Personally I'd rather ditch defensive/and other modes altogether (grubs like me never understand them anyway) and just stick us all in a big sandbox but with bigger consequences. So if someone attacks another player for no good reason and the victim presses charges (which seems to do nothing) there would be an instant, more serious bounty, some law turn up, maybe bounty posters as well, so the aggressor would field some real heat. That would either deter the casuals and they'd stop, or the hardcore would enjoy the attention and would carry on but that in itself would be realistic and would improve the game realism. As it stands, a bounty poster will send me after an NPC because the committed one relative innocuous crime, but a player can murder a whole town and my horse (you know which part of that I find particularly unpalatable) and get off scott-free. If a stranger shoots me that's actually fine, but he needs to expect some payback, both from me and the authorities and other players who are into fighting the good fight.