In principle, we will keep the distinction between knockdown and kill in place, as it is a crucial component for our upcoming reputation system and it also keeps the experience consistent between PvP and PvE.
Having said that, executing somebody in PvP should not be hard with Albion Online Gold. We absolutely want to make sure that smaller groups of players can execute knocked down players in larger groups without much trouble.
Therefore, we will look into the cast time of the execute ability, make sure that it does not require any energy and also change it in such a way that it is not interrupted by damage. On top of that, we might be adding a passive that you can pick on certain weapons that allows for even faster executes.
core goal of the reputation system (and some other little changes alongside it) is to make yellow and red zones ideal for smaller scale PvP fights, while having the focus of black zones be on guild vs guild and large scale fights and wars. This goes hand in hand with the world map change, where we will drastically increase the number of black zones in the game.
If your only concern is reputation AO Gold system – than players who care about reputation can have knockdown/execution mechanics enabled as an option to not kill someone if they dont want to. But the players who dont care about reputation penalties at all will have an option to always kill opponents they reduced to 0 HP.
Also why keeping consistent experience between PVP and PVE is important? Why is it even a thing? If you want to keep experience consistent Albion Online Silver trading, than why the mobs attack tank with taunt while players dont (unless they are really dense players)?
You are introducing mechanics which hurt PVP(actually also hurt a PVE side, but that cause is lost, i see no point arguing) a lot, and you either cant or just dont want to give any reasons for it. No ‘consistent PVE and PVP experience’ is not a reason. Its just another way to say ’cause we want to’.
Albion Online: PvP and PvE Roams, PvP Solo 