Minecraft Name: King_of_the_Dot Suggestion: As we all know, there are dozens of abandoned/unused/banned user towns. In order to help minimize the numbers of these towns, there should be some sort of auction system, or random drawing of some sort. There could be a forum post about available towns, so that users could visit them. The auction could then open on the forums, with people posting their bids on the towns, after X days, the bids close and the highest bid wins the the town they bid on. There could also be some sort of drawing where there's sort of entry fee, or even free, and the winner receives one of the towns up for drawing. Reason: It would help clean up some of the unused land on ECC, and help create some server excitement.
This would just never work, I'm sorry to say. While I personally agree, at some point of time we should auction towns away, Andrew will never agree with it. I've seen people come back after a year, year and half, and still have their towns. It would indeed cause angry people because their town was auctioned away while they were gone.
I dont think it's wise to speculate what Andrew would think. However, certain player particulars are cleared after X amount of days of being logged off. This could easily be altered. Also, there are players that are perma-banned. These towns will never be revisited by those players.
I also believe it is unwise to speculate on Andrew's behalf, that's why I wasn't speculating. He has said before this wasn't going to happen. He has also said he would never back official town transfers, and by doing this, he would be doing that. Player particulars are cleared after X amount of days, but if you examine the system closely, you'll realize that anyone with 100k in their balance will never ever have that cleared. Towns at their extreme cheapest are 85k, and that only happens once. Any modifications, in theory, raise the price, so towns are right up there with the X amount of money that won't be cleared. I agree that perma-banned players with ZERO chance of EVER coming back should have their towns sold, and their items cleared from within, but that's another suggestion.
Let's say someone already has 8 towns, and he wins an auction for let's say 150k. He would then get an OFFICIAL town for super cheap. This isn't quite fair, is it? Also, how do you define an abandoned/unused town? What if it's someone's mayor town? Would we demote him to resident? In case of a permbanned user: What about any co-mayors who may be inactive but not banned? What if a mayor returns after a year and sees that his town got auctioned off? I honestly can't see this working.
Well kuke, life isn't fair you know. Towns wouldn't be auctioned if unused/abandoned, but only when the owner of them is completely gone. No, he's still a mayor, he's got the tag. There are plenty of mayors who don't have towns. Co-mayors would obviously keep to keep it. And the last one, there's the problem. If the mayor comes back and is angry, you've got a problem. That's why it wouldn't work. But really, the first four reasons are very easily answerable.
This is totally feasible. ECC is a game, this is for fun. If a player is logged off for 1 year+, they deserve to have their town removed. Your town isnt something you should expect to be there after a year, that is ridiculous. If the town has active co-mayors, that is a different story. Also, for those players with several towns already, the chance of the auctioned town being anywhere near there current towns, are slim. Furthermore, I do not see how this is unfair because these players also have that other land to run, and everything it takes to turn that town into a money maker, if that's even that player's intent to begin with. I believe this will drag more money out of the economy, than it does put money into those towns new owners' pocket. This is also something that gets the community more active, and would allow players to team up on bidding, so this still poses a threat to richer players. Why continue issuing land to people who want it, and can afford it, when there is plenty of "claimed" land that isnt being used already? Pros - exciting, takes money out of the economy, reduces future "clean up" Cons - cheaper towns for multi-town owners, slight potential for new owner to make more money than they spent on the town (although this happens with mayors and presidents anyways).
Okay, I would have to agree. Except for the red lined part. There are NO mayors who don't have towns, they all still legitimately own their towns because andrew doesn't support official town transfers.
As Kuke pointed out, Andrew doesn't support official town transfers. He's said it before and its in our rules. So, lets consider this scenario which has several possibilities. 1) I go inactive for a year and a half 2) I return to ECC and find all of my towns have been auctioned off. Option A: I reclaim my towns and whoever bought them all is out of however much he paid. Option B: I take the money I was going to use to donate and quit out of anger. We already have enough issues due to town reclamation, I don't think this is an acceptable idea. I recognize that it sucks that there are towns out there would could be using for xyz. But, until space becomes a problem, I don't think the issue of unused towns will matter. Don't get me wrong, if/when we run out of town space then I would hope that Administration will be able to find a solution. And the most logical solution, imo, would be the following: Delete the towns of perma banned players. That would get us space and give no one an advantage. However, like I said, I don't even necessarily think we should do this type of thing until we run out of town space.
I say auction off towns from perma-banned members, I already know of 5 perma-banned people who probably total to about 5-10 towns.
If you are talking about inactive players as well, then just add (or inactive) to "permabanned" in the following questions. If I am comayor of the town with a permabanned player, do I just lose my comayorship? Or do I get the town for free? What if there are more than one active comayors? Do they auction it between themselves? In the case of just deleting the town, if we delete the permabanned person's town, what happens to the comayors or residents of that town? I currenty share a town with a permabanned player, his inactive brother, and one other person who is active. Who gets the town? If the town itself is deleted what happens to our protections? Is it, first person to log on can grief and run since now it is officially the wild?
