Imo the solution lies in splitting up existing game types and introducing a new currency.
Hotjoin was easily abused by gloryfarmers while newish players found themselves in matches where leavers hopped in and out for the sake of their pvp title. By that, those new players never learned the basics of tpvp.
The Devs recognized that problem and rightly found a solution.
But the issue with that is, that those people, who werent abusing the system, but waiting for arenaqueue to pop, were greatly punished, as their low overall-incoming (glory/rank) has been nerfed even more by that.
So my solution would be, to split up hotjoin in two several gametypes.
1. The “old” hotjoin. You can come and go whenever you want. Glory gain (at any time) is reduced to let’s say about 60% of its normal amount. By that you can still try out new builds and still get a small amount of glory while waiting for arena to pop. But abusing this system isn’t worthwhile anymore.
2. The new “normal” game type. It works almost the same as battlegrounds in WoW (ouch). You queue up for them and get 120% of the glory, but at the end of the match. And if you win, you’ll get the (glory-)win-bonus, which now you just get at the end of tournament matches (150 if I’m correct).
If you leave before one game is finished, you get a leaver penalty, which prevents you from joining any pvp-activity (except WvW) for 15 minutes.
That said you might wonder, why you should play Arena then, as Leaderboards still have no use and tournaments give even smaller amount of glory as “normals”.
This is why I would love to see a new curreny in future patches, given only to people competing in Arena Matches! This currency could work like badges. Losing an Arena Game gives you 1 badge (“[…] of Balthasar”? ;D), while winning rewards you with 3 badges. Doing the daily gives you 1 badge, the monthly rewards you with 10 of those. These badges can be used to obtain special rewards, similar to Laurels in PvE.
Those rewards might be:
1 laurel = 20 badges (so any laurel item might aswell be bought by badges but 20 times as expensive. e.g. “Unidentified Dye (10)“ costs 5*20=100 badges. So playing pvp actually might bring you some income.)
10 badges = 1000 glory
1 badge = 3 Rabbit tokens
5 badges = 3 Deer tokens
10 badges = 3 Dolyak tokens
15 badges = 3 Wolf tokens
25 badges = 3 Tiger tokens
35 badges = 3 Bear tokens
50 badges = 3 shark tokens
65 badges = 3 phoenix tokens
100 badges = 3 dragon tokens
50 badges = exclusive armor piece (skin)
Oh well and sorry for my kittenty english. Hopefully everything can be understood :P
Edit: To prevent farmteams in Arena, I changed the amout of glory you’d get in normals. It’s now 120%. I fear, that some people would play Arena without really caring wether they win or not, as there would be more to get than in normals (before: 100% glory in both game types).
(edited by Hammpy.4218)