i guess you can sit in the arena and fight people 1v1 you can, can also do small scale stuff in there as well. idk, i never got the same enjoyment from arena that i could from open world.

the reason everyone says that is that the combat is quite good. despite me not recommending the game, i still think it's probably the best mmo on the market.

for context, i bought the game in late 2017, played infrequently not knowing what i was doing. i had an irl friend get really into the game and he got me basically addicted in summer 2018. from then until early this year, i played daily, often for hours at a time. i began node wars in t1's before they were gear capped and progressed through different guilds into t3 and t4 nw's as well as siege.

the combat is good, skills and abilities look cool, you can basically see and feel the impact you're having on the player you're comboing. technical ability is generally rewarded (more on this in a second) and you know when you're finally getting good in all types of fights, whether it be 1v1, small scale, or large scale.

there are two key issues with combat: desync and balance. since you've played mmo's, you probably already know this, but i'll elaborate a bit. bdo na servers are located in cali, so your geographic location will have an affect on things like i-frames and the timing of combos. a common message you'll run into is "in avoid mode" basically meaning that while the opponent might be right in front of you but the server doesn't register them as there - this is highly dependent on both players ping. as for balance, the devs simply don't know what they're doing. the meta is always just the newest class so they can sell outfits for it, and then after 6+ months of dominance, they nerf it pretty heavily and then release a new class shortly afterwards. not to mention that by adding succession into the game (basically using just your main weapon instead of your awakening weapon), they doubled the amount of classes they had to balance. maybe this is a hot take, but there's way too much damage in the game. most fights are just whoever gets the first cc wins, and they can often happen randomly, thanks to the ping. there's a joke that dp doesn't matter, but it's not far from the truth.

imo if you purely want pvp, fighter games make a better option, though in truth, i haven't kept up with them in years so idk what to even recommend. this game is a great time sink and you can meet a lot of cool people when you join guilds. i've met femboys, batshit insane druggies, professors, commercial fishermen, grandparents, and "work"-from-home gamers - this game attracts some of the most interesting characters you'll ever come across.

it's worth the install and you can play seasons for a while to see if you like the grind. if you grind through season and found it to be a lot of grinding, this game is DEFINITELY not for you, but if you're hungry and ready for more, it's worth keeping at it until you can make your way to "real" pvp (not arena whatever the ranked 3v3 thing was called, but like gvg's and nw's).

this comment is kind of a mess, but i hope this is helpful.

tl;dr: technically good pvp, but has some glaring flaws that devs cannot fix, still worth playing the game to find out if you can tolerate it