Guild Wars 2

The Rewards in general have one of the biggest impacts on the game. A-Net already stated, it is a huge point on their priority-list. We can see from recent changes to the TeamQ and SoloQ rewards, that even little modifications actually attract / drive a lot of people into PvP.

• I played PvP on a competitive level since the release. Therefore I’m probably qualified to say, the rewards for the competitive modes (excluding hotjoin) were besides the paid-tournament with gem-rewards, never better than nowadays.
  It was a long time ago, when i felt Progression for being “good” and invest time into the game. Therefore, a compliment to A-Net for the new distribution of rewards among TeamQ, SoloQ and Hotjoin.

Hotjoin:
In my opinion Hotjoin should belong to beginners, where they can discover the maps, learn the basics of their class and some general strategies. However, as Hotjoin was always the place, where you could progress the fastest, it not only devaluated the rank, but also teached a false understanding of the game-mode. The Goal was to farm the most points, not to win.

TeamQ:
While Hotjoin felt at least a bit rewarding, it damaged the Team-Environement. Why you should form a Team in GW2 and invest hours and hours into theory-crafting, strategies? Why you should do that, while you can progress faster alone? The Reward-structure of this game supported solo-play.
Now, for the casuals it definitely fits. But for the more ambitious PvP-Players among us (and this is a big number) it is a pain in the back.

1. First of all it harmed Team-Building. It was not attractive to play in a team (based on reward-distribution).
2. This leads to less and less teams.
3. And probably the worst consequence of this is: It harms the competitive-scene due to less teams.

You could ask why teams are important for PvP. Well, it is as simple as in every other sport. The bigger the competition, the more attractive to play.

To close my post I recommend for A-Net to maintain their new concept of Reward-Distribution (higher rewards for TeamQ, lower ones for Hotjoin). It showed me, there is still some hope for the PvP-Community.