I just read all the replies in this thread and since most of them are complaining about the gear balance and since you're interested in outside ideas I made an account to share my two cents.
Most people that have seen/played race for the wool know that the only real way to be able to get each wool (which is always in a rather difficult dungeon) while under heavy enemy fire is to be in full diamond armor because your practically invincible at that point. That map is balanced around the effectiveness of diamond armor however PvP in minecraft generally isn't, there are no armor piercing arrows or anything like that so this map really isn't in a map that has any use for the highest tier items in minecraft. The high tier armor in minecraft is just way to good for PvP to be fun or for potions etc. to have any real effect (although that is not totally true since they bypass armor so maybe that makes them more viable? (however the effective heal of health pots is also way stronger), the point I'm trying to make is that it changes completely how you play the game (because your invincible) and that change doesn't affect the gameplay in this map positively). That's why I have some suggestions.
Against mobs even stone swords are pretty strong, I think a better approach is to have wooden swords or just some random item like a fish, enchanted with some minor knockback as your first offensive item. It gets the job done but killing creeps is way to time consuming so you would upgrade and with each sword upgrade it would take one less hit to kill the creeps. I think having the first "sword" be something else than a sword so that it has infinite durability is a wise move because you can renew your sword by buying a new one any way... Having it so that each upgrade makes the creeps one fever hits but expire faster (for example gold items) would mean you would be forced to upgrade through each tier instead of skipping from the first one to the last one, which is probably what you want the player to do. The reason I say the first "sword" should have knockback is because it will make managing many mobs at a time possible which is a necessity.
So I think the best thing you can do is to go and test/read how many hits each sword type with each enchantment takes to kill every creep and how much damage armor absorbs. I would do it for you, and post it here, but that is basically the same as linking the wiki which would be pointless since you can find that on your own. However I think no matter what you do you should give every armor some projectile protection or at least the cheapest types because you want to avoid making it so that the losing team can't make a comeback, if one team has good bows and the other just wiped and needs arrows it means they're at a huge disadvantage but if the cheapest armor has huge projectile protection then the fight becomes much more interesting, especially with low durability armor because then the winning team might have lost some armor pieces in the previous fight, this means the defending team is always at an advantage which is good and makes the game last longer.
So what I'm essentially saying is:
- Make potions cheap and accessible (at least short duration ones and then the longer duration/more potent ones more expensive) to provide more depth and skill to pvp'ing.
- Make all weapons lower durability.
- Make sure bows aren't anything amazing.
- Make armor low durability with high projectile protection.
- Make sure that weapons scale in a way that makes them actually kill mobs faster (for example the difference between a iron and stone sword is none in terms of hits needed to kill a zombie).
- Remove diamond armor all together and if you want to have iron armor make sure its only superior trait is durability, that is make it on par with the less durable armor but not have any projectile protection or something like that.
Also it would be really cool if you had some places that you could get higher than the opponent to make up for all the bow nerfs I'm suggesting (like in dota where there are hills and stuff).
Maybe you could have a 3 for 2 thing on some potions or some other deal that makes them more expensive than just an even trade but still really cheap. Especially speed potions since they would make the running back and forth less mundane not to mention that the only real way to catch fleeing enemies is to run faster (keep in mind I have only played this on the barron server where food is disabled so you always regenerate so if the enemy is in heavy projectile protection armor then there's not much you can do to him from afar).
Looting enchantments might be cool but it would be very hard to balance.
I really hope someone reads this and modifies my ideas in a way he/she thinks would be an improvement and I also hope this map will be continuously updated since it's a great concept for a map. Also if someone would be willing to (and I don't know how big of a deal this would be but I know it is possible) make a .exe / .msi that would install a bukkit server so that you could play this on a LAN with minimum effort that would be really cool and probably increase publicity for this project a lot faster.Longterm thing but it would be soooo cool to make a mod with craftable unique items (like in real dota). It would be like... REALLY cool
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Most people that have seen/played race for the wool know that the only real way to be able to get each wool (which is always in a rather difficult dungeon) while under heavy enemy fire is to be in full diamond armor because your practically invincible at that point. That map is balanced around the effectiveness of diamond armor however PvP in minecraft generally isn't, there are no armor piercing arrows or anything like that so this map really isn't in a map that has any use for the highest tier items in minecraft. The high tier armor in minecraft is just way to good for PvP to be fun or for potions etc. to have any real effect (although that is not totally true since they bypass armor so maybe that makes them more viable? (however the effective heal of health pots is also way stronger), the point I'm trying to make is that it changes completely how you play the game (because your invincible) and that change doesn't affect the gameplay in this map positively). That's why I have some suggestions.
Against mobs even stone swords are pretty strong, I think a better approach is to have wooden swords or just some random item like a fish, enchanted with some minor knockback as your first offensive item. It gets the job done but killing creeps is way to time consuming so you would upgrade and with each sword upgrade it would take one less hit to kill the creeps. I think having the first "sword" be something else than a sword so that it has infinite durability is a wise move because you can renew your sword by buying a new one any way... Having it so that each upgrade makes the creeps one fever hits but expire faster (for example gold items) would mean you would be forced to upgrade through each tier instead of skipping from the first one to the last one, which is probably what you want the player to do. The reason I say the first "sword" should have knockback is because it will make managing many mobs at a time possible which is a necessity.
So I think the best thing you can do is to go and test/read how many hits each sword type with each enchantment takes to kill every creep and how much damage armor absorbs. I would do it for you, and post it here, but that is basically the same as linking the wiki which would be pointless since you can find that on your own. However I think no matter what you do you should give every armor some projectile protection or at least the cheapest types because you want to avoid making it so that the losing team can't make a comeback, if one team has good bows and the other just wiped and needs arrows it means they're at a huge disadvantage but if the cheapest armor has huge projectile protection then the fight becomes much more interesting, especially with low durability armor because then the winning team might have lost some armor pieces in the previous fight, this means the defending team is always at an advantage which is good and makes the game last longer.
So what I'm essentially saying is:
- Make potions cheap and accessible (at least short duration ones and then the longer duration/more potent ones more expensive) to provide more depth and skill to pvp'ing.
- Make all weapons lower durability.
- Make sure bows aren't anything amazing.
- Make armor low durability with high projectile protection.
- Make sure that weapons scale in a way that makes them actually kill mobs faster (for example the difference between a iron and stone sword is none in terms of hits needed to kill a zombie).
- Remove diamond armor all together and if you want to have iron armor make sure its only superior trait is durability, that is make it on par with the less durable armor but not have any projectile protection or something like that.
Also it would be really cool if you had some places that you could get higher than the opponent to make up for all the bow nerfs I'm suggesting (like in dota where there are hills and stuff).
Maybe you could have a 3 for 2 thing on some potions or some other deal that makes them more expensive than just an even trade but still really cheap. Especially speed potions since they would make the running back and forth less mundane not to mention that the only real way to catch fleeing enemies is to run faster (keep in mind I have only played this on the barron server where food is disabled so you always regenerate so if the enemy is in heavy projectile protection armor then there's not much you can do to him from afar).
Looting enchantments might be cool but it would be very hard to balance.
I really hope someone reads this and modifies my ideas in a way he/she thinks would be an improvement and I also hope this map will be continuously updated since it's a great concept for a map. Also if someone would be willing to (and I don't know how big of a deal this would be but I know it is possible) make a .exe / .msi that would install a bukkit server so that you could play this on a LAN with minimum effort that would be really cool and probably increase publicity for this project a lot faster.Longterm thing but it would be soooo cool to make a mod with craftable unique items (like in real dota). It would be like... REALLY cool