Originally Posted by
ifireallymust
So glad I'm not a developer.
Well, scrap the npcs and have skills and resources only usable in areas where no safe zones exist. Make those skills and resources revolve around speeding up construction of both offensive and defensive architecture and equipment and of anything that can be destroyed in a siege. That was the heart of the idea the guy I was talking with the other day had anyway. Make it hurt less to lose what you've built, and more people will be willing to risk it, especially since they'll come out ahead, unless they live in a bad neighborhood or irritate other players, since it will be costly to attack them.
Pack animals would be nice to have, too, and if pvers want those, they should at least have to come into pvp zones to catch them. It might take a few tries, but eventually they'd succeed. I don't see what the harm in that would be, since we're already not safe outside our tribal area. It's just a matter of a longer trip into an area that pvpers know other players are trying to reach.
Same with rare resources, if they're a bit spread out, no one will be able to guard them all of the time, so what's the harm in putting them where non-safe-zone tribes can get them a little easier than safe zone tribes can? Just don't let them park their tribal totems on top of every single one, and you're good. Maybe smaller amounts of rare resources could spawn randomly throughout the area to prevent a tribe or alliance from completely preventing everyone else access. So a big tribe could take over a large mine, and defend itself from attack, but what is mined there can also be found in small quanties elsewhere in the no safe zone area.
But this doesn't resolve the issue of people logging in from a few days off only to find everything they've built destroyed. If there is no protection for offline players, some pvpers will only attack when they know someone isn't online to defend. It also won't stop a giant zerg from running roughshod over the entire no safe zone areas, but at least when one does, it won't be as terrible as it would be at the current pace of building.