[Suggestion Denied] /Loot command for Derelict Res

Offer the option for players to loot derelict residences. When a player uses the /Loot command, send a message to the Town chat that the residence has been opened to looting. In order to keep the residence from being an eyesore, have it automatically reset after 48 hours.

This would not apply to residences of banned players.

This would be further incentive for players to not go Inactive. I lost one residence due to inactivity. In my case, it was due to necessary real-life things, but I could have spared the time to log onto the website but didn't make it a priority. For others in similar situations, this added feature would not motivate them to actually play more, but I know there are others who go inactive for other less-serious reasons who might be motivated to play a little more if this were implemented.

I know that when people do this purposefully with their residences before resetting them, it usually draws a crowd and is enjoyed by all.

An alternative to having a command is to start a forum section where Staff would list derelict residences and give an extended (30 day?) period before they would be looted, with the earliest date that the Staff would officially open the Res to looting (at their convenience). An email would be sent to the Res Owner informing them of such. Derelict residences would still be able to be claimed, as per the usual method, within this waiting period.

It would be cool but a tad easy money

No.

I'm not sure I agree with that.

I bet if you were to check, you'd find that many derelict residences do not really have a lot of resale value.

And if it were up to staff to open them to looting, I guess they could decide if there needed to be a certain number of players present so that no single player gained an unfair advantage. Or they could decide which residences could be looted or not.

True maybey like derelict Saturday when u get announcements that u can /loot on any derelict res

And the res number follows

No because let's say there was someone like herbrin3, you may or may not know him, who literally had stacks upon stacks of diamond blocks at his res and that person decided to "take a break" and didn't go through proper channels to get his res protected. Then some one came by and did /loot then stacks upon stacks of diamond blocks were just essentially duplicated resultino in an off balance of the market. And that is just an example of one item!

I absolutely do not support this! This would encourage force claiming for profit, not because you want the location. People would become vultures.

I do think that the items/blocks from recycled plots could be made available to moderators for public contests or public drop parties. But this should only be from system forced res resets, not player ones.

This would more so enforce the idea of force claiming residences to spite other players. Originally when snr. staff would unclaim a residence for you there were a few flaws in the system with that and time, but then the automatic system was put in place. Nowadays it costs you 5000r out of your pocket if you are just looking to spite another player by taking their residence.

Now a lot of good items go to waste when you forceclaim a residence but I could see this idea having more cons than pros.

For me that sounds like a door open to raid, I don't support it at all. Also, it has been discussed and suggested before, to have ability to forceclaim a residence with all the stuff it has on it and it was refused.. for obvious reasons.
Also, looking at it from the point of ethics, If you would feel good to raid and grief someones residence (yes, system allowed, but NOT by the willingness of the residence owner) and then play on emc with the same person later when they become active again, and still feel good about what has happened... well. To enjoy griefing when it is announced by the owner is something totally different in opposite of "forced" grief to their residence.

Again, Staff could look over the Res prior to making it available to looting. It's actually rather easy to follow proper procedure. It's all spelled out here: http://empireminecraft.com/wiki/derelict-policy/

And it even allows you to message Staff to let them know of an expected extended break.

Also, as I stated above, a further time limit could be imposed on looting, in addition to the current time limit on force claiming a residence.

This would not be the same as force claim. It would be force looting, and yes, for profit. You would be able to loot the Residence but not own it. The current 5,000r cost for claiming a derelict residence would stay in effect. In fact, even if the residence was "reset" for purposes of limiting the amount of time allowed for looting and keeping the residence from becoming an eyesore, the owner could still come back and keep the lot if no-one had claimed it as their own.
For the owner, that would be the motivating factor: Log on, or sign in to the website at least every 30 days, or alert Staff of an extended period of inactivity, or risk losing your stuff.

I don't quite get what you mean by "this should only be from system forced res rests, not player ones." Maybe you mean it shouldn't be up to players to decide when a Res gets reset, but have it be automatically determined?

If that's the case, then technically it would give players even less of an opportunity to save the existing property on their Res. Player-looting requires someone to find the derelict residence and decide to loot it. A system reset would not give the benefit of noone paying attention to the derelict status of that residence.

If you want to give more time, you can always extend the period between making the residence available for reset and making it available for looting. So I really see only four options with this:

Option 1: After a residence goes derelict, a period of time (another 30 days?) is mandated when no-one can loot, but the residence can be claimed as is currently the case. Thereafter allow players to initiate looting for a designated period. Ownership of the residence is retained by the original owner unless someone actually pays the fee to claim it as their own, in which case it's completely reset and there is nothing to loot.

Option 2: Same as option 1, except instead of waiting for a player to come along to loot the residence after the additional 30 days is up, Staff assesses the residence and determines whether it should be opened up to looting or if the contents are too valuable and might constitute an unfair advantage to those who loot.

Option 3: Same as option 1, except the server automatically confiscates the non-dirt blocks from the derelict residence, either "resets" the residence while not revoking ownership or completely resets the residence, and Staff decides whether it's appropriate to offer the items in a drop party.

