My opinions on PvP (forced and otherwise)

I am creating this thread largely with the intent of linking to it in other discussions. There is a large and divided community here and I want to make sure people are informed about the various mentalities and reasons for playing this potentially-great game.

Before you post a response, PLEASE read all the other posts. This thread itself was designed to reduce the repetition of arguments and flame wars.

Disclaimers/Definitions/Miscellany
Boilerplate out of the way? Let's get started with some basics:
1) I do not, nor have I ever believed that PvP is an inherently bad thing. The desire to test your reflexes and in-game knowledge against other humans, as opposed to limited AI, is a perfectly natural human behaviour. To deny that fact is to be ignorant of gaming culture, gaming history, and general history. The desire to do so in Starbound only indicates that it is one of the pleasures you wish to derive from Chucklefish's efforts.
2) Not liking PvP does not make you a wimp, a wuss, a sore-loser, a bad player, a casual player, or any other of the many harmful stereotypes and labels thrown around. It simply means you wish to explore other aspects of the gaming world, such as sense pleasure, cooperative play, or narrative delivery methods. Starbound has been advertised as "a story within a sandbox." Why can't the story be a person's primary point of interest?
3) Desiring the opportunity to destroy another person's artistic efforts or to thoroughly squash them through the combat engine without their consent, purely for the reasons of ruining others' fun, does make you a griefer. Griefers are bad people and, if you are one, you should be ashamed of yourself.
4) There is a gap between the "honorable" PvPers (those who only attack consenting players or for PvP revenge/vengeance) and griefers (those who attack to ruin other people's fun). This gap is filled by the people who will attack non-consenting players because they personally enjoy the combat/thrill/whatever. From the eyes of a non-PvPer, there is no distinction between those in this "gap" and griefers, but I'm not a psychologist, so I'd rather not judge them.
5) If the thought of another player reaching the same tech- and sector-progression as you, but with less effort, makes you angry, annoyed, what-have-you, then you actually have some psychological issues. I recommend a therapist or professional sports.

Some Terminology
At various points throughout my posts, I will be using some of the following terms. I will make an effort to re-edit my posts so as to make the usage more consistent in the future.
"Soldier" or "Warrior": An "honorable" PvPer who only attacks consenting players or for the purposes of PvP revenge/vengeance (griefers aren't likely to consent to a retaliatory curb-stomp, but they deserve it.)
"Civilian": Any of a number of types of players who either do not enjoy PvP or do not wish to engage in it in Starbound.
"Ronin": The gap between soldiers and griefers, discussed in point 4 above.
"PvP-open" or "open-PvP": A setting (frequently for a section of the world or a specific server) which indicates that all players are attackable. This is the only situation in which ronin can appear.

Arguments and Counter-Arguments
Are we clear on that? Okay. Now, let's talk about the most often repeated arguments and counter-arguments over forced PvP (some of these are pulled from previous posts on other threads, some from my mighty brain/ass):
Argument I) "There are nigh-infinite planets in Sector X. The chances of running into another player randomly are almost zero. Just don't party with strangers."
Counter-Argument I) Public co-op servers are formed because some people like anonymous cooperation with strangers. Determining whether someone is a griefer or not based just on text chat is impossible. Forcing those co-op servers to have PvP in all of the end-game content can cause paranoia. Asking random players to help you defeat a difficult monster is no longer a viable option because those players could turn out to be griefers who will drop party as soon as they find you and kill you.
A II) "This is probably just some alpha-testing for PvP." or "You're worrying too much."
CA II) My personal objection to (A I) and (A II) (and (A III) to some extent) is not due to the direct effects it will have on my playtime (I never play online multiplayer, so I wouldn't be affected at all). Rather, my objection to it is due to a worrying trend I see in the features. Tech progression being gated by difficult bosses, linear progression of tech, pixel loss on death (which punishes crafters and builders who need those pixels), lack of a "Peaceful" mode (a la Minecraft), and now forced PvP. These features lead me to the hypothesis that Chucklefish is aiming their game at challenge hounds. If they threw us builders and crafters a bone (e.g. Peaceful mode or no-pixel-loss mode), then I wouldn't worry as much.
A III) "Just don't go into Sector X. There are still 4 other sectors to explore."
CA III) The reason that a lot of us non-PvPers want to go into sector X without hassle is that it currently houses almost half of the content. Getting some of the high-level ores is near-impossible without going into that sector, and crafting the beds/doors/lamps/what-have-you without those ores is impossible. If/when Chucklefish fills in the rest of the sectors and sector X becomes a duplicate of sector X-1 without any new content, I will concede this point. Otherwise, avoiding sector X forces us to forgo the part of the game we enjoy: building and crafting cool stuff.
A and CA IV) See second post.

