Another shameless plug to my current project: Accelerated PvP. I'll list the main goals as to how it fixes the problems with PVP. This is an active project I'm working on and the server is up RIGHT NOW.
1) Slow progression - The slow nature of 7dtd does not do well for PvP. The amount of time it takes to become relevant in an established server is a huge investment. Because of this, the problems below just get out of control.
2.) Slow resource gathering - It takes a long time to gather resources. Once you have gathered a good amount, it can all be taken away easily and while you are offline, this discourages offline raiding, but many servers tend to just make offline raiding hard, and by hard I mean an 8 hour exercise of holding the left mouse button. This is not fun. This is absurd.
3.) Slow base construction - You build a base, it's concreted with a spike pit surrounding it. You spent the better part of three days building it and dammit it's not going down while you are logged. Hell, with most servers, your base isn't going down even when you are online.
I'm going to pause here for a bit. Because of the large investment of time and energy, most admins (rightfully so) ACTIVELY DISCOURAGE VIA POLICY base raiding and griefing. In my opinion, those two things are some of the most fun things there are to the game.
4.) Way too much space. People use stealth and distance to help protect their base. Basically, they are saying they don't actually want to participate in PvP, because they hide their base away from the action, reasonably so because of the above mentioned costs to getting a foot in the door.
I could go on about the problems of PvP, but let's talk about the solutions I've already implemented. (They need testing. Please test them)
Fast progression. I restarted the server yesterday (and will again on Friday). Within a few hours of playing I was pushing level 50, with 10 skill points per level I had maxed out blunt weapons and scavenging, quicker crafting, etc.)
Great loot. I broke into a gunsafe and immediately had a pistol, hunting rifle, and a shotgun. If it came down to it, I could do some damage in a PvP scenario. Zombies are plentiful and also drop good loot. Lots of airdrops and treasure quests. Loot does not respawn in normal containers though.
Fast resource collection and cheap base cost. Each night, to protect from the hordes, I set up a small base with wooden/scrap walls with spikes around. It was cheap to do and I got a lot of levels for it. Abandoned it as I moved on. By the end of my session, I had built a pit base in a cave with some zombie collection spikes. It was decent, but I still had some trouble with the horde literally raining down on me.
Super small map. at 1500 radius, there is no where to run or hide. You wanted PvP, you got it.
Short map life cycle. Because of the frenzied nature of progression, maps will probably only last a week or two.
Weak blocks, decent online blocks, invincible offline blocks. - At 25% durability, blocks go down fast. They go up just as fast. Controlled blocks are at x8 (Effective x2), and control blocks can be made easily from scrap. Control blocks themselves aren't durable. 24 hour offline durability, then your base is vulnerable. Don't like it? Too bad, the sessions only last a week or two. Besides, you have levels, graba weapon and take someone's base.
That's the main goal of this project, Accelerated PvP.
The reasond PvP sucks right now is because base capturing is the best but it takes WAY TOO MUCH time to build and invest in a base right now, so we make it nearly impossible to take a base, which ruins the point. If you want to try this mod out (It's only xml), just Search for Accelerated PvP. Server is dead right now so if you are by yourself you will have to deal with aggressive zombies. You can still check out the xml mods and see how quick it is to progress.
Enjoy!
