Don’t have players lose points on losses. Have players only gain points from wins. Any system built where you have to climb atop or over others to reach high rating or to succeed REQUIRES a large player base to function properly. When many people don’t play or participate in pvp in a given season, ratings feel deflated in the current system. The current system also discourages players from sticking with it and playing more games, where I argue the only way to improve in pvp is to play, and play MANY games. In seasons, there are just not many people to climb over to get where you want to go, resulting in facing multi-glads at 1800+ ratings in many brackets in TWW. The old system was fine when participation was high enough to support it, but clearly pvp is dying or at minimum, struggling to attract (and MAINTAIN) new players.
Prestige or titles or achievements in this new system could be earned based on number of games played to certain ranks or levels, such as 100 or less games to reach 2400 rating. This does several things that I think are necessary for the health of the PVP mini-game in wow (mini in comparison to the juggernaut of pve that is)…
First, it gets people to play and make or feel consistent progress towards goals or rewards in pvp. People invest HOURS into wow, and if they feel it’s wasted time, they will do something else. This new system means people can grind out pvp rewards like other rare mounts in the game. You never top out rating or get stuck, because you only gain points on wins, and don’t lose points on losses. THIS IS HUGE, as the best way to get better at PVP is to play PVP, and to play a LOT of pvp games. My friends and I often play many classes in a season, and we always joke that it takes 1000 games across pvp formats to get good at X or Y spec. If it takes you 500 games to get to 2400, so be it, but that means that person played 500 games and provides life to the pvp community by participating regularly across those ratings to get there.
Second, and relatedly this new system would increase numbers of games played for most players, especially those that win roughly 50% of games (which blizzard is trying to do with current MMR), as each win moves progress forward, without issues with losing points. This is apparent in relation to current MMR, as I always see people cmplaining that they win games but don’t gain rating, or lose more points on losses than gaining on wins (again, due to their MMR lowering with repeat loses).
Third, I think MMR should remain, for example, as a way to control how many points you earn from said wins. If you are 1600 cr actual rating, playing a blitz game at 2500MMR, and win, you should get more than 23 points on that win. Basically, the bigger the gap between current rating and personal mmr, the more points you can potentially net (up to a max, say, I don’t know, 100 points), maybe similar to how CR gains work before 1400 or whatever when point gains get limited significantly. Here, you can set a minimum gain from wins too, like 5 points minimum for a win. Rough math… at 5 points a win, that’s 480 wins for 2400. That’s not unreasonable for most people in a season of pvp.
In conclusion, a system like this for pvp would get more people to play, get them to play more games, get them to continue playing pvp, and give more people (especially that all important 1400-1800 bulge in the player base) a meaningful feeling of climbing towards goals or rewards.
Again, in pve you don’t lose points when you fail an M+ or when you die in a raid. You rez, dust off, maybe vent a bit, and then try again. Pvp should adopt this model, and not rely on a system that requires you to climb over others as the only way to climb ratings.