PvP idea-bomb

[Canny]

Statement and proposal of solution/discussion about current ingame mechanics.

First of all. I would like to refer all the readers to the amazing post Jorb wrote: http://www.havenandhearth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=44710

I completely follow his idea on pvp, there should be no place safe from players inflicting another person harm. This is a self-governed game.
The idea of offensive and peaceful actions is something that's decided by each player's own perspective.

Since the idea of harmful actions is based on the concept of one's own perception, I insanely bluntly state this: a player makes a choice to be harmful towards another player.
To put more backbone to my argument, as Jorb pointed out, there are more ways to grief another player than simply attacking him. Swarming someone with alts, village/claim extensions, and so many other examples that are not considered to be a direct approach to pvp.
The other way around, peaceful actions would be considered from your own ideas of 'peace' as well, I have no intent of doing all the actions pointed out earlier based on my own perception of peace. I am such a peaceful hermit smoking my peace pipe.

3 days ago I noticed a sprucecap had settled on a spot that's very close to my cave entrance, and my brand new mining set up.
My first reaction was "I wish that player would not be there so that cave would be my own, I would be able to settle there with future expansion, I prefer my own hunting grounds, etc.. I dislike the way he's been ruining that pretty spot with farm ground and ugly pavement
Some people choose to scare that player away with direct combat, wreck his claim, steal his nettles/roots or whatever.
Others choose to not attack but instead start walling him in or expand their territory all around him.
On my own perception of being peaceful, I chose to start talking to him and learned fast he has no harmful intentions and I helped him get started. Though I did palisade my mine hole to the next layer because that's something I did on my own efforts, and should not be used by someone else.

Though that simple interaction already made me start thinking. When I met an alt of him with a different name he said he spotted a bear and would like my help killing it, I couldn't trust him. My natural self-perseverance reflexes took control and screamed "this is someone out there to bait me away from my claim and lead me towards someone else out there to mug me and steal what I have on me".

Okay, we're getting somewhere now.
Based on what just happened. And in my own experience of playing this game for a good long time now I realize this.
I think inherently, we choose our own path we take in the game. We're either in there focussed on pvp actions, we enjoy the game as it currently stands with all risks or we prefer to be safe from ending up being mugged 'helping someone kill a bear'.

Now here's another argument, "Haven as it currently stands is strongly set up already to prevent actions seen by the general public as harmful, I barely have room to breathe and roleplay a viking raider." says one.
"I would enjoy the banquets in my kingdom, but there's people out there wrecking roads, sieging cities and attacking others." says another.
Talking to the owner of one such city, she stood firm in her idea that being sieged is not in her perception of having fun.

Danger zone. Having fun. Would my actions prevent the joy from this game of someone else playing in the same world as me?
Again this returns to our choice of one such action.

Starting there and stating my idea.
Based on our own perception joy of the game. We can start to make a choice to be a fighter, a villager or a hermit.
The way a player would generally think is that fighters can become paladins or bandits, peasants can become kings or greedy landlords, hermits can share their love of their surroundings with others or strongly protect it from anyone else.
A choice like that already sets the tone of what you want your character to be.
"I was a hermit growing up at first, but I seem to have taken a liking to stealing others possessions or mugging them for their fancy hats." Don't worry, we'll get there.

Let's go crazy and make the idea above a fact. We choose our path before we start life in Haven.

I enjoy pvp: I become a fighter
I don't mind pvp with a strong ruleset: I become a villager
I hate pvp: I become a hermit

I enjoy other players, I don't mind other players, I hate other players. This would also follow a ruleset but I'm not entirely through with that, not sure if I even like that concept but a lot of other people do.

How about and just throwing this idea out there for your lovely holiday brains to brood on, my 'peaceful'/'offensive' developers.
Trash anyone's idea about having a pve-only world. excluding is making cuts in your game, no other way around it.
Make a world divided in zones that either allow pvp up to a certain degree, enforce pvp-oriented rules as it currently stands, or strongly enforce rules against pvp.

