Ideas on how to improve gun combat and make base raiding viable and fun for MP servers

[Nukaboy]

Hey everyone!

So I'm running a pretty big PvP server + community and after some months I have made certain experiences with PvP and specifically base raiding that I'd like to share alongside some of my ideas to solve/improve upon these issues.

Like we all know PvP is kinda whacky in PZ at the moment and I hope the devs will improve on this aspect in the future as there definitely is a sizeable PvP community around the game that thursts for changes in this department lol
 

THE 2 BIG PROBLEMS:

#1 Safehouses make raiding almost impossible but without them offline raiding will frustrate players and make it unviable to have a base in any premade structure
On well populated servers EVERY place will get visited after some time so with no safehouse system in place you are guaranteed to lose all your progress at some point. At the same time it would be a shame not making use of all the cool structures on the map for basebuilding.

Safehouses on the other hand make base raiding almost impossible as they allow the defender to respawn infinitely and throw their body at them until they eventually break and have to flee or they just log out and the protection become active again.

On our server we have the setting activated that safehouses will become lootable whenever the owner (or one of the members) is online. That makes the situation a little bit better but openly attacking a safehouse while the inhabitants are present is still not possible as, like I mentioned above, they will just zerg rush you and your team mates until you run out of ammo and another problems that comes up with this is that defenders can just combat log and leave the attackers with a protected base they cant raid.

Of course we have rules against things like zerg rushing and combat logging but there cant be an admin online 24/7 to help out in those cases and its always kinda unimmersive when an admin has to come and resolve PvP situations just because some nutsack couldn't be bothered with reading the rules before and following them.

Now you could argue here that I could disable safehouse respawning but I think that isn't a good solution to the problem as its rather annoying if you have to spawn in some random place each time you die in a PvE scenario. Especially if you have a wilderness base and no safehouses at all will make offline raiding a thing again and that just sucks. Imagine coming back home from a long day of work, looking forwards to playing on your favorite server and suddenly all your progress is gone.

#2 Stunlocks in gun combat
There is a server settings that disables stunlocks in melee combat, why isn't there an equivalent for guns?
One could argue here that PZs gun combat is (weirdly) realistic in that sense as whoever shoots first usually wins but it's still a game and gun combat is way more enjoyable when players have a chance to fight back.

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS:

#1 Safehouses make raiding almost impossible but without them offline raiding will frustrate players and make it unviable to have a base in any premade structure
I thought a lot about this. There is a mod called "SSR: Safehouses Overhaul" on the workshop. That mod adds a feature that allows to "capture" safehouses and I think having such an (optional) feature in vanilla PZ would solve most issues with safehouse mentionend in the problems section.

I'd imagine it to work like that:
- Safehouses can be temporary captured when the owner (or at leat one member) is online and not present in the safehouse (have been killed or are away on a loot run etc.)
- Server owners can set the time it takes until the safehouse will switch ownership back to the original owner essentially limiting the raid time to like 20 rl minutes

This would prevent owners/members of a captured safehouse to respawn in it infinitely and logging out won't activate the offline protection without the need to deactivate safehouse respawns in general for anyone.

#2 Stunlocks in gun combat
The obvious solution here is to give us a setting that disables stunlocks in gun combat.

Now I know the devs have mentionend wanting to overhaul the whole aiming mechanic to a more skill based system. We'll have to see how this will affect gun combat but I could imagine a system where stunlocks only happen on critical hits etc. But yeah thats future stuff. For now the best solution here would definitely be to give us a setting to disable stunlocks in gun combat.

CONCLUSION:
There's obviously still some open construction sites to make PvP and Raiding viable and enjoyable in PZ but I think the devs are well aware of that (given the content of the Thursdoids) and additions like traps etc. will definitely make base raiding way more fun for all sites (attackers and defenders).

The good thing I see here is that there isn't actually THAT much to do to make PvP viable. Something like a capture system I mentionend above is definitely worth its own release but it could be way worse. The base for an enjoyable surivival PvP game is there and I hope the devs will make use of that base and turn PZ into a true gem when it comes to PvP gameplay without annoying things like offline raiding that plague other survival PvP games.

I look forward to feedback and discussions on my ideas. Please tell me what you think of them.

PS: No I don't think that "Use mod XY" is a good solution for a problem.

[duh7]

For fairness guns are an ultimate weapons and depends how much of a realism on server u want to have. I understand frustrating players after they get stunlock but understand that if u are without any armor u could not survivie even one gun shot. Balans with something to counter stunlock meaby change it on push a lil bit will be better and more playable for players that go melee.

[Jack Bower]

Issue #2 is probably the biggest issue with guns in PZ atm. The general consensus of the RP community is "Guns are broken." and until a server option is added that properly removes the stun lock from guns these threads will continuously pop up and the M14 will always be the absolute best gun for 75% of pvp situations.