Land claiming - Do it right

Actually I'll send you an email with some suggestions. It could turn easily into a linguistics forensics discussion which is of little value to this thread.

I feel ya man. But then again some people are even more passionate about which of the various StarTrek captains were "The Best." I think when done in an open minded manner passion is a wonderful thing.

This is a conversation that is absolutely needed, however I feel it is a waste of time. Maybe it will have an impact, but after years of people begging for land protection, I fear it is a lost cause. Wouldn't they have done something by now if they were going to?

It is logical to think that a company will listen to the voices of their costumers. In the end they only hurt themselves by not. When I started here I was regularly a gold or diamond member. I, however, am not willing to pay to play a game where anyone can come in and take things away from me. Where I then have to be in charge of fixing the problem. I particularly am not willing to pay so much for such poor customer service. There are professional games you can pay less to play, and are supported with 24/7 customer service. I would still be willing to pay the prices here if there was any chance that I was being protected as a player. As it is I wouldn't spend my money here, knowing that at any time I can be the victim of the bad behavior of anyone who stumbles upon my things.

So yes it is important for a company to understand exactly what it is that will keep their customers paying for their product. Manic is correct. It is only to their own detriment that they do it any other way.

Oh, no argument on that point. I suppose it goes back to your statement about word-choice though. As you recall, I was actually saying much the same thing in the Town Expansion thread - that ideally it should've been discussed openly before being announced. Trying to paint it as "a stand for liberty and justice for all" is the point where I start getting eyeball pains.

In short it's not the idea I disagree with so much as the tone. The notion that EMC staff should have to clear any major developments with the community first, or they're "doing it wrong" (as implied by the title of this thread) is what I object to.

EDIT:

Best abandon all internet / multiplayer games then, Standsinlava. That can happen any time, to any game, and inevitably it will (See: any MMO that has ever shut down, updated, or changed its service model). I understand you feel very strongly about this point and it's not likely I'm going to change your mind, so I'll simply leave it at that.

The land protection status (move it to the frontier, if so how much) will be part of the larger discussion. As the successes of some of EMC competitors indicates there are plenty of people willing to pay for such services. You and, to some degree, I are not the target market of these competitors.

I am sorry your customer support experiences did not live up to your expectations. Mine have, to date, lived up to and a couple of times, surpassed my expectations. I guess this is a matter of your mileage may vary.

The meaning of words are important and how they are used, we each one of us make many choices every day based on this. It is not necessarily something we think much about unless it is something that's important to us.

Indeed with the help of the search engine I do recall this. I understand your point about word-choice.

Since we understand our beloved maniacal miner's intents and largely agree with him, how should we proceed with moving this conversation forward?

When it comes to grief, all of the responsibility falls on the shoulders of the player. We are responsible for catching the person. We are responsible for proving the offense. We are responsible for repairing the damage.

These are not the responsibilities that should fall on the players. This is what I mean by poor customer service. The mods are good about being there to do what they can, it is the policy that needs to be changed. There are tools available that will allow this problem to be fixed. Why aren't they being implemented? People having been asking for them for a very long time.

This is to the point of the thread. The owners of this server need to be willing to listen to the players. To have open conversations. To take into consideration what the people need. It boggles my brain that so many people here are so closed off to the fact that this is a business.

This has been precisely my experience. I've never had to provide the ID of the people/person griefing me.

EDIT: This suggests to me that Aikar and the rest of the staff are listening. Krysyy's thoughtful reply demonstrates active engagement.

The thread itself here is just an appeal for the land-claiming feature (and, in a large sense, major future developments and features) to be discussed openly with the community prior to implementation. Krysyy's seen it, as evidenced by her reply, and from the previous discussion threads I feel confident in saying that EMC staff collectively (Aikar, Krysyy, J5F, Sr. Staff) are at least aware of our desires on the matter. Beyond that, I'm not sure how much further this particular conversation can go, short of staff actually stepping in and saying "This will/won't be discussed when we're ready to unveil it."
EDIT: I type too slow.

From what I've experienced though, it's more likely we'll get an "initial" release with the feature working, and then the particulars of it will be expanded on and tweaked as time goes on. Aikar seems to favor working from a functional foundation and building off it based on feedback and observation rather than theory-crafting a "perfect" solution (that will likely have to be refined anyway). Can't say as I fault him there, even if the unveiling is liable to ruffle a few feathers.

Now if we want to switch tangents a bit and discuss the particulars of land-claiming and do some theorycrafting of our own? That might be better-suited to a new thread, since people often don't read past the first few posts (*or in SkyDragon's case, the first sentence ), but it'd at least be more productive than bickering over verbal semantics...


*Just teasing, Mr. TL;DR.

The solution to fixing grief in the empire is so simple. Placing band-aids on it is not the best solution. I've watched a programer (one who is currently being paid to create custom content for one of the bigger mini-games server) create a custom land protection plug-in, in less than three weeks - from the ground up. While he is one of the most brilliant young men of my acquaintance, I don't expect everyone to live up to what he can do, but how could we possibly still be waiting for this after three years? The only reason we are is because at some point a decision was made to put it off till after other things. Despite the fact that many different people have said, over and over again, that this is important to them. It keeps getting pushed back for things that are 100% cosmetic.

