Every game out there does just fine with just pvp level and statistics for progression.
FFA, no consequence games traditionally fail hard on their face, and not 1 FFA game with power items for progression has ever succeeded, I include AOC in this fail category.
Power items are a bad way to go. If you dont see that after 6 years of sh1t pvp then youre not as clever as you seem Shiwan. People have been farming gear (aka the AOC pvp crutch) since pvp gear was introduced, then t3 weapons then bori then t4 gears and weapons and now the new pvp gear.
This is how it should be:
1. Disable or fix bori so you have to pvp
2. Make it so there 5% difference between the starter set and the best pvp set. Forever removing the pvp crutch.
3. PvP level reset to 0, most pvp 10 farmed bori anyway so fvck them.
4. Reintroduce the pvp stats page that you cant hide, with a large amount stats on there, include behavioral stats like mini's left, lowbie ganks and link this to guild pvp rankings penalties.
5. Hire some (2 or 3 volunteer) GMs to ban teleporting comber users - paying special attention to sieges
6. Make some simple pvp content like top 50x rankings or king of the hill mini.
Do those 6 basic simple things and AOC pvp would be great again. It would be fast, easy and be basically free to implement.
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But no, we are stuck with the same old pvp crutch crap weve had for 6 years.