An "unclaimable" claim

[Malicus]

I think there should be a type of "claim" that prevents other people from placing a claim but allows anyone to do anything else as if there were no claim there. This could be used to ensure that certain areas or paths remain available for passage and to prevent griefing by way of placing claims.

Since this guarantees that people can move through an area, it should probably be exempt from the normal restrictions on how close claims can be to one another.

Edit to clarify: Basically an enforced public area.

[Peter]

A lot of items should auto-include this, such as hearthfires, mines, wells...

[kaka]

Another idea could be that you can only claim an area that is not too far
from your hearthfire, but I don't know if that would work in practice.
Not sure if it goes well with multiple claims and you could always build
a hearthfire, claim the area and then rebuild your hearthfire where you want
it, unless there were some restrictions.

I'm a little off here. :P

It seems like the shared or village claims will solve this problem, hopefully.

[Trafalgar]

As far as only being able to have claims near your hearth fire, personally, I wouldn't want to be unable to set up a new claim while moving items to a new home just because I haven't put a new hearth fire there yet, or if I have moved my hearth fire, to have to lose my old claims before I'm done moving (leaving anything that hasn't been moved yet at risk of being stolen).

[kaka]

While I agree with you, I still think it's reasonable to think of your hearthfire
and claimed land as your home, and as such they should not be separated too far.

I won't argue for this any more, though. :P