"The PvP Update"

Block damage should be established with a more stable leveling arc on time to destroy. I think it's worth looking at reducing the effectiveness of steel upgrades to reinforced concrete. It's a huge difference. It's tough to balance with the mining perk. I really think some experimental data is required to figure out how it's behaving. On a 64x server it takes us 18 minutes to open a fully upgraded vault door with TWO people hitting it sequentially with 600 quality steel pickaxes, 5/5 miner 69er, 100 mining for reference. Maybe that's a good time for a 64x server, but it's basically not worth it until you're leveled and perk'd out. I don't care to find out what it would be for a level 1 player on that durability setting. I'm certain it's too long.

Need something to give you wellness faster or nerf the wellness multiplier reduction on the higher levels. It takes weeks to get to max wellness now since you have to get it from food. Dying and losing 10 wellness is painful. Getting into firefights/battles is more infrequent because people don't want to lose 40 or 50 wellness in one evening. Antibiotics was totally fine when they gave wellness. The moldy bread to make it was somewhat rare, so you couldn't make millions of them. Some servers added a custom recipe so that sham sandwiches could be crafted into moldy bread, which was a logical extension for boosting the availability further (good touch). Personally, I like World of Anarchy's solution which was to add a canabis plant. You have to loot the seeds, they give 1 leaf, and craft it into a joint with some paper. The plants take 12 real time hours to bloom and cultivate. They yield about 3-4 wellness over time when you smoke the joint. (he's dutch - it's legal there).

Auger durability and damage rate is too low. It's gains over using a steel pickaxe aren't commensurate over the auger's rarity. Auger parts need to be a little more common.

Airdrops are a good thing. They bring people out of their bases to converge on a common area. Higher frequency and the addition of server notifications in chat would be good. "Airdrop landing near X,Y"

Zombies should take fall damage. Base building, heat generation, and zombie defense is part of it and should remain part of the game experience. It's just we ought to be able to build a base that is mostly self sufficient with the tier 1 materials and minimal maintenance. Just don't do anything drastic and make spikes worthless.

Sound is supreme in pvp servers. Sound proximity has been completely broken with 14.6, but was good for the rest of 14. Good players turn off the music and ambient sounds entirely, then boost the game sounds really high. With a good set of headphones they can hear you 4k away banging on a car. Which is actually not far from being that unrealistic if you are familiar with living out in the country. I like that. I like that the forges don't tink anymore. That was a little too revealing, but some would disagree. I think you should hear them from further than you can now, but they used to be really bad. Like 7-8k away. Player sounds interacting with the environment should be audible from a fair distance. Otherwise you have a heck of a time finding people to fight. I can't spend enough time on this topic.

Completed weapons and military parts should be a little more common in the stores/more frequent in air drops. The rarity for even getting a good gun in garbage loot containers should have a better %. Killing cops to get level 100 sawed off shotguns really sucks. But magically if you're higher level, they give better guns. Balance with extreme prejudice goes to the high level player/or team's designated looter. I find myself ignoring all loot containers that aren't in a store, air drop, or military cache after getting to a decent level. The scavenging part of the game just dies.

A somewhat pvp specific contentious issue is destruction of store loot containers. Some hate it and consider it griefing, and some feel it is is fair game. The fair gamers say this adds an ability for denying your competition resources which makes you stronger. If you value them, then you should protect them. I agree mostly, but there are some items in the game that are essentially only looted from these crates which makes them too valuable to get weapon/machine parts. I think if you boost the loot table to include crap containers to have small chances to get better items, then this contention will die down. On an established PVP server (day 100) with a 10k radius, it can be quite challenging to find a store that isn't claim protected/heavily reinforced.

I'm sure I'm missing a lot of things. Some aspects change with each alpha a bit, but I tried to focus on the latest.

 
Oh. On belt drop servers a common cheap thing to do is to run with crossbow on your bar and exploding crossbow bolts. The bolts are expensive (good thing) but not losing anything of any value here allows people to have a very OP weapon at essentially no cost. Once a few good shooters figure it out, it usually kills all reason to run anything other than that. I think the explosive range should be nerfed.

Raiding with explosives should have minor gains over picking it at somewhat intensive costs. Or just drop the block damage all together, which is what most server owners do.

