@666 , what was your name in MO1? I think you share a lot of the PoVs that I do.
There are a lot of people arguing from their vantage point in this thread, and maybe we all are, but asfore more thoughts from me:
MO1 was hardcore. lol. It's like that thing where people say a game is challenging. People will always say no it's not, but in general MO1 was hardcore. MO2 is the same engine, but it's a lot different. Like, you die in the wild and the mobs aren't gonna kill your horse. It'd be so much less infuriating in 1 if you got stuck'd and eaten if you didn't have to watch 'your mount is taking damage'---- your mount is dead. Now you can just walk back and call it. Those sort of 'quality if life changes,' home priest, aim with crosshairs... they made the game less hardcore. They made it less niche. For better or worse, it remains to be seen because the game isn't really up and running yet (hence why I'm not even pushing, well that + just general blah,) all the people stacking mats need to remember mats mean nothing without a person using them.
They smoothed a lot of the little problems with MO1, even the subtly griefy things that you arguably deserve (like losing your mount when you die in pve.) Still, I have to blame dev direction for furthering the divide between pvp and pve. haha. Being a pvper is hard. The reason it's easy is because people group. The hardest dudes in MO1, and they had to have legit personality issues (again, as a solo of sorts, I can cop to having personality issues) rofl, or they would have been guilded regardless, were true solo pvpers. Whether they played mounted or not, doesn't matter. It was a very hard playstyle in MO1 and it's... honestly prol easier in MO2 if you get out your calculator. lol, remember I was the first person to say SOCIOPATH ahaha, nah, but maybe you all would prefer pragmatist. I am a hardcore idealist, which y'know can lead to immense tragedy, too, holocaust etc... so nobody is pointing fingers!
Still, I feel like something went wrong. They made a grave miscalculation. People are mad on both sides just like in MO1. It's passion. Either way, it's never gonna be enough, but my PoV is that the choice of pvping should carry the downside of pvp from other people. Small groups can still survive because they can pvp and such, but they aren't locked out from towns, etc. Still, if they keep pissing everyone off... I mean ARPK alliance or RPK alliance, you are gonna get the same result if you go around PKing, haha. You're gonna have people hunting for you, and that's OK! Guards and systems should be there to prevent things, like I agree w/ a respawn timer, better for both sides. No one feels camped, and no one like "I won't be controlled!!" me has to keep spawning out of spite. Guards should protect your stuff in cities. Horse griefing, I think just about everyone agrees (altho someone parked their horse to block the bank on purpose hummm, in the end it died) should not be a thing. That's the problem with sandboxes, there are always outliers and when people figure out those outliers they start to use them to piss people off. I mean, you used to be able to drop a bunch of campfires and mess with the game, too.
Better moderation would help it all. Someone parks a horse purposefully to block something in a city, mods should delete the horse after like 20 min or so. People spam a bunch of campfires, mods should delete the campfires and tell them if they put down any more they are gonna get forcefully logged off w/ a 24hr ban. I mean something as simple as 12hr... 24hr bans could be so useful. My belief is still "the perfect sandbox" would have very few systems but it would have good moderation. Sure, people would whine about mod decisions, or, esp in a game like MO with player mods, favoritism. EVEN THEN, assuming proper oversight, I would take some instances of corruption (that hopefully would be rooted out quickly) over overbearing systems.
The truth is, and this I can say with ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY: OVERBEARING SYSTEMS (it seems to be a truism because what is 'overbearing,' but I'm saying systems like the ones in MO2, that affect the whole of gameplay) are BAD for a game. People who wanna do what the system prevents will find a way to get around it and still profit. The rest of the people will be blocked from part of the game, and yes pvp is part of the game. I think people would have a better opinion of pvp if they saw it being used in circumstances other than ganking, etc.
A lot of the pvpers are not arguing because they want the game to succeed. They want to pvp. A lot of pvers are not arguing because they want the game to succeed, they want to not be pvp'd. All of this shit, "When will this system be implemented/finished..." or "When it's finished!!" is BS to me. Even most pvpers don't want the flag/rep system toned down too much. That should go to show you that it's something you might wanna look at. Because, as I said, the systems protect everyone who knows how to live within them. There is not a lot of perma kill on sight flag in MO2; I mean, is there even one? haha. So it's a joke. It's confused. Let people pvp. Learn to make friends. Let the pvpers ally wit the pve-ers. Let the population be pruned a bit, if it must. This is not good, either. It's static and boring. it's a world of people stacking mats. Like, what are you doing? Not even w/ good systems to use the mats in, just getting more and more mats. Not for war, not for siege, not for TC, not for cooking, not for breeding, not for many of the advanced crafts... just to have more mats. That's what the game is about now. That's not a sustainable thing. It seems good right now, but everyone will burn out. This game hasn't been out for like what 3 weeks yet? Some of those weeks were unplayable due to permalogged in sweaties. Wait to see what happens.
Pvp is very much essential to the game and economy, just like having your horses get eaten when you die in pve. Everything creates a balance. Things balance by default... I mean if the game is up and running its technically balanced, but is it GOOD?
Seems to me no matter what they change, people are gonna be upset about it. I would just like less restrictions, let the players handle more. As I said before, people think of sandbox as in building sandcastles, but sandbox is actually a society. Let society be created with minimal restrictions THEN start to shape it. If you pre-shape it, you are shaping how it grows, which is weird... if the game turns into a death match with low pvp restrictions, then take action, as it is right now... I really dunno what is going on.