Concessions
Finally, do not mistake "I object to forced PvP" for "I object to all PvP." I actually think adding a PvP option (per-character, per-server, or per-duel) is a good idea. It will broaden the user base and bring more money for Chucklefish. I object to forced PvP (in any form) for the simple reason that it narrows the prospective user base, thus reducing the success of the game.

Are we good? Good. Please tone down the anger.

P.S. If you have an opinion which has not been stated in this wall-o-text, you are quite welcome to post it below. Just make sure you read everyone else's posts first, so you're not repeating an opinion. Thank you.

P.P.S.S. If all you're going to say is "I agree" or "I disagree", please go to another thread. I'd like this to remain as a thread for pro- and anti-forced PvP, not devolve into a pseudo-poll. If you'd like to vote in a poll, try this one:
http://community.playstarbound.com/...xt-patch-commits-force-pvp-in-x-sector.66276/


EDIT: Added section titles for easy reference and added counter-argument (III).
EDIT2: Added Argument/Counter-Argument (IV) as a separate post.
EDIT3: It was pointed out by D-16 that my original definition for "griefer" actually included two types of players and was a sloppy misread of the official definition. I've corrected the definition and added a note about the players in the middle. I also slightly modified the wording of the section so that I no longer imply these are facts. Better organization of arguments and counter-arguments.

 

I wanted this Argument/Counter-Argument as a separate post as it's not likely to come up often. I'll give the two original posts and then follow those with my summaries of both argument and counter-argument.
(IV) The argument, graciously provided by Serpensio:

My counter-argument post:

Argument Summary: Part 1 is that removing civilians from the mix (by giving servers a "PvP on/off" option) will redirect the griefers entirely at the warriors, lessening the warriors' enjoyment of the game by forcing them into unfair or nonconsensual fights.
Part 2 is that having the civilians in the mix provides very different dynamics than a PvP-only world. He provides the examples of civilization competition and invasions. My own hypotheses as I ponder this include hiring soldiers as guards, and retaliation strikes against griefers on behalf of the miners/crafters.

Counter-Argument Summary: Part 1 can be interpreted as saying that the soldiers essentially want the civilians around as alternate targets for the griefers, to take the edge off. This probably isn't what he meant, but it can (and will) be interpreted that way.
Part 2 is faulty only in that there were no given examples of this dynamic working in real games. My retort was essentially that all the non-PvPers will abandon (in one way or another) the PvP-only game in favor of the many, many, many other games out there which don't have that downside.

One last thing of note: Our world, the one we live in, is entirely PvP-open. If you really wanted to, you could grab a knife and stab your neighbour (please don't do this). The only things stopping you are (a) there probably is no reason to stab your neighbour and (b) you will face retaliation at the hands of the other "players" (your neighbour, other neighbours, the police, gods). The Geneva Convention (and other such rulings) is essentially an attempt to establish non-PvP areas (non-military targets) and proper PvP honour (don't use nerve gas, you asshats). I can pretty much guarantee you that, given the option, 80-95% of humans would choose to be completely free of (permanently damaging) PvP in the real world. This has nothing to do with PvP in games, but I thought it an interesting notion.

Again, thank you to Serpensio for broadening my knowledge.

 

I'm very sorry for even posting, as I only skimmed what you read, but I noted two things: Your four original facts are opinions, and two you should look at World of Warcraft as an example of forced pvp working.

 

I'll just go ahead and add that Sector X is meant to be Sector [todo]. It's just there to hold Tiers 5-10 in a sloppy pile until they're ready to be separated into neat tiers. Sector X is not supposed to be a wild frontier of war unless the server owners want it to be.

