Debunking EoC: Power Creep and PvP

One of the problems in RS2 was that if level 90 weapons were added to the game, they would end up being way too powerful in PvP. Level 80 chaotics were already hitting constant 400s.

While the Wilderness had self-moderation in which people just run if you use "cheap tactics", balance in the wilderness could have been improved.

What I thought of was having an equipment wilderness level restriction. In other words, at level 1 wilderness, you can only use level 50 armor (runite) and level 75 of lower weapons (most of what you saw in Edgeville was around there).

At level 10 wilderness, you could use level 60 armor and level 77 weapons. In other words, the wilderness level adds to the level of armor you can use and 1/4th of the wilderness level adds to the weapon requirement (rounded down). Spells may or may not be subject to this too.

At level 50 wildy you'd be able to use level 99 armor and 87 weapons. At 60 wildy you'd see level 90s. Anything above that would be deemed too powerful everywhere. Actually, I don't think the Wildy goes up to 60, so the number may need to be adjusted a little bit, like 0.3 instead.

This is of course, a very awkward solution that could cost inventory space if you are required to unequip things, which I am against doing. I would merely mark the items as ineffective and act like their stats are 0 until the correct level is reached.

It may be possible to prevent entering the Wildy at all if your equipment is too strong, requiring you to jump levels by going through canoes, using a game's necklace teleport, or entering through Ardougne's wilderness lever.

On top of that, we could make it to where only a vertical strip of the Wilderness has these rules applied, possibly north of East Varrok.

This keeps an area in which the usual wilderness balance is enforced, despite additions of new and powerful level 90 gear. In RS2, it's entirely possible for people levels lower than you to get kills off you if they're built a certain way, and this might highlight that.

Already in EoC I see people complain about how level 90 weapons destroy people too fast, and level 90 armor makes you too invincible. No matter how you introduce new items in any system, powerful weapons are going to destroy the runite everyone usually PKs with.

This also does push people using bandos armor or similar a little further back into the wilderness, which I think might not be the best thing, but if the unrestricted strip of wilderness is still there, it should still be fine. It could also be world based.

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In PvP minigames where you can go all-out on gear, power creep didn't seem to be too bad of a problem, because you can go all-out on gear. The addition of minigame hybrid armor also greatly leveled the playing field in my eyes, because it gave anyone good armor for free.

Of course, the more power creep, the more the gap there would be between high level players and low level, but hopefully other stuff can help to mitigate that, such as adequate defense creep.