Defending the honor system

[Watto44]

I'd be interested if you have any ideas on how to tweak the system to promote the objectives it currently promotes, while simultaniously discouraging burnout and addiction in the top players.
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As I see it there are two major issues with the honor system as it stands:

1) Casuals. I hope that the casual dillema has been solved by the changes made in 1.8. (If you missed the patch note, rating point gain was increased for ranks 1-10 in patch 1.8.) Prior to 1.8 it was nigh on impossible for a casual player to gain any meaningful rewards through the honor system (as distinct from the reputation system) before they hit "the wall". While this doesn't give casual players access to "the top" ranks/items, that seems to be blizzards approach to casual players: give them blue sets/items. While I don't agree with that approach, that's the road they have taken and hopefully the 1.8 changes have made rank 10 and achievable goal for casual players who focus on pvp.

(Prior to 1.8 it certainly wasn't. I was far from a dabbler in the honor system, but restricted by timezones as I am, I hit the wall at rank 7. And that was playing with a burgening "pro" team for the last three weeks.)

2) Decay. This is the real kicker, and where the honor system truly falls apart, introducting burnout and addiction. For those of you that don't know, each week your rating points decay at a rate of 20% of your current raiting points. If you fail to earn more rating points than that decay, you move backwards in. (Note that if you fail to beat the 20% you only move backwards by either 2500 points or 10%, whichever is less.)

This is what causes the "addiction". The closer you get to your goal, the harder it is to reach. And when you're very close to a goal you've worked hard to achieve, it's very difficult not to push yourself harder and harder to reach that goal.

The way in which decay works needs to be heavily tweeked in my opinion. I can think of two options off the top of my head. 1) Scale the decay percentage based on your rank. (ie. 20% at rank 14, 18% at 13, etc.) While this method would still produce the "addiction" effect, it would at least be less pronounced. 2) Implement decay thresholds based on your rank. For example, from ranks 1-5 there is no decay, from 6-10 decay only kicks in if you don't meet a certain fixed quota of CP in a week, etc. This would mean that if you can't pvp as much for a week or two, a smaller level of participation would at least keep you even. It would also mean that more casual players could chip away at their goals while hardcore players have to put in more time to achieve their goals.

But, in an ideal world, the honor system would get a radical overhaul. While I like the idea of a ladder system, I think it should be more of a novelty or for bragging rights than for character progression. Certain rewards should remain for ranking up, but they should be the curios like the mounts, battle standards, potions - perhaps even a magical tabard. (Although I would probably keep the weapons as a reward for getting rank 14. After all, it should be a pretty serious reward for a pretty serious investment.) Use a point buy system of some sort for the armor rewards. Place whatever checks or balances you want on the point buy system to prevent hardcore players from completing their sets in one week/fortnight/month, but at least give casual players a chance.