Rethinking the Reclaiming

[trexation]

The Background Info
Reclaiming is a major part of keeping the server clean, healthy, and active. The problems arise when older players log back on 6 months to a year later and their plots have been over claimed. This recently happened to me. I had been a long time and very active player for a while when my good friend Deutschland63 got temp banned for a month. Deutchland and I got involved in other server, but eventually came back. When I logged on to the server I found my plot taken over by neodragonkiller. The arguments that fallowed my return inspired the staff to make changes, and I am here to make my suggestions.

Defining the Problems
There are may a problem with the reclaiming process, such as, but not limited to the list below.
- Developed plots only take 6 months of inactivity, that means that if dph went offline for 6 months his large storage room and casino would be taken over and all his materials donated to the community storage.
- Reclaiming a plot takes even less planing than claiming the plot, here is an example post, "I would like to reclaim plot n19e34 since i am the only active player on that plot i would like to claim owner ship of it." Even the "I's are not upper case. Reclaiming a developed plot should be much more difficult.
- Some people try to reclaim for a chance to get the items, mooshroms / horses, or blocks from someone else's build.

Any problems that I failed to addresses? Please leave a post below, I would like to see more community involvement in the development of better rules.

Defining Developed
What is a developed plot? Well maybe we need a better description. My suggestion is to first define a building / structure.

Blocks - Any block not found in nature / A block placed in a intelligent manner not created by nature or to transform nature.

Simple Structure - >50 blocks to 100 blocks Ex. Large Tent, Lenor House, Harold, etc
Structure -100 blocks to 1000 blocks Ex. House Larger building, The most common Structure
Large Structure - 1000 blocks to 2500 blocks Ex. The CSP exchange, Lenor Ice Scating arena, A giant building
HUGE Structure - 2500< blocks Ex. A castle wall, A small house, dph's Casino

But then, can we simply sort a plot into developed and not developed? I suggest several different classifications.

Undeveloped - Not much going on, looks very similar to the way the world was generated. Maybe one or two Simple Structures and a few chests.
Marginally developed - A structure or two, and a few Simple Structures , >20 chests.
Developed 60+ - Lots of Structures, so that the space is filled, and that no gap of more than 40 blocks is between the perimeter Structures. OR no gap of no more than 70 blocks is between a Large Structure's perimeter and any other type of Structure. OR one or more huge structures. This would be considered what is required for a new plot
Developed 0-256 - Structures can also be found underground (around 3 Structures or one large Structure), farms and such.
Developed Connected -The plot shows may connections with other plots nearby (the nearby plots must be developed 60+ or greater) owned by other players that have not been offline for more than 1 year, The plot must also either developed 60+ or developed 0-256. When saying "Connections with other plots" I mean that several structures are built across the line, that road networks connect the plots, an artificial biome is present in both plots, or one large structure is built across the two plots. This would make said Developed 60+ plot or Developed 0-256 Plot a DevelopedC 60+ / 0-256.

Redefined Reclaiming Times
The next general step is to define the amount of time a player must be gone in order to reclaim their plot.

Undeveloped - 2 Months, 1 staff resolves the reclaim.
Marginally Developed - 4 Months, Members of the plot may file a reclaim a week before everyone else. 1 Staff resolves the reclaim.
Developed 60+ - 8 Months, Members of the plot can file a reclaim a week before everyone else. Special care is taken to store all materials in temp storage for 4 months. 2 Staff handle the reclaim.
Developed 0-256 - 18 Months, Members do not get any early claim privileges, all material stored in temp storage for 6 months. 2 Staff handle reclaim.
DevelopedC - 2 Years, very similar to Developed 0-256. The plot the plot in question is connected to, must have the owner offline for 1 year or you must have their permission to overtake the plot in question. All Items are moved to temp storage for 6 months. 2 Staff, and connected plot owner handle the reclaim unless the owner is offline for greater than a year.If that is the case, then 3 staff are required to handle the reclaim.

Format for reclaiming
Clearly reclaiming a DevelopedC plot should not be so simple as "I would like to reclaim plot n19e34 since i am the only active player on that plot i would like to claim owner ship of it." So what Should the new regulations be?