 
The game is constantly changing so who knows.

The massive multipliers on all skills have always been a pain to balance. Weapon skills/perks have already been nerfed to half the effect they originally had. =)

And note to self:

Auto-kicking for high ping. That solves a lot of cheat issues.

 
pvp is interesting is can launch other looks to the game.

One way to capture the flag would be agreeable.

A progression of goal so where there are goals to meet the team, winning the fastest team.

A survival mode where players have only one life, after death the players could continue their goals, but without inteferir other competitors and not entitled to the prize.

A classic team deathmatch with a deferent feature where the players would create their weapons or move to another similar following a gun master (available in Battlefield 3 and 4)

these are my ideas for now.

 
All these are great posts, but honestly, until the game can reward community building and territory gain over just 'the kill', then all the other posts here are just band aids. I like what Hal suggested above. I also like the slapping and slaying mechanism that was suggested for higher level players that. I have played on servers that give a 100% invulnerable base and ones that give nothing. Both are fun if you put your mind in the right perspective. One is a base building, alpha tribe all out war situation, where the other is a stealth like small hidden base, dispersed inventory situation. Both are very fun if you can get your mind around each style. Thanks Gazz for starting this thread. It has been sorely missing from TFP and you are now one of them. :)

 
Awesome post(s) by thorntree.

Can someone point to a game that they feel is doing PVP right other than a game that only exists to PVP. I mean a game with the elements that 7DTD esposes; survival, crafting, and 'tower defense' for lack of a better word.

I'd love to PVP in this game but it's the griefing and the steep curve whenever you start from behind that kills it. Short of 'gentlemens' agreements' what are some ways to keep it competitive without the sort of all-or-nothing blow outs?

It seems a little contrived but I think something where different factions or clans on a server must give notice to the clan whose base they wish to raid. A sort of 24 or 48 hour "we are coming for you!" After all, what is the fun of a raid when there is nobody home to defend it? That's just griefing pure and simple. Plus I like the notion of offense vs. defense. None of that would stop PvP outside of a declared raid; anything is fair game outside of the bases with the claim blocks or whatever.

But ultimately such rules only prove that someone will work to find a way to circumvent it and so the server admin is the final arbiter.

 
Awesome post(s) by thorntree.
Can someone point to a game that they feel is doing PVP right other than a game that only exists to PVP. I mean a game with the elements that 7DTD esposes; survival, crafting, and 'tower defense' for lack of a better word.

I'd love to PVP in this game but it's the griefing and the steep curve whenever you start from behind that kills it. Short of 'gentlemens' agreements' what are some ways to keep it competitive without the sort of all-or-nothing blow outs?

It seems a little contrived but I think something where different factions or clans on a server must give notice to the clan whose base they wish to raid. A sort of 24 or 48 hour "we are coming for you!" After all, what is the fun of a raid when there is nobody home to defend it? That's just griefing pure and simple. Plus I like the notion of offense vs. defense. None of that would stop PvP outside of a declared raid; anything is fair game outside of the bases with the claim blocks or whatever.

But ultimately such rules only prove that someone will work to find a way to circumvent it and so the server admin is the final arbiter.
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EVE Online does this very well by allowing the attackers to take down the defenses of a base (A huge investment in time and manpower to begin with) then towers will go into a state of invulnerability for a defined length of time in hours. At the most, a 24 or so hour period (if they are full of strontium.) This mechanism works very well in that the attacker never knows how long they will have to wait after the initial attack, and the defender has a known amount of time to rally forces or attempt to move assets before their base is laid to waste. From my experiences, EVE Online is a game with Base/empire building, but also a very robust PVP aspect.

 
There is easy solution to all this problems with base raiding:

Every base should have "claimfire" build, without it its not a base.

Claimstones need to be connected to each other (zones overlapping).

In this overlapping zones there should be "claimfire" object. There should be a limit on how much fuel this claimfire can store (lets say 24 hours). If fire is burning, connected claimstones have 999 strength, if not, server defined strength.

Once first block looses its first level hp (you can upgrade wood frame twice, each giving you 200hp i think, that makes this object loose its first level hp after destroying its first 200hp), claimstones make all blocks invul and you cannot refuel (or turn off) your claimfire until all the fuel is gone and all the blocks are repaired (you can only repair your blocks if claimfire is turned off).

