The Problem with PvE and Claim Flags.

[José Gaspar 58]

The fundamental problem with claim flags in PvE is that claim flags are an inherently PvP concept.   You are taking land away from other player and on top of that taking part of their harvest.   In PvP an absent, over-taxing or generally unreasonable owner can be deposed and the ownership taken away from them.   In PvE it cannot be taken away, and the owner can be as ruthless as they want without having any way of removing them outside Game adminstrator actions.

There are a couple ways of dealing with it. 

1) Have significant maintenance cost, but the taxes collected till likely stop that until the resident stop playing.  Not good, encourages people not to play.

2) Making the claim servers PvP, many unoffical servers do exactly that.   So far have not seen any interest in this approach by developers.   But this allows the owner to maintain order on thier island, and if they have support of the people living there, they will defend the island from attack,  if they do not, the residents may join the attacker.   While the residents can't place cannons and other seige equipment they can have them stockpiled to join in on attack.  So an owner better be on good terms with residents.    

3) Removing Claims, that seems to be the current solution.   Claims will be missed it was one of the defining features of Atlas, but no claims was better than what we have now.  with vast tracks of unused land blocked from use by players by claims.  The world simply is not big enough to have that much land unused,

4) Last is to have a PvE-frieindly solution to removing bad owners.   Let the residents decide. 

4a) A democracy where residents of the island can vote on ruling company at regular intervals.   players of the island would select the new owning company

4b) A no confidence vote,   Resident could at any time declare a no confident vote, that would occur,  it the company does not get the majority of the vote an election is held.

While this is not a easy change, it would not have to be implemented with next patch,  It could continue with current lawless style building.  let people build there bases but know the election is coming, the companies the helped every one and did not block areas would be the ones most likely to win the election.   Those that pillar/foundation spammed would not have a chance and may be removed from the island after the election.

To be fair to all residents, players only get to vote on one island and election takes a week with no results published until its done.  If they change islands they vote on they cannot vote for a month, to prevent companies from stuffing ballots.  after the election the current owner is removed, and the island is lawless for a week to allow the residents to move on. or off the island or just adjust their build, then the new owning company becomes the owner.

While i will miss my claims on 3 islands, the claim system as it is now is broken and something needed to be done.

Edited March 2, 2019 by José Gaspar

[UDO 361]

the claim system was fine the problem was the unlimited flags that could be placed and the way the overlap worked enabling players to creep inwards , the exploit that allowed flags to be placed at the radius edges without contesting ,

all the devs had to do was limit the flags per player / company  and add an upkeep cost instead of day countdown timer

Edited March 2, 2019 by UDO