PvP is cheap by design. Without the campers in Quake and the snipers in Counterstrike these games wouldn't have been as much fun as they were. That damned sniper might pick me off six times in a row, but nothing was quite as satisfying as finally lobbing a grenade into his position. It felt like complete payback.

I find Tactical PvP so much more satisfying than systematic. Tactical implies opportunity. Opportunity implies advantage. Advantage is inherently unbalanced / cheap.

Can we handle costly PvP? Perma-death is a sad reminder of real life and you can only remove a player from the field for so long, if it's Last Man Standing then it better be a short round. Looting items from players isn't popular either, especially if it stops the player from jumping right back into the fray.

PvP is about action, non-stop. That's what we want right? To feel like we're in the middle of a rollercoaster blockbuster action flic where it never stops. Go ahead and die, take a loss, but pop back up and keep going. You can kick a man, but you can't keep him down.

But when you take the cost completely out of PvP, if you remove any progression and bring it down to the basic elements of skill and pride, players start to demand balance. Is a fair fight what we really want? Here's the central argument in a recent post crying for class nerfs:

Isn't that what you're asking for? Perfectly balanced classes / characters would average out to everyone dying exactly 50% of the time. If you're concerning yourself with your rate of wins/losses, half the time is horrible, isn't it? You want to win, to come out on top.

PvP has terrible odds, period. Statistically, the only way someone can get ahead is while more players fall behind. So winning can't be about the odds, otherwise a whole lot of players are left unsatisfied. Accomplishments need to be given out either in small doses, or larger tasks that progress and accumulate more than the losses. It can't be zero sum.

In my mind, I feel the trick isn't to balance everyone as equals, but instead allow suitable means of challenge and revenge. Lob that grenade right back!