So every time you login, you put on your claimfire amount of fuel you want your base to be protected with. In this time, attacker can start raiding, but has to wait for said time for base to be raidable. With some timer notice, attacker knows when to be online to finish things, but also you can be there to defend it.

As far as PvP goes, current implementation is OK, apart from hackers. Last time I got killed, I managed to kill that person back and his gun had 450 bullets in magazine for example.

 
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!

 
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!
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I can appreciate that you have modded some changes to make the pvp 'as you want it' but I and most other pvp players would actually disagree with many of your points. I wont go through them all but I did want to focus on one in particular with regard to the time investment.

Many many players in pvp really enjoy taking the time to build up a truly strong base (no matter the protection settings). As with all things in life the harder something is to achieve the more satisfying it becomes and when you finish off that super secure fortress you have been working on its genuinely a great feeling, especially when you know its safe enough that you can log off and not worry about it (too much).

A lot of players dont want fast resources or fast building, they want the opposite, they want it to be hard and when you come across that giant fortress they want to have a feeling of awe and excitement at the time taken to do it.

 
It's gonna sound crazy but I would get rid of or at least make the 7 day hordes optional.

As of the moment they only serve to punish the few players who stayed logged in, or new players who happen to join the server at the exact wrong time. Most established players will be avoiding them underground anyway as it's usually one of the best options for avoiding both zombies and players.

This is by far one of the most awkward and immersion-breaking parts of joining any server where people don't all live in one spot- and obviously a balancing issue.

 
I can appreciate that you have modded some changes to make the pvp 'as you want it' but I and most other pvp players would actually disagree with many of your points. I wont go through them all but I did want to focus on one in particular with regard to the time investment.
Many many players in pvp really enjoy taking the time to build up a truly strong base (no matter the protection settings). As with all things in life the harder something is to achieve the more satisfying it becomes and when you finish off that super secure fortress you have been working on its genuinely a great feeling, especially when you know its safe enough that you can log off and not worry about it (too much).

A lot of players dont want fast resources or fast building, they want the opposite, they want it to be hard and when you come across that giant fortress they want to have a feeling of awe and excitement at the time taken to do it.
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Everyone has their preferences, and I hope that my changes speak to at least some people (they certainly speak to me.). I love griefing and sacking bases, and some of the most fun I've had in pvp in 7days is protracted base sieges. The problem is in that one of them, the assaulting team (it was 3v3) could not possibly win due to the high health of the blocks. They couldn't get in and we were just respawning in the base if we were killed. It was fun for a while but the thrill of the fight wore off when I knew we couldn't lose. I'll keep working on it and hope that some people will want to join in :)

 
I just found this thread and still need to read through all of it and the other LCB thread more carefully.

There are some interesting ideas out there and many things that would make stuff more interesting for PVP, but if I had to select one thing that would in my experience make PVP better right now, it would be to fix the broken offline claim modifier.

The boys at Ground Zero run a nice server and the rules keep most griefing in check. Most of the examples of blatant greifing from this thread (jailing the starting points, reducing a base to rumble, undermining a base, etc) would never happen on the GZ server because the players who did that simply wouldn't be allowed on anymore. However, it would make the PVP dynamic so much better if the LCB's offline modifier worked properly. I'd even be cool with it if the LCB ONLY worked while offline. That is, no LCB modifier at all when I'm online, but make it invinsible while I'm offline (or, at least, give the server admins that option again).

There isn't any skill to raiding a base while the owner is offline, but if you can do it while they are online then you have got some skills. Unless TFP decide to completely overhaul the PVP mechanics then a lot of the ideas in this thread may just be pie-in-the-sky. If you join a pub, expect it to not be a great PVP experience. But a few minor tweaks can make 7DTD a fun PVP experience on private servers where that server's rules are clearly defined and enforced.

Admittedly, I'm more of the type that figures you have to have another PLAYER if you are doing PVP. I don't think it is PVP if it is you against another guy's base.

Just my take.

