Plots and Lairs

[Gothos]

what do you all think about a set rule to reclaim non-guild plots and Lairs from inactive accounts? i recently took a tour around chaos and the amount of quality plots and lairs in non guild towns held by long gone members is astounding. would it be possible to free these up for active members to use? just a thought

[Kerech]

what do you all think about a set rule to reclaim non-guild plots and Lairs from inactive accounts? i recently took a tour around chaos and the amount of quality plots and lairs in non guild towns held by long gone members is astounding. would it be possible to free these up for active members to use? just a thought

*makes a note to log in and show some activity in his lair*

Sounds good to me!

[diabolis]

Ive paid and tried to pay for 2nd plot, so as long as I pay, it should stay mine whether or not i play or not. I will be selling mine to guildie shortly though.

Diabolis

[Shur]

yeah, a plot reclamation sweep on inactive accounts is lllooooonnnggg overdue

[Draygon]

It might also be prudent, given the low server populations, to make a distinction between developed and undeveloped (or scarcely developed, as in no complete structures) plots and lairs. It might be the case, for example, that a plot linked to a closed account is the only one in its region with x machine or y service. In such cases, is not the community better served by retaining those structures, rather than needing them built all over again?

Also worth mentioning, as diabolis pointed out, just because an account is inactive does not mean it is not being paid for, and current paid accounts should not be subject to having their properties and holdings stripped away.

[Justa Mirage]

Until they fix billing... they can't tell who is active or not. If they do it that way, we have several guild members who log in once every month or 2 that will have fully developed plots (with guild owned resources) vanish.

The only people this would make happy are multi-account holding novian farmers looking for free raw materials, and not players that really want to develop the plots.

bad idea. They need a better method of determining whether or not the player is one year or greater absent and determine if the plot is indeed "not used"

There has to be a better way.

[Gothos]

my goal is to make sure that our ever growing population has the same opps that the past members had, come on wake up, hz has most of its best land locked cuz some"once in a blue moon players" hold land?, i say if inactive 1 yr the land is put back into community, and all nov's and property from that land go into vault of said holder, we are getting low on good spots, if members dont play much ,then sell, why hold onto to something it seems you dont really care much about when others can use it?seems a bid off, there are alot of lairs that havent been touched in a very long time, there are also alot of new paying members who want one, so......paying accounts be excluded, but many have been gone for along time and i dont see them actually paying for something they walked away from. if i dont stir this up no one will and ill keep hearing complaints about what ultimately needs to be done, feed back is very needed

[Gothos]

The Time for Reform is on us

[Kerech]

The true problem is this: back when I played, I paid for two accounts every month. But the plot page said I had only one active subscription, meaning I would have lost my lair under a reclaim.

Why should legitimately paying customers lose their property because the billing system doesn't think they have a subscription when they actually do?

I agree it's a problem though. I searched for 6 months before I finally lucked on to the lair I have now. Way too many properties are idle and owned by players who are never coming back.

Fix the billing system once and for all and then I'd support a reclaim.

[Steelclaw]

I'll agree that a plot reclaim would be good for the new players seeking plots. However, I'll also agree that the accounting system and the game itself is in such a state that doing a plot reclaim using the previous conditions could have some nasty unintended consequences.

Consider, for a moment, that it is easy to make coin. The price on the plot, and the bid for it is no concern. Now...

As already mentioned, there are some plots that would serve the community if they are left as-is for the time being, rather than put up for novian farmers. Putting down a few gold for a nicely built up plot to decon it for novians isn't an obstacle to them.

Now, consider the ability for a single login to buy up all the plots. True, it's one plot per character, but there does not seem to be a limit on the number of characters, nor the number of plots per account. If there is, I'm quite sure that a few more logins can be created. Once again, coin isn't an issue. There are about 421 lairs. The average price is around 518s per lair. 218g would be enough to buy _every_single_lair_ at community price (if these people have been farming coin, this is really not that much). Assuming there is a limit of 25 characters per account, it would take 17 accounts. In other words, there is nothing to prevent this from happening.

