The two major issues I have with the idea have been voiced, but I will use my own to reiterate them aswell.
Griefed buildings and structures.
At this point no builds will be able to be built with soft blocks. Any player that sieges will have free reign to run through the defending players build and destroy every soft block he can find, leaving a destroyed and griefed personal structure that the player has to rebuild with his own time and materials
everytime he is sieged by this malicious player. The "griefer" if more powerful will be able to ignore the defender and run through his house destroying everything available without anything to stop them.
Possible solution for this would be to turn on a roleback for the siege if such an option exists. If no roleback option exists, then any blocks designated "soft blocks" will not be used in any builds of importance, removing them from the creative process.
The removal of personalization to the world.
With all griefing legal outside of your claims, townships would be griefed by teams of players modifying and destroying the territory right outside of their towns. There has been talk with friends of making a township with buildings on pillars over lava but anything that reaches outside of our (or below) township such as the lava that would give the town it's style would be griefable whether it's at below out township or to the sides.
Large builds such as the great blue dragon of Bastion, or the awesome port city of Drakenvale(sp) of Aegis, or the custom cleaned landscape created around player houses and cities.
Want to build a house on a mountain? Better not, because when you come back online you may find your claim floating in the air with the lands destroyed around the edges. Want to build something awesome for the world to see, you are limited to your claim, and if that's not big enough then you might as well not even try. No roads will be built between allies, no underground subways, no skybridges, nothing because it's just to risky and easy for someone to destroy it.
The only possible solution for this is to still have claim abilities outside of the protected claims. I myself would not build near lava without these protections, because I know for a fact that I will login one day to find all the lava just outside the claim to have been turned into obsidian and it will be my responsibility to manually repair it and hope the person does not come back again.
With the new network and being able to check last online for players it will be easier to check claims as a player which would eliminate the need for an admin/mods approval.
My two desires for our future,
- Make all standard(Stone/Earth/Lumber/Glass/Wool) building blocks as softblocks, and set them to auto regenerate when when the siege is over. Either setup GP so that destroyed soft blocks don't drop, or if that is not possible, add the rule that player exploit farming resources from sieging will be punished.
- Allow players to claim structures by themselves. They are still required to make a sign claiming the build, but can self police the fact the other player is inactive. The claiming player would check the current owner's last login date using the new tools, and if it's past X days they can remove the original sign and place their own. Mods would still be involved if the build/structure is of unknown ownership, but this would simplify the system and all the mod would have to do would be find the owner and check last date for the claimant.