 
I will start with player progression and experience. My opinion is there shouldn't be any. Make all players maxed out on all skills and perks from day one and remove experience from the game. With that aspect of the game removed everyone will be relatively equal and there will be no insurmountable differences in strength between someone who has been on the server for weeks and a new player who just signed on. PvP worked so much better before the game introduced all the experience, skills, and perks.

 
Pimp fight!

EDIT: Sorry, that wasn't very productive of me.

I agree about no grinding in a PvP environment. Safe places should be kept to a minimum and any guards should deal with problems quickly (so no running around after the people breaking the rules, just kill them outright).

EDIT2: Also, I think instead of maxing everyone out in everything, give them a certain number of points and let them pick the perks they want without being able to max everything. Then people can differentiate themselves at least a little and try out spec each other.

 
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Imho making a good PvP mode (or a game in general) is like voting in a new law, so you have to think about how people can exploit your system.

*smartass mode off* :)

I think we need

- truly random player spawns to prevent spawn point preparations

- a 3. spawn option for bedrolls because you can abuse the current system

- less noisy player sounds

- fixes for certain bugs (e.g., there is a bug that allows players to see and shoot through the terrain. The claim block can be abused to find protected areas. The minibike frame can be used to build an indestructible wall afaik.)

- protection for newbies

 
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Air drops: I think the loot inside should be more about short term advantages (so buffs, healing, that sort of thing). Also, the time it takes to loot them should be increased either by making the time to open longer or make you have bust it open to get the contents. That way it can get be a bit more competitive to get what's inside.

Zombies: They need to be there but... I can see them being used as a weapon. Back in the early EverQuest days there was a concept of "trains". Where people would get the attention of monsters and as more would tag along the player would flee. Soon there were a whole lot of monsters following the player until they exited the zone (bad news for anyone else there or just coming in) or they died. Sometimes people would use the trains to their advantage by dragging a bunch of monsters into the midst of someone else's fight, nearly guaranteeing they would die. So I can see someone doing the same sort of thing with a horde or just a large group of zombies. Good thing or bad thing? Hard to tell.

 
So I can see someone doing the same sort of thing with a horde or just a large group of zombies. Good thing or bad thing? Hard to tell.
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It's hard to prevent anyway (how would you stop players from using this tatics?) and it makes sense. So don't remove it.

 
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How would the game have to be balanced to make PVP viable?Broad strokes.

I'm no PVP player so while I can see the balance issues in the abstract, I am more of a neutral observer here. =)

Sound

As mentioned here recently it's really hard to sneak up on someone if your food level drops below 50% or so and your character has an orgasm that can be heard from half a kilometer away.

Hiding yourself or your base is equally hard for the same reason.

Keep in mind that the notion of hiding being the only defense can not be the base for everything. It is one aspect!

If it can be made sufficiently hard to break into bases, hiding would not be the only viable solution.

Offline raiding / griefing vs PVP

PVP in theory:

2-5 players have an exciting time of hide and seek or assaulting someone's base.
PVP in practice:

You log in and your base has been reduced to rubble.
Every. Single. Day.

Ark has turrets and NPC (dinosaurs) and 99% of the PVP in that game looks like... you log in and your base has been reduced to rubble (and all your dinos killed).

Can NPC and turrets defend a base while the player is offline or will having turrets and NPC only increase the impact of griefing on the victim because he also has to rebuild turrets and find/hire NPC again?

I talked to MM about this and he does not consider a separate (and working) offline claim protection a necessity. Is that so?

(previous claim stone topic: here)

On the 4 or 5 PVP servers were I asked no one even knew if "offline claim protection" actually worked. (as in having a higher x than when online)

Loss and recovering from it

Okay, so you got raided and you respawn around the central hub in your undies.

Spawn spots are static so on an "established" PVP server with an "alpha tribe" you now log into the steel cages built around all the newbie spawn spots and would have to knock down the wall with your fists.

With only 2 layers you have to destroy 4 blocks for a total of 13 RL hours of punching.

You would of course starve to death and respawn in a different cage several times before you had a chance to get out of one such spot.

Oh, and before you laugh it off as a "no one would ever do that"... I logged into a PVP server, looked up, and saw this:



Land claimed, naturally. I am not making this up...

But let's say you are dedicated enough to this particular server to not quit but instead invest a few RL days to get back out of the starter cages and that the alpha tribe is terribly neglect about maintaining their cages.

