Disclaimer, this comparison gets made every few months. Sometimes they compare it to Savage, sometimes to Ultimate, fundamentally the argument will be the same. I'll highlight the differences below. Simply put...
- Raids - You are fighting together with other players against a scripted AI. The actual challenge will not change if you do it now or later, baring a few potency changes. You are also not competing against each other for anything aside of the World First race semi-officially held every raid tier and ultimate. You are in a challenge and get a reward.
_- Ranked PvP - You are fighting with other players against other players. The challenge is completely in flux with how good the players you play against are and can vary from season to season. You are quite literally competing against each other in the most direct sense of Player VS Player, meaning that there WILL be winners and there WILL be losers, which is necessary to determine who is the better player worthy of the trophy. You are in a competition and get a trophy.
Now, I personally have given plenty of compromises we could have to give weaker players a chance at some of the designs available (including in this very thread), but the point is that PvP and Raiding could fundamentally not be any more different to how they grant high value items. Love it or hate it, but this is high level PVE vs PVP in a nutshell.
TL;DR: Challenge + Reward in raids vs Competition + Trophy in pvp.
