Claiming land someone else has built on | VeteranCraft General Discussion | Forum

To be honest, I think OP and Okarim both bring up good arguements - at what point does modifying a structure make that 'your' structure? I mean if we're talking semantics here, it's all just blocks replacing other blocks anyway, whether it's stone or wood blocks replacing air blocks (building an actual structure), wood blocks replacing dirt blocks (creating the foundation of a building), gravel blocks replacing dirt blocks or grass blocks (fixing a road or making a path).. even dirt blocks replacing air blocks in the terraforming of a hill to be built upon later... at what point do these 'modifications' turn a previously public something (land untouched by another player that you found somewhere) into 'your' something? 

If i create a gravel path leading to a random spot and lay to me what is the foundation of a building i plan on making at some point soon (to someone else what is plainly an ugly random rectangle of cobblestone blocks on the dirt and nothing more).. but i don't actually protect the area.. by the old rules, if someone made any changes to that area, it would be griefing (since my previous block changes basically stake my claim to that area for me, whether protected by residence or not - that's how the rules have seen it before)... and taking this example even further, if someone residenced an area i staked out already via making block changes to it previously, that would before have also been considered a form of griefing via use of residence (claiming residence over an area another player was already building on).

Here's why I'm looking at this from the angle that i am: I've actually started building on a new server before by basically finding a random unused village, cleaning it up a bit (straightening the paths, etc), putting a door (nothing else, just a door) on one of the random shacks in it and using that as my new home base. At what point did one of those minor modifications flip the switch that turned that random village into 'my' village? (i can tell you at some point, it did, at least in my mind it did)

I'm sure handling situations like this in a case-by-case basis for awhile is fine, but this case does bring up that we could use some better clarification down the line on what qualifies as someone's build and what doesn't, as these situations are definitely going to come up again, and quite easily (one player sees an ugly random rectangle of stone on the ground in a random area, another player sees a foundation they just put down for their future house)...

On closer view, i'm probably looking at this totally wrong (which i tend to do on first look at something). LWK also brings up a very good point that when dealing with pre-existing structures (like villages), it can be absolutely not easy to guage what is pre-formed and what is player-made/modified (and owned via having done so). My viewpoint was simply how do we tell the difference between the two and where do we draw the line where it crosses over from one to the other?

Obviously case-by-case would apply in this situation, and i didn't mean to infer that i was referring specifically to this incident -- i wasn't; my view was moreso an in-general question (this was just catalyst there).

In any case, both applicable parties here (of which i am not) have weighed in and are talking at this point and i'll butt out (as i should, lol).. just wanted to clarify what i was contributing to the discussion earlier as i didn't want it to be misconstrued or taken wrong...