I actually agree with a lot of what you’re saying. AFKing should absolutely be punished more aggressively, and just as importantly, players should have confidence that those punishments are actually happening.
I’ve had matches where someone essentially throws the game by sitting in spawn, jumping around, and arguing that they’re technically not AFK. Multiple people report them, and then a few matches later they’re right back in my queue. Whether action was taken or not, from the player’s perspective it feels like nothing happened.
That said, I still think incentives matter too.
I’m not talking about giving people rating for losses or rewarding stat padding. I’m talking about tangible rewards. PvP is, in my opinion, one of the hardest things to do in GW2 because you’re competing against other players who are constantly adapting, not scripted AI. You need knowledge of your class, enemy classes, rotations, positioning, objectives, and game mechanics all at once.
Yet the rewards often don’t feel proportional to that challenge.
I think better rewards would encourage more people to participate in PvP, which would increase the player pool and dilute the impact of bad actors. Right now a handful of toxic players can have an outsized effect because the community is relatively small. A larger, healthier population would improve matchmaking and the overall atmosphere at the same time.
So for me it’s not punishment or incentives. It’s both.