A more relatable experience, for example:
Multi-person homes
Death of animals
A meeting place inside the game
More teamwork, street creation isn't cutting it?
you spend a few hours planting a grove of trees and a couple of days tending only to have someone chop down all your work in half an hour.
and there is nothing you can do to stop them.
that's not so much a little chaos as total.
how about letting planned infrastructure emerge in the game before thinking about various ways for solo players to destroy it?
certain decisions in the game should also have weight. the choice of tree planted is important because it isn't easily undone. that isn't a bad thing, it just means you have to plan ahead.
still, I think cutting down live trees will have to happen eventually. too many things will need planks and the plank spawn points are weird.
i think the balance could be found in the chopping time. have a fully grown living tree take up to fifteen minutes to chop down, and generate 100 planks when chopped down. epic battle for a big reward but time consuming enough that you can't mow down entire streets before they can be re-planted.
Sometimes, jokes are just jokes. Have fruitless trees which scale plank yield to their size and are choppable while alive, no changes to the other trees.
there's been suggestions of an arborist skill that will let you dig and replant trees similar to the capturing pigs technique. with proper cooldowns and timers this may be a great way to prevent griefing yet allow some ways to better interact with existing trees
The ecological balance between growing trees and harvesting planks will have to be thought about very carefully. A tiny imbalance between the rewards for helping them grow and helping them be chopped up could result in thick forests or a treeless world.