It has been stated over and over that the hermit lifestyle is very advanced play.
Nonsense. What is a village but a collection of hermits who've agreed to try not to do things the others don't want done to one another? Most people aren't even logged in at the same time.
Also, you can ignore the rest of this post Fikes, it's mostly just commentary on
that thread post you linked to and directional raging at it, because
damn that thread is just full of full retard. Most of it is just useless fluff-talk and disjointed, like you know, full of, well i think, "may be" shit you could get the point of by now.
"If you are standing on the tile which I wish to plow, I cannot plow it. The land which I have claimed, you cannot claim. The basket that I am carrying, you can not carry. The apple that I have eaten, you can not eat."
Unless of course it was simply programmed so you could plow tiles beneath players, by making players non-collisionary with one another when using farm equipment; then you totally could farm tiles beneath players. Or share claim areas. Or supportive-carry objects. Or eat an apple only part of the way then pass it over to the next player... Or put multiples of the same type of curiosity into the research inventory and have only one of those type count down and switch to the next in sequence, saving time and server load as a result.
"[there] does not exist a clear divide between offensive and peaceful actions"
First, 'offensive' and 'peaceful' are subjective; "What actions a player does and does not want performed" is much more specific, accurate to the arguement, and honest about the players' feelings.
Second and third, they are not mutually exclusive and as provided in that statement, it is in fact a false dichotomy; such as that charming "game of not touching you" example given -- the person can peacefully act like a spaz all they want, and the people around him can or can not be offended by it, and will or will not choose to stop or alter that behaviour.
He saved the worst for last, though:
"New players I would also like to add, should be and are particularly easy to target. The amount of investment needed to create one is so small that affording them any means of special security is inviting for them to be used as grief-machines
and if they die, not much has been lost."
Bolded is my emphasis; run that shit through your head for a while.
A total lack of consideration for the player of the new character which had just died. Never mind he never elaborates on why a new character could be a grief machine. Personally i like to think it's because he feels (even if only subconciously) that the system is inadequate to deal with griefers or even basic crime and pvp. Claims have never really stopped any actual theivery attempts and/or murder from happening, and if the character has no equal or greatly powerful friendly characters to assist post-act, that player has no recourse but to "try again?".
A claim does not jump up and stab people when they start to do shit a player doesn't want done; An NPC guard does that shit. How many NPC guards you see in H&H and how many times you wish you had some? Yeah, exactly.