Player-versus-Player in Role-Playing Games

It is difficult to have a fair pvp system in most online RPG and that's for one main reason, most RPGs aren't very realistic. Forget the magic and demons and stories and such, those I can understand. But having a variable HP system in itself makes it difficult to set up a fair system. It's fine for all intents and purposes for single player RPGs, but if you're going to fight against other people, you're going to need some type of balance and each person having a different amount of "healthiness" is going to disturb that balance and make some abuse it.

Let's be honest, even a peasant with a butcher knife could have a chance at killing someone if they hacked at the neck and were lucky enough to avoid the onslaught. It's not likely, but it's possible. Now take that same peasant, just say they do 5 hit points of damage, and they might manage to kill a real lowly person but if a person has 3000 hit points, the only way they're going to come close to finishing them off is if the other person constantly misses. People often say "It's silly that people can just walk down the street and be hacked at and not be killed" as a defense for pro-pvp, but isn't this the same thing in reverse? I don't care what anybody thinks, a knife in the back would hurt, no matter how "healthy" you are.

The hit point system makes things simpler for single player games because you don't have to bother with such things as where the person was hit, was the attack deflected, did they dodge enough to get only nicked, and so on. It also makes your character seem heroic because they can take on impalement and still lug their sword to hack off the poor whimpering monster's head off. You pit those people against each other and it doesn't work as well. You can see this easily in single player RPGs as well. If you fight things in the area you're supposed to, they are a challenge and can do the damage they're supposed to. But when you're trying to go against that final boss, you don't go back to the first area and kill those wimpy little blobs you first encountered.

Now there might be a way around this though in DA. If it can judge insight and only let those that are close in insight fight each other, then it would work fine and people would have a chance. But suspension of disbelief has to stop where abuse would set it. Thanks for reading a long-winded opinion/rant/rational explanation.

-Dartanian Lestor