When designing a video game, do you ever stop and ask yourself: Do I want my players to win through Skill, or win because they have skills? I had done a test with my roomates children to find out how good they were. They all played World of Warcraft, and were all pretty good at it, therefore they had Skills. However, I flipped on the original Super Mario Brothers and guess what.. they were stumped when it came to passing levels, no skill. This seems to be the problem with a lot of games on the market. It is the ability to bang your head on the keyboard and still be able to play your character correctly. Kind of like playing Mortal Kombat and winning by just pressing buttons and not through special actions.
Where does facerolling playing stop and real playing begin? Do you balance your game through PvE, PvP, or both? The answer, in my honest opinion, is in the game itself. If you are making a very in-depth game which includes all of the elements of questing, instances, raiding, pvp, etc... Then honestly your game should balance around the world content of the game, THEN balance your PvP around that. Its vice versa if your content is very pvp heavy.
Realistically, I feel it is damaging to try and balance for both. If you do that, you take away from both the players who enjoy PvE content, and the hardcore PvP players. You should take some time, sit back, and ask yourself this: Do I want a story driven game with a lot of PvE content, or do I want a PvP game with some PvE content thrown in. The choice is yours in the end
