U - Undeserved rewards

I am constantly seeing a trend in gaming: undeserved rewards.

Imagine that you go into a match of Tribes or BF3 or even, god forbid, MW3.  Now imagine that just entering the match gets you nearly the same rewards as the person with the best score.  You don't have to do anything, just showing up will get you through.  All you really have to do is show up and wander around and you'll get the same experience, gold, tickets, whatever currency the particular game uses for advancement.  How fair is this? Not very.

I remember the good old days where all you had was your KDR.  People looked at that and were amazed.  Then there were the games that were based on an overall point system, so that people like myself could still benefit.  We weren't all guts and glory, we didn't run out guns blazing, but we contributed.  I appreciate getting things for free, I really do.  I enjoy having to work for things, but there needs to be a line where you decide what difficulty level you want to have.  Do you want a system like BF3 where you must unlock everything for every weapon?  What about a BC2 system where class unlocks would give you the benefits you wanted?  How about a Tribes: Ascend system where you have to level each class and then weapon and then armor and then perk all separately?  It requires work and dedication to get any of those, but it all depends on how you like your rewards.

I feel that farm too often we are simply rewarded more for showing up.  In WoW, for example, just showing up can get you damn near the same points as the best guy on your team.  The Feral Druid with 50 HKs, 20 KBs and 2 of 3 flag caps should get far more than you just for "participating".  It's dumb.  SWToR has a similar system in their open world PvP.  It is frustrating.  While BF3 makes you work for what you get, the system still isn't perfect.  The rewards should match the work put into them, but the work shouldn't be daunting.  I shouldn't dread getting a newer and better weapon, just because I have to "level" it again.

Moving forward we need to find a happy medium.