Faction concerns: Land overclaims

Recently we have been looking into faulty landclaim power. Landclaim power is the power generated by your faction members which directly dictates how much you are allowed to claim. This has always been an absolute number, and most* factions actually keep to this ruleset. There have lately however been more richer and bigger factions who hire poor people or alts to join the faction, use their land claim and then kick them again. This sort of practice is highly unwanted, so we have acted against this sort of thing lately. This post will detail when you are in the red zone, or green zone, and some exceptions.

Currently as it stands, we find a 3* player power a reasonable limit. So: If you have 30 players, your land power is 300. If you have a land claim of 900, this would be “reasonable”. Mods however reserve the right to say your land claim is not reasonable. This high amount is “alarming” and will require some explanation, this will however rarely happen unless you claim half a continent without actually using it. We realize that leaders cannot be held responsible for members going inactive or leaving, but some faction use this as an excuse not to continue recruiting people and just sit on a massive amount of landclaim.

One prime example is Elders, they recruited people then all of them either left or got kicked, resulting in the faction claiming 616 chunks with only 2 players in the faction.

Our action in this field is primarily a reaction towards small factions being unfairly treaten, and a function within our Factions plugin essentially being completely ignored. The power limit base is there for gameplay balance reasons, and also a roleplay reason. After all, one cannot claim a kingdom without having the military to support it.

If your faction has more then the allowed x3 calculation, an admin at some point may contact your faction leader to discuss what would happen next. It would be reasonable to expect the admin will ask you to recruit more members, because in turn, this also helps new players get footing in the server.

There may be some exceptions to this rule

Heavy Roleplay Reasons
Large material storage (like White lotus)
Other reasons in consult with admins (we will not accept X faction is historial because it’s old! or X faction is important because it’s the oldest faction)

These will only be accepted in discussion with at least 3 admins.

I hope this informs you all, post any further questions below. Ranting and raging at this decision will not be appreciated. We are already being increadibly reasonable by allowing a 3x limit, instead of forcing everyone to stay at the actual landclaim limit.

We realize your buildings are important, but in the end, we are a roleplay server, and for us gameplay balance and equality for poor and rich players is important.

32 Comments

CRACKPOTATOE 2012-11-12 at 22:11

All of us are being forced to stay in line because 1 or 2 or 3 factions out of 200 have done this? It’s not the fault of the faction if everyone leaves or is inactive.
j3r3my 2012-11-12 at 22:14

Do you have any idea how many factions this will affect?!
Lizardbones 2012-11-12 at 22:20

I’m kind of amazed that there are people who would complain about this. It’s pretty clear that you get 10 power per person, and part of the idea of the plugin and the game is that you manage your people and your faction’s power to maintain what you have claimed.
Fred Truck 2012-11-12 at 23:38

It’s good to see that they’re finally addressing the glaring holes in Factions. Too bad they end up only making more.
- MonMarty 2012-11-13 at 11:46
  
  Factions as a plugin will at some point be rewritten when our current coding project sharding is completed, This should allow cayorion to correct a plugin that has been faulty for the longest of times with new coding experience and ideas for features.
  
  Many of the requested features will be included, it just takes time before he will be able to start working on it.
igel_son 2012-11-12 at 23:46

This is all to remove the “space holder” factions that takes up big chunks of lands with one guy in them and people missusing the system. If you read the post you will see that the “an admin at some point may contact your faction leader to discuss what would happen next. It would be reasonable to expect the admin will ask you to recruit more members, because in turn, this also helps new players get footing in the server.”

And why would that be a bad thing?
This will not mean the team will start remove land from you without you knowing.
gchristopher 2012-11-13 at 00:17

This is a good policy. It addresses an additional potential exploit as well:

A group of people can create allied factions to land grab.
1. Everyone joins the first faction, then grab as much land as their power permits.
2. They found a second faction, ally it with the first with full shared permissions, then everyone but one player move to the second. This new faction now has just one less power to grab more land.
3. One player stays behind as a placeholder in each of the allied factions, to keep it from disbanding.
Illogicalleaf314 2012-11-13 at 04:32

I’m glad that the mods are lenient enough to allow 3* power claim, anything more is clearly exploiting the system.
- igel_son 2012-11-13 at 10:45
  
  Yea, especially Place holder factions or facitons with like 3 active players that invites and claims for 100 players than kicks them and keeps the land. How would that be fair :P
savagesun 2012-11-13 at 08:12

Ugh. *Waits for mods*
redsunfight 2012-11-13 at 13:39

i admit, i’m not thrilled about this, BUT if the owner/admins want to keep the server in check, they way the want it, to be played how they originally imagined the server and factions to be played, then this is it. it’s not our server, it’s theirs. i think they appeal to the masses enough as it is (which happens to be why masscrft is so popular). so i can’t disagree. everyone who’s plans just got a wrench thrown in is gonna have to adjust and like it. i speak the truth!
mulligan3000 2012-11-13 at 16:06