 

while i agree with you in general, and for the very same reasons, you have made a statement that i disagree with wholeheartedly.

bold, italicized emphasis mine.

you see, unlike you, i consider myself to be a pvp player in most games that allow it. because your statement that i take issue with was not specific to starbound, i shall give you a situation where unconsensual pvp was a very fun thing.

a very long time ago, a game called Ultima Online handled pvp in perhaps the best manner i have seen (but then threw it all away some years later, but that is not related to the point). they had a "justice" system. newly generated players (and those who do not meet the following conditions) had blue names. doing a "negative" action to a "blue" (stealing, attacking, etc) caused you to degenerate to "criminal" status, for a limited time. if this act occurred within the borders of a town, anyone could summon the town guards to instantly kill the offender by saying the word "guards" ingame (and any NPC who witnessed a crime would do so automatically). in the wider world, greys could be attacked by anyone with no risk of going grey yourself.

if a blue died to an unprovoked attack, he had the option of reporting the offender as a murderer. after 5 such reports, the offender's name became red. they were then a murderer. reds could be attacked by anyone with no justice implications, and furthermore, if they entered town limits, a call to the guards resulted in their instant demise.

now that you know the justice system, let me explain how it was fun. UO (at the time) was very much like starbound in that it was a big sandbox. there were no quests, your only goals are those you set for yourself. you didnt have to fight anything to be "successful". many people enjoyed being crafters and merchants. the catch of it is, in order to craft, resources must be gathered, and you never knew if you would all of a sudden be running from a gang of murderers, or if that guy choping trees a screen over would get a wild hair and decide chopping you would be more fun. granted, i was/am a PVP guy, so in those cases, i'd quickly switch to my fighting character and have many a battle, but sometimes i wasent in the mood. i'd have to find ways to hide and escape. the hiding and escaping was also quite fun for me, but i guess that could be written off as my normal PVP enjoyment, because i was still competing against other players.

another, emergent facet of gameplay came from newer characters without fast travel options paying for an escort to someplace or another. i also ended up joining a guild of other PVP minded players, but instead of being murderers, we hunted murderers down (the term at the time was PKK, player killer killer) because UO had a large total area where player housing could be places, player villages became a thing, and they had conflicts as well, and that was also quite fun.

i also eventually had a red of my own. sometimes i would attack defenseless resource gathering types for the sole purpose of them raising a mob to deal with me after they respawned. oftentimes this lead to very fun battles with all sorts of great things happening (of note, sometimes a member of the lynch mobs raised to deal with me would make some sort of mistake and go grey, and the mob would descend on him almost instantly)



so now we come to the TL;DR version: unconsensual PVP is not always griefing. sometimes it is just a tool used to initiate PVP as well as build a story around it. it's been close to twenty years, and i can still remember some really awesome times in UO that started with one player attacking another who did not want to be attacked.

now, as to starbound. i think a si,milar system could work very well here. build a village, give players the option to declare allegiance to it, and the village leaders to set the "laws". have what guards and static defenses the village has deal with lawbreakers.

 

Eh. I never did like forced PVP, and I seriously doubt I ever will. That is just my opinion. I don't mind PVP in general, but I want to also have the choice to engage it or not. What is fun for one person could be considered nightmarish to another.

 

Unfortunately, that demands a response, which makes it even more likely that this thread will get off-topic and/or spiral into the mire that is the other pro-PvP/anti-PvP thread. Oh well.

1) "Facts" 1 and 3 are actually facts. Fact 1 is a statement and fact that I have an opinion which is not contrary to PvP. Yes, the wording could be clarified a bit, but it is, technically, a fact. Fact 3 is a definition. Try looking up "griefer." I'm sure you'll find a similar definition to the one I've given. (The "griefers are bad people" is an opinion.)
Fact 2 is a bit muddied by the first sentence in it being a suggestion. The rest of it is the simple fact that some people enjoy games differently. Fact 4 is an observance of human behaviour and a summarization of several articles I have read on the psychological implications of griefing, in both games and real life. No, it may not be a "FACT" fact, but it's still grounded in science, as opposed to pure opinion.
Hooray for technicalities. Defending my word choice is not relevant to the discussion. In the future, please consider whether accusing another person of using "fact" incorrectly will actually help the discussion, or is simply an anal-retentive need to point out small mistakes in the posts of others. Civility and focus are key.
2) World of Warcraft has consenting duels in the non-PvP servers. There's a huge difference between consenting duels and PvP-open. I may be ignorant of a lot of things, but spending any significant amount of time on the Internet will expose you to WoW's mechanics.


For everyone else who has posted while I've been typing up this response: It is midnight here and I have to wake up at 5am for work. I'll try to get to your posts during my lunch break or after work. Thank you for your patience.
(If anyone else wants to handle responses to those posts, feel free to do so, as long as you maintain the civility and even-temper that I was hoping this thread would bring to the PvP discussion. Tempers flaring helps no one.)