Please fill out the fallowing chart if you would like to reclaim a plot. For a more detailed explanation of reclaiming please visit (Link to this Post). You must have more than a sentence.
Minecraft Username:
Plot Number:
Previous Owner:
Aprox Last Seen Date:
Development Rating: (Ask Staff to Check it)
Connection to Plot: (Member, Previous Owner, Nearby Plot Owner, ME WANTZ IT!)
The Plan: (several sentences to a paragraph at least! Pictures are good)
The Reason: (Why this Plot)

Rules Regarding Plot Reclaims
-The Owner must be offline for an extended period of time.
- If the owner re-appears within 1 month of reclaiming a plot, you must return the plot to the original owner.
- You must fallow your original plan somewhat.
- You may not reclaim a plot to simply grief it.
- You must donate all items from the plot to the community storage.
- Any Original Rules

The not so Grand Conclusion
I hope this large post helps clearly define what I wish the new system to be. I know this may seem a little complex but I think that reclaiming should be something difficult, and that rather than reclaim a plot you go and get yourself a plot. I hope that this aids the staff in making a new set of rules. Please leave what you think down below and also leave your own ideas, I would be glad to hear them, please leave a your vote! Have a good day, and thanks for reading.

Ps - You catch my trick? "HUGE Structure - 2500< blocks Ex. A small house"
Ps - You catch a ride on my roller coaster yet? Ask me if you want to try it out!

 

[jennythegreat]

You must donate all items from the plot to the community storage.

I think one would definitely have to agree to donate all items and resources to the community chest / storage so that we know someone isn't going to just reclaim the plot to get the resources. Whether or not they actually get donated depends on a couple of things - if they keep the original structures intact then there wouldn't be any call to donate those materials. If the structures start getting torn down or removed, then those materials should be donated.

 

[Spubbles]

I agree with part of this, rather with others I dont. Specifically I don't agree with if the (previous) owner comes back on within one month of the reclaim, the plot must be given back to the (previous) owner. This wouldnt work very well as well as it would cause problems between people about it. Not to mention that the (current) owner could've already majorly deveolped his/her things onto the plot, and be close to one month after the reclaim, and the owner comes on, asks for the plot and then the owner will have to lose all the stuff that they've worked on.

Another thing I disagree with is donating all items to the community chest, a lot of people reclaim plots because the said-plot has items that the person is looking for, or even a friend taking over another friends plot (with permission) to continue with a project etc.

(Again) Another thing I disagree with is the "DevelopedC" part of your post. If a developed plot owner is offline for two years, it would be quite hard to contact them. Just saying... plus two years is way too long

Harold is not a 'simple structure', Harold is an incredibly complex work of art.

The idea of require X amount of staff to deal with reclaims seems pretty weird for me. I don't think you need to take 3 staff from what they're doing for one reclaim.

You should've known that if you left for such a long time, that there's a chance your plot/stuff will be reclaimed. Just saying

The system is more then "complex" a lot of it is pointless, the system should only require at most 2 staff (an OP should be one of them), and much shorter reclaim times. You also shouldn't base the development of a plot based off block amount (nor is 2500 blocks a lot). A large project that should even get a 2 year reclaim wait should be one of the giant projects on MCA, like Maple's Medieval City (Which name I forgot, sorry mapls), Meteor Impact Site, Etc. These are projects/builds which a large amount of players on the server recognize, not some small little plot.

My idea of a reclaim process:

Plot you'd like to reclaim:
Prev plot owner:
Since they've been online(Min:6Months):
Banned?:
Your name:
Reason for claiming:

Yes, I know it's similar to trex's; I just got rid of parts that arent needed like "plans", plans should only be for jumbo plots.

SO yeah

 

[alien12]

Seems something has been communicated incorrectly.
Reclaims are 6 months for barely touched claims. Plots with significant builds on usually aren't reclaimed, at least until suitable plots are scarce.

In this case there seems to have been an error in how the reclaim was processed.
The current staff were previously Reps and therefore would never have dealt with reclaims, and since there isn't anything solid written down in the way of reclaim guidelines no one seems to have clarified the details.


