[PMC] Creative Land Claim Policy Discussion

[Challenger2]

This is the third Creative rev since WE has been introduced and it seems like a good time to evaluate land claim rules.

 

Before the time of WE, only an existing build would qualify for protection. Players could build wherever they wanted to and then get protection. This prevented any form of un-used land.

 

The current policy allows any user to create HUGE land claims and get protection before building.

Pros:

• The owner knows they will have enough space to complete their build
• The owner does not have to worry about expanding

Con:

• Many of the regions are huge and full of empty space
• It is difficult to find good building places after the fist week. (All good places are all claimed by then)
• Some owners will use their land, while some will not

 

 

We could only grant small claims and expand them incrementally, but that has its own problems.

 

Pro:

* Less wasted land

* Claims actually have builds on them

* More time to get good claims

Con:

You can get boxed in, hindering long term and huge builds. ("hindering" is a bit of an understatement")

 

 

Possible solutions:

• Any large claim of land that hasn't been used in awhile or doesn't use all the space could get shrunk by Cadmins.
  We would have to be very careful with this solution because it gets players the impression that their land claims could be revoked. Its like giving someone $100 dollars and then later telling them they have to give $80 dollars back.
• Maybe a type of "reserve" region system could be used. A player can make a large land claim like they do now. However, the player will only get a small chunk of the full region. The player can build in their small chunk and the "reserve" region will be unbuildable by anyone. As the player builds outwards, they can then claim and use up the reserve regions. Since the reserve regions are unbuildable, they can easily be revoked by staff and give out to other players. At the same time the player has piece of mind knowing that the land they do have won't be taken away.

 

 

I would like to hear any feedback or suggestions about how to better handle huge regions.

 

 

[Guest]

Perhaps steal the rule from P about land claims only being valid for a certain time. That way if someone has made a big claim, but hasn't used the space at all another player wanting the area can ask for it after the set time has passed.

[Silversunset01]

The reserve idea sounds like you may run into the same sort of problems as full-protections. You'd still have large (or even larger) areas that can't be built on or risk boxing in players who haven't finished their builds.

I don't have any idea if this would work or how, but maybe some sort of pre-sized plot system would work. Similar to the redstone playground. Although the terrain would look silly with a grid system overlayed on it. [idle musing: if there were pre-defined plots I wonder if a plugin could be written/found that would allow you do something like /tpfreeplot and have it tp players to an available area.]

Does c require claimes to be marked by borders?

Short of requiring build plans be submitted or restricting claim sizes I am not sure. I'd assume allowing WE on the entire map is out of the question.

[Challenger2]

Right now the best idea is to just take the land back like Bardidley and Zomise suggest. Carving the world up into plots probably wouldn't work out.

 

 

 

Does c require claimes to be marked by borders? 

 

Claims that are empty require boarders. This rule was introduced with we to allow a player to claim land and get WE perms to make a build.

 

It is still possible to protect existing builds w/o a boarder, but the size of the protected region is at the moderators discretion.

 

 

 

The reserve idea sounds like you may run into the same sort of problems as full-protections. You'd still have large (or even larger) areas that can't be built on or risk boxing in players who haven't finished their builds. 

This isn't entirely correct. There is one subtly introduced with reserved regions. This is best explained with an example.

 

1. Say Bismarck gets a huge reserve region around his city.

2. No-one can build in reserved region

3. Bismarck goes away and never comes back

4. Admins can now _revoke_ his reserved regions.

5. Any reserved region could be revoked by staff at any time or given to another player.

6. Bismarck's "committed" region will never be altered by staff (unless /modreq)

I'm afraid that reserved regions would be to complicated to ever work out though 8(

 

This goes right back to "Its sometimes best to just leave things alone"

[Bardidley]

I believe the best solution for this problem is to leave it to admin discretion on re-sizing and reclaiming regions. If a player claims a giant area, yet only ever built on 1/4 of the claim and then never returns for 30days - we should be re-sizing their border so that other players can use the land.

 

A prime example of this can be seen at coords; 1900, 65, -1730  An entire island with less than 1/4 of it being built on approx 1 month ago, and the player not returning to it - this is where I see shrinking a region acceptable.

 

We have the capability of expanding the map as well, but we should try to have some of these huge spaces close to spawn filled up before we go expanding the map, so we don't end up with a sparse map that is uninteresting to fly around and look at things.

 

Having a "reserve system" may be too complicated to explain to players, plus I think we have a decent understanding of our "regular players" and the size of builds they usually generate over a revision. We need to be wary of a new player requesting a massive region.

 

Another thing, we need to ensure players are making their borders on their own by manually placing the block border. This is a test for them because it proves their interest in claiming the land. Do not make a players border for them using WE, they need to show us they are willing to commit the time and effort.

 

 

~bard

[Electifried]

During the time I was cadmin (rev 27), claims that were relatively unused and abandoned for about 2+ weeks were removed at admin discretion (I distinctly remember removing at least 2). Have we stopped doing this?

[Challenger2]

 

 

Have we stopped doing this?

 

Nope. Just lately we shrunk a region on the north east of the map. We are also looking at removing this huge unused region north of Theopolis. I believe taking peoples regions away from them is a touchy thing and I started this conversation to talk about the issue and possible alternatives.