 

Woahhh. Starbound IS the same as WOW.

The thing is Starbound is not Ultima. Forced PVP worked in this case because the game (back then) had mechanics built around it Starbound does not.

 

of note, world of warcraft does not (at the time i quit playing, before the first expansion) have forced or open PVP. pvp is restricted to certain zones, and you must flag yourself for pvp for a large area of the game's area. also, i assume there are still non-pvp servers?

forced pvp should be taken to mean "you are flagged for pvp all of the time". the definition works for starbound, because sector x is currently ~60% of the game (assuming sector x is [TODO] sector, 10 total sectors, and alpha through delta are nominaly "complete") and also it is not toggleable by any option or server flag.

if memory serves, contested zones in WoW made up ~20-30% available content. dont forget, instances count as content!

first results i got were:

- urbandictionary

- dictionary.com
PVP in a PVP marked zone in not unexpected, nor is it unintentional. that is not griefing. attacking someone who does not want to be attacked could be irritating, but it is hardly harassment. again, i disagree with this change for starbound, and for the very same reasons you do, but let's not dilute the term "griefing".

i see you missed an important line.

 

True, but he ended his post by suggesting that those very mechanics be added to Starbound.


Also, I could take or leave forced PvP, but optional PvP is awful. It's boring, rote, non-emergent, and overall terrible. Killing other players in arena/warzone/pre-agreed and defined situations is just as boring as fighting the AI once you get the hang of it. Players are going to do the same things every time in given situations because those things are the best things to do, and when you limit PvP to only people who want to PvP and be competitive at it, the only people playing are the ones who know how to do those things. It's like in Tera, every single time you go into a pirate bay castle battle, it's always "Everyone on south door, grab tanks and take out canons, get mid as fast as possible." Now and then you'll get someone who suggests ladders, but that means you either lose immediately or win slightly faster if the other team is awful.

Whether you win depends not upon your personal ability but upon how well your team follows the orders. The orders they get in every single other confrontation.

It's the same thing for warzones, arena battles. . . and duels are just miniature examples of the same. It's your personal ability now, but it's still the same rotation of abilities, the same attack patterns, the same movements, etc. Because you're still holding a duel in a predefined place where you know how everything works.

When you have forced PvP, it's less about making people who don't want to PvP play (which is why this should be a server toggle at the least), but about making everyone have PvP on all the time time, instead of only when they feel like it. This creates emergent gameplay. Situations like when I was playing Rift and saw a rare spawn I needed. . . and two Guardian players who were also eyeballing it. We rushed at the spawn, and then started fighting each other when it became obvious that the other team would attack whomever was foolish enough to go after the spawn first (thus leaving them distracted). Instead we had an impromptu fight then and there, no prep, no nothing. Just my warrior tank against a rogue and a cleric (I won, eventually. . . took like 15 minutes). That was fun. It was unexpected. It wasn't rote. It was emergent.

In Starbound you could, if we had a system for finding other players, easily have to defend your homestead against attacking players, possibly with the help of turrets and guards. You could get people together to build and run a city together. . . and then defend it from others who want to take the fruits of your labor.

With a personal toggle this isn't possible. That's why forced PvP is better.

However, it shouldn't be necessary on every server for all time forever. It should be a server toggle. And, further, limiting it to just the last sector leaves it, essentially, a more annoying personal toggle, anyway.

In other words, the current implementation is basically awful, however:

So I have some faith, at least, that this is a temporary situation.

 

I can't help but note that this is supposed to be a beta test and you could interpret this move as the answer to the question:"How do we test PVP if most testers are just going to turn it off or avoid it?"

I think it's harsh only if in the final product there is no actual choice in how you play if you want to complete the "main story" but given the current single player and local server options I'm not overly concerned.

 

This one was just too ripe for the plucking.
If most testers are just going to turn PvP off or avoid it, then maybe you shouldn't have PvP in the first place! More generously, maybe you should fix the undesirable, broken state of PvP before trying to get more input.

My counter-argument (II) covers this as well. The developers should have realized, either before the change or after the flood of angry posts about it, that there are a fair number of anti-PvP players here. They could have assuaged all of our fears by adding a simple phrase to the commit log: "(this is for testing mass-PvP)" or "(this is for testing PvP on a server-basis)." Instead, we now have almost 20 pages of arguments back-and-forth, with heated tempers all over the place.

