True, I forgot some skills were too OP last we ran it (diamond fists, lol). Was thinking of the non-aggressive skills in particular (anything to take the edge of mining/woodcutting). Combat in MC is one-sided enough as it is.
This, among the other complaints in the thread, are all somewhat fixable. I've ranted about these things before, but it's coming again.
The general problem with minecraft pvp is that the game very much lacks in the depth department. Given equal equipment, a player's choice in getting the edge over another player is either to jump and always crit, or have an amazing connection and be able to crouch and hit feet. There are a few crafty ways one can retreat and heal up, but that's the full extent of 'skill' in this game. The general problem is that players don't have full access to all the same things. Potions aren't too hard to come across, but enchants are completely random (though maybe not with 1.8?) and diamonds do take a bit of time, and not everyone can afford a computer and connection that never lags (especially in pvp). And losing a fight means losing all of those enchants and diamonds.
Now these things can be somewhat balanced, and primordia took a step in the right direction with it. Yes, primordia had balance issues and in some places was too restrictive. But in general, nobody allowed to wear full diamond gear was great. Everyone using stone or iron swords, without enchants, was great. And having
skills added
skill to the fighting in the game.
A big deal with primordia was the increased life pools. A sword that does 20 damage isn't as brutal to a player with 100 hp as it is to the standard player with 20 hp.
Now as far as servers go;
It's obvious that I think primordia was on the right track for some things. The use of land on that server was pretty terrible though. I'd rather see a small radius at the center of the map as protected (no pvp zone, not block protected) for players who want to hide in that kind of area. But make it small. Jte had far too much area set as no-pvp (as well as terrible rules for the pvp zone in the beginning) so the map was a lot less interesting (though I achieved my greatest build there, Seahaven felt really good to get done).
Having the set factions (the 4 families) was a great idea, imo. They just had way too much land for it. I'd like to see maybe 5-8 factions in a similar way to what primordia had, but give them like 4 chunks of land protection, and paste a standard vault there (maybe customized for the family design, but a standard vault). Let players built off of that.
No blocked chests was a great rule (though I understand a HUGE pain in the ass to staff, though I bet it wouldn't be hard to rewrite the chest code to allow them to be opened regardless of stuff above). Encourage people to build proper secrets or redstone locks on their stuff. It encourages people to spend time thieving, and in some cases you spend too much time and get attacked by the owner.
And finally, the best way to balance pvp is to restrict things. Don't let
anyone run around in full diamond. Don't let
everyone use enchanted gear or potions. The plugin(s) primordia used did this stuff, and though it wasn't perfect, it was a lot of fun and was constantly being improved.