I enjoy the idea of PvP in this game. It's really why I build, because the conflict between players gives what I built a purpose and a chance to have that purpose tested.
As PVP is at the moment, two things stand out. The first is that end game armour (600 military, 600 hazmat shirt, 600 poncho, 600 gasmask) feels to me like an absolute necessity when going up against established players. With perfect armour, your resists to bullet damage is over 95%, isn't it? Trying to defend against that sort of disparity when you have mid level gear (so around 50% resists) isn't happening. I don't have a solution, and agree that the established player should be rewarded for their investment. Yet I feel like the resists on perfect gear are too high to permit appropriate counterplay, therefore necessitating opponents to grind for the same before engaging.
The second thing that stands out to me is just how quickly a fight is over for a person with mid level gear. This is anecdotal, but wherein a game like Golden Eye or Perfect Dark or Farcry you would have the chance to react to an opponent opening fire on you, in 7days people are often dead before they know where they are being shot from.
As regarding land claim blocks. I wish the claim range could be larger so that we don't have to go through the tedium of digging out so much of a land claim grid to protect a large base. However, once the claim size is larger than the range a pickaxe has from outside of the radius, a balance shift occurs which is heavily against those seeking to raid. Boring and uncreative towers which reach from sky to bedrock will always be the meta in the current system, but at least with a default claim size defenders have to be more creative to stop raiders from cutting into the middle of their tower and getting in.
Does anyone think it would be exciting if dynamite or TNT could be used as an effective raiding tool? (Pending a balance of values, of course.)