Getting players outside of cities
Most PvP Still occurs around towns which the red priest change was supposed to fix but the reason PvP occurs around town is because that is the main location of players and player vs players needs players. Its mcdonalds PvP as you get fast, reliable, but mediocre guardzone PvP.
So the solution to fixing this problem is to get people to leave towns and group up elsewhere.
Look at why people are grouped up in towns. They have banks, grinders/crusher, workbenches, refining, libaries, and everything you need to play the game. They are centralized source of production. You gather your materials and then bring them back to town to craft/level crafting.
Two paths that could be taken is to move things like crushers/grinders, furnaces/refining, to protected camps outside of towns.
I think the more likely path would be second of having these production camps outside of towns that have doubles of each appliance so players can double their production speed.
Have two types of camps a grinder/crusher camp. And then a refining extracting camp.
Each camp will have a small bank with maybe 12 slots that cant take bags or 2 that can take bags, a stable, and guards.
The camps should be far enough away that people could be attacked on the way there but its still convenient to go to them.
Need to make sure there are not funnels from the camps to town so people could take different paths to get back to town to avoid people.
Not only do these camps give a reason for players to leave towns but they also give safe places for players to flee to. Many bandit camps almost never get touched because its too far away from town for people to safety get to. I also ask to add scoundrel camps to near these camps to facilitate noobs leaving graveyards as the PvE goes from easy zombies to challenging bandits. There needs to be a medium level.
I think to keep game balance the devs might want to lower the amount each appliance could produce then increase the amount of appliance in those camps to make them attractive. Like making furnaces only take a half of the mats at once but putting furnaces in the camp. So you dont double the production of stuff from furnaces compared to now but you only increase it by 1.5. I think more things need to happen with material balancing but thats a different talk.
Now for the lawless areas.
If a guard didnt see it then it didnt happen. You want to have a immersive experience but have a magical criminal system.
Also the issue of not knowing the boundaries of where is lawless and not lawless.
To solve these issues put around the towns, town camps, roads, and other protected areas guard towers that have "long ranges of detection".
Each tower will have 3/4 render range radius that if any criminal (grey not negative reputation) enters or criminal activity occurs a dice roll will happen to see if they are seen and the penalty is applied. At half render range the roll is 100% success rate. This makes it fair for players as they have the ability some way to avoid these guard towers and know the boundries of where it is ok to PvP and not ok to PvP.
Have priest work similarly but at a smaller radius. Except for red towns.
After this place guard camps in the world similar to bandit camps. With the purpose of having a area for players to flee too which will encourage them to get out and away from towns. These guard camps should be attackable by players and with no elite archer guards. They should server as a way to give a fighting chance to fleeing players. A band of red players could wipe out a camp to kill the blue players inside which would now have a couple of NPCs to provide backup. These camps should really only be near roads and other places of traffic as quarter way or mid way points. This give some way for solo players the sense that they could run to some sort of group for protection.
These camps can end up being the reverse of bandit camps for red players. Where in the future there would be bandit rep and we could farm the guards or gold like we already farm them at the towns.
Another thing that could be done is to bring back murderer titles, but you can only gain these from kills in the lawless areas away from towns.
All past systems have not stopped noob killing and ended up back firing and making the game over all worse.
Most PvP Still occurs around towns which the red priest change was supposed to fix but the reason PvP occurs around town is because that is the main location of players and player vs players needs players. Its mcdonalds PvP as you get fast, reliable, but mediocre guardzone PvP.
So the solution to fixing this problem is to get people to leave towns and group up elsewhere.
Look at why people are grouped up in towns. They have banks, grinders/crusher, workbenches, refining, libaries, and everything you need to play the game. They are centralized source of production. You gather your materials and then bring them back to town to craft/level crafting.
Two paths that could be taken is to move things like crushers/grinders, furnaces/refining, to protected camps outside of towns.
I think the more likely path would be second of having these production camps outside of towns that have doubles of each appliance so players can double their production speed.
Have two types of camps a grinder/crusher camp. And then a refining extracting camp.
Each camp will have a small bank with maybe 12 slots that cant take bags or 2 that can take bags, a stable, and guards.
The camps should be far enough away that people could be attacked on the way there but its still convenient to go to them.
Need to make sure there are not funnels from the camps to town so people could take different paths to get back to town to avoid people.
Not only do these camps give a reason for players to leave towns but they also give safe places for players to flee to. Many bandit camps almost never get touched because its too far away from town for people to safety get to. I also ask to add scoundrel camps to near these camps to facilitate noobs leaving graveyards as the PvE goes from easy zombies to challenging bandits. There needs to be a medium level.
I think to keep game balance the devs might want to lower the amount each appliance could produce then increase the amount of appliance in those camps to make them attractive. Like making furnaces only take a half of the mats at once but putting furnaces in the camp. So you dont double the production of stuff from furnaces compared to now but you only increase it by 1.5. I think more things need to happen with material balancing but thats a different talk.
Now for the lawless areas.
If a guard didnt see it then it didnt happen. You want to have a immersive experience but have a magical criminal system.
Also the issue of not knowing the boundaries of where is lawless and not lawless.
To solve these issues put around the towns, town camps, roads, and other protected areas guard towers that have "long ranges of detection".
Each tower will have 3/4 render range radius that if any criminal (grey not negative reputation) enters or criminal activity occurs a dice roll will happen to see if they are seen and the penalty is applied. At half render range the roll is 100% success rate. This makes it fair for players as they have the ability some way to avoid these guard towers and know the boundries of where it is ok to PvP and not ok to PvP.
Have priest work similarly but at a smaller radius. Except for red towns.
After this place guard camps in the world similar to bandit camps. With the purpose of having a area for players to flee too which will encourage them to get out and away from towns. These guard camps should be attackable by players and with no elite archer guards. They should server as a way to give a fighting chance to fleeing players. A band of red players could wipe out a camp to kill the blue players inside which would now have a couple of NPCs to provide backup. These camps should really only be near roads and other places of traffic as quarter way or mid way points. This give some way for solo players the sense that they could run to some sort of group for protection.
These camps can end up being the reverse of bandit camps for red players. Where in the future there would be bandit rep and we could farm the guards or gold like we already farm them at the towns.
Another thing that could be done is to bring back murderer titles, but you can only gain these from kills in the lawless areas away from towns.
All past systems have not stopped noob killing and ended up back firing and making the game over all worse.
