"You Are My Content" - Being The Challenge
I'm curious as to people's general opinions on a specific thing that occurs in games like this, and can be almost exclusive to the PvP/PvX MMO genre, technically, because of the 'reward' and 'encounter' systems in those games.
Let's say you have a particularly skilled player Harry The Summoner, level 32, and Harry is out chillin' in his favorite spot outside a node that Harry isn't a citizen of, 'minding his own business', per se. Some other player comes up to Harry and decides that they don't like Harry's face and engage in combat, and Harry dispatches this player without much effort due to Harry's mad skilz.
Let's further assume that in Harry's mind, that's the end of it, I mean, he was just chillin', someone tried to PvP and failed. But that person lives in the node. So they drop off all their mats, and come back, and try again. A little annoying, sure, but Harry obliges them and smacks them around again.
Then when they come back, they come back with a higher level member of their guild. They don't attack Harry again, they just let the higher level member do it, for 'fairness' or something. Harry flattens this player too, despite them being level 38 (Harry is just a PvP god). Harry returns to hanging out, just killing mobs.
Next a level 40 Rogue shows up from the same guild and now it's a 2v1 with the original attacker and this rogue, and Harry still wins, since he brought enough potions or has some good time to heal up and impeccable summon control. So now Harry has beaten the original attacker three times, and the other two once each, and 'defended his spot', for next to no benefit since they don't drop anything.
Next they come with all three of them, and Harry, being the impeccable paragon of PvP skill that he is, schools all three of them at the same time. This repeats twice more.
On the fourth 3v1, Harry messes up a move and finally dies to the original attacker after still having defeated the first two. Chat lights up.
"Yeah! We did it! Take THAT, asshole!"
"Pwned."
"Thought you were tough, didn't ya, we got you though."
I've played games where somehow, this results in Harry now having 'enemies' that will basically never let him chill at that spot again, the moment they see him, they'll attack, or go so far as to gather even more people. Because Harry is now their challenge. Harry is now their content.
Some games don't consider this to be either 'griefing' or 'toxic behaviour', and my understanding is that Ashes will not, either. After all, Harry can just leave, and find a new spot to fight in, or 'bring his own group'. But Harry just wants to chill out and fight some enemies that he enjoys fighting, and that the other group wasn't even actually competing for; someone just wanted to PvP and found a target. But now, by 'being strong enough to require 3 people to kill him', Harry is a 'wanted man', even if it is that he is 'wanted' in the sense of 'people challenging him constantly to prove their own strength or practice'.
What should Harry do here, if this is Ashes?
a) Suck it up and move on, his favorite chill-spot ruined forever because he is such a PvP chad?
b) Convince his whole guild to come guard him while he runs around smacking a few mobs?
c) Gather people to raze the entire Node to the ground and then spend months building it back up?
d) Assume that they will eventually stop due to EXP debt if he can in fact manage to keep winning?
e) Assume that Ashes is not the game for him and go play a MOBA where he is explicitly rewarded for being the GOAT?
People often worry about PvP griefing from the perspective of 'players beating up on others who don't want to fight'. What about 'players throwing themselves at those who do want to fight, but don't want to fight forever'?
