This game has serious free-rider problems and it's getting worse. A suggestion.

[Lastelli]

In my experience, that's the very definition of "elitism". Deciding based on subjective reasons who should and shouldn't get rewards. It's a slipper slope and introducing any form of punishment invariably will go too far in the wrong direction. Maybe that wasn't the intention, but it's where I've seen such thoughts go toward.

I feel that hobostew nailed the issue, that it's just the over-arching structure of the groups for the instance that's the issue. Not being able to kick/remove seriously problematic people is a core issue that I agree, hopefully gets addressed in the future.

But to reiterate, anything involving punishment on one end and extra rewards on the other isn't a practice I ever want to see again. I saw that too much in WoW and it resulted in making the game unpleasant to play because if you weren't part of the top-tier, then you were considered garbage.

Here's the thing, it's not subjective. It would be based on a formula, and formulae by definition are not subjective. But the main thing I feel many are not getting is that what I'm suggesting would make playing with less skilled players desirable for top players. This is the whole point. In other terms, pick up their slack and you get better rewards. That's it. WoW is different in that you really want to play with good players because your reward is dependent on the group's performance. But I'm suggesting something very different. So if, say, you're in dalriada and do great and most other people do very bad, it will take you like 45 minutes to clear instead of the 15 minutes of an optimized run, but you get (just as an example of course) 3x mettle, 3x exp bonus, 3x the amount of whatever you're farming for your relic, increased drop rate for mount of hairstyle. That's the general idea behind it.

On the other hand, the "bottom" should be penalized in absolute terms. If, say, your potential is 100 and you're doing 20, it's not about not being very good at the game. It's just that you're leeching, plain and simple. You absolutely know what you're doing. What I'm saying is, in those very obvious cases, remove the reward. Set the bar low, but set it somewhere. Because it's absolutely preposterous that if I wanted to I could enter castrum, use a rubber band to fix my analogue stick and come back in 30 minutes to collect my rewards.