Players Who Don't pull their weight.

[KarstenS]

"SOMETHING's gotta give outside of just bickering that someone has to take a hit"

Congrats! You're a great player playing a game who's Devs cater to the very worst and in one regard the very best (Savage.) You'll still be able to play in content on alts, just get some more gear.

You wrote that skilled players will always have maxed gear (or better: BiS gear). Yes. On the main job its true. But on alts: its not. Filtering players just by gear, you will miss good players and take bad ones instead. Not always, but it will happen.

The point of the OP is not: Get mor gearz!!!

Its: How could players get encouraged to do better.

because they don’t play their character the way you want them to. It is just a game after all….

Its not that we want the players to play how we want it. It about that we want the players to play more how its intended by the game (and in the backstage the developers).

Every game has rules. Virtual and real life. When you play together with others (are all that people here so much egoist, to ignore that point entirely?), everyone expect the others will not mess them up. "Play how you want" in football, soccer or whatever else. What do you think will happen to you?

People that don't pull their weight in a virtual team game are the same as people that don't pull their weight in a real life team game: a burden to the other members of the team.