I would be fine with a flagging system that allowed you to defend yourself. However, I think it would probably need to go both ways, though. If a player goes to another tribe's land & collects any resource (getting the "you are encroaching..." message), then that player gets flagged as a free kill & can't defend themselves.
However, if that same player minds his/her manners & doesn't encroach on the tribe's resources then they should be granted the right to defend themselves if attacked unprovoked.
I would actually take that a step further, for the sake of fun. Why not enable something like guest rights & hospitality? If a tribe kills a visitor unprovoked, then the God's deem them beyond evil...removing all their safe zone protections for a limited time!
And there it is. It's all about provocation. He who provokes must reap what their actions sow. Not 100% realistic, but a good compromise for gamesmanship in my opinion.
I am sorely disappointed to see all the apologists in this thread. This is clearly a broken mechanic.
The attacker must be flagged to the victim. No one should be able to kill another player with 0 risk, the thought of it is absurdly imbalanced and unfair. Never have I seen a mechanic such as this in my long MMO career dating back to MUDs.
It discourages trespassing, plain and simple. Changing it will only encourage idiots to come waltzing into another tribe's safe zone for the sole purpose of pissing off that tribe and getting them to attack.
No one is forcing you to trespass and no one is forcing the tribe to attack trespassers.
Yup,
tho who say this mechanic is bad as it is now.. and those who see the flagging system working but neeeded a chance were the person visiting needs to do a hostile action first. (attack or stealing)
How about I come to you. and start to use the chicken sound animation for 10 hours , or just call you some, run around jumping in front of you.
how about me going to sit right on the spot you are building a wall and moat. ? I can sit anywhere I like, no rules against that. and people are that crazy to keep it up for hours upon hours finding it fun.
As I said on page one, there plenty of reasons why this is now in place and no doubt there will be a better system in place at some point, but specially for the start of the game this is needed.
The only issue i have with the safe zones right now is just the notification that you're in one...
yes you get the little bit of text when you walk in, after that, you're kinda guessing ('did i leave it and miss the text?)
I know it's a sandbox and all that, but a little bit of UI intuitive features would be huge...namely:
A Compass with a text bar noting the current zone you're in...this would be HUGE. We already have the grid coords ticking, which you can use once you get the hang of it...but a compass...MY KINGDOM FOR A COMPASS.
so yeah. Seeing that i'm in someone elses house would be nice...so when you're hauling ass out of there you know definitely when it's safe to fight back (as opposed to 'did i miss the little white text?...i should be out of it by now...')
Hmmm, there are currently scenarios where the griefing you suggested is still possible even under the current rule set. What is to stop a player who wants to be a nuisance from doing so? As long as they're not evil aligned, they can just keep respawning to make their chicken sounds & standing in the way of structure building. Even killing them won't help unless Jordi implements a "move corpse" command. Asshats are always going to find a way to be asshats if they are truly committed their asshattery.
Imagine that on a large scale...a tribe of 100 nekkid peeps that chicken corpse camp Hopi for hours on end. With such short respawn timers, doubtless there would be clucking chickens up & running around non-stop. It would take some serious commitment, but the youtube out-takes would be hilarious.