Feasibility of Claim Change Idea?

[MeatSammich 214]

Originally posted buried in a different land claim change thread, just wondering on people's thoughts.

If it was set up so that you had to designate 50% of your claimed land over X amount of claims (5? 10? Some random formula involving the # of the people in the company and # of claims?) as open build by anyone. With some other mechanics thrown in:

1: Whoever built there first would be the only company allowed to build in that claim, aside from the owner.

2: The tenant would get protections like not being able to be kicked off as long as they were active within as long as the company's claim timer was.

3: If the actual landowners claims go up for the owner's inactivity, the tenant  automatically becomes the new owner of the claim they have built on...there would be a lot less people in lawless, and a lot more people 'renting' claim space.

4: A flat tax of 10% for the tenant, on the land.

 

I think that this would force people to allow building on their sometimes ridiculous amount of unused claims, as well as incentivize people to rent, but would still allow people to protect their 'important' spots like harbors and resources, while being an almost open building set up, similar to Ark, but with the protection that the land holders get to choose which of their claims are able to be built on, and a minor passive income for them.

This would allow lawless to go away and become more claimable area, since the overall purpose of it originally was to be somewhere to build something better than a raft to find your own claim, and now that you can get a ramshackle sloop in freeport, the only purpose was for people who couldn't find land. 

Additionally, the land claim leaderboard could still exist, because even if you held 1000+ land claims, half of them would still be rentable. No claim limits would need to be imposed, due to the same reason, although to keep unused land to a minimum, the percentage of land forced to be able to build could scale up to 66% over 500, and 75% over 100.  No upkeep would even need to be implemented, because people's land would be working for them while still allowing new players to find claims.

Edited February 23, 2019 by MeatSammich

[Vegetto 59]

People will just spam foundations to block resources in the current scenario if this happens. 

We are even letting people build on our land with 5% tax and no rent cost so they can farm and have their own base but they want their own claims.

I understand everyone wants to have a claim of their own but in the current situation this is the only option until they change claim system in upcoming update.

[MeatSammich 214]

5 minutes ago, Vegetto said:

People will just spam foundations to block resources in the current scenario if this happens. 

We are even letting people build on our land with 5% tax and no rent cost so they can farm and have their own base but they want their own claims.

I understand everyone wants to have a claim of their own but in the current situation this is the only option until they change claim system in upcoming update.

That's the idea of being able to protect a good number of your claims. You choose which ones fall under the flag, as long as you meet the percentage of your excess land as allowing tenants. There are so many people that have giant empty claims, with a couple rocks and a few trees and no other resources that they should be willing to give up.

Edited February 23, 2019 by MeatSammich

[Raine 53]

There is still finite space, even if you appear to open up a few slots via this mechanic.  You still end up hitting  the wall.  If I understand this correctly, it only kicks the can down the road a bit, but doesn't solve the problem.

To be fair, I'm not convinced the problem is solvable on Official.  There are player limits on any server for any game, and even when you crazy quilt them together into an Atlas map, they're still limited.

If you limit the number of claims, there's nothing to prevent a large Company from splitting itself into smaller allied groups and claiming massive amounts of territory.  Acquisition is the whole point of most gaming and the Leaderboards make it abundantly clear that the devs encourage this, PvE or PvP.
 

So maybe a better question is, which kind of acquisition should the devs encourage?

 

Edited February 23, 2019 by Raine

[MeatSammich 214]

2 hours ago, Raine said:

There is still finite space, even if you appear to open up a few slots via this mechanic.  You still end up hitting  the wall.  If I understand this correctly, it only kicks the can down the road a bit, but doesn't solve the problem.

To be fair, I'm not convinced the problem is solvable on Official.  There are player limits on any server for any game, and even when you crazy quilt them together into an Atlas map, they're still limited.

Aye, no matter what you do, it will always be finite land. Hell, if you limit people to 1 claim per company, you can theoretically still fill up the whole server, given sufficient time and playerbase.

What my idea would do would almost double (more than double, if you count freeing up lawless to be claimable once people had more land) the available space for people. If you figure a company has 100 claims, and they have to allow building on 40 of them - that could be 20 companies out of lawless...if they only have 50 claims and they have to allow building on 20 of them, that could be another 10 companies with a quasi-permanant home. When you start looking at the big companies, that would have to allow building on 600-750 of their 1000 claims, thats a good chunk of people who can move out of lawless. Then, you open up lawless as claimable land, and that provides people with another couple thousand claimable spots.

I'm guessing that that breakdown is alot closer to what GS's original thought process was with opening up claims to be buildable. They just underestimated the greed and 'To hell with everyone, I got mine' thought process of a large portion of their playerbase.

If all of that was used, then the servers wouldn't be handling the population needed to fill all of them, and there would be enough people for GS to open another server cluster.

Edited February 23, 2019 by MeatSammich

[Jean Lafitte 451]

6 hours ago, Vegetto said:

We are even letting people build on our land with 5% tax and no rent cost so they can farm and have their own base but they want their own claims.

