So, I decided to actually play Minecraft once in a blue moon and logged into one of those servers with "thousands" of players. I'm not sure how significantly different it is from playing java Minecraft in 2012 since it's the bedrock edition on Xbox, but considering the pvp servers looked like desolate wastelands with ruins strewn about, I'm assuming it's not much different (although I'm not sure how many players those big servers can hold, I know the bedrock edition gimps personal servers to basically nothing, because lol MS wants to sell you skins and 10 player servers, which are free in java, but I digress).

Around that first time, I joined an online group and we were all friends and friendly and did stuff. Randos could join the server if they asked for invitation, and yes plenty of them were griefers but it was generally easy going. We found a more... professional server that had pvp we could dive into occasionally, but we didn't find any murderers outside the safe zone, just ruins in the habitable portion of the world. Red flag for later.

So, when I went back to playing Minecraft online, on a pvp server, I had a fantasy in mind: To find settlements with cautious and wary folks who might interact with you the same as a lonely town in the middle of nowhere, allowing a community to form and perhaps do some trading. Sure, there would always be murderers, but they'd be in the outskirts preying on loners. Reality was more like an apocalypse, anything fancier than a wooden shack was whittled down to scraps, and heavily armed marauders chased me down and killed me. If you didn't run and find a place to hide from the others, you were mere meat to them.

And this reminded me of what I had seen elsewhere. I played some Ark with a friend and their friends and anyone outside of that didn't bother us because heavily guarded fortifications that shot you down are apparently just standard pvp play. I saw a video of Rust and half the video was just hiding and experiencing an off-screen war. At least they found some polite people. And I saw another Minecraft pvp server video where it was just... extremely bizarre landscapes and violence everywhere.

My question ultimately is this: Is the best way to play pvp in survival games to just team up with your friends and kill everyone else? Because I figured it'd be fun to make neutral communities that people can come and go from, but perhaps human nature, without regulations from external pressures, makes that a farce. Maybe we're all animals more than willing to indulge in wanton destruction.

Or does anyone actually have stories where my wishful thinking was somewhat successful?

Do you even know what the typical demographic skew for Minecraft severs are? Most of em' are violating COPPA just by existing on a server like that.

I think your mistake was expecting better of a public server; doubly so of one you claim had "thousands" of users.

Hey man, I just wanted to start a bar, serve food and drinks, and hear some stories. None of this "wander about and then get murdered".

Yeah, I get that. But that requires a group. Wandering into the wilds without organization is akin to a sawblade level in Super Meat Boy. No amount of persistence is worth the pithy awards it bestows.

I once read this little piece of wisdom somewhere:

"If you offer people the opportunity to behave like assholes without being held accountable, the majority of them will gladly take on the offer."