The older system pre-10.0 was much better overall and simpler to use.
It wasn't perfect by any means but you could grief a lot less than with towns. Farmers are quitting a lot more now that they can't protect their crops outside of a town radius, anybody can steal their hard work or destroy their farms. You can give them their own outpost/claims but its much LATER in the game and usually too late.
For a game without the PVP tag I feel like more servers are mostly PVP now. Almost everyone fights over making credits or the most "money". The second their claim gets griefed, the town absorbs them or they make less credit than someone else they quit.
The game used to be more centered around collaboration and working together to defeat the meteor while avoiding devastation to the world from pollution.
The old system had abuse too but it had more pros than cons.
A main issue with towns now is that you can't protect your stuff outside of the initial ...