Increase rewards for losing team

[realistic1]

Xayide more or less hit the nail on the head with her interpretation.

I too had ‘guessed’ that this was your intent but a couple of remarks you made had me hoping that I was reading your posts wrong and your point was that gear rewards are unfair due to how broken pvp is in this game rather than we should have no gear reward incentive in any pvp. I wanted to give you the benefit of doubt before responding.

PvP "Stats" serve no purpose other than skewing someone's chance at victory.

Or the cup half full viewpoint: Pvp stats serve a very distinct purpose in pvp, to benefit those that place effort into earning stats by providing a slightly higher advantage in a pvp match.

By putting these kind of stats into a progression system, especially one that depends upon winning, you do nothing but rob newer (not less skilled, but 'younger') players from being able to participate fully and equally.

Or with the cup half full viewpoint- putting these stats into a progression system, especially one that depends upon winning, furthers the spirit of competition by creating goals and incentive for players to invest time and effort into winning and achieving higher stats to better themselves so they can earn the same advantage of those they come up against that have put in time and effort to win and better gear themselves. Sort of like life- goals and hard work often equal success. Handouts and the demand to make everyone ‘equal’ regardless of effort or performance creates spoon fed zombies that expect everything giving to them someone else has without extending effort and earning it.

From a design standpoint, they serve no purpose other than putting the carrot on the stick for a PvP audience instead of a PvE.

Yes, hard work, specific goals, and achieving those goals and rewards for effort. I am all for the carrot on a stick.

It separates the playerbase instead of encouraging them to play in both areas, as some people simply do not have the time to doggedly pursue both arenas.

And this is fine as the game will mimic life a bit then as often we have to choose a path to focus on as we cannot always excel at everything there is to do. Those that want to focus on PVE will do so and those that want to focus on PVP will do so. Those that want to play a little of both will do so and very likely not be on the same gear level of those that focus primarily on one or the other but everyone has the very same choices in this game as far as what to focus on.

The appeal of PvP is the fact that you're playing against someone who is as wiley and unpredictable as you are.

This appeal is there for me every match, it only tends to fade a bit when I see a premade (gear or no gear) as they often have an advantage just due to strategic organization and the lesser chance (1 out of 4) of having an AFK player or bot.
However, this is not the only appeal. For me, the patience and effort I am placing into solo queue matches and slowly earning marks for my gear holds an appeal to continue playing. Every point I make I feel like I am actually earning something that others have the very same option to earn but instead spend their time complaining about instead of extending the effort to earn so I am slowly (very slowly) reaping benefits that those that are not extending the same effort are not achieving. While I am certainly not on the same level as those in full 70 or 90 gear right now, I will be in better gear (all by solo queue) than those complaining about pvp instead of playing pvp. I have earned this slight benefit and it feels pretty dang good.

Adding in a reward for anything other than vanity taints that system

Again, my cup is half full, I think it provides incentive and goals for achievement. I think earning gear is part of the competition and it encourages me to extend that extra effort in every match rather than just getting by or sitting on the sidelines waiting to be handed the same reward for losing as I would get for winning.

Competition thrives by giving everyone the same mechanical means and watching what they do with it.

Competition also thrives when you have incentive, goals, and rewards. Your primary argument appears to be the pvp gear advantage and that everyone should be on equal footing with pvp gear. Every one of us including you and me started with the same exact pvp gear advantage on day one of patch 2.1. My gear accumulation has been slower than someone doing premades but there is no reason I should sit back and complain or ask for handouts to equal those that geared quickly with premades as nothing was physically stopping me (or you or anyone else reading this) from making a premade and earning gear at the exact same rate- other than perhaps skill. If someone reading my post today enters their very first pvp match with 2 others on vent or TS, they would very likely have an advantage over me in a pug even with me wearing some pvp gear. This would be most certainly the case if I am grouped with an afk player, a bot, or someone that that does not know what a healer looks like or one class from another.
People view competition differently, some of us want to strive for goals and achievements even when the course before us is a tough one and some of us see a course that is tough and spend our time demanding that we not have to earn it as it is too hard and everyone should be equal.

If your argument would have focused on the fact that the win/loss ratio is so lopsided with ES allowing 3 man premades to be matched again total pugs and gear lvl 90’s being matched against lvl 55 and therefore ES needs to work on this issue as until then the win/loss lopsidedness greatly impacts gear accumulation and spirit of competition, our conversation would be going in a different direction. However, your argument is that any type of stat advantage on gear rewards for win taints the competition. While we might be closer on sides with the former, we are not with the latter.