Suggested changes to enclosure and highway rules

[bdew 2,462]

If the current rules are removed without any replacement that will be a step back to 3-4 years ago and all the griefing that made those rules required in the first place.

 

A lot more people were griefed by roads being destroyed than roads being created.

[Weatherwax 49]

Perhaps we should ask ourselves "Why do we need legal enclosures?". First, new players want to get a taste of the game without getting stomped by a kitty cat and to protect the few possessions they manages to scavenge/create. I'm good with that as are many others and I think the solution of a "starter deed" as previously suggested would work nicely. I was new once and so were you (the player) so cut a newbie some slack.

 

Second reason for legal enclosures is "All of the above" and I that's where the abuse come in. Perhaps the easy solution to this is change the function of locks. If you do not posses a starter deed (as suggested) or an actual deed as it exists today, your doors/gates cannot be affixed with a lock. If the creator of the 100x100 farm/ranch/whatever enclosure finds value on whats on the inside they wont fence it off. Public land is public land.

[Lostone 93]

Simple for highway , 3 tiles wide is a highway if you need it more make it 4.

But do not remove protection for them.

 

I have seen to many roads dug up because some players are lazy to lvl land to plop a house down.

Plus when did the option to build fencing across a road come into affect without removing the pavement first?

 

if you try to place a fence it will say you can not build here or something to near that.

You had to destroy the roadway.

[rosedragon 2,282]

Rolf while your at it just implement pvp on freedom so i can kill anyone and everyone in my local

 

Please consider playing on chaos. We don't need these sarcastical or serious notions and start another JKH incident.

[fatboy 448]

way i see it is, deed it to protect it. if u arent deeding, well then work it out with the neighbors to help keep your stuff safe.  Removing this rule will allow us to access decaying places faster! (im a scavenger wat can i say haha). However, a starter deed or special kind of paving needs made to protect highways and have only priests able to remove them. Make sure it takes 70 favor to remove 1 tile, this way it will be a massive undertaking to completley remove a highway and protects it. As for homes, yea Roses idea is nice,  Give deed papers to noobs  make it account bound and so if they make alts, the alts dont get it, only 1 per account  Enough to make a simple 5x5 that lasts 30 days, giving them 30 days to get silver and fill the upkeep or itll disband. (include a templar in this type setup to help protect them) Make it to in the first 30 days said deed cant be traded, cant be given to any1 else, this way prevents other players from making alt accounts for it. after 30 days, if silvers been paid, it can be traded.  Min of 10s must be used to neighter expand or fill deed coffers in order to trade/keep it. Thus avoiding any possible exploits or spaming. so in the end they still pay the standard 10s fee, still have an option to get premy, However are still treated the same as everyone else

[Mordraug 2,542]

Ok... before this company goes full into bait n' switch practices bear this in mind:

 

We were SOLD our deeds(yes, sold, silver = $ ... those who made the silver ingame instead please bite your tongues a sec, we congratulate you, but it's not the topic).  The product was sold to us with a mandatory 5-tile perimeter which is usable enough with some properly gatehoused fencing.  Said product was also sold to many people long enough ago that they now have no room to expand due to other people purchasing the same product in the inmediate area.

 

So let's sum all the factors.  Can't expand over my perimeter, system requires my ratio to be 1 animal per 15 tiles.  Add the off-chance of two good horses breeding a triple-badtrait foal here and there.  Now this big bad jaguar-feeding guy happens to have offed a couple injured horses in his real life so culling horses, not really his thing... "that's ok" he thinks, "i can perimeter them, great AH exp" (which was a brilliant idea btw).

 

Now I can't expand, can't absorb my perimeter unless 4 deeds disband, but wth let's open his enclosures to griefers.

 

Think Paypal and certain banks would take Wurm's side if enough of their customers decided to reverse all their latest payments?

 

My recommendations, all or mixed should do the job for DEED OWNERS: (I'm not gonna advocate for free landgrabs)

1) Do away with ratio, 1:15 is overkill when in theory 1:3 is enough to go a couple irl days without having to replant grass.

