Vertical land claim

Game mode: all
Type of issue: [Enter one of the following: | Bug | Misc]
Server type: [all]
Region: [all]


People keep building over cave and dungeon spawn points.

In 99% of cases this is purely accidental.

Currently land claim seems to stretch from the clouds to the earths core.

New players are contantly blocking off -
The end of all hope.
Galamans tomb.
Black keep.
The dancers and asura spawns in Sinners Refuge.
Possibly several other places too.

Can some thing be done about vertical land claim. At least having no clam below any base.

Alternatively make these no build zones.

We have just had to help a lvl 39 guy relocate from on top of Skittering cavern at the tower of bats.

He like many others wasnt to know that building there was preventing the spider from spawning.

Like i said, almost no-one is aware when they find a really nice spot to build that they are blocking these spawns. And when you are level 30 something, not swimming in resources and have just found out how many stones you need to make a brick, it is heartbreaking to realise you are going to have to rebuild.


Please provide a step-by-step process of how the bug can be reproduced. The more details you provide us with the easier it will be for us to find and fix the bug:
1.build on a cave
2.get no warning that your infinite vertical land claim will despawn someone’s chance for adventure.
3.
4.

23 Likes

You have my upvote. It is indeed an issue and while some do it intentionally, most don’t even realize. Once they do realize, they may not care enough to move. It creates all sorts of issues.

7 Likes

Yes. Its a very difficult and delicate conversation to have with someone new to the game to say in a nicer way " Those 10’s of 1000’s of stone, wood and iron you’ve mined and crafted now need to be scrapped".

8 Likes

It’s part of the learning curve.

But it shouldn’t be that way.

I’ve had this uncomfortable conversation with a few players who have accidentally built over and killed off an important spawn. Some stayed on and continued with the game, others left and didn’t come back.

Allowing building to despawn important spawns can create a whole set of issues that the dev team may not have thought of, including:

  1. It requires you to become the server police and point out where others have done the wrong thing
  2. It is confrontational and disheartening for new players to have others come and tell them what they have done is wrong
  3. For players or clans who keep on top of these things and let other players know, they can be seen as wanting to own or rule the server
  4. If you fence around an area to prevent others from building there and blocking the spawn - you are seen negatively as a land claimer
  5. The possibility of a player who has unknowingly blocked a spawn being reported and banned for it

This is not as big a deal for the level 60 players as it is the new players. Grinding resources aside, we’ve done these things - new players don’t even know some elements of the game exist when the spawn no longer appear in the game.

If the vertical land claim stays in place, it should apply to important spawns as well.

11 Likes

Completelty agreed. One of the first things I learned to do when I started playing CE was run around with a bedroll or foundation selected to get a sense for where I could build and where I couldn’t. When I discovered that it let you block important spawnpoints underground without warning you I thought it was the most illogical thing I had discovered in the game. It had been telling me for weeks and weeks “can’t build there, blocking spawnpoints”. Anyone would assume when it stopped warning you about blocked spawnpoints, that you were no longer blocking any spawnpoints. I would be thrilled to see this corrected.

7 Likes

It applies to dungeons as well. Though the X,Y coords can be a little fudgy.

1 Like

Maybe this could be a setting.

I can understand how in singleplayer, someone might want to build in a way that blocks a certain area, but on a multiplayer server this current mechanic state really only causes problems - whether occurring accidentally or maliciously.

It should be ‘easy’ enough for a dev to change the master blueprint for spawners to enforce their own landclaim radius.

Or, conversely, to set them to ignore player landclaim.

Then on a more interesting level, maybe they could periodically trace and check hit results for player builds and then select a build item at random to set the AI aggro to target (borrow from purge mechanics)

This would allow for world bosses and camps to continue to spawn uninterrupted, while providing a protection for the possibility that they were surrounded by traps/exploits - sending the camps themselves to attack and destroy them.

5 Likes

Never get rid of vertical land claim on top of buildings please as long as undermeshing is a thing.
This landclaim is sometimes the only way to detect abusive buildings!

Rather this!

3 Likes

I totally agree.

Recently I was experimenting a lot to avoid preventing named bearer in a cave deep under my base to spawn. The building spot is important for the rest of my base. So I built a T1 building and removed pieces until the NPC spawned. But shortly after replacing the T1 with T3, the bearer disappeared.
I’d hate to demolish building, thrall wheel etc.
Entrances for the cave is far away from the building, so it’s not logical at all gamewise.

1 Like

True.

But the devs should be working separately to prevent this.

The no build zones would definitely solve the despawning problem though.

2 Likes

The OP suggested removing the down ward land claim. Maybe just reduce it to 1 foundation lower than the placed item. The only negative is it would be hard to foundation sweep to find hidden bases built on cliff plateaus. But that would also make it a way to better hide early on???

2 Likes

I´m not so sure this would work well. What about tree bases? Solo players could not hide in the trees in the jungle any more or they would take the risk of someone claiming the land under their tree?

I know, that is why i said it would be iffy. And realistically you aren’t that hidden in trees anyways. I can run around with a foundation out in front and mine sweep for land claim I can’t see. Players would have to build around it to prevent being blocked in. Yes, it exposes the not-so-hidden base. It is not like i can’t claim check to find those if I am really looking for them. PVE it shouldn’t really matter if a player knows your location. PVE-C, maybe??? PVP, well it is PVP, and vets can find any base by running the map in a 2 hour session.

It would really only hurt those that build on hidden flat areas that don’t give land claim warning because they are too far away from edge. But it would also not change the fact someone could build below those bases.

So really, now that i think about it, it doesn’t really change anything when it comes to hidden bases.

Seems to me that spawn points should simply have a boolean flag to indicate if they should ignore landclaim or not, and then set all the spawn points in caves and dungeons accordingly. I can see in the control panel for my server that there’s a checkbox entitled “Camps Ignore Landclaim” that makes me wonder if those areas simply need to be reclassified as Camps.

image

6 Likes

@Larathiel is that option PC only
Most of the people who have blocked spawning on my server have been accidentally. So I help them with new material and better. I ask everyone to have a clan name so I can reach them most everyone does. It is pve so no problem there. Skittering cavern and Sinners refuge can be affected without building on top. Maybe they could fix this as part of the antiundermeshing campaign.

Being as I don’t have a console server and don’t play console I have no idea if it’s PC only or even if it’s a functional option. All I know is that it was turned on by default when I first rented a server from GTX Gaming.

Thankfully, the few times we’ve had folks accidentally build over such locales on my server, it’s been a simple enough matter to use admin mode to compensate them with sufficient blocks to rebuild elsewhere and then Ctrl+Shift+Delete the old site once they’re done. But yeah on an Official server, it would definitely be a headache and some bad mojo if an unwitting newbie got reported and had action taken against them over it. :frowning:

1 Like

this probably means PC only. I thought the sliders looked different. G-Portal servers i do not think have this, or at least i do not remember seeing it on my private PS4 one.

1 Like

I do not see that option on the administration page for my G-Portal PC-server either…

All they need to do is go back to the 2 1/2 year old plan and go ahead and make those areas no building zones, nothing else to do.

2 Likes