Option 4: Same as option 3, except Staff lists the Residence, Previous Owner, and Number of Non-Dirt Blocks in an auction where they auction off the residence contents as a whole, or in random lots of unknown blocks consisting of (approximately) equal quantities of blocks.

This is a good idea, but what I'm seeing is you extending the derelict period. That's how I'm reading this
Also that ruins the idea of no griefing

True. Obviously you have to weigh how you would feel about taking that person's stuff. But then, how is this different than the people who force claim a residence now, knowing that they are deleting all of the previous owner's belongings and their claim to that residence?

The only difference is that you wanted the particular location instead of wanting their valuables. The end result for the original owner is the same though: They are out their stuff. Except in this scenario, perhaps they get to retain ownership of their same residence. The only real difference here is how likely someone was to desire that residence simply for the location vs. how much they would desire the valuables, and the psychological effect of knowing someone else has your stuff. But I can tell you that personally I felt worse that everything I had on my reset res just went to waste. I would rather have had it go to good use and made others happy, despite my misfortune.

I know that giving the new player the ability to claim the res as-is isn't really an option, mostly because banned players could abuse this, so having those items go back into the public pool seems like the next best thing.

Heck, here's another variation on this idea: You could randomly divide the items from all (normally) reset derelict rersidences among all active players who are current residents on that SMP! Give a command for players to claim their random blocks from derelict residences once per month, similar to claiming other Promos. This still might increase the rate at which residences are reset overall, but no single player could get a definate advantage over others.

no, this has been suggested and turned down. get your own materials no stealing is a rule

Interesting. You're right that players should be encouraged to gather their own resources and work for the majority of their income.

But then, whether this constitutes "stealing," I guess depends on whether you believe that someone still "owns" the items if they have allowed their residence to go derelict. The current policy of allowing someone who wants the plot enough, to pay 5,000r to purchase it and in the process delete all the items, indicates that in fact no, they no longer "own" those items.

In a real world example, suppose a tenant abandoned an apartment where the landlord was not collecting any rent directly from the tenant, and the tenant left behind personal items. The agreement between landlord and tenant clearly states that they give up all right to items left behind after a certain period of time. The landlord is a nice guy and doesn't really care if the apartment goes empty and the items remain for an extended period unless someone else comes along who needs a place to stay.

Now say in the meantime some other guy comes along who makes spare money by collecting these abandoned items from wherever he finds them. Is he stealing? Is he a "Bad Person?" After all, the tenant was clearly informed of what would happen if they left and didn't return.

Obviously he wouldn't want someone who he'd already identified as a cheat, liar, or felon to be allowed to come onto his property to collect anything! So, if the previous tenant had been identified as a criminal, he might be leery of just handing the items over to a new tenant. After all, they might somehow be associated with the previous tenant and the landlord feels they deserve nothing they left behind!

But, should the landlord instead incinerate those items left behind so that no-one profit from them? On the other hand, whether the previous tenant was unsavory or a decent person, would he feel bad about going along his street and offering all his neighbors the opportunity to come look through the items on a particular day and time?

The only thing I can think of that might sway him would be a very favorable impression of his previous tenant, in which case he might place the items in storage for a period of time, or his sense of justice might cause him to give the items to charity or randomly distribute them to those in need or a charity organization. In EMC this equates with equal distribution among all active players and disallows player-activated looting.

Yes, I see that others have suggested multiple times keeping the residence as-is upon force claiming. However, I hadn't seen my idea duplicated and felt it was somewhat original. If this has been discussed ad nauseum, I apologize. I did check the "These topics have already been suggested" thread prior to posting.

This would cause more unhappiness than happiness and it sounds greedy and cruel... that is just my opinion...obviously you feel differently and that's okay.

I kind of like the idea. A derelict residence will be reset anyway, why not let ornery players have some fun. If we don't want to give the items away, a game could be made. A bunch of players go to the deflect residence and race to get the most items. No one keeps the items but the winner gets x amount of rupees. The residence is then reset either to its previous state or it becomes blank.

the difference between your real world comparison and our system is quite extensive. a proper comparison would be lets say you own land and you build a house on it then you fail to pay taxes on the land. they level the house and resell it. thats how it works in real life and on emc. many people go derelict accidentally and there has been numerous threads of beautiful buildings being leveled because someone thought they could get the goods this would only increase that. this idea sets a precedent for stealing (yes thats what it is you are taking something that does not belong to you) others reses and everything on it belongs to them, them going derelict means at best that they moved to another server. the system taking their stuff reflects that. the items are removed from the economy.

i think this would be cool

This is a good idea, but maybe make it so when 45 days pass, to make sure that they are REALLY gone for good, allow looting. and 15 days after the looting effect happens, the residence gets removed from reality. (Same new players quitting effect goes into play, just a few more days, the one day player would have a 10 day, 5 day player 15.)