Originally Posted by
Lothaeryn
If that was the case, games like Counter-Strike, Halo, and RTS should have been complete failures when they came out.
Last time I checked, they still go strong even without rewards systems that RPG's have.
The thing about rewards is that it rewards one of two things: participation, or success. When you have this type of system for PvE, success is marginal to what you perceive is a victory. for some folks, beating that boss is a victory, others beating the entire dungeon is.
However, PvP is a different element entirely. that is because your not fighting an NPC, your fighting another human being, and when you reward people for success, you tend to alienate those who were defeated even more than what defeat would have been if there was no reward system in place.
Now defeat means more than just losing, it means you lost your reward as well. This type of reward system inevitably promotes a have/have-not personality amongst gamers, and they tend to be VERY violent and arrogant in their views on the other side.
I would rather the game be about having fun, and not comparing what I have to someone else. <--- that is why I say Arena killed WoW communities, because it divided them amongst those types of lines, you never saw that kind of hate between people on the same server in Vanilla, you would say "cool! he got Grand Marshall, I can get that too if i participate long enough" whereas after arena, you got "Lol, this guy doesn't have 1800 rating/ challenger/arena master, he must suck" or "That guy is a douche, he has Arena Master... probably bought it too".
Rewarding someone for participation is fine, but rewarding people for succeeding against others in PvP creates a harmful playerbase.
EDIT: and yes, I know GW2 has a rated system, however, it does not reward people to such an extent from what we know so far.