SV continues to make drastic changes that nobody asked for, instead of doing the changes that everyone wants, like sieging.
Continuously punishing pvpers is also completely moronic for a game that sells itself as being a pvp game.
MO2 is quickly following into MO1 footsteps and that is because the same people are in charge. The same decisions are being made. The same mistakes repeated.The same stubborn blindness is directing the games development.
What can we do? Nothing. You cant change stupid. You cant change Henrik.
I feel like for MO2 pvp to work, we need a polis/city-state system... I know, I know, it will never happen... but hear me out.
There is a reason most PvP MMOs launch with a sensible framework of rules as to how the PvP will occur that everyone can understand; usually with catch-all factions... You could do something similar to this in MO2 by implementing a civic faction system that wasn't just some 'murder count' counterweight.
For example, guilds sign up to be a member of a city faction (maybe member guilds of said state can vote to accept membership or not). With something like this, PvP would then have a sensible framework to take place between cities (and ostensibly the guilds who make up said cities & direct such things) who are at war; no murder count here (only murder counts if you fight blue people from cities you are not at war with). Guilds could lobby with other guilds within their city to go to war with other cities... If your guild ends up having disputes with same city guilds, no problem, your guild can leave the city and join another city faction. Boom, you also have more realism, civic pride/identity, etc... Implement city housing, apartments for the poors, etc. In a sense you can then have lawless city factions for all the reds/greys to dominate, and then you have your edgelord 'for the horde' factions as a counterweight to blue cities; obviously just as now these city factions & guilds that make them up don't have to operate within war/diplomatic frameworks and can just implicitly kill or not kill whomever they choose-- but on the other hand their cities are more susceptible to blue city raids. This would be the option for the hardcore guilds/players, which imo most outlaw RPK guilds already are (in effect outlaw cities would be the ones who operate similar to current pvp; ie. all their decisions are implicit & not directly defined by city treaties)
Would this be balanced? Of course not. But it would have a meaningful framework for PvP which is sorely lacking. The current system is not balanced AND has no meaningful framework beyond 'don't kill x amount of people in x amount of time or become an outlaw'... The siege mechanic is never going to work out on its own for the same reason it never worked out in every other MMO that has done it, it's almost impossible to implement in a fun way and just breaks down to zergfests. If you have city factions as a backbone rather than having JUST the siege stuff as planned, you might be able to mitigate this issue.
That's why I think it's the wrong move making guilds>cities, and moving towards guilds owning cities rather than being members of the overarching city faction, because it does not offer enough of a factional backbone to the pvp or offer any democratization of a game that sorely needs people to be able to participate. If cities>guilds, the city then has a natural incentive to help its new citizens who can then participate in warfare on behalf of the city. If guilds>cities, basically anyone in that city not a member of the ruling guild is marginalized in what is already a game that is brutal to newcomers, and you just end up with boring zerg pvp. The city would act as a failsafe to this boring 'sandbox gvg (zerg vs zerg) blob empire' bullshit that happens in every game with the guild>city model. All the player-housing guild territory in between could be the area that is competed over, whereas blue cities (& outlaw cities to a lesser extent, being guardless) are basically HQs not intended to be conquered outright, but instead competed for leadership of by participating guilds.
Sandbox is all fine and good, but there needs to be a sensible framework for how the sandbox will operate. All of the best sandbox games have this as a cornerstone. Imagine if Crusader Kings (I'm aware how extremely different the genre of game is, just bear with me), for example, had no factions\cassus belli\city-mechanics etc. and everyone is just 1 character occupying 1 region, there are no kingdoms, no civic mechanics, all you do is raise revenue hire levies and blob until someone is unbeatable; when you take a region the region's previous owner no longer exists-- it's just you. That would not be very fun. Well, that's the 'it's a sandbox' mentality MO takes to pvp... 'The player will make up the framework' does not and never truly has worked, and in the instances that it has seemed to, if you dig deeper there is always a sensible concrete framework holding it up.
I know this is not a finely tuned idea, but something reminiscent of this is what would make MO2 whole. You can pile as much content on top of the game as you want, but it needs a meaningful foundation like this. The lack of it is why nobody is happy re: the state of the PvP system, and why, as this thread suggests, pop. is in decline.