I recently had a discussion on Discord with several WN8 2500+ players about how playing for the win is the ultimate goal, and that I'd always prefer winning the game to losing and dealing more damage. All of them disagreed, saying they'd much rather get a good result for their marks/stats and lose, than to win the game.
I genuinely think this kind of mindset leads players to play in a way that is less influential on the win-rate than it otherwise could be. Marking and WN8 provide incentives for the players that are at times contrary to the main goal of the game, and incentivize selfish play-styles that only benefit the player themselves as opposed to the entire team.
I'm pretty sure the vast majority of this community would disagree with the following, because they wouldn't like the detriment it would result in when they have little to no power over the result of the game, but I'd like the disparity between the XP given for a loss and XP given for a win to be increased in order to counteract these perverse incentives. I believe this would also to some extent alleviate many of the frustrations people have with bad players camping, or refusing to fight for map control.
Anyways, I'd like to hear people's opinions, I'm especially curious about what average/bad players think of this. Discuss.
Edit:
The two main objections appear to be the following:
1. People claim the only way to play for a win is to get more damage.
This is obviously absurd. Where you do the damage matters, finishing off tanks matters, spotting for your team when it's needed matters, all those things, and many more, are not accounted for by just damage alone. All it takes is take a look at the stats of several players with the same WN8 stats, and you'll see huge disparities in their winrates, showing that some are better at winning than others, even though they both do the same amount of damage. And before the next objection comes along that says it's because they're all platooning, this is just wrong. I'm sure some of them are, but I've see many players over the many years I've played this game that do not ever or very rarely platoon and the disparities are still present.
2. People assume only good players are chasing WN8.
That's just not true. A lot of bad players check their stats, use XVM, and are taking feedback from fluctuations in their WN8 and probably adjusting their playstyle accordingly. If they start camping and it results in a higher WN8, but a lower winrate, they'll assume they're playing well because they've been taught WN8 is the ultimate indicator of skill, and so they'll start camping more because it's clearly increasing their WN8.
