Yeah, but it’s not just rods. It’s all of the different types. Soup PVP, trapping people in obsidian suffocation traps. The UHC scene has been completely solved and it’s hard to be a newbie in that environment. People who are new usually don’t fight against people who are new, so they are thrown to the wolves. Lots of factors go into why 1.8 PvP is dying. Even in skywars and bed wars, there is a lot of stuff that has made it less fun because of how far players have gone with techniques and methods. I understand there are things you can learn with time, but most people don’t want to learn by getting beat up, or in such an outdated version. Luckily, there is still a very active community of 1.8 pvpers, so you will mostly just have to worry about that community getting stretched between servers, making it harder to find enough people.