Let’s take Ashran, which is highly known for people leaving once the initial fight is lost. The current final reward for a win is 450 honor and 65 conquest, plus a chance at a loot box for a loss and a better loot box for a win. This applies only to quick match and not rated.
On a loss, there’s little incentive to continue trying when the eventual outcome is a loss. It doesn’t matter much to players who are there for the end rewards if the winning team has 150 resources left or 1 resource left.
But what if the rewards were tiered so that on what is likely to be a loss, the losing team still has an incentive to try?
After 30 kills, reward 30 honor.
After 60 kills, reward 60 honor.
After 90 kills, reward 90 honor and 25 conquest.
After 120 kills, reward 120 honor.
At 150 kills (the end), reward 150 honor and 40 conquest, plus the good loot box.
The total reward for the winning team is the same and the losing team can earn most of what a win would. This does mean removing the daily bonus reward since it’s baked into the battleground itself.
A tiered reward system also removes the perverse incentive when honor farming to purposefully lose a battleground. A quick loss, such as a 0-5 Arathi Basin, takes mere minutes whereas a long loss can take up to 15 minutes. In both cases, the end honor reward is the same but the time spent is vastly different. Unless a team has a very high chance at wins and an equally high chance at quick wins, the faster honor gains are actually through quick losses.
I’m sitting at a 45% - 55% win rate on random battlegrounds and those losses are so much more awful than the wins because people can sense an eventual loss and simply quit trying knowing the end result is the same if they try or don’t try.