Chucklefish developers? If you are reading this, please toss a short, stickied post on this forum or a news post on the main page describing why you've forced PvP on all of us. It doesn't have to be laboriously long or even reveal much about future plans. Examples:
"Forced PvP is just for testing purposes and will later be added as a server option."
"All content in Sector X will eventually be available via non-PvP means."
Do this and I will not only retract all of my arguments, I will also work to calm down the other anti-PvPers and encourage them to wait it out.

I've already invested ~100 USD in this game (and close to 200 USD in this company), so I'd really like this game to succeed. Unexplained forced PvP, and a basic understanding of the behaviour-patterns of people with my mindset, makes me worry about the future of this game.

 

I don't disagree with with you Ibraxis, at all. My own view on what we're doing here isn't shared by all or even the majority of the posters on these forums but the blanket that keeps me warm is that I have bought my way into a beta test process and some of the hoops testers have to jump through are far removed from the kind of experience I would expect as a bog standard consumer who had waited until release (and probably several reviews) before buying.

I also feel that when people front up here with their opinions on the relative merits of various aspects of gameplay that those views should be respected and discussed with civility. Beyond the basic "does the mechanic work without breaking anything else" aspect of testing I got the impression that the developers wanted feedback on everything in the game, is it fun, does it fit, could it be better, blah. I could be wrong on that one as well though.

You wont get a fight out of me, I have warm fuzzy feelings about most things and that's the way it's going to stay.

 

Workload is light today, so time for some replies. I'll start with the "easy" ones (i.e. ones which require the least amount of thought and arguing on my part).

I didn't realize so much of WoW's content was in contested zones. It makes me even less likely to pick up that game (not that I have much desire for it now that I have GW2).
Do you happen to know how much of that content is story-related, art-related (i.e. new-model armor and weapons), or otherwise attractive to a non-PvPer?

Wow. Um... I'm a bit ashamed that I didn't look up the defs (and diffs) before posting, considering how often I lean towards prescriptive language. I've modified my original post accordingly.
From the same Wikipedia article:

The reason for this mislabeling (which Wikipedia doesn't go into) is mostly due to the victims not seeing much of a difference between a griefer and a perpetrator who isn't intentionally causing grief. We can't read minds, after all...

... or can we?

 

Forcing Pvp gameplay on people today who doesn't want it, will simply drive them away. This isn't a theory or opinion, it will happen without fail.
Games are meant to be entertaining, not forced upon somebody by other people.

And in my opinion it's a horrible idea without any respect for those who don't want that.

 

As someone who enjoyed rifting in Aion (korean grindfest game with some PVP intrusion into enemy territory and one "Always PVP" zone), I think unwanted PVP adds tension to gameplay. Sometimes, that tension is good, like when it produces unscripted combat that is enjoyed by both sides. But, I think that a lot of the tense moments are just paranoia and frustration at being ganked.

Examples: Aion had two factions that were forcibly separated. They couldn't meet each other except in rare exceptions (rifts) or the "Always PVP" abyss zone. "Rifts" that opened every 2 hours, and allowed anyone that can get to them to travel to the matching zone on the other faction's side. On that side, you were able to attack anyone on the other faction, and able to be attacked by anyone.

This is a good example of "unwanted PVP."

Good: Leading a small band of invaders was a lot of fun, as you tried to escape the rift exit and hide out for a bit, then either snipe some groups of players grinding on elite mobs or run around the lower level areas gathering and making your presence known (to cause mobs to form). It was also hilarious when we used all of our Illusion items to look like dragons, scarecrows, trees, and small dogs. Many of the other players enjoyed this, and we actually helped some of them when they pulled too many mobs. Oh, we also made it a point to kill any bots. It was a korean game, so there were lots of bots.

Bad: Lots of players just griefed and wanted to pick on lower level players. This caused a lot of frustration and grief. You're minding your own business as a lvl 30, and suddenly four lvl 44's come in and crush you. Now, you can't go back to that area without a MUCH better-equipped group, and you were forced to either quit out for an hour or so, or beg for help in the broadcast channel. Not enjoyable.

