That's good if it's not free to try to control a spot, because it's exactly what I'm asking for. 

Would you please be kind enough to read our posts before you answer? Thanks.

(yes, you can also believe that you manage to post the ultimate answer, after which no objection is possible but... No. Not with such lacking answer) 

Karmabombing as a guildess player is pretty much risk free. War decs are, pretty much risk free - well, as long as the guild you are declaring on doesn't have players that can assist their mate and, as such, don't reciprocate your dec. Lastly, mob-feeding is, in some cases risk free, namely when the gearscore difference works in favor of the feeder.

All in all, the current system of contesting a grind spot is far from ideal. Pretty sure karmabombing and mob-feeding weren't part of PA's grand plan. Now, we're not going to have PA rethink it, for sure. Not when there's no financial incentive to do so, not when the playerbase is so heavily divided. Even if same player base is mostly arguing against or in favor of just one of the flaws, considering the other ones detrimental. 

And again, this could be solved, kinda, if they'd balance the drop value and drop chance around the gear score (so that, if a 999 gs player wants to grind Cadry, he/she should pick up his/her Tuvala alt for the task :P), remove death penalties (even more so considering how poorly they scale later in the game) and do away with the gratuitous war decs. In that particular order. At that point one may no longer find any value in the karma system either (not that it has much, seeing how it's a bandaid/currency that got abandoned in the game's early years, along with the entirety of the game centered on Muiquun).

You forgot one.  We will pretend it you accidently forgot ;)  What about the person BEING Karma Bombed.  Their risk is ABSOLUTELY nothing.

Also mob feeding isn't risk free "in some cases", you should change that to "in almost every case" because a moments thought will come to that conclusion.  If the person mob feeding thought it was RISKY they typically WOULDN'T DO IT.  So OBVIOUSLY it's done when the player feels they have a signifcant advantage.  Not to mention the absolutely horrendous trash mechanics provided by Pearl Abyss that make it so easy.

You are welcome for making a more informed and comprehension discussion.

Already have read it and the answer is the same. You pay a price in karma to temporarily inhibit and remove the offending party from the grind. That's the price and the limit of your options until you grow a spine harder than that of a jellyfish and play on Arsha. Until that point your laments fall on deaf ears.

The end.

Cope.

The person being attacked is not the aggressor and as such has no reason to have "risk". You can simply ignore them and continue grinding. If you choose not to because your ego tells you that you are entitled to a spot and/or a rotation then you pay the price. There is plenty of value in the karma system, we know this to be true because of the people who want to rule over grind spots at the expense of lesser geared players trying hard to have it removed because the punishments it brings are quite severe in potential consequence.

Maybe Pearl Abyss could put a new food buff called Copa Cola into the game.  To help those claiming they want a challenging PVP environment, but are to cowardly to go to Arsha.

Except that what your call my "laments" is completely different from what you're saying.

I'm make it more obvious for you (quote from one of my previous posts) :

"That's good if it's not free to try to control a spot, because it's exactly what I'm asking for." 

It also seems you forget that regular channels are pvpve with owpvp, and Arsha servers are the only place with FFA pvp.

If one chooses a game with regulated owpvp, it's ridiculous to tell him to go on the FFA channel. Totally ridiculous.

So... Try to READ and FOLLOW, please. For your own sake, and it's getting absurd. 

I've seen a few good counter arguments popping up so I'll try to address them (this got pretty long, oops x.x):

Isn't your proposed scenario exactly what people want from a GvG? :) Actual coordinated efforts that can quickly escalate into full-scale territory wars with multiple groups involved? To be perfectly honest I think that a flag-claiming system, in any form, would introduce a very healthy change for the GvG scene by turning grind spots into true objectives. Having whole guilds showing up to either defend their flags or patrol a zone to keep rival guilds from planting theirs sounds much better than guilds holding war slots to resolve petty skirmishes.

Plus don't forget that the karma penalty would be applied on first hit, so a whole guild showing up to try and zerg people out of their spots would see everyone involved taking a karma hit. Much less ideal than patroling around to kill people for free during their 12 second flag-planting animation.

I don't think this system would require any mass re-coding of basic mob mechanics, just an AoE aura around the flags that provides buffs and debuffs to players. Here's the full list of effects a flag could provide to potentially fix a lot of these problems:

Owner's Buffs:

1) A small XP and drop rate buff. Why not? They paid for it.

2) No karma penalties for PvP kills within the flag's radius. Personally I would prefer it if the flagging system could be reworked *slightly* to auto-flag the defending player for PvP after being hit for the first time, so that they could fight back immediately if they wanted, but the attacking player would still lose karma. The defending player would also have the option to manually flag up to attack a trespassing player, which would still have no karma penalty, but would give the trespassing player the chance to flag up too and initiate a natural DFS with no loss on either side.

