I agree. The housing in this game belongs in a theme park, not a game that claims to be hardcore.
Other games like Scum and to an extent Conan exiles get base raiding right.
What really killed off a lot of new players, was not getting ganked by groups of kids camping outside towns. It was that those camper kids could just dump their loot into a stronghold and there was nothing the victim could do about it. Had they been able to ninja siege them while they slept, even if it took months of saving and planning, they would have played on for the prospect of revenge.
Buildings should not be anymore permanent then they are in real life.
Make siege engines constructible in the field, with stone and wood only. Make wild boulder spawn in most places and make boulders do realistic damage. Repairs should take months, just like in real life.
If the above was done, then game would feel less like a themepark with useless villages that never get used anyway everywhere.
For those that say that buildings should be protected because its a pvp game, not a survival game. It's not really a pvp game, considering in a PVP game you have balanced teams. The reason many town camper kids play this instead, is simply because they get wrecked in actual PVP games, so have to rely on overwhelming numbers to win. This is the reason none of them play battle royale games.
If a murderer built a stronghold near a town that he was pillaging, I'm fairly sure it would get destroyed unless he had an army to defend it. If they were all asleep, then the townsfolk would just burn them down.
Maybe SV can add NPC sieges. Every time someones rep goes down by 1, there is a 1% chance their building gets bombed by NPC guards within 24 hrs. Something like 50 guards with Mangs. Even if their offline. This would bring fun back.
