How Will Claims Work in EQN Landmark?

[Balandar]

Claims

When you enter Landmark, you’ll find yourself in a near-endless world ready for you to explore and make your mark. Landmark is a world with destructible terrain, but changes made on “public” land will heal up over time. Your own claim allows you to make permanent changes in the overland that everyone can see and admire, but which are protected so that nobody else can harm or change your work.

You’ll earn a claim flag by playing the game. We anticipate that you should earn your first flag within your first hour of playing, which will allow you to claim a plot of land as your own. To claim your land, activate the claim flag on your hotbar, and you’ll see a third person view of the terrain with an outline of a claim that you can move around and position exactly as you want. You’ll be able to raise and lower the claim relative to the ground, and when you confirm the position your claim will be placed for all to see!

Once you’re inside your claim you can build with any of the resources you’ve gathered, place props, and you can also manage the settings on your claim such as the name other people see when they visit, a description, and other properties. This article and video provide an early preview of how claims currently work, and a snapshot of our current intentions for development. During Alpha, we will be gathering thoughts and feedback in order to refine these systems. As with all pre-Alpha content, details may change during and after Beta based on your input.

Q&A

Q: How big is a claim?
A: The current size is set to 70 meters x 70 meters x 100 meters tall. These numbers may change during Alpha testing based on the feedback and performance data we receive, but we feel reasonably happy with it so far.

Q: Is it possible to run out of land and have nowhere left to claim?
A: There will be a maximum number of claims permitted in each area. Once that limit has been reached, nobody else will be able to claim land in that area until one of the existing claims is removed. This ensures there will always be land to explore and mine. If the continent you are visiting is full, you will always have the option to move on to explore a new continent which is not yet full. The procedural content generation we use to create the world of Landmark means that we’ll be able to add new continents very rapidly as needed.

Q: Is placing a claim instant, or do I have to wait?
A: Yes, as you can see from the video, as soon as you confirm the placement of your claim flag your claim appears immediately and you can start building right then if you have the resources you want to build with.

Q: Can other people help me build?
A: Yes, you’ll be able to give other people permission to help you build on your claim if you want to. By default you will be the only one able to build on your claim, unless you change it.

Q: Can I place another claim beside one I already have?
A: Yes, we’re going to allow you to do that so you can expand the area you’re capable of building in. This will let you build something larger than the size of a single claim if you want to.

Q: Can I build across the boundary of adjoining claims?
A: Yes, as long as you own both claims and they are adjacent, there isn’t going to be a gap unless you want one.

Q: Can other people join their claim to mine?
A: Initially there will be a buffer space between different owners’ claims, for performance purposes. This is something we’re going to evaluate during Alpha. If it turns out it’s something that’s highly desirable, we’ll investigate further what we can do to make it possible.

Q: Will there be guild claims?
A: We know this is something there’s a lot of interest in, but we are focusing on the details of individual claims for the moment and will save guild discussions for further into the future.

Q: Can I know ahead of time if an area is claimed or available?
A: Yes, you can see other people’s claims in the world and on the map if you want to. This is an option you can toggle on and off.

Q: Can other people interact with props on my claim, like crafting tables?
A: Yes, you will be able to grant permission to other people to interact with items on your claim, as well as a variety of levels of permission so that you can choose exactly what they can and can’t do. You can also prevent them from doing anything at all on your claim.

Q: Can people interfere with my building, for example by standing in front of what I’m trying to build?
A: No, we intend to give you the option to hide other people on your claim so they can’t stop you from building.

Q: Will there be a limit on the number of claims I can have?
A: During Alpha we will be limiting the number of claims you can have. As we enter Beta and launch, we don’t intend to have a hard restriction but for practical purposes there will be a limit, since each claim will have an ongoing upkeep cost. The cost of purchasing additional claims will remain fixed, but the upkeep cost will escalate.

Q: What is upkeep?
A: Upkeep is a recurring cost that goes along with having a claim. It’s intended to encourage engaged and active playing. As you go out and collect resources in the world, you’ll use a portion of that towards the upkeep on your claim. Upkeep also ensures that the landscape never becomes an “elephant graveyard” of abandoned claims due to claim owners who have either stopped playing or moved elsewhere and lost interest in their original claims. If someone claims some land and then abandons it, after a given amount of time their area will eventually become available again for someone else to claim.

Q: If my upkeep does lapse, what happens to my stuff?
A: The only thing you risk losing if your claim lapses is the actual location in the world you had claimed. We will save the resources and props on your claim and create a template of the building work. If you return and nobody else has taken your land while you were gone, you can simply reclaim it. If somebody else has taken your land, then you’ll need to explore and find a new place to claim instead. The template will allow you to recreate your previous building, or you can start fresh and make a new one if you prefer.

Q: What’s to stop someone from creating 100 accounts and having 100 claims that way?
A: This is another reason claims will require regular upkeep: if you did create 100 claims, you would still need to manage upkeep on all of them. There is going to be a practical limit to how many claims you can manage at a time. It will not be good for the game experience if everyone creates 100 empty claims and fills up the world with nothing. This is something we’re going to be watching and balancing during Alpha and Beta, to ensure the upkeep is reasonable but enough to prevent this kind of thing.

