Constant balancing is a must in any MMO. As to driving player back for a new game type… Possibly?
See a lot of people who play PvP games usually play more for the player vs player aspect. What do I mean? Well score is a factor but no one really cares, like arcade games’s level of pvp was “who has better score?” But anyone coming from another MMO/Shooter/Moba(DOTA-like) it’s usually about the kills, even if kills don’t matter.(leader boards are a different story)
LoL as an example kills and deaths matter a lot even if its not the main objective, and although being balanced around a team game to reach a main goal a vast majority spend their times playing to rack up kills along with the objective. Even CTF games in shooters have a simular mindset. Meaning people want “player vs players” as a competent opponent to overcome.
GW2 cannot do this with 5v5 territories.
The main philosophy is trying to make everyone and almost all builds relevant, but how do you make bunkers relevant if they can’t kill? Make them out last DPS 4 days till the DPS dies? no! You can’t then bunker becomes OP and why run anything else? So you need something else for it. Thus we have points to hold. They have a presence on the battle field take a while to die and can hold out, thus making them relevant.
This is why we cannot have death match and duels and why the current format won’t work. It will for some, and anyone who wants a new e-sport will stick with it. But for the majority who want it to be players fighting other players, a territory game type isn’t the most appealing thing.
With all this said it’s also where the mentality of balance comes in (even if A-net currently isn’t giving us the attention we need) but continuing down this road is going to make a very niche community in the long run.
A death match though I think would draw people back because it fits with the proper mentality of what PvPers want. However the game would have to drastically change IMO for it to work.
-after thought-
A lot of people suggest 2v2s and 3v3s which as a team game with the ability to combat revive allies in not a instant up way is actually a rather valid idea, and would give tanky players with this current meta a viable role. But then instant revive skills and AoE heal fields will be the back bone of the meta still.IMHO – I think the healthiest thing for this game is to force team fights but have a way to prolong the experience.
Simple deathmatch is ill-suited for GW2’s class design regardless of whether they want to keep bunker builds viable (I’m skeptical that guardian bunkers, at least, would disappear in a deathmatch mode; they are generally fairly CC/support focused, which would be good in TDM too). GW2 needs some sort of objective to force fights even when things are on cooldown.
I think some of the current conquest maps do a good job of forcing fights (Spirit Watch and Kyhlo are lacking here; I think they have the problem of too many objectives being achievable at the same time). Other game modes that could do so could also be nice, though it is obviously more difficult to balance for multiple modes.