[Carding]

There is a big problem in what you suggest though, if +tactic weapons are rare only the strongest will use them and it will only make them stronger. I think the fact that smithing is extremely slow to train also affects the current balance of loot items and craftables. Unless it is made easier I am not in favour of making weapons and such more difficult to accumulate for players who prefer to do hunting rather than macro endlessly to be able to craft them.

I think perhaps we agree in principle but your approach is that crafting and hunting should both be useful so nerf the hunting drops but my approach is more that the hunting drops are mostly fine and we just need more crafting options (but not too many at once, these things are always best approached one step at a time).

There was a time on IN1 where the very best players would use perhaps vanqs and invul (no +acc.) or high end craftables like blackrock, and weak players would use verite/blood rock and force/power weapons, the difference was minimal in performance and new players stood a great chance of competing and thanks to the high drop rates and mining yields a death for a new PvPer would be no more than 20k, perhaps even significantly less. This was a time when PvP was rife and a lot of new people, including myself and many of my friends got involved and learned to fight and have fun without having to grind our lives away to replace our stuff each time we inevitably died to the more established and experienced PvPers.

Much later many changes similar in nature to the ones you suggest (nerfing loot tables and a vanq/invul wipe) and introduction of craftables to "replace" lead to gear being more expensive, generally less available and ultimately more boring for players who don't like crafting to accumulate. This, together with a number of other mistakes such as the idea "the best stuff should be really rare" (which means it just makes the strongest stronger) really killed the PvP system, making it inaccessible and difficult to replace losses, frustrating for the weak, poor or new PvPers and boring for the strong and rich who had fewer and fewer to fight.

Like I said, ideas that sound good can pan out really badly.

You misunderstood my suggestion about tactics, that was independent of changes to narrow the band of damage from weapons. In otherwords, make the suggested changes to damage, and then phase out or nerf the accuracy bonuses on +tactic weapons whilst boosting general hit rate. Essentially then making all weapons a little more reliable, and narrowing the difference between the top (+tactic) weapons and other weapons whilst still preserving overall balance (which as you pointed out is currently mostly balanced around +tactic weapons).