Hi Henrik Explained the bounty hunting system in his stream have a listen he has used swg as his inspiration for bounty hunting and is aware things can get exploited for profit. I dont think this will fix the whole problem but it is a start in the right direction
I think there is a danger bubble around town /graveyard....... and every spawn thats needed so wandering out into empty wilderness might feel safer because there is nothing there for you but go to a Risar camp, spider cave, caleno cave, kill tagmaton soldiers... even kill snapping turtles and you will find your self wasting a lot of time and resources because people want these resources.
I mean the whole crux of this game currently is point of interests and players contesting for these resources, there are clear best farming spots, and even if I am not farming, me and my crew can hit up all POI's in an area, looping around to look for players, this has always been MO gameplay, if there was more flora/fauna in the game (provided the severs could handle it), then we may have a harder time catching each other, but this wouldn't stop people from trying, they would likely hit the best spots still or camp common pathways to cities or chokes.
This game in it's essence is a low security world where a bunch of beggars are vying for resources, in an effort to skill\gear up, thus it creates PvP, which in turn creates resentment, and when sieging comes out will likely result in bigger battles for territory\removal of safe zones(structures).
I think the biggest issues in this game have always been a lack of forethought with changes/implementations which create more nuance to the game or more stale gameplay, and even in MO2 we see a lot of the tediousness back, i'll name a few I dislike IMO.
1) Mining\Wood chopping, sure it's great to be able to afk do this while I eat, do chores, watch netflix, sure i don't lose really anything if I die, but that's a pretty stale way to keep me playing long hours and create a time sync for end game resources, what about making the destruction of nodes quicker, they crumble into pieces that are obviously heavy so either you carry small amounts per person or horse, or we have wagons/carts to move this stuff. Now we have ppl who will want to do this together as it is safer, they can't run away if they don't want to lose their carts/wagons, now we have groups of ppl who will attack these resource wagons and likely players defending or being paid to defend it, look content. With TC we could have structures near good mining/chopping spots for safely depositing, then doing bigger resource runs to cities or trade hubs.
2)crafting, it's like we went back in time, why would we not re-implement the auto delete function on crafting, why did we need to wait weeks for ppl to cry and then it was implemented, after an entire beta where I am sure ppl asked for a fix, I get why we want ppl to grind craft skills, but there is no reason to go to the dark ages and make ppl boringly drag/drop 40 items out of their inventory; Yes we have a solution now, but we also had one in MO1, so why do we gotta go through it again.....
I could probably go through a lot more examples, but these two should be enough. I just think we need more creativity in some current features, we need more depth in others, and honestly I am not sure the game was ready on release, not including server/population issues. We have incomplete housing, incomplete sieging, incomplete magery, incomplete priest/law/reputation systems, incomplete guild/alliance systems.
This will all take time to do, and if SV needed an influx of money to continue development, it makes a lot of sense why they released, any other reason, I personally don't respect... (I went on a rant but yea, it's how I feel about this topic lol..)