Why is skill level in pvp this low?

[Februs]

The obvious answer would be that the game itself discourages people to pvp, making it more of a thing the average players does once a day at most. PvP is too much "hidden"

This right here is a big part of it. Very few people who play this game actually queue for PvP and therefore have almost no experience with how it's done or any of it's features (such as PvP skills). Those of us who do PvP suffer through extremely long queue times, so the amount of practice and experience we get is limited as well.

Front Lines, in particular, is the absolute worst place to look for skilled players, because the entire game mode is designed to be face-rolled. Party composition and individual skill mean next to nothing in a game mode that has 24-72 people in it. It's basically PvP for the lazy and casual. You don't have to work hard at anything, because your team will carry you. If your team fails to carry you, then it's their fault for sucking ... < insert nonsensical and circular reasoning here >etc. Most people who queue for FL don't take those matches seriously, and SE doesn't really give them a reason to. Rewards are practically the same between 1st place and 3rd place, so there's no incentive to actually try and win. Worse yet, I suspect that if there was incentives to win, most FL players would outright quit because they'd be afraid of real competition. It's similar to the difference between people who run Alexander and Alexander Savage. Not everyone wants to put their nose to the grindstone, and you can't expect maximum effort out of people who go out of their way to stay in the kiddy corner.

[Zojha]

Its not just pvp. The players in this game have the lowest level of skill in any game Ive ever played period in general. I don't think there's any way to really fix it either

League of Legends was much, much, muuuuuuuuch worse. You could easily get into gold (top 30%) without even having runes nor masteries. For platinum (top 10%), having masteries and half a runepage sufficed.

Player skill has crept up considerably over the last years of course. These days, you don't have to actively "try" to get into bronze. But gee...

You don't have to work hard at anything, because your team will carry you.

And if everyone is that way...who actually carries?