Board Thread:News and Announcements/@comment-25998654-20151219224951/@comment-25998654-20151221185446

I5-2500k wrote: What if the owner of that brick was the only person allowed to drag it around?

That raises other problems. What happens if someone wants to transfer a brick? Or release ownership? What criteria makes an unowned brick the property of a player? What happens when a player leaves with owned blocks in the world? What if someone blocks someone else in a cave or building with blocks that only they can move?

Transfer or release of ownership would probably be handled on a brick-by-brick basis. Manually changing the owner or releasing ownership of the hundreds of bricks a player can accumulate over the course of play is cumbersome at best and unusable at worst.

Another concern: what if someone forages a block, or puts one of their own in the path of construction? The original constructor can't move that block.

As for ownership release when players leave: a naive solution is to simply unprotect all bricks when a player leaves, but that means their constructs are open to destruction the instant someone disconnects, accidentally or intentionally. This is likely easier to fix than most - simply wait a few minutes after they disconnect to allow them time to rejoin.

Being blocked in a cave or a building is possible right now by using other buildings, but it is far easier to drag blocks into place than it is to place a structure in an entrance - this would exacerbate the problem.

I am not willing to implement such a measure given these issues. Even if I were, it would not happen soon. A major update is already in development; in the interests of speeding release I will not add another at this time.