Waystone ownership?

[kevinswho]

This might be a bit of a biased idea considering the way my server's gameplay flow is setup but I feel like it could be valuable to have a togglable feature where a lodestone can be "owned" by whoever placed it, meaning only they can link the keys to it and teleport to it. This would be for a bit of anti grief and for servers with a bit more of a variety of players inside some of whom might not know/trust each other. As an additional idea maybe a hologram should display above the waystone showing who "owns" it.

[AtriusX]

It should be possible to do something like this, but I think a theoretical system where a waystone is locked or unlocked should come down to whether an item of some kind is used on it, rather than just a global toggle.

There also is the consideration about how waystones that are locked should behave, since a player could just easily break them and/or place their own nearby without regard for the ownership. If we add a protection system to locked/private waystones, then that could become a griefing risk for players as well potentially, as players could place blocks which might only be removable by the original owner. Only way I could see this working is if the item used to lock a waystone was expensive to craft and single-use, though part of me is wondering if there should also be a mechanism to do shared ownership. We would also need to figure out a system to prevent the locking of intentionally public waystones (such as for server spawn teleports).

Assuming its used in the intended way I could definitely see this being an enhancement worth adding, but some of those security considerations need to be debated before introducing anything. Open to hearing any ideas you have in mind!

[kevinswho]

I appreciate you being an active developer and taking time to respond to things like this. I think ownership should only restrict who can make the linked teleport keys so that ideally someone can't come across someone else's waypoint later on and link their own keys to it to use it. Ownership could perhaps work like land claiming anti grief plugins with some kind of trusting user command. As far as breaking blocks go I believe it should be allowed/not protected against; either someone can find someone else's waystones and steal the materials/disable them or when combined with an anti grief plugin like griefdefender someone should be able to protect their own waystone with that.

For the case of if waystone ownership was toggled on with a land claiming plugin being used and someone claimed over an area containing someone else's waystone, maybe this could be balanced with either the waystone being disabled/destroyed once this land claim is done or allowing users to remotely relinquish their waystones. The claim owner could destroy the waystone themselves since it's in their claim, or if they for whatever reason leave it up but the waystone owner wants it gone they should be able to sever the link without needing to interact with the placed waystone anymore since that may be locked away from them by the land claim. Maybe the waystone management could be done by the waystone owner/trusted manager upon left clicking instead of right clicking with the warp key to bring up a menu?

[AtriusX]

I feel its worth mentioning that one of the driving philosophies behind the plugin was to avoid using commands and the chat system to cover gameplay mechanics. To that end I'd like to keep this plugin as gameplay oriented as possible, and limit any management commands to server admins. I personally grew tired of many plugins that meant to compliment survival gameplay relying on commands rather than trying to blend into the game better (in the case of this plugin, those common commands being /tp, /tpa, /warp, and other teleport commands).

I don't have any issue with a server choosing to protect their waystones using grief management systems (heck I could see a case where integrating with grief management plugins could be ideal for some), but the core basis of the plugin should stay as close to the game as possible.

If we're looking to just restrict who can make the keys, then I could see that being simple enough to manage by itself, though I still think having an item or mechanism to restrict who can mess with a waystone in this fashion would be ideal so we don't need to go the route of an all-or-nothing toggle.

I'll think things over a bit more anyways, but just updating quickly with my thoughts currently

[kevinswho]

I see what you mean for the commands concern and now that I think of it perhaps my suggestion was unnecessarily overcomplicated; maybe simply adding a toggleable option for "owned" waystones is enough. Non-owners being able to break them should still be fine for a few reasons but also leaving protecting an owned waystone up to an anti grief plugin perhaps should do the trick enough. While being able to trust/add more owners would potentially be useful maybe the owner could just make and distribute extra waystone keys to cover that.

[AtriusX]

We could probably start with a basic locking system thats handled by global toggle, perhaps give it several options

waystone-locking:

• ALL: All waystones are locked to their owners
• PER_WAYSTONE: All unlocked by default, but can be locked by the person who placed them only
• NONE: Waystone locking is disabled, all public

Would still need to determine how to handle the flow for locking waystones with no owner (as ownership isn't tracked for existing waystones today). At least as I envision it working currently, waystones with no owner could be locked by anyone or nobody, both of which don't feel particularly ideal.