The Mana World Forums

Well, I have nothing against role playing politics which in fact has no real power.

Regards.

I think that before we start seriously discussing the addition of any governmental system to a game like this, we need to lay down some basic groundwork on what to discuss. Here are some topics that i think government discussion should cover, in the order we ought to discuss them:
1) How many and what kinds of country leader(s) should there be? Should it be a counsil, or a single dictator, or what? And also, what do you call them?
2) What powers should the leader(s) have? Should they have a military/police force? Should they control monster levels, shop prices, etc.?
3) How should the leader(s) be chosen, and by whom? How long should they serve for? And finally:
4) Should the leader(s) becom corrupt (as some inevitably will), how can the players overthrow them before they cause harm?

That said, here is my general idea:
1) There should be at least two aspects of the leaders, one council and one really powerful leader (kind of like american congress vs. the president). Each should have their own powers, and each should have the ability to keep the other in check somehow, such as vetoing bills and whatnot.

2) The leaders should have the ability to do all of the above. In a really cool MMO, wild monsters would "breed," and there would be a constant potentially for the population to get out of hand. In this case, the leaders should commission a military/police force to lower monster levels. Conversely, players could start over-killing monsters and reduce the population, in which case the leaders would have to set aside "reserves" and "ranches" for certain monsters, to keep the levels in certain ranges.

The leaders should also influence, although not directly control sho prices. That is, they can make suggestions to NPC shops, and then the AI will determine whether or not and to what extent the NPC will follow that suggestion.

Also, the leaders should have control of a certain military which can put out mission for players (such as killing certain monsters, or helping build a reserve). The available rewards ought to be limited by the actual possession of the government (basically, they can't make money appear out of thin air, they must have a treasury or something somewhere), and determined by the leaders.

3) The leaders should be voted for by the players. The council should be formed first, and should be of a reasonable size. Council members should have longer terms that the powerful leaders, but be easier to extridate(sp?). This way, "good" council members will remain longer, and be able to keep the rest of the council, and the one powerful leader, in check, as well as help to ensure that the government remains relatively effective and efficient.

4) Large groups of players should be able to band together to overthrow the current government, and replace the former leaders with it's own members. I haven't figured out a much mroe specific method than that, but it shouldn't be something too easy to do, otherwise there would be constant political fluctuations. Conversely, it shouldn't be too hard to do, or evil leaders would remain in power for much too long.

One final note I would like to add is that no matter what kind of system you implement, there will always be corruption, evil, selfishness, etc. at some point. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it could spice up the game considerably, and make it still more interesting.

P.S. sorry for the excessively lengthy post... this is such an interesting topic.

My first thought was to keep borders static. But I thought maybe if a country is taken it just gets a new local authoraty. This way it would still be a seperate country and it would first be an ally of the country's taker, but this could change. Or a new nationalist government could be elected and demand to be seperated from their masters. Either by negotiation or by force.

Players could also joint the army as an army leader. They would start as some low officer and their rang would be increased according to their accomplishment. The player would have a few NPC soldiers following him if he wants to. The size of this small army increases with the rank of the player. This would probably be around 2-10 soldiers. So one general could defeat two officers.

Players can put encampments in friendly areas to defend them. Soldiers can be added and removed from encampments, so as a beginner you could have two one-soldier encampments or one two-soldier encampment. While in an encampment soldiers regain health. After a decleration of war by their rulers players can choose to attack hostile areas. These too will be defended by armies controlled by other players.
An army cannot cross an occupied hostile area without fighting. An army can only retreat to the area from which it came.

The alignment nor the government of an area shouldn't influence the monsters. Maybe a bored soldier would do some target practice once in a while. But I don't think this whole war thing should influence the possibilities of non-militairy players too much.

It's just the start of an idea. No details yet.

EDIT: Added a little bit

Anyone familiar with FFXI should find this idea familiar, but here it is anyways:
The entire world map is divided into a series of regions, and each nation gets a certain number of points assigned to this region according to how active they are. In FFXI, the mroe monsters your nation kills in an area, the more points the nation has. In my idea, this will play a role, but will not be exclusive. Players from enemy nations may also engage in PvP battles/events in order to increase their points in the regions. For example, a nation may get extra points if one of it's members kills a player from an enemy nation in that region. On the other hand, the nation may lose points if players from within their own nation kill eachother (this latter idea could also help reduce unfair PKing). All of the above would work quite well with Modanung's ideas, which I think are really cool.

haggard wrote:i like the voting for the ruler of the kingdom but i think elven and his "crew" should keep tabs on people and the good tasks that they do. say they are big on helping people and things like that. then the top 3 or 5 people will be put on a voting list and the things that they have done and people should vote and maybe not get armor but like a sword dedicated to them. and of course they would be the ruler of that kingdom...that should be good enough!!!

I hate the goverment and Politics suck ...period...
but I do agree with haggard, Something like a election would probally be a good choice for the whole politics in TMW thing

there could be implmented some kind of rules that players should respect...not kind of rules that if you break u get banned, its the kind of rule for example kill manny people.Anyone that ever seen ".Hack" will know this.there would be cool to implement a kind of some knights as so like to be a kind of "Police" like to "Arrest infractors players" u know...this would be a great idea:the creation of "police department" but, of course, with knights,mages etc...it would make the game more interisting so for example will can be an infractor player in the rules on the play, but not in the rules of the mana world

PS:srry for my bad english, i am a brazilian boy u know ;D

What is a Soul AFAIK?
And I sure do hope you won't perform the big wipe out or
back out from all this efforts. And who care if aren't the best mmorpg
here, right? At least you released a beta.