2) ***KEEP THE ENCLOSURE RULES FOR PERIMETER ENCLOSURES THAT ARE PROPERLY GATEHOUSED***  Ownership of a perimeter and edifications on it is way too damn obvious to be missed.  Heck, my gatehouses are ON-DEED, and my enclosures don't go past my perimeter.

3) Lower minimum ratio to 1:5 AND allow 0-perimeter deeds, I'd still consider it a filthy money grab, but beats having no option at all other than culling 2/3 of my herd.

4) Don't let GM's handle tickets from within their own alliance and/or friends' list.  Need I explain more?

5) Have KOS coverage apply to perimeter and the one tile outside where ppl stand to bash walls?

6) Bounty system, since Freedom is slowly becoming PvP where griefers only have PvE consequences: As in, if a minimum of 5 DEED OWNERS declare a shenanigan on a griefer, that person becomes open for PvP, bounty paid from those who shenanigan'd  him.  In other words, if you're gonna give griefers new tools, give them new consequences.

 

I'll ask again, are you TRYING to cull down the player population for some weird reason, maybe a tax break if Wurm declares losses this year?  In that case you can always just say that directly, people will spend less without having to quit the game.

 

(Edit in anticipation to griefers screaming "yes please" and the incoming reply: READ AGAIN, THE PART WHERE I CAN'T EXPAND UNLESS 4 OTHER DEEDS GO, DO THE FINANCIAL MATH FOR WURM)

 

*chucks credit card into freezer for a while*

Edited April 3, 2014 by Mordraug

[Kortanna 20]

I agree with many others, I'm all for allowing huge "offdeed" legal enclosures to go bye bye. Why? Simply for the fact that so many others have stated.. There are a lot of people out there who enclose large tracts of land yet don't have a single deed. They themselves are premium (which can be witnessed at how well the fences are made) so in essence they have huge portions of land that they don't even have to pay for, yet get to take up because of "legal enclosure" rule.

 

I believe a 5x5 enclosure for non prem. would be a perfect size for someone just starting out. When I first started out, I made a single room shack and a small little enclosure linked to it. I didn't need to go crazy and take up huge portions of land. When I was ready for something more I bought a deed and got bigger land.

 

However, if your going to make us have to keep the perimeter (allow those who make fences in their own perimeter remain under an enclosure rule) Some of us pay for more perimeter anyway. If we are paying for it, we should be able to build in it and have rights to it. Do away with the free 5 tiles or if we want to keep them...have us pay for them. I don't see how this could cause issues for those of us who have deeded land, or are using "our" perimeters. If you don't want us to use perimeters in this way then do away with them. Time and again I've heard gm's tell people.. it's perimeter, it's free meat for anyone who wants to do stuff in them (except of course build a house in it) get rid of perimeter completely. I honestly don't care if someone's land was bumped up against mine.. is it nice to have a little cushion.. ya, but it's not required.

 

However I don't want to see our highways get messed up. I'm not talking about the ones people do, just to be jerks or try and cause issues.. but the ones that were made that are heavily used and well liked. I really don't want to see these start to be messed up. Next thing you know people would be digging them up and then they are all messed up and no one can go anywhere with out some serious climbing.

[Mormo 353]

Removing pavement off deed hits your reputation. When you hit <50 reputation you become (OUTLAW) or (HUNTED) and there is then no penalty to kill / loot you.

Comments? Build on the details I forgot?

 

Imagine, you want to build a small hunting shed somewhere in the deep mountains, without deeding this place. You find a few paved tiles somewhere, where people used to live long time ago and noone remember when, That tile annoys you because you`re an esthete and think that these tiles spoil the landscape around, so you remove them and?

Edited April 3, 2014 by Mormo

[Teibidh 14]

Just for reference, I made a post yesterday about how unprofessional it was not to communicate changes ahead of time... This is perfect. Even though there's no exact date, it is clearly stated that players should plan on the rules changing. Easy sauce. Thanks.

 

I think the most simple non-coded solution to the legal enclosure scenario is to limit the size and duration.

 

From a code-able perspective in regards to the legal enclosure rule:

 

Every time a planned wall or fence section is completed, the following checks are run:

- Is the person completing this wall or fence section a citizen of an existing village or the owner of an existing enclosure token?