It is time to be more willing to listen to what the players are asking for. If you did you guys could spend a heck of a lot less time and effort bringing in new players, because the players you have here would stop leaving.

It is, and I realize that my wording is often ... too provocative?

Sorry if it is, that would be a mistake on my side - I'd like it to be just a tiny bit provocative.

Service users demand quality of service from the service provider.
Service users request quality of service from the service provider.
Service users suggest quality of service to the service provider.
Service users petition for quality of service to the service provider.
Service users politely, cap in hand, ask for quality of service from the service provider.

I'm not sure I understand this completely (?)
Is it about respect and good tone?

If yes, then I'd say that a good communication and cooperation with the community in all issues that significantly influence community life belongs to "respect and good tone".
Ignoring, skipping or overriding the community without obvious necessity, without a solid explanation and reasoning would certainly be less than "respect and good tone".

<--- Cautiously dons party hat...

Continuing on with the main topic of this thread:

Here are the subjects/wishlist that I as an outpost/settlement claimer find important to me:
Critical = Things I view this as essential for a successful first cut.
Highly Desirable = Something I believe that I, or my settlement members will use with some regularity.
Would be nice = Things that sound nice on the surface.

1. Critical: (Semi)automated settlement land claim and land claim extension process. (Well documented on the wiki or elsewhere, and as always, kept up to date, including costs.)
2. Critical: A "Settlement Map" or some other ability to easily determine my own claimed land extent. (i.e. am I on my own property? Additional questions to answer but which are "would be nice" include: Is it unclaimed and unclaimable? Is it unclaimed and claimable? Is it claimed/pending by someone else, no names needed?) I consider warning messages such as we get when entering the wastes "easy" (e.g. "You have entered land claimed by another party" ...etc. Or something like entering a command such as "/settlement claim status." )
3. Critical: Membership management. That is provide some way, a command, a UI, a webpage... for me to say who is or is not a member of NS. For example: "/settlement member add Perry_Stahlsis"
4. Critical: Town to Settlement and vice versa Fast Travel / teleporting. At least to a well designated area of the settlement.
5. Critical: The ability to grant rights to members and non-members, similar to residence flags.
   1. Minimally we should be able to assign these flags/permissions on a per player basis. (For example: "/settlement flag add Perry_Stahlsis teleport" would allow me to teleport within a specific settlement)
   2. Ideally (i.e. read as highly desirable) this would include the ability to create named groups to which I assign members and then rights.
      1. Example 1: Why I want it. Let's say Alex and Robin are in the "trusted longtimers" group. I would like to give them carte-blanc access to the settlement, they can do everything but eject me or edit my permissions. Later Bill joins their ranks. I only want to add Bill to the group in order to alter his rights. Even later I decide that the ability grant membership is being abused and revoke it from the trusted "longtimers group." At this point none of the members within it can grant membership.
      2. Example 2. How it might work.
         1. "/settlement group create Trusted" -- creates a group named trusted.
         2. "/settlement group add player Alex Trusted" -- adds Alex to Trusted.
         3. "/settlement group remove player Alex Trusted" -- removes Alex from Trusted.
         4. "/settlement group add flag Trusted membership" -- allows all members of trusted to add or remove settlement members.
         5. "/settlement group remove flag Trusted membership" -- removes the permission from all members of trusted for adding or removing settlement members.
   3. But only pick one of the two methods! Explaining exceptions gets tricky later on down the road when a permission/flag is removed from a group but was granted to an individual and the membership admin forgot! I've been in the position of explaining then having to do behind the scenes fixing. It's never pleasant.
6. Highly Desirable/Borderline Critical: A settlement specific members only (sub)forum where all EMC staff and outpost members can post and create threads. If the current rate of growth continues (2+ per month) NS will soon have more full members than can be included at once in the current forum PM/conversation system.
7. Highly Desirable: Intra-settlement fast travel/teleporting, if not named coordinates, I'm thinking of something similar to the "/home my_named_location" command that can be attached to a teleport sign as well as used directly by those with the teleport or settlement equivalent permission/flag.
8. Would be nice: I want to grant my members some level of autonomy and their own sub-claims. Further discussion to flesh this out is needed, probably in a separate thread.
9. Would Be Nice: "Settlement Coffers" a way to aggregate rupees (and possibly tokens) from those who want to contribute and/or settlement taxes. The expenditure and management of these would be governed by one or more flags/permissions.
10. Would Be Nice: "Settlement Taxes". Allow settlements to, should they choose, impose a sales tax on their members for sales conducted on settlement premises. (I'm borrowing this concept, loosely, from EVE Online's corporation taxes. I'm sure other games have it as well.)
11. Would Be Nice: An automated treaty system where one settlement implicitly trusts another... or distrusts. Permissions would be granted based on membership in the other settlement and their "standing"/permissions...etc.
12. Would Be Nice: Membership in multiple settlements. For example at least one of my members is creating his own settlement for purposes that will be mutually beneficial; another is engaged in an effort which could be considered, loosely, a settlement; while yet another frequently helps out a friend of the settlement with his own settlement tasks.

Yep. And it seems to me like that's happening.

I like that development attitude actually. That's why I crafted my bound to be considered TL;DR by most post to include a top 5 critical, then the rest optional with two levels of granularity (Highly desirable and would be nice)

Fair enough. I'm happy to copy and paste my other long post into a new thread.

EDIT: Done, click this link