Haven't replied since my original post to foster some discussion.
I would like to point out that the basis of this entire suggestion, theoretically, is that players flock to a "fresh start." A planned rr wipe would allow players to re-organize, re-plan, get excited about investing into the server when the playing field is truly even again. I use the 8v8 population during NA time as an example of why my time that I invested in since 2019 has become stale and tedious.
To be clear, I understand the consequences of a RR wipe. It certainly would upset some high rank people that put a lot of time into their character progression. However, I suggest to you that for every high rank person tearing it up in RvR, there are at least 10 who got frustrated with the rank gap and quit. I can off the top of my head name several people that have become bored with Phoenix in its current state and only play when the pvp events are live, otherwise they don't play at all. That is a result of sheer boredom.
If you let players keep their characters, money, rogs, reskins, etc., and literally ONLY wipe the RR, you could announce this in advance and give groups a chance to come back, level their chars to 50 in anticipation of the RR wipe, and hit the ground running on day 1 of the new season.
At the end of the day, it's 2021 and we are playing a 20 year old game. The question shouldn't be how do we keep things going as is? The question should be how do we protect the integrity and legacy of DAoC while still keeping things fresh and exciting. Seasonal DAoC is the answer.
The success of the lvl-playing-field shows exactly what the problem is. - NF is a lot better than OF, but the distances are still big.
Most content needs a significant time to reach action, which is part of classic DaoC, but strongly favors RA-regging and punishes dieing a lot harder than in the event.
Also all the group action in the frontier is much more organized and a lot less wild than the event, which is naturally more punishing to the weaker groups, as noone cleans up their fight, so they get RPs too and don't have to feel so bad about being humiliatingly defeated by another group.
Part of this, especially for 8v8 comes from the big groupsize of DaoC - but changing this is imo not an option. It is a flaw but also a beautiful part of the game, driving teamwork to the limit of what a pug group can achieve.
The Phoenix team already implemented options for fast PvP access for smallmen and 8men with the smallmen and EV teleporters. I don't know what more we can rly do to improve access.
There could be /fair cleanfight for smallmen to maybe grow a 5v5 scene for faster groupbuilding and faster fights than 8v8. - But this bares the risk of seriously harming the 8v8 population in the process or even killing 8v8. - I still think it should be done anyway. And a solo teleporter into direct action needs to be added too, for the populated soloing zones of beno/dc/bledmer, just outside cliprange of the docks or bridges, to make the spawn faster and drive the wildness of the action forward.
If those things are in place we still need to look at low RRs in different content and make sure they all at least do 30k/h pre RR6, better 50k/h or more, at least if they do well.
For the strong performer at 50k/h it would be 10h /played to RR5 and 20h to RR6, so for someone playing 4h a day, that would be 2 1/2 days to RR5 and 5 days to RR6.
For the casual playing 1h per day at 30k/h it would be 17 hours /played to RR5, so 17 days and 33 hours to RR6, so 33 days = a bit more than a month.
This is pretty close to what you do at the event. Of course there would be top performers at 100k/h with a full gvg premade reroll and there would be underperformers at 15k/h - but that is acceptable and there is no real way around it.
- I don't think this would take away the progession aspect of DaoC - it would just keep the door open for new players or rerolled characters/ changing classes in an existing group. - The server has been growing to mid/high rank, as it happens with all daoc servers. And there needs to be an answer for new players/rerolls.
The problem with seasons is, how far down do you want to erase RR? to 1L1? Then after 1 week the RR gap is bigger than right now. - If you just Reset to 5L0 or 6L0 it would make things more interesting, as the beginners can use some tools and the 24/7 groups have to soon face the exponential climb barrier and can't get away to 50 more RApoints all too fast (which is the case if its RR2 vs RR6 after a few days).
Another problem i see is that some classes simply need a lot more RR for their fundamental 8v8 kit than others.
Example1: A primary healertype needs arcane5+ = 10 pts, mcl2+seren1 = 10 pts, raging power1 = 5pts, di1 = 5pts, pr1 = 5pts, purge3 =15 pts =6L0 - without any castspeed, bof or moc - add art5, dex5 and bof3 and we are at 9L5 +acuity2 at 9L7.
Example2: A offtank does reasonably well at det9+purge3 = 4L7 - even if you see cap swingspeed and mop5 str5 as fundamental you still end up at 7L vs 9L.
Example3: A peeltank needs det9 +purge3+dashing3 to be able to just basically do his job - that's already 6L2, no swing speed, no mastery of block, no soldiers barricade, the impact of RR here knows no limit, as dashing5 is double as long as dashing3 and if you could you would grab soldiers5 too.
I think Phoenix choosing 7L0 for the arena was not a choice by accident - it is where most classes have their core tools and some have their first 10 points spent into personal preference (aom5 vs dps, etc).
What i am trying to say is - you need to keep things fast not just to 6L0 but probably further ... at least at a reasonable speedup compared to the current RP/h.