- Are there no other plans with a different owner or fence sections that are not connected to this one within 11 tiles?

- Has the person completing the wall or fence section ever been the owner of an enclosure token?

- Is this a valid house plan that is at least 2x2 tiles (if the newbie isn't ready to build 2x2, they're not ready to reserve land either?)

- Are all exterior walls of the valid plan completed?

- Are there fence or gate sections directly connected to the valid plan?

- Is the enclosure completed to the point where an animal could not enter or exit it? (This can use the existing pathing code.)

 

If all of the above checks pass, then do the following:

- Create an enclosure token on the tile one tile north of the north eastern most wall of the plan.

- Set a timer on the enclosure token for 15 days.

- Flag an 11x11 (or whatever minimum deed + perimeter size is) area centered on the enclosure token as perimeter tiles. (No ability to add templars, no manageable permissions, just reserve the space)

- Add a command to 'upgrade' the enclosure token to a deed token by using an activated deed slip on it.

- Modify the current rules regarding the ability to destroy structures to prevent people from destroying structures on perimeter tiles when they're not a citizen of the village that controls them. On PvP servers, this doesn't matter... on PvE the object is not supposed to be to be able to harass or destroy stuff of other players anyway, so what does it hurt?

- When the timer on the enclosure token expires, the token goes away, as does the perimeter flagging on the surrounding tiles.

 

Any time a wall or fence section is destroyed:

- Is this wall or fence section in an area marked by an enclosure token?

- Does the removal of this wall or fence section cause one of the previous checks to be false?

 

If these conditions are met:

- Remove enclosure token and associated benefits.

 

This should all be fairly easily doable via code... whether it's simple to integrate with the existing code base or not I don't know, but I know I could write the snippets to do these evaluations, and I'm not a developer by trade.

 

From a player perspective, the worst thing anyone can do from a griefing perspective is to create a bunch of alts to keep someone from deeding an area for about two weeks. They would have to destroy their own structures to place another enclosure token ... and since it doesn't give them the full privileges of a deed, I would think this would wind up not being worth it... at least any more so than any other griefing method.

 

From a new player perspective they still have to follow the rules about securing their property, but now that their stuff can't be destroyed by other players for a short time they at least get a chance to get established and determine whether or not they want to deed the property they're on.

 

There is no need for GM interaction if the code works correctly. If the owner has locked all doors/gates, and the code determines properly that there are no openings in the house and fence, no one should be able to get in. If they can get in, they are exploiting (remember, the code should be working properly?) and are subject to banning.

 

If the player spends the time building the house and what not they get up to two weeks to purchase a proper deed during which time no one can come along and lay a deed on top of them or the perimeter they would require, preventing the spot they've chosen from getting hijacked. Meanwhile, it's only two weeks... if you have to wait to put your deed down until some newbie's timer expires, so be it. If the upgrade to a proper deed, they were there first anyway.

Edited April 3, 2014 by Teibidh

[RockyBalboa 565]

i was always for public use of roads, areas and other places....    all servers must have same 2 wide highways with special pavement witch  cant be diged or removed at all...   only gms can pave areas with that protected pavement...  when new road is build in (2 wide, flat and smooth...) do support call and gms come around pave area with special pavement...   

 

highway there and protected... cant be removed cant be changed....  is there like server border....

[Elen 1,013]

Why both?   Most everybody seems to agree that enclosure is being abused and highways are good.   If not having to enforce one (enclosures) frees up more time for road issues

 

 

I love the roads... don't like the enclosures

 

This be true.

[Crack 408]

i was always for public use of roads, areas and other places....    all servers must have same 2 wide highways with special pavement witch  cant be diged or removed at all...   only gms can pave areas with that protected pavement...  when new road is build in (2 wide, flat and smooth...) do support call and gms come around pave area with special pavement...   

 

highway there and protected... cant be removed cant be changed....  is there like server border....

