Seems to me they just need to implement a ranking system. Let player skill form the balance.

Souls memory was flawed, very flawed, especially at launch. But the principle was sound. Stop twinks, group players together based on experience.

Perhaps add a soul memory that works solely off of PvP win "experience" points?

Like, say soul memory returns, but now also includes weapon levels and boss progress in order to fully crack down on twinks. This could include calculations based not just on soul memory but also bosses beat and such. However it is not a hard restriction now, just something that influences who you match with. Perhaps it only applies to invaders, leaving coop and also dueling summon signs free to be open. I think it could be made to work for most players needs.

Then specifically for PvP they could add another form of this where kills specifically from PvP accumulate. This moves you to other "tiers" \This isnt a hard cap** and you can invade anyone, but the number would increase the chances of pairing with someone with similar "soul memory" and lower the chances of moving to someone with lower memory. It works as a priority, NOT a hard block.

So an invader who has amassed 50k PvP memory is more likely to match with someone with 50k soul+PvP memory. The invaders memory is calculated by their game progress too, so even a LvL 1 invader cant twink an early player as the game factors in what bosses were killed and the levels of the equipped weapons, lets say the game says "you killed bosses worth a total of 15k souls and your weapons are worth 5k souls, so you have a 20k affective memory"

They CAN still invade a lower player, but its more likely theyd get another 20k player. In which case their attempts to twink make them have a disadvantage, and their PvP memory tells the game of their relative skill level, pairing them on PvP skills, NOT just memory.

Then finally, PvP Memory takes priority over soul memory. So if you build for PvP and have, say, 10k soul memory but 30k PvP memory, youre more likely to invade UP to 30k than down to 10. Like give PvP a memory factor of 2 or something. In this example youd match more regularly with 25k~ish people.