Quote Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI View Post
I've said it over and over, but thanks to Frontline Freelancer (that is, GC Restrictions finally removed, but overshadowed by the Garo event), GCs really don't matter at all anymore. I'm not going to somehow play better or worse just because I'm in Maelstrom now. And if in a premade with friends, we're not going to play better or worse if we're all put in the Adders or Flames. There is no substitute for skilled play. There is nothing more fun than skilled play. But unfortunately, as long as SE won't do something about the bigger issues and keeps applying band-aid fixes to the problem, most players aren't going to bother getting better if they get a fat participation award.

And even if there's a sudden decline in participation, at LEAST those who remain you know are there truly for the sake of competition and active enjoyment.
Freelancer isn't on by default, despite what some people claim. Therefore it's reasonable to think that GC still matters to some extent, though given the relatively low penalty for switching, it probably doesn't matter as much as faction might in games like WoW or whatever. You really can't argue with a 40 match win rate spanning months and a 40 match win rate spanning a couple of weeks that are so drastically different. Like you said, I'm not going to somehow play better or worse just because I'm on Maelstrom now, so what accounts for the drastic increase in win rate immediately following joining Maelstrom and turning off Freelancer? It's worth noting that Freelancer dumped me on Maelstrom a whopping one time when I was part of Adders, so it seems Maelstrom rarely needs to pull from the Freelancer pool to fill its teams.

If you really want to ensure people are there for the sake of competition and enjoyment, then remove all rewards, even Wolf Marks, from PVP. After all, until you do that there's always a chance that someone could be there seeking only to gain something from winning.