Edited April 3, 2014 by Crack

[Ekib 183]

....you guys all talk about removing the enclosure rule and  giving new free deed token and removing perim...

but the point is oldies abuse the rules and new players cant enjoy it right?

so why not limit the safety of enclosure by limiting it to low ql buildings. would turn all those huge areas totaly useless due to the time to spend into repairs

if its above ql 10 or 20 : no more protection... so a small 10x10 area or smaller a noob was lucky enough to find and work or would be safe, but an old player wanting to 'land steal' 100x100 areas will have to have it in a ql 10 fenced area... and we know how fast those will decay, making it keeping repairs a hell they will soon give up (and besides high lvlplayers will makebetter ql mats and better fences right off so wouldnt even fal under the enclosure rule)

 

an other way would be to limit enclosure size. clearly some abuses there, but not all people can deed yet, money, neightbourgs, lot of things can come into play. so limiting the enclosure's size would clearly put that away. your place bigger than 10x10? its big enought for a deed so no protection!

and making 20 small enclosures by each others wont qualify for protection either

 

for the highways i like the ideas of something that cant be removed. but would need GM's ok to avoid grief...of course some are right it would take GM more time, but about as much as when they approve a new highway for protection no? and once its been built, its done, so no more need to get back to it

 

i'd say keeping perim enclosure safe is needed too: people pay for deed,perim comes with it and its useless wasted room otherwise ...not like someone can go build an estate there right

 

regarding some of the deed's ideas i'd be personally tempted... the perim part could be an issue to some of my neightbours if i deeded right now. and i cant anyway because my spot is 7x12... its large enough for a nice estate but cant deed cause of an old treefarm (yes protected with enclosure law, but even if it drops i cant deed cause of gatehouse) so a good solution would be to make smaller base deed. like rose suggested a token + 3 on each side would make 7x7. which i think is large enough for new players and even for those wanting a holyday house area (or for hunting grounds to make a good spot without making it so large it stops animals spawns? )

[Arkonick 557]

I see no issue with legal enclosures so long as the land is being used. I have big legal enclosures which at one time where deeded till the silver hike which caused me to not be able to afford keeping them up so I turned them into legal enclosures. Because of faulty mechanics and other abusive systems put in place is the real reason behind the price hike imo. I don't believe for a min it was a tax thing. I believe it was cause funds where low cause to many people where able to play wurm free with out paying a dime.

 

I see no issue as long as land is being used again I will state this. I do see one point where people enclose massive amounts of land and only put a tiny deed in the center or a house and tons of open empty space. Yet my sections are car piled with buildings and such which I spend a lot of time maintaining till you can eventually get this silver cost down. Ever maintain 50+ buildings that all are on a decay timer? I use not have to till the silver hike cause they was on deeded land.

 

I see no issue with the road rules that where set in place, but I do see a issue with GM's wanting to do less and reap special benefits they get for being a GM. I was a GM for 7 years for SOE in EQ on the Tarrew Marr server and I did it for free along side my account's I paid for every month. If being a GM is to stressful for someone Rolf you need to relieve them and pick others who are not that stressed and Enjoy actually helping and settling arguments.

 

You should make Rules and make them stick not throw them in Grey so called areas. And make your GM's enforce them regardless if it makes a player quit. You should keep legal Enclosures but make your GM's go by strict rules like they can't have x amount of open square space. And roads should be tagged by GM signs that are not to be tampered with out confirmation from Said GM who plants the said sign.

 

If you plan on removing the Enclosure Rule you plan on bringing in a PVP grief mechanic to your freedom PVE server's this will not go well. You have a good bit of pvp players who live on both freedom and chaos and this is just a opening invite for them to go around and start bashing walls and stealing any thing not nailed down. There is no amount of time you can give any player with a legal enclosure to prep for the removal of them cause it took time to build what they have built. Some people have spent a year or more building on them like me.

 

If you lowered the silver cost maybe people could start to redeed there enclosures. But as of right now it cost way to much to deed and maintain my enclosures alone that where once deeded. I have given you several ideas on this topic and another you started today that would and could bring in way more funds allowing you to lower your silver cost.