I understand everyone wants to have a claim of their own but in the current situation this is the only option until they change claim system in upcoming update.

I'm currently working with a guy who I'm going to give a waterfront claim to.  Once myself and the neighbors are comfortable that he's not an asshat or a griefer, I'll demolish the claim I'm allowing him to build on with no problem.  This benefits my company, our neighbors and allies and the guy who's building on the claim.  We all get a good neighbor (we hope), he gets a claim of his own that ensures his hard work can't be taken away, and we get tax collection from the inland claims he'll be farming.

Hoarding claims isn't the only option. While the dev's may consider claim count a 'win', hoarding claims has so far generated enough animosity toward the system that the devs are going to change it. And IF the changes still allow hoarding, the complaints will continue to pile up until something drastic is done.

Unless land owners, like you and myself, come up with a viable solution that gives players what they want while still achieving the goals we as land owners want, the devs will be forced to ram something down our throats. And what they come up with will likely be much less palatable that the solution we come up with.

So, I suggest you approach this like a business.  If they're already on your claims, you have a captive audience.  Make them happy by giving them a claim, raise the taxes and you create a monopoly where everyone is happy (mostly).  Or should I say happier?

Edited February 23, 2019 by Jean Lafitte

[Raine 53]

Then again, once you relinquish control, what happens to the land when he decides he's had enough of the game and just abandons it?  With that plan, you have control of the neighborhood only once.  Once the land isn't yours any more, you would have no recourse over who moves in after that.

[Vegetto 59]

2 hours ago, Jean Lafitte said:

I'm currently working with a guy who I'm going to give a waterfront claim to.  Once myself and the neighbors are comfortable that he's not an asshat or a griefer, I'll demolish the claim I'm allowing him to build on with no problem.  This benefits my company, our neighbors and allies and the guy who's building on the claim.  We all get a good neighbor (we hope), he gets a claim of his own that ensures his hard work can't be taken away, and we get tax collection from the inland claims he'll be farming.

Hoarding claims isn't the only option. While the dev's may consider claim count a 'win', hoarding claims has so far generated enough animosity toward the system that the devs are going to change it. And IF the changes still allow hoarding, the complaints will continue to pile up until something drastic is done.

Unless land owners, like you and myself, come up with a viable solution that gives players what they want while still achieving the goals we as land owners want, the devs will be forced to ram something down our throats. And what they come up with will likely be much less palatable that the solution we come up with.

So, I suggest you approach this like a business.  If they're already on your claims, you have a captive audience.  Make them happy by giving them a claim, raise the taxes and you create a monopoly where everyone is happy (mostly).  Or should I say happier?

We also have done this with a couple of companies cuz you really want to keep griefers away.

But the main problem is quitters who have heck ton of land without any build permissions. They just login to reset the timer, thats it. And I've seen many companies which do this.

[MeatSammich 214]

10 hours ago, Jean Lafitte said:

I'm currently working with a guy who I'm going to give a waterfront claim to.  Once myself and the neighbors are comfortable that he's not an asshat or a griefer, I'll demolish the claim I'm allowing him to build on with no problem.  This benefits my company, our neighbors and allies and the guy who's building on the claim.  We all get a good neighbor (we hope), he gets a claim of his own that ensures his hard work can't be taken away, and we get tax collection from the inland claims he'll be farming.

Hoarding claims isn't the only option. While the dev's may consider claim count a 'win', hoarding claims has so far generated enough animosity toward the system that the devs are going to change it. And IF the changes still allow hoarding, the complaints will continue to pile up until something drastic is done.

Unless land owners, like you and myself, come up with a viable solution that gives players what they want while still achieving the goals we as land owners want, the devs will be forced to ram something down our throats. And what they come up with will likely be much less palatable that the solution we come up with.

So, I suggest you approach this like a business.  If they're already on your claims, you have a captive audience.  Make them happy by giving them a claim, raise the taxes and you create a monopoly where everyone is happy (mostly).  Or should I say happier?

I've tried the same thing, but, the problem is nobody wants to rent the claim, even for a trial period. They're all worried that whoever they get the land from is going to wait til they build everything, and then change build permissions and screw them over. - that's one of the reasons that the plan included the non-kicked for anything other than inactivity. Yeah, you take the chance of some douchewaffle moving in next door, but thats why you would be able to select the claims that were buildable - to allow some breathing room between you and them. I look at it as closer to Ark's open building plan, but with the benefits of land ownership and being able to dictate where on your land they settle.

As far as just giving the claim away, my problem is that if you do that, and they stop playing and someone else gets it, and lets it lie fallow, now you're right back to square 1 as far as land usage. At least tenant inactivity would revert it back to the landowner in the scenario I put forth, as well as the tenant becoming the actual landowner, if the owner loses the land due to inactivity.

GS is going to have to force something, because as willing as some people are to give up land, the majority of the people aren't. Either forcing allowing renters with protections for them, or, the most likely scenario, forcing upkeep and claims limitations...which, with the attitude and capabilities of the megas, is just going to end up with them owning ever more of the land, either through themselves, or through a surrogate offshoot company.