I know the developers have said that they want to make PvP meaningful, not just something people do for no reason. As a red in almost every game, it really bothers me that for every 1 decent red player there are 10 drooling morons who want nothing more than to just kill everyone for no reason. A big problem with this is that there aren't really any meaningful consequences for death. If players really had to worry about death I think the only players that would be 'evil' for any length of time are the fairly good red players.
Someone in IRC mentioned permadeath could be a consequence. I'm not really opposed to that, but it is a very harsh penalty. I do also recognize that lag spikes and other things out of the control of the player do happen, so it might be a bit too rough of a thing to simply kill them off immediately.
I was thinking of tying this in with the aging system. Since players all age, I think it would be good if 'evil' players aged a number of years on their character. I'm not sure what the revival system is in this game. Maybe they make use of pre-Apocalypse 'cloning' technology, and the evil mindset of the player causes the player to age at a greatly accelerated rate for a certain amount of time.
I know that idea might sound a little silly, but science has shown that people with 'positive' life outlooks do tend to improve better as compared to 'negative' outlooks. I'm guessing it has something to do with stress/depression, which both do affect your health negatively. In any case, I guess the 'lore' reason could be worked on, but what do you think of this idea?
What ideas do you have on 'evil' penalties?