You only have to ask a few simple questions to understand:
Why isn't the game completely lawless?
Why have any penalties at all?
Why can't players just kill anyone at will?
The answer is just as simple. It's because that would only cater for a small minority of players. The game would die because it would lose one of the most fundamental themes of game design. The theme of fairness.
Nobody wants to be reminded that real life isn't fair. We know that we could get burgled because we have been. We know that things can get stolen because it has happened to us. We don't want a game that recreates some of the worst facets of real life without also attempting to catch and bring those troublemakers to justice.
So there has to at least be the idea of justice. That there is good and bad. And ultimately there needs to be the idea that, although it's not fair all the time, it feels fair most of the time.
That's the balance. There has to be a point where people accept loss but the ones taking have to acknowledge that they too will eventually be held to account for inflicting those losses.
The game design does not revolve around fairness, it would be silly to expect that. Law exist only to give certain players the illusion of revenge by penalizing certain behavior.
The game isnt completly lawless cuz SV struggles to come up with good ideas and they have to respond to the noobs and frustrated nerds that wont ever be saciated when it comes to penalizing criminal* behavior.
MO1 for example revolved around player interaction. With almost no law in the wilderness and a shitty flag/tag system. Often players controlled areas and people knew how to interact with eachother.
The true law was player made and thats how justice was given and thats what it should be, one of the most wonderful things MO had Is that players made their own fate instead of trusting for systems to punish behavior.
Thats a reality people were ment to play with, the ones who could and would accept it anyways. So many noobs quit the game cuz they were getting ganked yes, but that just happened cuz noobs had trouble understanding how to deal with other players and It's precisely what happens now. What can i say mortal Is death, it allways been as it Is social and political.
One of the problematics of the learning curve Is to know how to avoid conflict when you ain't looking for it. So when i see someone complaining that got killed on a road i laugh my ass off because this player has yet to understand the unforgiving nature of wilderness conflict.
I see people that instead of investing time and intellect into learning the game they rather rage bacause they can't deal with loss, and end up expecting the game mechanics to do for them what they are unwilling to do, play well or seek justice/punishment.
I say, fuck those nerds. Take it or leave it, if theres something thats atractive in this game Is that it ain't a steam themepark clone with instanced pvp. Mortal offers a different experience, stop trying to swim against the river and either accept It's reality or bring real balance arguments.
But not willing to accept the essence of a player driven game will only make you expect shit that wont happen.
The game does need balance and discuss a bunch of things? Yes definitely. Does the game need to punish behavior? Absolutly not, let players create their own shit.
It blows my mind people can't understand how the game works and expect shit like strongest penalties, toggle or instanced pvp. If you are in this game for the PVE only i have sad news, mortal's pve Is absolute garbage i know plenty more games that have excelent pve but not mortal, so if you in this shit just cuz pve im sorry but not worth the unpleasentness of not accepting the dangers.
You have to seek for your own justice and fairness, so not expect the game to hold your hand because it wont.
