DiabloFans

I assume people wouldn't find it that much fun if they were constantly paired against guys like Kripparian, KingKongor or Archon, if they played 12 hours a day and could roflstomp them every time, simply because they played less. That's where people will disagree the most. To me a Diablo-like PvP has to be somewhat balanced in order to be remotely fun. A "fair fight" is what most people look for in terms of competition, and also doing well based on strategy and skill (execution). Not many people enjoy either stomping their opponent or being stomped every time. I can absolutely understand the fear of the developers to even step into this area. It's scary as fuck to them. Of course most people don't care, they "just want PvP".

The intent is great, but you're probably never going to find a good middle ground between people who want their gear (aka their time available to play) to matter, against the people who don't want to be gimped because they can only play 2 hours/week, and just want to have some mindless fun with D3 heroes. These 2 groups will never reach a consensus. And that's maybe the biggest dilemma the dev team faces with PvP. What is PvP to the Diablo franchise. It most certainly isn't the crap that we had in D2, for crying out loud let's not even go there. I'll be completely honest with you. As much as I'm attached to my characters, if people want some real competitive mode in D3 (and not something to just complain about balance later), I do think D3 would benefit a lot from a "Generic Hero vs Hero" mode. You choose some predefined gear, maybe two or three legendary items from a poll, preset stats, some skills with predetermined effects, and just hack away. Similar to GW2's structured PvP (heck, anyserious competitive PvP game). There's no "I farmed 1k hours, hence I automatically win against anyone who farmed less than 800 hours" feature in those.