Hello. I'm not sure how to phrase this but I wanted to see how you thought of these ideas as I break down my view of SK and how the design affects players. It might be late in the game, but I figured I would try.
These are my personal observations from what I have seen, so feel free to correct me or counter my statements if your opinion does not match up with my own.
I've spoken to players and have seen many times that people have decided to quit playing over loss of gear, and I suppose that would be related to the time it takes to recover. The pk scene revolves around conflict but many people have been driven away from that aspect due to the competitiveness of other players and the potential to have your things taken. PvP has obviously slowed down, but the general feel was that people avoided pk or only chose to engage when they felt they had an advantage. The mentality among a few was also that it lessened your chances of being crippled by jloots if you jlooted the other first. There was also the hoarding mentality which some might say is an adaptive aspect of evolution and it's subjective. In the end, it leads to items not being used or only used by the same person who knows the process of obtaining it. As of now the benefits and incentives for PK/looting come at the expense of loss from another and potential loss of a player who has limited time to even play.
In the PvE aspect, end-game dungeons and exploration have led to instances where a mistake can lead to hours of lost time and lost gear on top of recovery time. Eventually it sometimes becomes an issue of finding someone who knows about the area you want to explore before you commit. Hopefully by someone willing to part with the knowledge.
I have a few ideas but these also come with drawbacks but the idea is to ease the burden of exploration, gear loss and to make PK less harsh.
First, implement an item carried cap in total items and prevent gear loss and jlooting. Players will then have to balance out their choices of food/consumables etc. Although I don't want to see everyone wearing the same OP set of gear, it would at least let you know where you need to balance other sets/items. It also solves the issues above, less consequences for PvP and exploration would encourage it a bit more.
The item cap also prevents loot overload from causing isssues with the game. Imagine being able to test out build theories in pk without being set back because you aren't skilled 'yet' and lost. The current system hinders newcomers in pvp or even moderately skilled players if the decision to take another persons gear is left up to the other person.
There would also be an incentive to PK in the form of points and diminishing points per same person killed to prevent gaming the system and trolling. Points can be used at a vendor who sells XYZ for that currency.
My second idea is to bring back every tribunal in its original form, allowing players to utilize gate/rift/enchanting/buffs. You will have more diverse builds this way and also open up more room for different pvp scenarios. This would allow melee oriented classes to have incentive to build around these buffs vs the current system, which feels like it rewards caster classes and NPC guards are used as tanks. It's ok to rely on other people for these kinds of buffs/utility spells, but there will be instances where your faction just doesn't have mages, or maybe you are a deep-elf and everyone might be playing light aura races/classes.
Feel free to chime in or offer up more ideas. Like I said, it might be too late, but I think this would improve the game experience for players, moreso the newer ones. Text based games are already kind of daunting, so maybe this could be done temporarily as an experiment? If it doesn't happen, at least we tried