You would have a battlegrounds zone, a borderlands zone and a tranquil zone. When making a character you can decide to be spawned anywhere in these zones. Beacons would change according to the zones.
These zones are shown to the player the same way as a kingdom buff does.
However, this does not mean to exclude pvp from the tranquil zone. Though actions considered hostile would have more backlash or situational factors.

Now this idea has a ton of questions raising. of course, so I'll just start at the beginning.
A PvE-only world allows any actions that grief another player without him being able to react to it. Trash that pve-only idea, people always find ways to be a dick.
There's no urgency to this at all, this idea should be carefully brainstormed.
Zones? I think free roaming should be possible between those zones but crossing them would incur a very large penalty in case you have been violent switching to more peaceful zones etc. Maybe you can bind that to strength of nidbanes, cooldowns, quality/skill rules, resources and so on.
On the concept of nidbanes, perhaps a player more weak to them with each violent action would not be such a bad idea in my opinion.

Enjoy being a fighter? fight others that enjoy that type of playing too, or cross the borders and risk the penalities. - prove to be player that does not intend to harm others in those other zones? become a guardian etc
Enjoy being a hermit? live your life with severely reduced risks of being attacked.
Enjoy being a little of both? be a villager.
-this could totally work the same way as very long term credo's

Now of course. this is only tackling the idea of direct violence. a greedy landlord might think "hey I'm only taking everything around you, not your stuff". There has to be a way to prove that such an action is with an intent to harm others.
And what about slaughtering defenseless alts sent by other players to swarm your gates, would you be penalized too? food for thought.

Perhaps there has to be a way to prove you're true to the nature of your surroundings and path like attending group events, farming, land ownership, violent actions etc. And progress your credo in such a way. 'Evil' actions would feed that credo towards 'evil' results with their own benefits/penalties. while 'Good' actions would feed that credo towards 'good' results. thus allowing the player to balance themselves towards the path they want.
As a note: I try to exclude social attitude as much as possible from this post. we choose how we stand socially.

I keep spouting new ideas and increasing the heaviness/workload of it. Being only a student in game graphics production I can already see this isn't something that would be ready in a short amount of time unless you dedicate all time and resources to it. And it will require testing
So now I'm finishing this post because it's growing to be huge. But I will edit this towards a full-blown brainstorm result in case the community or developers gets interested.

Thanks for reading this! I hope I will see some lovely constructive feedback either breaking this idea or growing towards it <3

Edit 1: asking around. The general answer of the people inside a discord I asked sounds they do not enjoy being sieged/contested by raiders, only the raiders do

[MinionTwo]

It's a little early for me so some of this was goign over my head but i did like the idea of zones, and i think that this could easily be taken care of through the kingdom mechanic. If we can calculate the distance from the center of the kingdom, then the divide that in half. the half that is closest to the kingdom center would be a peaceful zone, then the portion closer to the exterior is the second zone and then anything with out a kingdom claim would be free-for all PVP as there is no ruling government.

but how would this prevent raiders?
well, the best i can come up with is a Lawful-chaotic alignment system. everyone starts out as neutral and as you swear fealty to a monarch(aka join a kingdom) you gain Lawful points. anyone that initiates non-sparing PVP inside a kingdom's combat area would gain chaos points, and a player could hunt these characters in order to get Law points, raising their alignment.

[Canny]

It's a little early for me so some of this was goign over my head but i did like the idea of zones, and i think that this could easily be taken care of through the kingdom mechanic. If we can calculate the distance from the center of the kingdom, then the divide that in half. the half that is closest to the kingdom center would be a peaceful zone, then the portion closer to the exterior is the second zone and then anything with out a kingdom claim would be free-for all PVP as there is no ruling government.

but how would this prevent raiders?
well, the best i can come up with is a Lawful-chaotic alignment system. everyone starts out as neutral and as you swear fealty to a monarch(aka join a kingdom) you gain Lawful points. anyone that initiates non-sparing PVP inside a kingdom's combat area would gain chaos points, and a player could hunt these characters in order to get Law points, raising their alignment.

I'm not thinking about a kingdom. but rather zones scattered throughout the map

[Ozzy123]

tl;dr

there is not enough players for different zones

[spawningmink]

PVP is toxic