I've been up for way too long but i was just sitting on break at work and thought to myself, what if combat related equipment stats, namely the damage of weapons and armor grade of armors, scaled differently if your current combat relation is a PvE or PvP scenario.
IE the scaling is reduced to 10% in PvP, so a Q40 sword won't deal 2x damage, it would deal 1.2x damage. And same with armor class. You could even go as far as to do the same with all STR/AGI/CON/UA/MC/MK gildings.
This would simply work like the "factor of 2" combat stat change does, in that it bridges the massive stat gap between players and makes all PvP combat more equalized EXCEPT at ridiculously massive differences (noobs gotta die) a little similar to how some souls games do it.
So armor and weapons still feel very satisfying to increase in quality when doing any kind of hunting but immediately become less overpowering when it's a player you're directly attacking OR directly getting attacked by.
Early world, at the first winter, me and my friends went to a noob's base because he said some people got into his walls via his cave (LOL) and we were gonna go help him. We get there and it ends up being a 2v1 (me and my buddy being the 2) and we easily reached the 2 factor stat gap.
HOWEVER this was a big macho faction player and they dealt like 55 damage with a quick barrage at like 9% red opening (this was at like week 5-6 or whatever of the world so yeah rip) and so my buddy hightaled it outta there and i got my ass thwacked.
That fight would have felt a lot more fun and a lot less shtewpid if it wasn't for the fact that dude was rocking a qwazy quality sword and armor we couldn't scratch simply due to nolifeing, me and my friend were using q50 gear and still got absolutely decimated.
I feel like taking ALL PvP mechanics and making them try a fair bit to level the playing field in ALL scenarios is a good idea EXCEPT a 100+ stat 60+ qual char fighting a spruce cap or a 500+ stat 300+ qual char fighting a widdle hermit. That's TOTALLY FINE and FAIR and i would never complain about that but me and my friend worked really hard on our stats and gear but still got beat because weapon damage and armor class scales kinda crazy imo.
Just a thought. Im very tired im sure there's a good reason this wouldn't work im not realizing right now its just a thought.