 

The problem is people come in and old timers decide to move and if they see a legal enclosure and they want the land they think they should be able to deed it just because it's not deeded. There is tons of land on Indy barren that needs love but so many get mad min they can't have that beach front property cause it is on a legal enclosure or the water front in the middle some where. It's not that wurm is landless and needs more free land you just need More GM's that do not put friend ship and personal views ahead of the rules.

 

Out of my personal experience Over the years in wurm I see GM's here are less friendly and more lazier than I've seen in most other mmo's. For 7 years I quad boxed and was in the middle of raids while on the side for 7 hr's a day being a full time GM being friendly and helpful. Of course I was representing SOE and If I had any attitude I would have lost my position real fast cause They don't tolerate that at SOE.

[Kegan 3,926]

Just make it so no one can terraform/build off deed then add a new newbie plot somehow..my suggestion would be timed as it is meant to be a trial after all. Then cut off all terraforming/building in off deed areas completely. I guess you can extend it for the perimeters but all else is off limits unless on clay/tar..etc  

 

This will leave only the natural land and you just find your own way around in the grass or maybe allow roads be build by the GMs after an area vote on them or something.  This would stop all the griefing..all the road wars..all the enclosure problems if you "own" the land do what you want if not then you can't do anything but gather resources. 

 

I know it won't be the popular choice but that is my thoughts on it anyway and how most of the other sandbox/building games handle it. 

Edited April 3, 2014 by Kegan

[Audrel 2,223]

When you implement it, make the 5 tiles you required us to have as perimeter "locked" for one week. In that week, we may expand without purchase per tile charges because you required us to have them and plan our deed placement upon them. We will have to, of course, pay upkeep on them after we choose to our extend our deeds over them. Anything beyond the 5 required tiles is business as usual.

You will have to come up with something for that border tile on touching perimeters because that border will be the property of both. You can't say you can't put a wall in it or you negate the use of a deeded tile with paid upkeep that touches it. You also can't say, since it is mutually owned, that one deed owns it or another does.

-Or-

Perimeter is now controlled by the deed it touches. If a fence is in it and it is broken, ownership of that fence is to the deed attached to it. Black and white. There will be no, "We can't prove ownership." You can with 100% certainty. That eliminates the grey area you said before that you want to remove. We are required to have them hence they are ours. Ownership is ours. When you examine the tile, it says so. There is a limit to what you can perimeter so that eliminates vast expanses of legally enclosed land. You simply remove that grey area.
 
 

---

 
Highways - Generally no one goes around digging up one lane roads. You are not allowed to build on roads off deed anyway. Of course, people dig them up but they dig up highway anyway as well whenever they see fit. I can name a couple "roads to nowhere" that vanished that were highway by the rules but dug up anyway because someone decided they went "nowhere." Someone above said to use the heritage system. That's a grand idea actually. Then a GM would not have to bother with anything that hasn't been protected by it.

 

---

 

Forget about new players. When they get griefed out of existence because they have no protection, you won't need to worry about them any more. In fact, get rid of free to play. New players must either pay premium or they must join a village and can only build inside the village they belong to upon a writ handed to them by the village mayor or upon a writ on which they have permissions to build set by the village mayor.

 

 

EDIT: Complete rewrite.

Edited April 3, 2014 by Audrel

[RockyBalboa 565]

i do support tickets about highways so many times that makes me move to chaos...  non of tickets was fixed,,,,

 

so i just grab shovel and fix after long time...

[Mordraug 2,542]

Just make it so no one can terraform/build off deed then add a new newbie plot somehow..my suggestion would be timed as it is meant to be a trial after all. Then cut off all terraforming/building in off deed areas completely. I guess you can extend it for the perimeters but all else is off limits unless on clay/tar..etc  

 

This leave the natural land and you just find your own way around in the grass or maybe allow roads be build by the GMs after an area vote on them or something.  This would stop all the griefing..all the road wars..all the enclosure problems if you "own" the land do what you want if not then you can't do anything but gather resources. 

 

I know it won't be the popular choice but that is my thoughts on it anyway and how most of the other sandbox/building games handle it. 

[RockyBalboa 565]

i wonder what will happend when bridges come in...   everyone will have own road own bridge own highway....  in some parts already to many roads, but some parts are cuted away from roads...  

