Mutual Hostile, or Hostile Timer?

[Tal]

BUT, sir, if mutual hostile button clicking is required for pvp damage to occur, you don't NEED to go back to town.  If the PK hostiles you and you don't hostile him, he can walk right up to you, cast 10 Frozen Orbs at you, and you won't feel a thing.  He can stand next to you cussing and swinging his uber rare elite greatsword at your neck, and he's harmless as a blind puppy.  Harmless!  About all he can do to you is try to steal your drops, and he can do that without PKing anyway.

So why would you "need" time to go back to town?  Under the mutual hostile setup, a person who has hostiled you, whom you have not hostiled in return, is functionally identical, in game terms, with a person who has not hostiled you at all!

This seems a clear choice between a.) needing 10 seconds to escape a PKer who will then either force a confrontation and drive you out of your own game, or b.) avoiding all the messiness by only having pvp confrontations when YOU feel like it.  When I state it like that, which option looks more attractive to YOU?

-Kasreyn

Primarily because, as Whereagles explained to me at that time and as Occhidiangela has already pointed out, sometimes there is a need to remove a jerk from a game. I personally tend to take the road less travelled and leave the game if the jerk has decided to ignore my polite request that he/she leave. This is primarily because I refuse to play the would-be PK'ers game. I tend to not stay in the field when hostiled and instead will annoy him/her from town with the above mentioned tactics. I deprive him/her of the satisfaction of hunting me down and/or killing me. I also deprive him/her of the satisfaction of seeing me angry as well. Instead they get to read about Bustopher Jones and Rum Tug Tugger. ;)

The most attractive option in my view is what Gnollguy has stated - a hostility flag on game creation. As the game creator I should be the one to decide whether or not to have to worry about hostility. If this was an option all of my games would be firmly co-op but seeing as Blizzard has stated that they view PK'ing as a integral part of Diablo 2 because "the world of Sanctuary is a dangerous place", I don't see the hostility flag ever making it into the game.