Ideally you have caches of gear hidden away but let's say they were found as well.

On a PVE server where people build awesome bases instead of trying to cave each other's heads in the resource balance works well enough.

On a PVP server... should you harvest resources faster?

I'm not talking about digging faster - but instead of getting 25 rocks and 2 iron from a stone block you might get 100 rocks and 8 iron from the same block.

If fighting players is supposed to be a substantial part of the game, base building / repair and resource harvesting needs to adjust.

Explosives / Rockets

On a PVE server, some players use TNT for mining / excavating which is no problem whatsoever.

I tried asking around on a few PVP servers today but that was a complete waste of time. No one knows ♥♥♥♥. I got a few guesses and opinions and zero usable data.

On a PVP server... how well do rockets and dynamite work?

How many of each do you need to get through an iron / vault door or open a chest?

Does it matter which block (upper/lower/before) of a door you target?

Time management

How long in RL units should it take to knock down a steel block or door?

Right now tools and skills are really powerful.

Near 400 DPS for a steel pick so with a x8 modifier, a steel block lasts 5 minutes, a vault door 8 minutes.

Does anyone actually do that or does everyone use explosives? (see above)

Blocks like "stone" have a

<property name="LPHardnessScale" value="2" />

If it works as designed (did not test it myself) then a stone block only has a 2x claim modifier instead of whatever the server setting is.

With a steel pick that's two hits tops so the most obvious way to attack someone's base would be to undermine it and let it collapse instead of going through the much harder front door.

Or am I missing something?

Naturally that doesn't count bedrock bases but should it be a requirement to build at bedrock to avoid this cheesy tactic?
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Ok Gazz you took the time to post as a neutral observer, allow me to respond as a partisan one

1. Sound

Sound has changed dramatically over the last few Alphas. You used to be able to hear an auger from at least 3-4k away, which was silly, likewise you could hear a forge clinking away from a good 1k+. Now its hard to hear anything over 100m away so some thing such as gunshots and augers probably need their audible range increasing. On your example of trying to sneak up on someone with 50% food i suggest you are not approaching this with the right mindset (as a non pvp player). PvP players take this into account and smart ones try to stay near full all the time, If i see another player or a base then i make sure i wont be making hungry noises before approaching them.

2. Offline raiding

Anti raid base design is an art, it takes time to learn all the tricks to making your loot safe. At this point in the game I never get successfully raided even when offline a couple of days. I am not going to give away all my hard earned experience here but suffice to say, if you get raided and they get into your loot room (this topic doesn't include hackers, different topic) then YOU made an error in your design or you play on a server with protection VERY low.

Sub topic - Griefing. If you play on a server that allows griefing, and all the popular PVP servers state their rules, then you know what to expect. Note however that if your claims are well hidden/protected and you have some concrete/steel fortress that no-one, and i do mean no-one, is going to take that base down because the time investment is simply insane and the reward is at best minimal. If you dont like the thought of being griefed (as defined by a particular server) then guess what, don't play on servers that allow it! personally I play on full no rules servers, anything goes I find to be good fun.

3. Recovering from a raid

Quick point here on your 'static' spawn points, I have never, in the ridiculous playtime I have, ever spawned into a player made cage or know anyone who has. I did once appear on a couple of spikes, once.

Any smart player on a pvp server has a recovery stash, personally I will have 2-4 and they will have everything you could ever want to get back up and running straight away, I have not need them for a looong time but they are there, just in case. When and how you hide them is the trick of it but I leave that up to you. the point is that, as the saying goes, to put all your eggs in one basket is really stupid.

4. Explosives - currently non viable as raiding tools, not much else to say except that if you only have one claim and they get it out them tnt becomes extremely viable for making a big smoking hole where someones base used to be :)

5. Time management

I am afraid your example of timings is irrelevant because every server has different setting, suffice to say that on, say, x32 protection, with miner 69 on level 5 and 600Q steel pickaxe it takes a LOOOOONNGGGG time to take down a triple reinforced steel door. Time management is all about your skill level+your tools level+the location of what you are hitting vs protection factor of the claims and IF you have people with you.

Your example of stone is simply wrong, its protected like anything else and still takes time to destroy.

 
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