Removal of claims

[Errol]

That one really should go in. Claims should be able to be removed in some way, by destroying the stake or killing the owner. It's sad to see some buncha idiots with no RL ruining our fun by exploiting that one. On that matter, you should also be able to do something to prevent claim placing by making stuff a public area or something.

[shockedfrog]

I agree something like this has to be done, for this reason and many others. However, it's difficult to balance a system that allows for the quick removal of obviously abusive claims (or reduces their ability to be abused) yet doesn't make legitimate claims meaningless and destroyable by any passing idiot.

Malicus suggested that public claim idea in another topic, which I think sounds like a reasonable temporary measure until better control over normal claims is available. Some kind of system that makes inactive claims possible to unclaim or take over would be handy for the future, as well - perhaps some kind of squatting system, where if the owner hasn't returned to their land within a time such as 3/4 weeks, others can claim it?

[Errol]

Yea, it's kind of difficult to let the engine know what claim's abusive and what claim's not, right? Maybe one has to expend a buncha LP for squatting the claim.

Or you could make it vanish by killing it's owner, which currently seems like the best solution. Somebody's camping your body? Have some frontier justice. Or, if he's too strong, hire a bounty hunter. After all, our goal is to have the world require as few divine intervention as possible.

[loftar]

I've just implemented the long-planned feature that every character only can have one claim. I think that should make everything more reasonable, since the one claim one can have (after spending 4000 LPs on Yeomanry) would be more valuable. It will only count on new claims, though, so there might be a little problem for some time to come. At least I've implemented the possibility for Jorb and me to remove extraneous claims, so we should be able to fix some of it.

[Vattic]

Only one claim? that messes with my little settlement.

[loftar]

Haha, sorry to hear that. :)

It is planned for the future, however, that additional skills will extend the number of claims you can hold.

[Vattic]

That is good to hear, will you be removing any duplicate claims or will you just stop people who already have 1 or more creating new ones?

[loftar]

In fact, only new claims will count towards the quota, so even if you have claims at this point, you can still claim another one.

[Vattic]

Thank Armok, at least I wont have to relocate and change how I'm working things at the moment .

Edit: just thought I should say I'm not against people only having one claim, if you create a new one while one is still in existence does the old one just vanish like with the hearthfires?

[shockedfrog]

Yeah, totally spoils my 4-claim vault too. That is kinda ridiculous, but overall I'm not sure what to think of this at the moment. Allowing only one claim will reduce abuse and overuse of claims, but hardly prevents them (those serious about it will simply use their one claim for it, or make alts for the extra claims). Not being able to make extra claims means players can't use them for much-needed additional security, or for multiple homes of equal importance, or transferring from one place to the next, or for developing property to trade with/give to others, or any of the other possibilities for multiple claims. At this time, if it does lead to a reduction in abuse, this change is probably for the best, but in the long term, when better solutions for the abusive uses of claims can be found, it would be nice to have a bit more freedom. The additional skills in the future should probably help out a bit there, as will improved land/village etc. controls. I think that increasing the LP cost of claiming land based on how much land the character owns in total, perhaps combined with an additional charge for each separate plot, and not refunding the full LP spent on land, would also help to control use of multiple areas. Even without the full refund, if the cost increase and additional charge are enough, a player would want to unclaim unused existing land in order to reduce the cost of their new land.