[PMC] Land Claims and Individual vs. Town Rights on P

[Guest]

I thought we could have a little bit healthier discussion about this here, since the the other one is getting a bit too heated and is approaching the issues from a weird angle that has nothing to do with the actual problem.

 

 

THE OVERALL UNDERSTANDINGS

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* As a basis we want to protect an individual players rights on the server.

 

* Griefing is when you alter another player's build without their permission.

 

* Protections are only to prevent grief and other unauthorized edits.

 

* Protections are not used for "claiming land". Mods will only protect builds (houses, rail, farms, etc.) and clearly established large projects, such as cities.

 

 

I think these are very clear cut and easily understood by everyone. When it comes to towns, there's some issues and it becomes a question whether we want to protect an individual player over a town. Since a town consists of several people, one individual player can easily screw over a town community on the server either because they're clueless or just don't care. I do not think there's a need to start doing protections for land claims, but I do think that land claims should be respected in some extent. As said, when you mark an area, most people will honor it and find another spot. The kicker here is that they do not have to and this is when problems arise. These issues don't happen that often, but when they do, they're very discouraging.

 

Before going deeper into that, here's the rules When it comes to towns:

 

* Do not build very close to other players without their permission - buildings that violate this rule may be moved to a new location without warning.

 

* If you have a large project such as a city or megabuild, expand in directions that do not come into conflict with other players. Exhaust all available unopposed routes before expanding near already established players. If you must expand in the vicinity of other players, speak with them first and see if they are willing to participate in your project. 

Leave signs, /mail send, or /msg them in chat. If you are unable to come to an agreement, contact a moderator for assistance.

 

* Be respectful of the map and do not mar the experience or view for other players. Certain "very low quality" structures including but not limited to cobble/netherrack boxes, floating skyrails, and abandoned incomplete builds may be removed if they significantly impact the surrounding area in a negative way. Such removal will be done entirely at the discretion of the server admins.

 

 

MY SUGGESTIONS

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* Make land claims have more value. Not so, that they would be region protected, but that unwanted builds within the land claim would be removed. (My understanding is, this is how it is on S and it's working fine.)

 

* Allow towns to have more power to decide what's within their town.

 

1) A town has started to establish and marked its borders when someone who's not part of the town, builds something inside that marked area.

 

--> Because the area is only marked and not yet developed enough this is allowed. People build like this usually because they don't know better and just don't think or they don't care that they're screwing up a town's plans. Usually this is resolved between the people, where the person is either recruited to the city or asked to please move the build outside the marked area.

 

Sometimes however it gets tricky. The person isn't around after build whatever they built or are just not communicating. This is where a town can't do anything anymore. Usually more time has passed since there's the obligatory waiting time before involving admins to the issue.

 

Why is this an issue? Towns have usually plans already in mind for their city and having a random build in the the area messes with them. This becomes a question whether you want to discourage towns making proper plans and thinking big versus and individual having the right to build where they please. If everyone is just building their own small thing, this wouldn't be a problem, but as a server encouraging bigger community projects gets people engaged and play more. Having one build come to the way of it is discouraging.

 

Solution: Allow land claims for towns and move unauthorized buildings outside of the claimed area on a spot that the player selects. This has already been done a few times, but there seems to be different ways of handling these things.

 

 

2) A town member builds something inside the city that is not within the agreed guidelines of the town. 

 

--> Most towns have a set style for the rev; a theme, general style or even just a predecided plot structure. At times, especially at the start of the rev some players build hasty houses that are not quite what's agreed on either by style or location. Usually this is resolved simply by communicating with the player and all is well.

 

Why is this an issue? Currently if a player builds something not agreed upon within the town borders, they can still get it protected only for them and then it's already quite set in stone and a problem if they don't want to co-operate or just aren't active anymore (the inactive players being the bigger problem). This discourages to allow people as town members more openmindedly, since there's always the possibility of people not following what the  town is trying to do.

