Fixing pvp: The case against enchantments

[Xestia]

You're online. There are 6 people in the pvp world. You want to go fight them. You have that shiny Prot IV diamond armor with Unbreaking III and Feather Falling IV on the boots, and an awesome Sharp V, Unb III, FA II sword. You even have two god apples. You think about bringing it all to the pvp world, you could pwn everybody. But then again, you've spent forever making that set perfect, you don't want to mess up and have it all be gone in an instant. You decide against going in it, you just grab some iron armor and a Sharp II sword. The quality of gear of the 6 people already there is all spread out. Some have no gear, some are invis, 2 are in fully enchanted diamond. You steamroll 2 people without gear, you get attacked by an invis person, but barely survive, and manage to ender pearl out. A person in diamond comes running towards you, and kills you in an instant.

This is the state of pvp, the quality of people's gear is so spread out, short of invis, there's no chance of an even fight. No armor isn't suited for fighting. You can go in iron, but fear getting steamrolled by people in diamond. You can go in diamond, but if you lose, you'll have lost countless hours of work. Besides, steamrolling people while in perfect diamond gear isn't really that fun.

I used to love fighting, it used to be that most people were even. Everybody went in diamond, and people would usually have their own interesting combination of potions. Everybody had their own tactic.

I can remember Lone bringing a buttload of diamond swords (this was before invis potions). I assume he stashed the swords next to a hidden bed, and then he'd keep coming at you, wearing your armor down. You'd kill him so many times your inventory filled up with diamond swords, but eventually your armor would be near breaking, and he'd just keep coming at you. He had a unique tactic. A tactic that sadly isn't viable today.

Another common tactic was instaharm spam, people would come running at you, and just instantly drop as many potions as they could on you, killing you before you knew what was up (or in case you saw them and moved out of the way, running like hell). This tactic sadly is not viable today.

It's not viable because people might have Unb III on their armor. It's not viable because people might have Prot IV on their armor and Punch II on their bows.

Enchantments have destroyed the even playing field. It used to be, when you went into pvp, the most you were risking was 26 diamonds and a stack of arrows. Now, go in with bad armor and you risk getting steamrolled, go in with good armor, and you can't find anybody to fight, because who wants to lose 20 hours work enchanting stupid shit to perfection just for a single fight? Practically the only times I've been in a fight against somebody with nice gear in the past 6 months was invisible or as a turret on a pillar (Thank you for that gear Deflow, BTW.)

No surprise invis is so popular.

I propose a simple solution to this problem, one that won't ruin our vanilla-like immersion any further. We ban enchantments from the pvp world. Whenever you use /world, if you have any enchanted gear on you, you get a red message saying "Sorry, enchanted items are not permitted in the pvp world." You can all still use your Feather Falling and Unbreaking and Respiration and Fortune in the overworld, you can even have Prot IV fights if you'd like (as if that'll happen). But there will be no enchanted items in the pvp world.

Everybody in the pvp world would be even, you know your opponent won't be in some super gear, so you won't have to risk losing your precious 10-hour gear to go have a fight. It opens up for the use of potions again, instaharm is nothing but useless now, poison is only useful for disrupting a persons running. We'll get a bunch of new tactics as possibilities, we won't be stuck on just 3 viable tactics, it'll open up for a lot of creativity.

Mojang doesn't care about pvp, they ruined pvp with enchantments, let's fix it.

[Mattias480]

I think it's a very good idea.

[SilasOfBorg]

As do I. Xestia, excellent suggestion and summary of the problem.

[Melvin3000]

I recently played on a pvp server that removed enchants, and poison II was really just spammed in every fight because it can leave someone in unenchanted armor at half a heart in about 15 seconds. I think this is actually a good idea but maybe limiting potions to tier 1 as well.

[worldruler086]

Yeah, I knew this would happen when enchantments were added. There is simply no easy way to counter enchantments. They are simply too OP. Before enchantments I wouldn't mind being closer to spawn. So long as I had a dia sword/armor I would be safe from most everyone. When enchantments came around, I didn't know who would stumble upon my base, and whether fighting or simply running away was the best option, where before I knew the worst scenario would be that I was evenly matched.

If people aren't happy with your addition (which I approve of) I propose a second part of this idea. We make an arena where people can fight each other, especially if it is 1v1 or 2v2. Have tournaments or something, even tournaments where there isn't strict rules like "everyone needs x enchantments", where it is truly whoever brings the most advanced shit. Is that ok or am I just saying nonsense?

[Xestia]

To Melvin. This suggestion would make potions stronger again relative to other items, and the 16 second ones are mean (they actually drop you to 0.5 hearts on their own in 13 seconds). Nerfing them as well would be an option, but I think we should wait and take one thing at a time.

worldruler, I personally think a tournament arena would be a great addition. We would need to sort through a lot of technicalities though.

[Yukar9]

This shouldn't be hard to do technically speaking.

As long as there's continued support for it, I say we do it.

[TLRedemption]

I'm glad someone is trying to have some action taken against it, because enchantments definitely destroy the pvp in this game, this is a great idea, and it should be implemented.

[Fluz43]

Seems like a good idea, I say we should do it. Would anything related to enchantments be banned, such as enchanted books and swords/pickaxes/axes etc.?
Other than that, seems like a very good idea to help aid the PVP.

[el_andres96]

Wouldn't this be too un-vanilla? Limiting players experience in PvP wolrd? I agree that some people just go full OP to fight there but there's other ways to deal with invisible people or proct 4 people. I disagree with this idea.