Consequences: If you killed too many (20?) players that were "much lower" level than you, you showed up on every enemy faction's minimap and zone map. They can open the zone map, and see your position, in realtime. This basically means you run around playing the Benny Hill theme song, and see how many max-level players you can "collect" before you get utterly destroyed. And you always did. Also, there were NPC guards that patrolled low level areas on the roads, that could kill monsters or other players within 2-4 hits. These were social agro, so if you had attacked someone but not killed them, and that person ran to a guard, it's time to get out of dodge. Fast.

Summary: Honorable PVP'ers are not what people think of, when they think of PVP. They think of the frustrating parts: the pubstompers, the gankers and griefers, the people that just want to destroy. Why? Because human nature, we remember negative things a lot more than we remember positive things. Honorable PVP'ers won't be a problem on public servers, because they want a challenge. They don't want to show their superiority by killing civilians, they want to defeat champions.

Dishonorable PVP'ers are what people worry about, and why there is a lot of negative reaction. You're letting THEM into our game!? People here spend a lot of time building bases, towns, finding NPC Spawners, "the right" planets, etc. Griefers can destroy that much faster than players can build or rebuild. Especially with the cost and rarity of NPC Spawners.

I think the biggest reason for negative reaction right now is the time/effort/pixel cost of building, and the ease of destruction. If it becomes much easier to raise towns from nothing, then the cost of griefing will be lessened and it would be less painful. That's not the case right now.

Also, for forced PVP areas, there should be "Safe Havens" and game mechanics that can protect players from griefers. Wandering guards, hiding places, and mechanics to identify and/or punish griefers. These things would go a long way.

 

A key point which I am noting so I can bring up later. You are a PvP player with a PvP mindset.

I will preface my response by stating that I know very little about the history of UO. Specifically, the rise-and-fall of the game. I'm fairly certain it's still active, but it has a lost a large percentage of its players to games with more modern sensibilities and graphics.
What I do know of UO is that it had an absolutely amazing crafting system and the still-very-rare opportunity for players to be something other than genocide machines. Again, I'm unclear on it, but I heard that you could successfully (and enjoyably) play a merchant, a shipwright, or even a miner (which would probably get boring about as fast as real-world mining).
However...

The PvP rules in UO changed for a very good reason: staying afloat. Given the choice between a game with forced PvP, and a very similar game without forced PvP, the non-PvP player will eventually and inevitably choose the latter, without fail. UO needed to keep the builders and the crafters, or they'd lose a large portion of their userbase, so they tore apart the forced-PvP you so enjoyed. You may not like that it happened (even I don't particularly like that it happened), but you should come to terms with the fact that, with so much more variety in games these days, you won't be able to keep non-PvPers in a forced-PvP game.

Finally, I would like to point something out to you that I hope you keep in mind: those "defenseless resource gatherers" you gleefully hacked apart? If they did not share your PvP mindset, they likely thought of you as a griefer, an asshole, a jerk, a @#%@*&!, and any other profanity they could pull to mind. To them, you were not exploring game mechanics and trying to make the game more fun, you were ruining their love of the game, you were contributing to them eventually leaving the game for greener pastures (e.g. WoW). Again, we're not mind readers and we can't tell the difference between you and a worse-than-worthless griefer. The part you should keep in mind, though, is that even if you do explain your reasoning to us, we still won't see you as any better. If a person punched me in the face and then calmly explained that they did it because they just like punching things and running from police, I'd think them psychotic, not intelligent/curious/rational/etc.

 

This game is closer to super mario than World of Warcraft.

Super Mario PvP is going to get old quick.

 

Ye gods, I seem to be running in circles.
1) I have not said PvP is bad. I do not think forced PvP is bad. Forced PvP might even work for Starbound, given the right added mechanics. But...
2) For everyone who has pulled a random MMO out of the ether as an example of "Look! This is a game with forced PvP that works and was fun!": Your example is fun for you because you like PvP. It is not fun for me, and it is not fun for a large number of the people who were looking forward to "Terraria in space, with a story." So...
3) If Starbound continues in the direction of forcing PvP on all players (whether in sector X or everywhere), it will alienate the builders and crafters, decreasing the userbase and the chance of future sales.
If you are fine with Starbound becoming less successful and/or a niche product then, by all means, cast your vote for forced PvP in that other thread. ... You monster.

 

I'll come out and say it. PvP for a game like this is a horrible idea. Even if they balance characters and weapon combinations, which they won't, I don't see the end product being even as entertaining as M.U.S.C.L.E. on NES.