Even look at rust, has lots of casual players that like to PvP. They might only have one or two houses each session to play and if dying meant that they were done for 30 minutes or even twenty for each death it would be getting as many players as it has.
Safe towns and safe areas would be ok if we could have our own bandit towns and bandit areas. Which should be most of the map. I personally hate being a area where I cant fight other players because you just deal with toxic blues that grief your farm. Its just people pulling mobs and kill stealing.
Yeah I feel for this game safe zones isn't the best answer because of the way resources are distributed. If you went with system like Albion you would need to put the best resources in FFA zones and the lowest grade resources in safe zones.
I think just to make cities safe areas and make a small circle around cities rep loss.... an area that is clearly marked... then everywhere else is FFA and move all resources out of safe city areas it would solve a lot of problems. Of course, just like faction flag system in Albion if you were at war with another guild being in a city wouldn't be protection you could be Killed on Sight. Add some more lawless towns without rep loss.
The system right now is too punishing for pvpers and in many ways makes life harder even for PvErs. If your in a FFA zone as a PvEer you would most likely run away from most people you see. The way system is now you tend to stick around and hope person doesn't attack you first losing the initiative.
I'll even use this as an example and not as a copy paste suggestion but more for proof that consequences for pvping isn't the only answer. In Albion you can wear gathering gear which gives you boost to gathering as well as unique skills for getting away from gankers. MO2 could easily do something similar adding new gear to craft and making the job of ganking more strategic. It's nearly impossible to escape from a good ganking group that coordinates on discord with escape gear unless your really good. But bad gankers are very easy to evade.
I'm also a mostly PvE player at this point. However, the main thing that keeps me wanting to get better at a game is what I consider the real end game once you've accomplished everything else: PvP. In this game, I'm losing desire to play because the PvP isn't fun compared to the time sinks you endure.
