addressed is that the villagers continued to stuff the upkeep fund as mentioned.

 

Edit: I am skeptical about the rebellion thing, though it sounds interesting. Prolly too much opportunity for abuse and/or griefing.

Edited by Ekcin
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Once deed upkeep hits 1 month remaining, this might be viable.

 

A lot of folks are currently waiting things out on wurm, and I'd say let them wait it out in peace.

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12 hours ago, Tpikol said:

so you sold a deed and got paid for it, now you want it back for free, including anything that person who bought it from you owned since you sold it. that is horrible.

No, I just want to be able to get my stuff and leave in good order.  However, I can certainly see how you would take it the way you did.  In my head I wasn't thinking  would be the new mayor, but now that I think on it, the citizens apart from the mayor and me are all alts of the mayor.

 

Maybe instead of full democratic election of a new mayor there is election of a steward - who can keep the deed going but can't cash it out and if/when the original mayor returns, they can take over again (although how you make sure nobody simply profits someone else paying upkeep, I don't know).

Edited by TheTrickster

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12 hours ago, Tpikol said:

but when the upkeep is gone there is no deed, and if i the person losing their deed had valuable items inside buildings only the mayor could access, now the new mayor owns it all.

Yes, that is exactly what this suggestion is addressing, so that when the current mayor's upkeep is gone instead of the deed falling the newly elected mayor takes it over.  I would presume that some kind of upkeep escrow would have to be involved.

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i agree it would be nice to somehow allow people to stay in a deed and be able to control it after the mayor is gone, but im not sure how to solve those issues im a way that everybody is happy with.

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37 minutes ago, Tpikol said:

in a way that everybody is happy with.

I think that would be the toughest part of solving this.  

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20 hours ago, Tpikol said:

i agree it would be nice to somehow allow people to stay in a deed and be able to control it after the mayor is gone, but im not sure how to solve those issues im a way that everybody is happy with.

I consider the concerns somewhat constructed and in contradiction to the proposal. Which issues in particular?

 

It is hard to see that a mayor who left without a notice and had the upkeep fund in as state that it would run out soon has much of the say about the future of the deed. If nothing is done, the deed will drop, the villagers losing their homes, and all buildings will decay, the mayor's ones included (and faster as the others may repair). 

 

 

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If the villages is unhappy they can go found their own deed, dont let the mayor who paid and probably spent thousend of hours on a deed they own get that taken away from them, just becouse they are taking a breake -1

Edited by Stinboi

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Btw could maybe be an idea to give active villagers the options to take over when deed upkeep runs out, set it on "hold" a week and if noone willing to take over, then disband it.

 

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1 hour ago, Stinboi said:

Btw could maybe be an idea to give active villagers the options to take over when deed upkeep runs out, set it on "hold" a week and if noone willing to take over, then disband it.

 

You are missing the point. Do people ever read proposals? The proposal deals with cases, and only with cases, where the mayor "vanishes", and villagers are left stranded, often paying the upkeep for longer periods to avoid dropping of the deed. Only when funds existing before the mayor left are depleted, the opportunity to appoint a new mayor must be given. This will even help the absent mayor as her/his houses on deed will stay intact.

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1 hour ago, Ekcin said:

You are missing the point. Do people ever read proposals? The proposal deals with cases, and only with cases, where the mayor "vanishes", and villagers are left stranded, often paying the upkeep for longer periods to avoid dropping of the deed. Only when funds existing before the mayor left are depleted, the opportunity to appoint a new mayor must be given. This will even help the absent mayor as her/his houses on deed will stay intact.

yes i read it, i offered an alternative as the original proposal is not possible in any ways.

 

Lets say i make a big deed, and put alot of silver in the upkeep that maybe last for a couple of years and go away for a few months(maybe something in rl happen so i cant log on to even tell that i will be away for awhile), then i come back 3 months later and everything i have worked on for maybe years and all the rl money i might have spent is just taken away from me.

 

It really isnt any workaround for this.

its just the risk you need to take if you decide to joine another village and probably the reason that theres so many one mans deed.

 

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