EDIT: The system that was being used is based on the time of 6 months, common sense and plot development. Similar to the way landclaims are processed to start with (minus the time period)
There are ultimately no real "hard limits" that we can set on the reclaim process, we even used to take in to account how likely it was for a banned player to make a successful plead.

Currently, in the event of a reclaim all valuables (at a minimum) should be destroyed or moved to community storage.
Creating a rule of not griefing a reclaimed plot is pointless. Once ownership of the plot is changed it works as any other land claim. The new owner has full right to remove all structures to start fresh if they so desire.


So again, we do have unofficial reclaim rules that have been used since build opened. I could rant about the situation but there's no point...

 

[jennythegreat]

Currently, in the event of a reclaim all valuables (at a minimum) should be destroyed or moved to community storage.
Creating a rule of not griefing a reclaimed plot is pointless. Once ownership of the plot is changed it works as any other land claim. The new owner has full right to remove all structures to start fresh if they so desire.

So would we then pull all the stuff out of trex's storage and take down what he would consider valuable / things that he wants and stick that into storage? There were some nice things in his storage area (not counting what was in the chests). And could trex take down his own buildings / have us stick all that into storage as well if neo plans to level the plot / change the surface?

 

[alien12]

That only takes in to account chests. Claims with a conderable amount of work should only be reclaimed as a last resort or if the owner is banned and is unlikely to be unbanned.

 

[jennythegreat]

I mean just for this specific instance. In the future I think we're developing a good plan going forward.

EDIT: I suppose I should take that discussion to the other thread dealing with this specific instance, but I do like the discussion going on citing this example.

 

[mk59apr]

Trex:
thanks for posting this thread, and thinking through all those items you've put forward here.
I agree that reclaiming developed plots is problematic!
At this point I don't think I would reclaim another developed plot,
unless the plot owner wanted to pass it on.
It has been our policy to only reclaim undeveloped plots, and the recent transfer of your plot to neo shows why.
My bad there, I'd like to apologize for that.

On defining development and reclaim parameters, i agree with most of what you're saying here,
I've done a lot of reclaims on the server and generally I've used one year offline, "marginally developed" , but more like 10 chests or less with actual items inside. It's common for abandoned plots to have lots of chests, but nothing inside them.
As far as plots with medium or well developed builds, I think having the owner's permission would be ideal. Alien's point here of someone with a permanent ban might be a good example of when a reclaim of a developed plot would need to be done without the owners permission.

 

[AssaultCommand]

As a currently not very active member of this community my experience is that 6 months is plenty of time to come back on once in a while to make sure you don't lose your claims. There are, however, some suggestions I'd like to make regarding the current system.

First of all, let players have some sort of main claim, one claim that they can designate as their primary claim. This claim would have a wait time of at least 12 or 18 months before it would be able to get reclaimed. Any other claim would be treated as every claim currently is.

Secondly, a wait period between the approval of the reclaimation and the actual transferral of the plot of about 1 month should be put in place. In this time the owner should get a message from the staff and be given a chance to counter the claim.

Thirdly, players should be able to go offline for a long period of time without having to worry about having to check in every few months as long as they announce their absence, like Richey did when he went offline for quite some time. Their plots would be put on hold with 6 or 12 months added to the default wait time.

Of course there would be exceptions to these rules on a case to case basis based on plot development and other factors, but that's up to the judgement of the staff handling these cases.

 

[mk59apr]

I like all these suggestions above Assault, thanks for that.
Especially like that staff would try to contact an absent owner of a developed plot before allowing reclaim.
And yes, letting staff know that you're going to be away helps a lot, this point is in our current rules under "Peaceful"
http://www.minecraftaddicts.com/rules.php

 

[dph]

Very interesting points coming up here, I particularly like the needing to contact the owner of the developed plot and allow about one month for a reply as I think that will work quite well and may avoid the situation that we have had recently.

Trex, one issue that I see with your first post, using that system is we just get tied down needing to try and quantify things, this will just suck down our time so what would be better is some guidelines with a smaller set of rules and regulations that we will follow which are the specific ones that I talked to you about (in my opinion). Regarding multiple staff approving developed claims and being a much longer time before they can be considered for reclaims!