3) 'Safe' from GvGs by giving the flag priority. Again, would only apply while a player was within the radius of a planted flag. Normal rules would resume after removing/exiting the flag.

4) To deal with mob feeding once and for all! - No death penalties, from both PvE and PvP deaths. That means no XP loss, no crystal shattering, and no buff removal. If a player spends a lot of silver/karma to rent the flag in the first place, why not give them a safety net while using it? Frankly I don't think this is the best solution, as a lot of in-game markets are tied to the cycling of crystals/draughts while grinding, so this might break quite a few things. Definitely worth exploring more solutions for mob feeding though, as that's one of the more toxic parts of the owPvP experience for sure.

Contester's Debuffs:

1) A 'Spot Taken!' Debuff. Does nothing other than let a player know when they have stumbled into another player's grind spot. This draws clear boundaries between spots and clears up a lot of issues with miscommunication, which I honestly believe is the main catalyst for toxicity in most situations.

I do think you're veering more into the territory of strong opinion than genuine criticism with this one. To reiterate what I said within the same post:

*Stronger players bullying weaker players has nothing to do with OP's idea, it's fundamentally baked into the game's gear system.*

Thus the context means nothing here - any owPvP mechanic will be open to this form of bullying.

You are also correct in pointing out that the only recourse for weaker players under the current karma system is to karma bomb. However, as OP and many many others have said before: this is an unhealthy mechanic that promotes toxicity and thus does not belong in the game. This suggestion and many others are not blatant attempts at taking this defense away from weaker players, they're simply ideas for removing these unhealthy mechanics from the game - mob feeding, karma bombing, war dec spam, forced DFS, guildless griefers, etc. If there are oversights along the way then we iron them out, no idea is 100% foolproof in its first iteration.

I also really like the idea that @Harth mentioned with karma multipliers being tied to the zone's recommended AP level instead of gearscore difference, so I'm going to explore that on its own below :)

This is an excellent idea imo, with or without the flag mechanic! Let's put it to the test:

1) Say they adjusted the base karma penalty for hitting any non-flagged player to a flat 20k and removed all multipliers attached to gearscore difference (so that people couldn't just wear lifeskill gear to safely plant their flags, haha).
2) Hardcode all non-desert areas outside of grind zones to have their 'Recommended AP' levels set to 0. Alternatively they could perhaps set it separately per region, say Balenos is at 0, Serendia at 30, Calpheon at 50, etc, etc.
3) Now tack on a x1 multiplier for every 10 levels of AP a player has *above* the zone's recommended total. So now you have:
4) Scenario #1:

A jerk is randomly pking people afk horse training along the roads outside of Velia. They immediately incur a 600k karma penalty just for breathing on them.
5) Scenario #2:

A 300+ AP player heads over to centaurs to flex on lower-geared players and bully them out of their spots. They would instantly incur a 220k karma penalty for killing one player. If the lower-geared player was grinding away under a flag they had paid a bunch of silver for, this penalty would be multiplied by the three deaths it would take to destroy their flag: 660k. Not only are they now very red, they would also no longer be able to plant their own flag, allowing the lower-geared player to replant their flag and happily go about their business.
6) Scenario #3 - Without The Flag System:

A 260 AP player heads over to Star's End and tries to force DFS on another 260 AP player who doesn't really feel like it. They get annoyed at the decline and flag on them anyways for a flat 20k penalty, barely noticeable. The victim shrugs and finds another spot, or proceeds to karma bomb the aggressor out of spite, in which case the aggressor tries to feed them to mobs. Eventually one of the players asks for a war dec from their guild lead, and on and on it goes...
7) Scenario #3 - With The Flag System:

Player A grabs a flag from the node manager and plops it down at a prime spot, first come first serve. Player B comes along and asks for DFS. Player A says 'nah, sorry' and continus grinding within the radius of their flag. This is Player B's favorite spot, so they get annoyed and go for the PK. Player A isn't expecting it and gets CC chained to death, giving Player B their 20k karma penalty. They're both at 260 AP though, so Player A gets back up and takes on Player B again, this time winning the fight with no karma loss. Player B can continue trying to contest the spot for an extra 40k penalty or just go find a different spot, either way, Player A keeps grinding with no fear of losing their buffs, getting karma bombed, fed to mobs, or a random war dec.

These two systems combined would solve *so* many of the toxic interactions that I can think of off the top of my head.

Thanks for your input! I went and edited the OP with your suggestions.

(Thank you, and sorry! I didn't mean to hijack your whole post o.o)