Guild Wars 2

Before the start of the test season or shortly after it, I think it is a good idea to introduce a pool of bonus points for players that join mid-season.
If you played competitive games like StarCraft 2 with brackets, ladders and seasons, you are familiar with this mechanic. For others – here is the idea.
With the start of the season every player is granted an individual “Bonus pool”. At first the pool is empty (0 points), but with each passing day of the running season, an amount of points are added to the pool.
After each match, the player is rewarded with bonus ladder points from the pool, until it runs out and from then on, the player receives the regular amount of points from the matches.

The idea is to help players that are late to the season (join half-way through) or cannot play as much as other players, to actually have a chance of “catch-up” on the ladder.
This also provides an solution to the issue in the " Time Played = Highest Leadership??" topic.

here is additional info how this works in SC2:
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Battle.net_Leagues#Bonus_Pool

I like this idea very much. For those who play 20 games a day compared to 20 games a week, this is perfect for casuals who miss playing time.

This would cause rating inflation and ruin the experience of other players because of their incorrectly set MMR does not match their skill level. A better solution would be to implement a rating decay where everyone loses points to prevent people from having over 100 points and cause difficulties for new players.

I agree that this solution doesn’t seam very balanced, can be unfair and inaccurate.

An idea would be to keep doing “seasons” like with the one from 16 Dec- 16 Jan. The seasons can last less like 1 or 2 weeks and at the end of each season the top 5 or 10 players can get the Glorious Hero Armor Skin. This is a good way for solo players, that cannot participate in the tournaments, to prove their skill and enjoy some special reward.

Now you will ask me, and what about the players that they are always active on spvp and they want to prove that some how. If the Leaderboards reset every 2 weeks how someone know who is the “Pro”. The solution is simple split the Leaderboards into 2 sections, 1 that reset on each “Season” and one that adds up all the points a player earned till now. So someone can see his total improvement and new players can also compete and have the feeling of achieving something even if they can’t reach the top of the main list. This is also a good solution for casuals or for people that leave game and come back.

We are not talking about anything MMR or skill related. Just Ladder points (and respectivly from this – ladder position).
Math is simple here.
Lets say Player.X and Player.Y are of similar, very close skill level, but X is playing 20 games per day, while Player.Y plays 10 games.
With the current system, Player.X will climb the ladderboard much faster and will be at a higher ladder rank/position Player.Y, despite both of them being great and skillful players. Thats unfair and inaccurate for the Player.Y, who just dont have the time to play as much as X.
The bonus pool of a fixed amount of points per season (please, read the detailed info) there won’t be any inflation, because the bonus point do not generate infinetly, only to a set number. With such bonus points to the regular points gained after match, Player.Y now have a chance of catching up to Player.X.