As State Minister of Reasonopia, I am proud of my job. I'm proud of the effort I put in to making my state (and others) enjoy the site. I'm proud of the other State Ministers doing their part for their states as well. I'm proud of PB and the Devs for implementing so many good updates into the game during Bleckys term.
Miss Bimbo, you've clearly demonstrated that the site needs to be more political, more like an IRL democracy. I see no reason why the userbase should oppose that idea. I believe it's how the idea is being presented. A working democracy NEEDS two sides for it to be classed as a democracy right? If everyone is on the same side, then technically it's a dictatorship. So, how can we combat this?
Firstly, I believe users are more interested in other aspects of the game, which is taking their attention away from the main point of XL, which is to be an Internet Republic. Secondly, you mentioned in your other forum post that we could do with some more revenue coming into the site, which I agree with. Instead of throwing points at one another an ultimately ignoring each other, lets try to compromise.
Miss Bimbo, you want users to spend more money on the site, so give us something more to pay for. I don't think any of us like the idea of a subscription like onlyfans on the site. Quite frankly, non of us have anything interesting to put on the site that would warrant a pay wall, and non of us are interested in paying to see other peoples posts either. I truly feel like this is a waste of the developers time. I think a better way to get more paying members is to have more benefits to being a senator. Here are some of the suggestions compiled, with my own input as well.
1) A Player home you can decorate. This can be a SENATOR ONLY part of the site. You want a pretty house? You have to pay for it. Seems a bit scummy, but that's business. I also know plenty of users who would be interested in paying for this feature. The new live chat feature can also be implemented here, where you can invite people over and then chat with them live. This also helps keep users on the site for longer periods, rather than having them communicate on other social media platforms. Being invited to someone's house is free, you just cant have your own home or host your own "parties" without being a paying member.
2) A player pet. Pretty much the same as before, a pet you can look after, perhaps dress up, which you also have to be a paying member for.
These two features have already been mentioned, and putting them behind a paywall will increase the number of senators in the game. With increased senators, that's more of a pool for potential SMs and also Prime Bimbos. Now that there's more senators, Prime Bimbo is getting more money, meaning more incentive for those senators to then run for PB.
With a more active and engaged userbase, then people may be more interested in focusing on political aspects. Now that there's more people running for PB, ultimately you will have opposing views come election day. Another point I would like to add is if players are interested in becoming PB with the current state of our republic, the incentive just isn't strong enough. Not just because of money, but also because we KNOW that PB will eventually HAVE to step down, so why not just...wait? To combat this issue we could perhaps reintroduce the idea of having no limit on PB terms. This may give people more of an incentive to actually run AGAINST them, else they'll just wait until its their turn.Things that need to be addressed here as well, is that we already struggle to find new state ministers as well as PBs. When Lilly stepped down from PB, I remember people panicking because it appeared no body wanted to run. If not ONE person wants to run, how are you going to encourage more than that? The answer isn't because of politics, it's to do with site engagement. What makes the site FUN. What is making people play the game? What is bringing in NEW players. Do we even advertise Ximboland?
Onto the topic of bans, I agree no PB or SM or FP or Shopworker should have ever been banned. Unless actual threats were said, "hurty words" as you put it are fine. That being said, these players should NOT be immune from the rules (that goes for admins too) and need to be held accountable for their actions. I was not around when a lot of these bans were taken place, so I cannot vouch for their actions being "hurty" and not outright harmful, so you would have to do some research into that yourself, perhaps alongside FP members and PB, since they have been far more active on the site than yourself around those time periods so they would know more details about that.
To sum up, getting a more involved player base will be the key to getting more interest in PB and the other positions. Things have been looking up recently with the updates, but these are some things we have been begging for for YEARS at this point. If more time went into developing the site, more players would have fun here, be more inclined to get involved in what makes XL unique. Unfortunately when running for PB, currently it isn't a case of what your political beliefs are, it's a case of what updates and activities you will bring to the site. Once that issue is resolved, I believe we will see a democracy flourish, because players will bring their attention back to the politics of the site. It's a win win for all of us.
04.12.2023 17:53:58
