The main issue with the equipment is that they seem to trump whatever your existing attack and defense stats are. I lost to a guy with half of my stats but his equipment was better. This makes attack and defense meaningless. To solve this, just have the equipment values calculate additional point to the existing attack and defense stats. That way we can still tell who is more or less powerful. A level 1 knife might add 1 million attack, a level 2 might add 4 million. Calculate it anyway you want. It might be a multiplier or a % increase. Level 1 might be a 10% increase and so on. But whatever it is, make it change the existing attack and defense values so we only have to look at ONE number to know what our odds are of winning a fight.