I should clarify my position. I think there is a skill gap in the game and it is fairly large. Having said that, there is also a gear gap. If you compare the high level pvp players to randoms, I can almost guarantee that the high level players have gear that is designed to be high end.
Let's be real on another aspect, Destiny has a lot of stuff that can be exploited, like Gift of the Sun plus Voidfang or Armamentarium with Lightning Grenades. The top level players exploit these things and whether or not you call it skill will vary across players.
Skill is a lot more apparent in games like Halo or Quake where everyone starts the same. Destiny's uneven starts means that the game's meta factors into the skill. It's another thing that can affect people's perception of skill.
I was discussing this with Drizzay yesterday and really, for all intents and purposes Trials of Osiris is basically a standardized-loadout playlist. With a tiny few exceptions: everyone you face will have:
Primary: One of 5 guns at the most flexible possible stretch (TLW, Thorn, HMoon, Red Death, Messenger/Pilgrim)
Secondary: one of 4 virtually identical shotguns (shot package aggressive range boosted Felwinter's or Matador or Party Crasher); or a high aim assist, high impact sniper.
Heavy: high velocity/blast proximity detonation rocket with Tripod
If someone has a different loadout, they're either exceptionally good and can afford to just joke around with you, or a noob out of his league. Both these cases are super rare.
And yet many teams struggle to get 5 kills, while others win 95% of their matches while carrying (often unskilled) viewers. Despite using virtually the same guns, skill let's high level players destroy. It's why Unstable/Drizz win their matches even when they troll enemies with Necrochasm.
I'll give you another example. A PvP streamer called Nghtly just started an Xbox account this morning. He was streaming Skirmish as a level 7. Basically no class abilities beyond the first grenade and jump. All white armor so the slowest possible super/grenade/melee cooldown. All white weapons so zero aim assistance and piss-poor stability. He averaged 1.8 K/D with an average 14 kills per match.
The game is unbalanced as hell but at the end of the day, skill makes a far bigger difference than gear does in this game's PvP.