 

Solution: If person is a member of a town, it's to be expected that the person has accepted the town's plans and honor them. If they do not do so, the town mayors should have the right to either ask removal for the build or alter it. All regions made within the town's land claim should be protected under the town region. This should go perfectly well with the reason why we have protections, which is only to prevent grief. A town is supposed to be a community building, not someone going their own way within it's borders. This has also been done, but there's no clear cut ruling about it.

 

 

3) Something is built very close to an already established area, even though there's plenty of room to go around.

 

Why is this an issue? Something very close to specific kind of build ruins their core idea. There's only the "too close" mention on the rules about this, but no specific rule about how close is too close. This seems to vary a bit, but apparently 10 blocks is space enough.

 

Solution: Make the needed space between already established builds bigger (unless it's within the town by town members, when they do as they want it done within the town). There's plenty of map to go around.

 

 

POSSIBLE ISSUES

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* Usually when this comes into discussion is that there's just not enough space for land claims to be honoured like this, but I don't think this is true. There's plenty of space on the map, but some people still manage to come and screw up preplanned areas.

 

* Spawn area land claims.

Solution: Allow enforcable land claims only from certain distance from spawn.

 

* Big land claims where nothing is ever done.

Solution: Land claim is only valid for a certain time. The claimer needs to put the claim date on border signs.

 

 

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I feel like I've forgot to add some of my points I've been thinking about, but hopefully we can discuss about this in a mature and constructive way.

 

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TL;DR: Individual player rights can at times prevent bigger community builds and towns to progress as planned. Maybe it shouldn't be so.

 

 

Edit. Fixed some of my horrible typos. I do apologise.

Edited August 11, 2015 by Guest

[WyndySascha]

Currently if a player builds someting not agreed upon within the town borders, they can still get it protected only for them and then it's already quite set in stone

 

This seems a little odd to me.  I'm sure there's an historical reason why it's the case, but why are individual protections allowed within group protections?  I'm a proud Ambrosian - The Town With Not Even The Remotest Semblence Of A Plan - but the idea does jar a bit.  Don't people talk to mayors and whatnot so they can contribute to a project they like the sound of?

 

I've spoken in favour of clearer, mayor- and group-led expectations setting in the dim and distant past (here and here).  I don't really want to rake over old ground but I think the general point stands: if groups have an ethos, expressed as working together using permissions and stuff; if someone actively consents to adhere to clearly set-out guidelines; then those guidelines should guide the basis on which permissions are applied and builds are edited without builder consent.

 

Other than that, I think Zomise's idea on land claims seem quite sensible: most land problems resolve themselves anyway; where there's difficulty or dispute, one side or the other has to be favoured; and there's plenty of map for everyone, and smaller builds will have an easier time relocating than larger ones.  If we go with this, we can figure-out the kinks as we go along. :p

[c45y]

Adopting the land claim rules from survival seems to make the most sense to me. As it currently stands the rules seem to indicate that a town terraforming a 300x300 space could have that land built on by another player with no power to move them, even after spending time to develop the land.

The major draw card of pve is the big community feel and the towns, both large and small. Currently the rules seem to favor one of the smallest groups of players on P to the detriment of the majority.

 

Edit: It was not my intent to 'bug' you, and Zomise sums it up quite well below. This doesn't allow groups to strong-arm each other, but actually makes the distinction clear of free land vs land with an intended purpose but yet undeveloped. In practice leading to less clashes based around land claims. Clear borders are easy to moderate.

Edited August 11, 2015 by c45y

[buzzie71]

With regards to land claiming - Zomise, you've brought up really good points about the penalties to towns in the case of an individual who disregards claim borders and builds within or close to them, and there have definitely been quite a few modreqs in this rev alone that highlight that and similar frustrations.

 

Sapphric, Troop, Silver, and I have begun to discuss this and we all agreed pretty quickly that something should be done to, at the very least, make land claims matter more than they do now (or appear to at least).  Our goal is to establish a guideline to honor claims within reason (as an extreme case, we would be less likely to honor a 300x300 claim after 3 months if the builder's activity has been confined to a 30x30 area in the corner during that time).

 

The points you bring up about the extent of mayor authority in their own town are also compelling; we're looking into re-examining this too.

[TheRandomnatrix]

Currently the rules seem to favor one of the smallest groups of players on P to the detriment of the majority.