The following things need to happen before a reclaim would work as expected:
0) Find someone who can baby the auctions and intervene if there is trouble. ("WTF! my plot isn't supposed to be up for auction!")
1) Provide evidence that there is development work being done. Some content patches are a good place to start. This will make step 2 palatable.
2) Fix the billing and account system. Begin charging again.
3) Give some leeway for word to spread so old-timers can come back and decide if they want to stay or not.
4) NOW Do a plot reclaim.

Doing these steps out of order will cause more damage than good. Horizons doesn't need more damage.

Hints:
There are LOTS of vacant biped plots. Yes, dragons can't make or apply the resources, though they can gather and process most of them. What do you think they did before lairs came out?

A plot near a resource field with public storage (consigner, silos) and machines to process the resource will be a welcome addition.

Bipeds love trophies, lore tokens and most like coin.

[Kerech]

Well said Steelclaw!

*edit* Oh, I just noticed... the 50 char limit seems to be gone

[Vermithraxx]

And just to toss my dime in on the subject...

I've only been back for a month, so somebody from EI might want to correct me, but I think it's unrealistic to expect long-standing bugs to be fixed for a reclaim. The third party billing system definitely qualifies since day 1.

EI puts no man hours into development, and probably minimal hours into maintenance and customer service. After all, the point is to glean more money from the subscriptions than is being lost to payroll (a theory which negates having a CS rep babysitting the auctions.)

All that being said, we need to narrow this down to base code. Simplest terms that any of us could walk into EI's office and run at the console.

Try these:
1.) Account inactive. (We KNOW AE wrote this base-code criteria back in the day, tho it could be a local SQL command.)
2.) Send out the email spam, just as they did back in 2004 if they feel like it.
3.) PLOT IS NOT SET TO "ALLOW ALL"

Check me on the last. Our main fear is that we're going to shoot ourselves in the foot and lose public silos and machines. #3 solves all those issues?

[Steelclaw]

Plots are no longer redwalled. (I think I complained about that enough to get it changed ) Thus, it is not necessary to have permission to use the machines, shrines or vaultkeepers on the plot.

That allows some of the useful plots to be reclaimed, and it does not address the issue of someone buying up more than "their fair share" of the plots.

Be patient and wait for things to happen in the right order. Stop pushing for some kind of rash action to be taken. A botched up plot reclaim will do more damage to HZ and impair its ability to recover than waiting for all the requisite conditions to take place. I hope whoever is following this ongoing discussion and is in a decision-making position has the foresight to see that a plot reclaim right now would not be in the best interest of HZ.

[C`gan]

I agree with you, Steelclaw. Tagath and I are in the same boat when it comes to plot reclamation. We've been trying to get the second subscription billed for over a year with no success. That means that should a repo go through, either he loses his lair or I my plot since both subscriptions were on the same account.

[IndyMan]

As long as a person is paying for the game, then their plot can sit empty for eternity in my view. There is nothing that says I have to build up my plot.

Only cancelled accounts should lose their plot(s), not paying ones.

[Jayne]

Yea you can't go by assuming because someone is not logging on that they arent active. I play my character 95% of the time. I have two plots, one account is constantly in game the other never sees the light of day, its so I can own another plot.

Once billing is fixed then they can reclaim the proper less risk way, till then I don't see this happening. Sure it be nioce to be able to email some of these people to ask them about there plot etc. But I highly doubt anyone is just gonna give you there email

[Gothos]

you are all missing one crucial point i made, paying account be excluded, but as i see there is no way to determine that, so the last thing anyone wants to see is anyone hurt, i as well.

[C`gan]

I understand your exclusion on paying accounts. But the fact is, there are active, playing, unpaid accounts due to errors in the billing system right now.

[Gothos]

well had i not tryed i would have never know, knowledge is our best weapon and by sharing it, we only srtegthen our community

[Hal`cyon Sskyler]

Until the billing system is fixed there is little that can be done here.