[AC] PVE Land Claim Policy Discussion

[TheAcademician]

I'd like to bring up the topic of land claiming on P since it's been on my mind a lot lately, and I've spoken to many people about it in-game recently who seem to feel similarly. I'd love to have this as a public discussion in the future, but for reasons that will be apparent I figured I should start it as an admin-only policy discussion for the moment.

 

Currently on P no land claims are enforced, and I've always heard the reasoning behind this is due to P using WorldGuard to protect builds from grief so no such claims policy like S had (at the time) was necessary. However, P also only protects limited areas with some form of in-progress build (at the moderators discretion of what constitutes in-progress), which is a completely sound policy decision as WorldGuard is meant as a grief prevention measure. Players are encouraged to work out any land disputes on their own until staff involvement becomes necessary. However, the current lack of an enforceable land claim policy on P leads directly into large land use disputes, of which P usually has 1 or 2 each rev. It also causes a great deal of worry for cities which have to ask people not to plop down on a plot before they have the infrastructure in place to warrant a region and hope for the best.

 

I'll admit to bringing this topic up out of personal interest, though it has been on my mind a lot since I transitioned from playing primarily on S and occasionally C, to spending all my time on P. I'm very used to being able to grab a section of land and mark it off and build at my leisure, knowing someone isn't going to plop down a house in the center without consequence. As many know I, with the help of some awesome friends, managed to carve out a 600x600 area of roofed forest (I have 150k log destroys alone from the experience) for building my city, Itamashi. I own the usage rights to light the SE portal, which is still unlit at the moment for the very reason that it limits access to the area and reduces the possibility of someone building inside the land we've cleared out.

 

I've even been advised by several P staff members to keep it unlit until I can get a protection on at least some areas, which to me seems a bit out of touch with how things should work. The scale of this project, and the fact that it's basically myself and Mumber, would seem to indicate I shouldn't dare light the portal until I'm finished some time around the end of the map which I think is incredibly unfair to myself and everyone who could use it for transportation. I don't worry about the usual P players doing anything untoward as they are generally respectful of such claims regardless of staff intervention, but there is definitely a population of players on the server who can, and have in the past, exploited this lack of policy.

 

To the point, I think the P admins should to come up with some policy on land claims that is both fair to large scale and small scale builders while preventing large, unused, claims from being maintained indefinitely. There has to be some sort of compromise on this issue. I don't think my giant plot deserves a region (in fact my last city wasn't protected until 3 weeks before the map ended), but I also don't think all the work I've done so far should be capable of being taken away. I have some ideas, but due to my bias on this matter I'm not going to salt the earth.

 

Thanks for reading, and I would really like to see some discussion on this.

[Mumberthrax]

relevant: https://nerd.nu/forums/index.php?/topic/2633-clarification-of-build-rules/

[schererererer]

Just an update on this topic: PAdmins spent a couple of hours on this topic along with interconnected issues, but have not yet come to a conclusion on land claims. There are a lot of subjective measures that come into these and complicate the applicability of policy, and we're still hashing it out.

 

Aca: I think you should go ahead and share your ideas on the matter here - perhaps you've thought of a potential solution that we haven't.

[Mrloud15]

Closing and moving to the archives.