Protection that Expires from Inactivity

[cy]

Too many (every single) minetest worlds have a dead spawn point, full of decadent buildings constructed from great effort, that nobody can work on because it's all protected... forever. Players build something, then life happens and they never come back. It'd be nice to be able to mitigate that somewhat. Maybe after a period of inactivity, say, 3 months straight without logging in, the server could save a schematic of the player's protected area, then remove the protection. Or if that gives new people too many free resources, it could revert the landscape to it's original state, then remove the protection. Or maybe transform the blocks into stuff that drops nothing on dig, but that seems a bit immersion breaking. When we find a ruined derelict, we don't expect it to evaporate upon excavation. Some sort of material decay?

I say a schematic, because you know there's going to be someone coming around after 5 years protesting their precious cobble creation having been ruined like a sand castle in the sea. An admin can then perform a few console commands, and declare, "Fear not, valued creator, for your amazing creation is now out at 1024,1024, for all to see!" It could be saved permanently, without permanently locking down the world, I mean.

There's a place for buildings that exist for all time, for us to look at in awe and never interact with, but I don't think that place is literally everywhere. Currently it's an all or nothing choice, either griefers turn your spawn into a hellish landscape of cobble and pits, or you end up with a moment frozen in time, leading new people to literally starve to death trying to find some land that isn't protected by a player who was last seen 5 years ago.

...for that matter, downgrading locked chests to just chests would be nice too.

Nothing substitutes for attentive admins, but it'd be nice if on some servers, we could set protection to expire from inactivity, to give active players more of a role on the server, rather than being relegated to the lands out beyond 1024. The hardest thing would be reverting the area I think, which might mean selectively cutting rectangles out of the map blocks stored in the database. Though there's one protection mod that only protects on block boundaries, so that could make reverting the area as easy as a "DELETE" statement.

[Jone]

I agree with this. Too much protection means nothing changes, and things get stale.

I would like to try something to make a building start to crumble after three months of inactivity, until after six months there is practically nothing left of it.

[maikerumine]

Lag has this feature in just test, the entire spawn area can't be permanently protected.

[Sokomine]

Fear not, valued creator, for your amazing creation is now out at 1024,1024, for all to see!"

That'd usually be insufficient. My buildings usually take their sourroundings into account and adjust to them in style and shape. Taking them elsewhere destroys part of what they are. More capable builders even shape the landscape around the house.

There's a place for buildings that exist for all time, for us to look at in awe and never interact with, but I don't think that place is literally everywhere. Currently it's an all or nothing choice, either griefers turn your spawn into a hellish landscape of cobble and pits, or you end up with a moment frozen in time, leading new people to literally starve to death trying to find some land that isn't protected by a player who was last seen 5 years ago.

The effort put into constructing something is usually worth perserving it - unless it's a trivial structure (i.e. not much more than a box). Even a chair and a table with a chess board somewhere along the road may be a highly valuable detail.

New players who join an established server and find no room to gather food, place their chests and start their own projects do need some help on a survival server. Nobody wants to walk for hours to get somewhere. The usual solution to that is to either move spawn (not so good for established players) or provide means of fast transportation to new cores of settlement where there is enough room for plenty of new players. Just take my travelnet mod, put one in plain sight very few steps in front of spawn, and add a new site whenever the last active settlement got too crowded. Don't exaggerate - 4 new settlements are usually too much at a time. One new place under construction and perhaps a second alternative one ought to be enough. It does require some maintenance (adding new places when needed now and then). And placing travelnets does not necessarily mean that you allow players to craft them themshelves (if you're a hardcore survival player). There's so much space on the map which players hardly ever explore. Make use of it! Or, if you really want decaying protection and no buildings of value, put that in your description, write it on signs, warn players who are more constructive away from your server.

[Libervurto]

I agree that moving spawn or providing teleportation to new areas is a valid solution, but ruins are also cool!

I would like to try something to make a building start to crumble after three months of inactivity, until after six months there is practically nothing left of it.

I have an idea for this that is pretty organic. Assign two values to each protected area: # ruined blocks and # reclaimed blocks. # ruined blocks is the number of blocks allowed to be harvested by anyone from the protected area; # reclaimed blocks is the number of blocks that have actually been harvested by other players. # reclaimed blocks is obviously not allowed to exceed # ruined blocks.

# ruined blocks gradually increases over time while the owner is offline. Once # ruined blocks reaches a set high number, the land loses its protected status.

Placing blocks within the protected area reduces the #reclaimed blocks and subtracts 1 day from the ruin timer. If #reclaimed blocks > 0 then anyone can place a block in the protected area to reduce #reclaimed blocks. This allows friends and admirers of the build to maintain it.

Thinking about it, this system could produce some interesting behaviours. For example, because people know that their protection will fade block by block, they might start to build vaults with thick walls to protect their valuables. This would actually make building boundary walls really important!

I played around with a few formulas in geogebra but the simplest seems to be the best: f(t) = (1/7 t)^2.

Where t is the duration of the ruin timer in days. (The ruin timer only counts up while the owner is logged out.)
This formula is for the number of ruined blocks. With this formula it takes a week for the first ruined block. After two weeks there are 4. After 30 days there are 18. 666 blocks is a decent cut off point, this will take just under half a year.

[sorcerykid]

I actually like the idea of temporary protection, at least within a designated area around spawn. The "protection braziers" on just test have proven fairly effective, for example.

Nonetheless, I believe a delicate balance must be struck to permit turnover but NOT to discourage or alienate prospective builders in the process. Given a shorter expiry, there will be a higher rate of turnover but less incentive for players to invest in quality construction due to the increased burden of maintenance. Given a longer expiry, there will be lower rate of turnover and increasing likelihood of eventual property abandonment. Finding the optimal threshold would likely take some trial an error and would be very server-specific.

In the future, I will be experimenting with such a protection scheme on JT2. I haven't decided on the exact implementation, but it will probably involve players paying a monthly "property tax" on land claims within spawntown. Delinquent properties would be repossessed and auctioned off by the city.

[843jdc]

Oh property tax and actions. I like xD I got players complaining about no place to build on Cash's World. That sounds like a useful mod to use.

[You]

Survival server No. 521 have mod which is removing players protection blocks, turn locked chests into normal chests with name of player which owned it. Protection expire only if player is not active 1 week. But if you are member of M521, protection can expire after 3 months of inactivity.

[sorcerykid]

Yes 84jdc, I think property taxes should work out rather well. After exploring many different options, it seems to be the most fair and equitable solution for everyone involved. If players enjoy the convenience of being in proximity of spawn, then they should be willing to pay a small recurring fee that reflects the value of that convenience.

I'm eventually hoping to extend the system to allow for rental properties too. That way players can sublet specific areas (for uses such as apartments, condos, duplexes, etc.) to others players while making a profit as well.