But for the love of fuck, remove this shitty debuff from the game in its entirety.
I get why it was implemented but it's just a shit idea in general. It's had countless exploits centered around it in the past, I have no doubt it will have more in the future. It's still to this day exploitable as fuck in other more 'intended' ways.
PvP near structures with gates have been watered down to enemies just dancing back and forth between their silly magical 'I'm 100% safe past this line and if you chase me, you die' zone.
Haven & Hearth has always had a uncertainty too it in regards to meeting players, be it for trade, having somebody join your village or just seeing them out in the open. Having this system in place which strips outsiders of all their power to act is just a cop out honestly. I'd even put money on it being one of the contributing factors for people leaving later on into the world (though by no means the only reason), because once everybody has their fortresses set up, the only time anything ever happens is when people get caught away from their bases.
The fearmongering about the lack of villager debuff causing 'trade to cease' is just hilariously misguided. Trade took place before this things inclusion and it would continue without it. Nobodies going to be stupid enough to wander into those huge trading hubs causing shit. That is a death sentence unless they have an army, and you better believe the owners of said trade hubs have armies/allies of their own.
Look, there's already significant risk of chasing somebody through their gate or attacking somebody in their home turf, the biggest risk of all is the most obvious one, which is being locked in. You attack somebody then you now have to sit there for a whole hour, trapped with literally nowhere to escape to thanks to the red handed / outlaw debuff, plenty of time for you to get swarmed by reinforcements from the opposition.
Visitor debuff is illogical and negatively impacts the game in a plethora of ways for very little benefit. There's been plenty of other systems that have been tried and then scrapped, we've had to deal with visitor debuff for literal years now, let's be rid of this shit.
Tell you what, get rid of Visitor Debuff for 1 world. Just 1 fucking world, and if you truly believe that its absence has been missed then simply reintroduce it. I won't even bother bitching about it again. I believe the benefits will be immediately visible, especially during the mid game were people have their villages completely built.
I want to once again be able to weigh the pros and cons of either allowing somebody into my base or attacking somebody in theirs rather than the game just choosing for me by saying 'nah fuck you, you walked through the gate so fuck what you want, you're going to behave like a good boy like it or not'. There's no fucking tension.
EDIT -
This sounds like the perfect balanced solution IMO -
Jackwolf wrote:Alternative suggestion would be adding new types of gates; merchant or visitor or what have you. These cost more materials than regular gates, as well as dreams (or other hearth magic esque items, to give a reason why neener-neener can't do anything past this line)
I'd prefer this option over the other, providing the gate actually cost a significant amount of materials so that
A. People couldn't just substitute every regular gate for one of these
and
B. People couldn't just use them to make proxy pali's without significant investment, maybe put some other restriction on it like 'needs to be on a village claim to set these types of gates'
Then make regular gates have no such debuff. If you go through a regular gate you can do whatever the fuck you like as per usual.
This is a solid compromise, trade hubs could still be a thing (they literally would have been a thing anyway even without visitor debuff but whatever) and would be just as safe as they are today, regular gates would no longer be a straight up no no zone to cross. I'd personally be happy as fuck with that change. Also as minor as it is, I like the inclusion of having some magic item be incorporated to justify the whole 'you can't get up to any funny business if you pass this shit' thing.