Well, looking back, it's more likely due to an oversight or incomplete game mechanics in the early Alpha stages. There was no friend/foe filters for weapon damage. At some point it was added so you wouldn't accidentally kill your friends. It's not so much that they opened up the possibility for it, as there was no filter to prevent it.
So since a proper no friendly fire mode is in, what keeps the devs from making it the only mode? Remove all the current options to claim settings (they are not inherently safe as you said) and have only full base protection granted by them and there ya go, no PvP game anymore. Instead of making the game PvE only with a few tweaks to the system right away the devs just keep pointing out it was never intended to be PvP but at the same time leave the PvP option in.
The point I'm trying to make is that the argument that the game was meant to be X is void when in fact the game is Y.
Most children don't play games for what they are actually designed for. Hell, I would bet that almost half the people who purchased this game don't even know it's still in the early development stages. What kind of backlash should be expected exactly? It was never advertised as a PvP game. It was advertised as a survival co-op sandbox game. Hell, originally it was only intended to be single-player from
co-op
[noun, adverb koh-op; verb koh-op, koh-op]
noun
1.
a cooperative store, dwelling, program, etc.
verb (used with object), co-oped or co-opped, co-oping or co-opping.
2.
to place in a cooperative arrangement, especially to convert (an apartment or building) to a cooperative.
adjective
3.
(of a game, especially a video game) cooperative, requiring players to work together to achieve a common objective: co-op play modes; co-op multiplayer games.
Idioms
4.
go co-op, to convert to a cooperative: Our apartment building is going co-op.
I don't see anything there that deals with PvP, the PvP mentality, or purposefully killing other people.
The backlash would be all the players that won't find their particular playstyle available anymore leaving the game.
It was advertised as something it currently is not or not entirely rather. Devs can either go the route of making it what they advertised it to be or go with the flow and actually see and work with the positive side of the unintentional features of their product.
The way it is now (with PvP being an OPTION) is the best it could be, because besides some (or even many) asshats it attracts a huge variety of interesting players and offers the same variety of interesting playstyles on a variety of interesting servers.
It's largely frowned upon because the majority of "PvPer"s are just as*hats that get a kick out of screwing over people who are trying to play normally. They apparently get their giggles from causing other people actual pain because they aren't actual humans. (I'm mostly from the console side, and the player base there is a lot more toxic. I'm sure the PC gamer kids aren't that far off though. It's a damn good reason behind why PvP should have zero place in a co-op survival game.)
As is the nature with any game that has PvP, such as 7dtd, it will attract the less desirable crowd of players, but I wouldn't ever make that a reason to disable PvP, that's just lazy and unimaginative. I won't go on a rant about them, I'll say I hate those kinds of players just as much as you seem to. But first thing you shouldn't do is throw those players in the same pot with everyone else who enjoys PvP and talk about a general "PvP mentality". What about players who are mature and not toxic and have a good sense of sportsmanship? People who can play fair too and know not to raid that newbie's wooden hut with 2 stone axes and a bundle of plant fiber in a measly chest? People who actually will help out a player who had just that happen to them? People who enjoy the additional challenge of human unpredictability (not sure if that's a word lol). People like me who like the moral implications and decisions that such a scenario offers over the plain grinding mats and slaying dumb as hell Zs (Which I love just as much, btw).
And to respond to the dictionary copypaste, Nr. 3 specifically: There is also Co-op in working together with a team against another team for example. The common objective being either seizing their resources, or defending against a very tyrannic group (read asshats). None of the definition gets lost with PvP enabled really, just more objectives added. IMO both the devs and their forum mods as well as some members of this community including you should throw out this concept of a dichotomy "PVE vs PVP".
Oh and the same argument goes for the "Originally it was supposed to be only single player". Why did they add multiplayer then? Probably because they wanted to try it out, or maybe because many players asked for it. And it made the game tons better because it added new ways to play.
