Quote Originally Posted by aeoncs View Post
Exactly this. What really surprises me is why this is even a thing - pretty much every other ranked system I know of, and this is especially true for solo queue, punishes you for not playing at least somewhat regularly.
And even that doesn't help much, because people will still only play whatever SE sets as minimum requirement. One game a month? One a week? Both are common activity requirements. And they only really change something for the people at the bottom who might fall out due to that one game per X. LoL has had such an activity requirement ever since, that never stopped people from buying elo boosts and getting their diamond reward.

One would be inclined to base the reward on the highest achieved placement so people only have something to gain but nothing to lose by playing, but that just invites "trading" in a small PvP community such as FFXIV's:"I got rank 1 already, I'll lose games for you now so you can get there as well."

Doing extrinsic motivation right is haaard. And as you notice, I'm not making much of suggestions, because I don't have an answer I couldn't pluck apart myself either.