Given the topic was brought up at the recent zoom meeting and it seemed like player input was requested here are few thoughts.

Before I begin we need to highlight some of issues that need to be addressed. This is a highly complex problem that have had major impacts on the game and the view of PVP in the game.

The skill and stat gap. Since overall mind state was removed and the number of skills vastly increased some years ago, many players have chosen to spend all their time hunting. A number of these characters have been bought and sold. Why does this matter? Well, lets say you are new and you see some pvp and want to get involved. There is no way to know who is your rank level. Even if you have played for awhile you will not know the rank level of every character in the game. Why would anyone want to pvp when the result is going to be instant death? How fun is being opened to pvp when you can just become a ragdoll to someone who gets bored with 0 chance at retaliation?

This leads into the second problem: How can pvp be balanced with such massive rank and stat gaps? Yes everyone wants to script up the be the biggest and best, but is being invincible to 99% of the player base healthy for the game? How many characters have been bought for this sole purpose? On more than a few occasions this has lead to some extremely toxic situations and im sure more than most have had experience with this. Characters are shaped by the world they are in. Maybe characters react differently to characters they know have a temper and can 1 shot them, maybe characters act differently knowing they can impose their will on others without repercussions. Some times it's RP other times its the actual player, however the system currently in place allows this.


Should time spent scripting = pvp power? Should characters with access to better scripts = dominate those who do not? I think this was OK in 2.0 when the skill gap wasn't as massive. There were also tools in place to help even the odds to go after others that had a rank and stat advantages. Given the state of current DR, and having many characters near or at cap, there is just too much gap in attempt to balance pvp for the game.

Perhaps balance should be implemented on rank tiers? Well pretty often i see mostly 1 sided pvp. People tend to avoid characters bigger than them, but they do not avoid characters smaller than them.

My idea is to separate pvp with rank level. Rank level does not equal skill level.

What advantages would this bring?

Characters of different rank sizes can now pvp with each other on a level playing field. How many negative interactions can be avoided if both characters are now have equal footing. Perhaps characters will react differently to situations they would previously avoid? PVP balance would be much much more simplified given you now have a much narrower rank gap to consider.

You can go further and equalize skill dependent on skill set. Different guilds excel in different things and can now be balanced with these factors in place.
There are many abilities that do need to be balanced including wards, sorcery, weapon damage, disables, resource management, and guilds need specific balancing themselves. However, I do no believe this is really feaseable given the size variances in characters currently in DR.

Do we want to make pvp balanced rank for rank, or do we want to make pvp balanced for the game as a whole?