Q: How can I find other people’s claims besides running around?
A: We intend to include a search function, which will allow you to search for buildings based on a number of criteria. On your own claim you will be able to enter a number of tags to describe the type of building you’ve made, such as “castle” or “science fiction,” etc. Other people will be able to search for these tags to find claims they may be interested to visit and look at. There will also be a rating system that will allow visitors to rate the buildings they visit. We will also provide easy ways to find your friends’ claims, as well as claims you have been granted permission to.

Q: Will there be navigational aids?
A: Yes, we will have a map, and ways to locate your own claims on the map and in game.

Q: Will there be fast travel to my claims?
A: This will be part of the progression in game and when you have achieved the appropriate prerequisites, you’ll be able to craft items that will allow fast travel to your claim(s). In the mean time you’ll be able to use the leyline network to travel between important locations and continents.

Q: Is the claim locked to the grid, or can it be rotated?
A: Claims are currently locked to the grid and we don’t expect this will change. This is because if the claims could be rotated or moved off the grid, there could be spaces at the edges that could not be built on, and we want you to be able to build everywhere on your claim. Locking to grid is the most efficient way of placing claims and we expect most people would do that anyway by preference.

Q: Can I put my claim way down in the ground, or on top of my other claim?
A: Claims can be raised and lowered relative to ground level within a limited range. However, we don’t yet know how much we want you to go down underground, since people will be exploring and mining down there. We also don’t know how high we want to allow building into the sky. This is something we’ll be determining with your help during Alpha and Beta; if we find people strongly want to build skyscrapers or underground mines we may expand the claim areas accordingly. Either way, the vertical space above and below your claim cannot be build on by other people ever.

Q: Can I transfer a claim to another person?
A: Yes, in the long term we plan to allow you to transfer a claim to someone else, or package it up and list it for sale on PlayerStudio.

Q: Will there be storage on claims?
A: Yes, there will. In addition to your personal inventory and your vault (which is accessible from any vault access point in the world that you have permission to use), each claim will have storage chests. You will have to return to that particular chest to retrieve the items you placed in it, but they will provide more storage than the vault alone.

Q: Will claims be wiped at the end of open Beta?
A: No. We do expect that claims will be wiped at the end of Alpha, and at the end of closed Beta, as noted in the Founder’s Pack FAQ. There may be additional wipes at other times during Alpha and closed Beta if necessary, though we’ll try to avoid this as much as possible. However, once open Beta starts we will not wipe claims. And since one of the bonus items in the Trailblazer founder’s pack is a head start entry into open Beta, this will allow them a head start in finding their ideal claim location they’re going to want to keep through launch.

Q: Will I have the ability to save the things I built before a wipe and rebuild them after?
A: Yes, we will allow this as much as possible. This will work similar to what happens if your claim lapses; you would be able to save a template of your building work so that after the wipe you can gather new resources and rebuild using the template. However, please note that this is still Alpha testing and there may be some changes that do require wipes. For example, if we changed the size of claims or voxels we would most likely need to wipe all existing claims, and it might be possible that templates made with the old size might not work with the new size. We’ll be doing everything we can to minimize the amount of wipes that will be needed and prevent work being lost.

Q: Can I go to another server, mine resources, and take it back to my starting server or another server?
A: Yes, we are making it very easy to visit other servers so you can see other people’s buildings, and we’re going to allow you to explore all over any server looking for props, resources, recipes, all sorts of things. You can bring those back with you.

Q: Is there a way once I’ve placed a claim to pick it up again and move it to somewhere else?
A: Yes, the choices you make are not permanent. Similar to what happens if your claim lapses, we’ll allow you to pack up your stuff and create a template of your building and you’ll get a claim flag back that you can place down somewhere else.

Q: What’s going to be in Alpha?
A: When we refer to this as Alpha, we really mean it. This is not a finished game. We are letting you into the game at an earlier stage than we’ve ever done before for any other game, so that you can give us feedback and see systems before they are final and take part in deciding how the final game evolves. You’ll be able to watch as these systems get implemented bit by bit, something that normally nobody but game devs get to see. That said, the things you can expect to see first are generally the types of things we’ve been showing to you in our livestreams and videos and dev diaries. Building, exploration, claims, the things that are the most fundamental to the game. They won’t be there in a fully complete form since we want your feedback on these also, but they’re in a state that you can play with them and let us know what direction you think they need to move in. Other systems like combat are not going to be a part of Alpha at all, as we’ve said already, but will come post-launch. Crafting will be available in a basic state, and we’re looking forward to your feedback as we develop it further.

Source: https://www.eqnlandmark.com/news/how-claims-work-eqn-landmark-january-2014-eql

[Rumblebore]

Looks good and was good info. I am still looking forward to trying it out and seeing if I can participate.