This bugs me that you say this. I've seen both ends of rules see their extremes. Towns have a tendency to strongarm independents on the outskirts of town during an expansion. I saw this many times while i worked with seneca back when it was the largest town on the server. Independents have just as much say as a town does, and saying otherwise just means that it becomes a game where the bigger group bullies the other into submission. That's not a kind of environment I wish to promote.

However, I will admit I've also seen a few large group projects(town or otherwise) get stalled indefinitely because someone built a shack on or next to a claim.

A problem with towns is that they are projects that expand as a rev goes on, and they constitute land that might not even get used.

There is also difficultly in determining what constitutes terraforming. I recall a discussion amongst the padmins a while back and we had problems reaching a clear consensus.

Survival has much fewer issues because usually the disputes are between two small groups, usually just two individuals. Towns are very rare on S and usually isolated. Building is not a central concept to S, nor do they use protection plugins like P does.

[Guest]

Towns have a tendency to strongarm independents on the outskirts of town during an expansion. I saw this many times while i worked with seneca back when it was the largest town on the server. Independents have just as much say as a town does, and saying otherwise just means that it becomes a game where the bigger group bullies the other into submission. That's not a kind of environment I wish to promote.

 

If I understand this correctly, this doesn't really land into the issues I'm trying to bring up. I'm not trying to get bigger communities to bully individual players out of their area, if they're there first. In fact, having the land claims have more value will protect them there as anyone else. When you claim a bigger part of land for a town, you'd be claiming the area you need for your town plans. Expanding it later and possibly getting closer to other builds, wouldn't suddenly give the town rights to get rid of those.

 

 

A problem with towns is that they are projects that expand as a rev goes on, and they constitute land that might not even get used.

There is also difficultly in determining what constitutes terraforming. I recall a discussion amongst the padmins a while back and we had problems reaching a clear consensus.

This is why I suggested that land claims would have some sort of time limit, from whereafter the land would be free to use, if there has no work been done and the town isn't growing.  Terraforming as such has more to do with protections, since the land claim honor is simply marking the area you're going to use and is not permanent on its own.

 

Survival has much fewer issues because usually the disputes are between two small groups, usually just two individuals. Towns are very rare on S and usually isolated. Building is not a central concept to S, nor do they use protection plugins like P does.

 

This is a fair point, the culture is different for sure, however I'm glad you're open to consider this for P as well, since personally I think it could work great for the more social building style we have on P..

[pez252]

I would support more meaningful land claims and more specific definition than "very close" for build proximity. The most difficult things that I have dealt with both as a player and a moderator have been the grey area of land claiming and build interference. Having these clearly defined would be nice as everyone going in knows what they can expect.

[Silversunset01]

plz to not build closer than 5km to haven. It makes the residents jumpy.

In all seriousness we've got some pretty decent things hashed out. We still have a bit of discussion left to iron out a few wrinkles but I'm hoping all of this will be finished up soon.

[Guest]

plz to not build closer than 5km to haven. It makes the residents jumpy.

In all seriousness we've got some pretty decent things hashed out. We still have a bit of discussion left to iron out a few wrinkles but I'm hoping all of this will be finished up soon.

I think you just claimed the whole map, assuming 1 block is one meter and you start Haven straight from the spawn. ;) Think all is done for next rev then.

Anyway, in all seriousness, thank you padmins for talking this through and thinking of solutions. Looking forward to see how it ends up.

[MasterCommaThe]

Come to C, we have land and protections!

[Silversunset01]

I think you just claimed the whole map, assuming 1 block is one meter and you start Haven straight from the spawn. ;) Think all is done for next rev then.

Anyway, in all seriousness, thank you padmins for talking this through and thinking of solutions. Looking forward to see how it ends up.

 

zomise didn't you hear? we're changing the server address to haven.nerd.nu ;D

[Guest]

I'm happy with the changes padmins made for REV16 regarding these issues. What it comes to the town's self govern rights can be another talk another time. Lets just enjoy the new upcoming rev.

 

As of such this discussion can be moved to the archives.

 

Thank you for listening and taking action. :)