I think this is reasonable but I would just like to say how hard it is to get active members- most people just go inactive straight away. I try to keep my power above my land but it is hard.
- Grailen16 2012-11-13 at 16:51
  
  I for one find the vagueness of this new rule to be concerning. The idea I’m getting off of the ” an admin at some point may contact your faction leader to discuss what would happen next” would be pertaining to recruitment of more members. It is a bit illogical in my own opinion what would these new members even do a already “finished” build wise city which leads me to my point in the event that the faction does not grow in size the only other possibility beside safezoning it (of which the mods seem to be against) would be to disband a portion of it so it is thirty times the amount of members. now granted this is their server and they make the rules but what is accomplished by the disbandment of these factions ridden with private chests already developed land (claiming and not touching the land is the exception here that being a waste) do to help new players? take for example TheEmpire a group of factions breaking this code if they were to be reduced to a appropriate size land would be unclaimed and exposed to grief and theft but in no way would a new faction be able to reuse the land they have making the point of fairness for all null and void. However in certin instances large factions claiming then never using land like Avgard (not entirely inactive) or Algarons Ellador land should be reopened to newer factions. In short I believe that factions of architectural value (NOT historical) should be allowed to be preserved to the deletion of their respective continent.
  - Leksz 2012-11-13 at 17:26
    
    I’m from TheEmpire.. I find this new chain of events… hurting.
    We are trying for over a year to make the biggest and most beautiful faction. Yet the community which we like to take/have part of this process f*ck it up(griefing). We are now trying with 2 players a faction to build this city/nation.
    After we are done with this massive project we will open our gate to the community.
    - Grailen16 2012-11-13 at 17:37
      
      I would for see a similar future for Argonia if/when the faction diminishes with time.
  - Shambang16 2012-11-18 at 20:43
    
    Are you saying that we from algaron aren’t archiectural factions? In the future we will expand to our ellador land, but for now we are mainly focused on our capital. You know when we claim an area, we just don’t claim it for nothing. We can see something being built there.
    - Grailen16 2012-11-19 at 12:35
      
      What I’m implying is you haven’t for the most part touched the massive island you claimed at elladors release
kurtotto 2012-11-13 at 17:04

What will happen to permanent factions? My second faction “Palace” has no members but 297 chunks.
- igel_son 2012-11-13 at 17:09
  
  It is a “approved Event site” so Palace will not be touched by this, is my guess.
Dragonwaz 2012-11-13 at 17:15

Just be Glad factions on this server allow you to keep the land you claimed most will take plots claimed as soon as you lose the power to claim them.
- Grailen16 2012-11-13 at 18:41
  
  Not true but the point here is that there has to be some aspect of continuity for large scale cities that many people put large amounts of work in.
Undrask 2012-11-13 at 21:16

I think it’s completely insane to allow people to maintain land higher than the power they should have from active members.
temarax 2012-11-13 at 23:06

well, im glad to see this has been put in. it will get more space available for other factions that are new too or just get big factions to grow even bigger
outsiderx2 2012-11-13 at 23:21

I for one am glad to hear this. There are way to many factions that have done this in all three world maps and its gotten to the point of being rather annoying. Although I feel like some factions should be exempt if there are good builds going on, but there is so much land being unused or it was used for a few weeks then abandoned and used again (the huge lava walls in daendroc are one example). Now to just enforce the medievil build style in Ellador…
Bubbajasper 2012-11-17 at 00:36

Is it bad that I may of JUST realized that the “Daily” Creeper isn’t daily? Also, should this be called “The Every-So-Often Creeper” or “The Everytime-We-Have-Something-To-Write-About Creeper” ? Maybe we should just change it to weekly and make more things to write about.
- Illogicalleaf314 2012-11-21 at 10:40
  
  I wrote a few articles, but no one is posting them. I guess it’s at the bottom of a very long to-do list.
  - percusjackson 2012-12-14 at 03:45
    
    Hey I wrote an article
Dragonwaz 2012-11-17 at 20:07

Hello again The forums are broken and won’t send confirmation E-mails. I have asked for help from mods but all I get is talk to this person or that (which is impossible to do unless you catch them in game) Then I catch Tom and he says the mods were wrong “It’s a client problem check your spam folder” I am not retarded and know basic confirmation problems such as those and had Checked it before he said so. Now I know that other people have been having such problems and a member in the forums has posted about it recently but with minecraft semi-down I can’t point it out t o a mod and say please fix it! So here I am.
- Dragonwaz 2012-11-17 at 20:13
  
  Nevermind they know about it now :)
  - waminer 2012-11-18 at 19:24
    
    Really they know about it it still isnt working for me as of a week ago. (It could be fixed by now)
    - igel_son 2012-11-18 at 21:55
      
      I recommend you to try again now. We might have found a wierd problem that we disabled.
tim_gamerdude 2013-07-29 at 22:23

Uh okay, but what about claiming land? Is that still allowed or is the whole war system done or something?