[Pagani 13]

Rolf, 

Removing the enclosure rule could be a good thing, but ask yourself why did you implement it?

 

 

Removing highway protection will only cause problems which in turn will lead to more /support. What will stop me from heading to Freedom Market  finding an undeeded section of main road that leads to/from it and putting a high QL wall across it? (Only using FM as an example) Forcing everyone to take a dangerous route around.

 

Slightly off topic,

  

Will we ever get to enjoy wurm? Without having to worry about what you have given us then taken away, what we have bought that you now want to change, abiding by rules that you set down that are now not to your liking or nerfs. Let us log on and get on with what we want to do,(seeing as we have payed for that time) without the constant changing of the goalpost. 

[spellcast 983]

arkonick

 

Just for the record, GM's don't get any uber special benefits here.... we do it for free. We get one character with GM abilities, and we do not play on it. it is only used for GM activities and is heavily logged. We get premium time on ONE toon as compensation for taking our time away from playing that toon to answer calls. My villagers all got fed up with me because we would be in the middle of a project and I will suddenly go idle and switch to my GM toon to help someone, leaving them to do the majority of the work. We just stopped doing major projects that I was organizing, it wasn't worth trying to do them as a group. (a couple of very capable members of my village took over organizing things, thanks a bunch guys, you know who you are)

 

And its not that GM's are being lazy in regard to the rules, the problem is we are being called to act as mediators when neither side wants to compromise, or when there is no clear aggressor or both parties are acting the victim. Cases where we settle things down and 2 hours later there is another call because both sides feel entitled and don't want to just leave each other alone and even with the rules while one or both parties are acting badly, they aren't doing anything overtly against the rules.

 

Players that break into enclosure, and we go deal with them as best we can, but the owner of the enclosure demands that we fix the fence that was broken, or replace the crops that were destroyed or return the cows that got killed to them or whatever.

We aren't supposed to do that, and in many cases we simply cant do it anyhow, we don't have those abilities. then the customer is mad because "the rule says they cant do it, but they did..." 

What we would like to do is put in some form of game mechanic that makes securing a SMALL area and a few items safe via game coding, so that we don't have customers becoming angry that their pen was broken into.

 

We aren't trying to make the game unplayable, or punish players, we are trying to cut down on the possibility of things going badly in the first place.

 

We are looking for feedback to see if there is a way to do that without a huge potential for other grief or harassment issues.

[Kegan 3,926]

Eeeeeh yes and no...... how do we make new roads, dig that sand for mortar...... dredge a canal... dig clay/tar/peat... make that abandoned and disbanded deed's area navigable again........ 

 

Right line of thought but are you insane, mon? =D

Edited April 3, 2014 by Kegan

[RockyBalboa 565]

about hunting...    i found great spot with tons of animals... desert   i make deed nearby and hunt there every day .... i enjoy that public place and many others hunt... then some guy come and deed middle of desert no animals no spawn no hunting... realy nice...  time to move...

 

 

is same with public mines, highways, noob houses in perimeters...

Edited April 3, 2014 by RockyBalboa

[Ekib 183]

spell i totaly understand that feeling..for game mechanism... what about special houses needing a bit less skill (so can make larger but still within reason), no upstairs, and that can grow crops/fields inside so they cant be bashed? and if off deed they cant be placed without a certain distanceoff each others like for guard towers?

[Thorakkanath 444]

 I personally have no issue with the enclosure rules being gone. I do have one with highway rules being gone.

 

Something else though is in my oppinion the biggest issue. You want to cut down on land grabbers, thats fine. But do not punish people that have their perimeters fenced in. Change the way perimeters work, keep decay but do not allow anyone to build buildings OR fences there, just like no possiblity to dig, mine, cut or destroy something on a perimeter. Why? grieving will be cut down by a lot AND besides people already pay for perimeter. You guys like to call it wild land, but it is not, players are paying for it, there are restrictions on it, I fail to see how that if wild.

 

Anyways, such a change will negate most of the problems introduced or future ones regarding reinforced tiles and getting rid of the legality of enclosures - and provide much less overall grieving (because you wouldnt be able to griev anymore in the perimeter).