Hello. As other adventurers have pointed out, there is both a demand for a reduction in the viability of greifing while not unecessarily restricting open world PvP. These seem at odds with each other, but I may have a solution.

The solution in mind is let karma go above 300k only while grinding. To give an example of how this would work as a good boi non-greifer. You start your grind session at Orc camp at the very south rotation. As you keep killing those same mobs, your karma goes past the normal 300k max. After a half an hour, someone decides that they also want to grind in the same rotation killing the same mobs you were killing, which makes you upset. You try communicating your presence, but unfortunately, they do not care. Since you have been grinding for half an hour, your karma is at around 600k because you have been a good boi. You can now utilize said karma to forcefully engage in PvP with the intruder and not go red which would risk your gear and crystals. If instead your hour goes uninterupted, you will end up with 900k karma, and as you run back to town (or map) your karma will be re-capped at 300k per normal.

There is some risk of abuse if a few steps aren't taken, which could be mitigated. It should not be possible for a player who was at a different orcs rotation nearby to use their banked karma to greif your rotation at another adjacent orcs rotation. This could be mitigated by players "claiming" mobs with sequential sweeps of grinding them, establishing them as their mobs. So if I was grinding Orcs and I wanted to extend my rotation into someone elses, my karma would be placed back to 300k as I am the agressor into their established rotation. Swapping channels, swapping characters, not killing any mobs for a few minutes, and killing mobs others have killed several times should reset your karma back to the cap of 300k.

The other solution that would help remedy greifing is by adding a death timer from being killed. This is common in many MMOs but is currently absent from open world PvP. You could add an increased timer to deaths from players who had above 300k karma this way, encouraging the greifers to move on to another rotation or server. I would also like to leave spawning at town be always 0 seconds, to allow any player to withdraw from a greifing scenario at any point. If they want to tear ressurect or safe zone ressurect and were encroaching on someone's established rotation, they should have to wait to ressurect if they want to continue to encroach/grief.

In summation - players want the ability to defend the spot they are grinding in. War decs were a method of doing that, but it is now gone. Karma loss is a harsh penalty and there is no distinction between who has been grinding the spot and who the invader is. Players having the marni realm for half the day is nice, but some don't like to be interrupted by entering and exiting the marni realm and like to continuosly grind for hours without bothering anyone or being bothered - especially at grind spots with events. It isn't fun to get a Calpheon Elvia boss in the last 2 minutes of marni time. With the karma change suggested, a distinction will be made giving the defender an advantage at defending their spot, without preventing combat from happening entirely, and might even enable PA to rollback other decisions about 1 sided war declarations. If I missed anything that could be exploited by a griefer, please leave a comment detailing how it could be abused with this system, and if you have thought of a way to mitigate/eliminate how it could be abused, that would be great, thanks!

Increased karma: something like that, yeah.  Or equivalently, reduce karma penalties (and karma gains when earning it back too; just increasing karma is simpler).

I was toying with just making the positive and negative limits much bigger.  Just that simple change with no other conditionals would be enough room for people to sort out grinding conflicts, preserve overall acceptable PVP, and really tank those with consistently aggressive behavior (which is probably what they want anyway).  Takes 'karma bombing' out of the equation too.

Another thought that's iffier: lose karma for killing, gain karma for being killed.  And maybe tie that gain into resurrecting in town only.  Incentivize that a bit.  

The problem with town res is exp loss.  That disincentivises it.

So much simpler on Arsha...

you can still use a tear and rez town.

Huh. Learned something. Thanks.

This isn't a bad idea, but I think the system on the whole needs multiple approaches to it. This is a solution to one part of a larger over-arching problem with the game's content balancing of both rewards and availability.
I already made a forum post all about my thoughts on the system, the summary of that being
-Karma loss should be calculated on the gear on the Account, not character, preventing karma bombing
-"Solo" grind zones should be grindable in a party within marni realm
-PVP Contents should have their rewards exponentially increased
-Negative Karma detriments should be relative to the amount of negative karma, with the exclusion of gear downgrade as that shouldn't exist.
-The Negative Karma Playstyle should be supported in some way, as it was back in the olden days, the way it isn't right now.

I thought about a system where u get like 10 points and each kill reduces that by 1. you can regenerate these points over time or by killing mobs.

So... karma system? xd

Don't you kow how are EU,NA player?

They will grind, get overload on karma. Before stopping grinding they will go on a killing spree and butcher oher people. This is how they are.

Yeah no, thank you..

The problem is not even the Karma system. It is the mindset of western players. No matter what you do, it won't change.

"only while grinding"

As they leave the spot, karma gets recapped at 300k.

Basically abunch of high geared players who want a "MIGHT MAKES RIGHT" law of the jungle gameplay. I wonder if gear meant little if these same people would be advocating for such a system. What's being advocated here is basically what killed ArcheAge and any other gear-based MMO that allowed for the whol MIGHT MAKES RIGHT environment.

My question is why should Pearl Abyss canabolize over 75% of the playerbase just so the top 5% can have fun till they are the only ones playing. RNG PvP gear power Gatekeeping in 2023 does not work in gaming these days.