The Problem

Qualifying Points (QPs) are the only non-liquid reward distributed through Automated Tournaments (ATs). Their purpose is to gate participation in the monthly Automated Tournament (mAT) and to decide seeding in it. For each AT, you get 5 QP for the month just for participating and as many as 50 if you win. To participate in the mAT, you need to have at least 100 QPs from that month. Any additional QPs are used to give you better seeding. At the end of the month, Qualifying Points are reset. However, currently QPs don't serve a real purpose.

Their first purpose is to gate entry into the mAT. They do successfully gate entry into the mAT, but unnecessarily. First of all, the most recent mAT on NA had 20 teams participate. This is a fairly small number of teams for such a large event, and I don't think it would cause issues to allow more teams into the tournament. After all, every time the number of participants doubles, the tournament is extended by only 15-20 minutes. To rephrase that, if 12 more teams had participated in the previous NA mAT, the tournament would have taken roughly the same time. If 44 more teams had participated, the tournament would have taken roughly twenty minutes longer. However, the main issue with the way QPs gate the mAT is by preventing groups from forming. There is currently no in-game way to find other players with enough QPs to participate. You can't check how many QP somebody has. So basically, QPs gate the mAT in a way that makes participation unnecessarily annoying for no real benefit.

Their second purpose is to seed the tournament. In theory, this is a good idea. The daily ATs (dATs) are currently the only competitive format for five man groups, so it makes sense to seed the tournament through QPs. The problem is that better seeding doesn't help you perform better in the tournament. This is because many top teams don't participate in very many of the dailies (sometimes just enough to qualify for the mAT) or just do it on alts (since all of the rewards besides QPs are completely liquid). The end result is an almost completely randomized bracket in a best-of-one single elimination tournament. Having more QPs can end up hurting your chances by facing you against a more difficult team earlier on in the tournament.

TL;DR - Qualifying Points fail in their only two purposes, gating and seeding the monthly Automated Tournaments, since there is no in-game method to form teams with enough Qualifying Points and gaining higher seeding through Qualifying Points isn't even beneficial.

My Solution

Qualifying Points should be removed as a gate for the mAT. In an attempt to incentivize participation in the dATs, it severely hampers participation in the mAT with no real pay-off. Instead, the dATs rewards should be incentive enough on their own. Currently, the liquid rewards are good enough to reward good players and teams, but not enough to actually encourage much participation. The main method for encouraging participation in different game modes is exclusive content. Due to the state of PvP, I don't really expect ArenaNet to make very many new assets for it, but they can better utilize their current assets. For example, QPs could be traded in for PvP League Tickets, for which drains are being implemented faster than players can earn them. Another option could be Ascended Shards of Glory. Both currencies are currently tied to Ranked Queues, so it isn't out of line to reward them for what amounts to a Ranked Team Queue. Also, seeding for the mAT should be done based on ranked rating.

PvP League Ticket

PvP League Tickets (LTs) are currently rewarded for completing various tiers of the Ranked Reward Track. Currently, the most you can get per season is 100, since they are not rewarded upon repeating the Byzantium reward tier. However, ArenaNet is adding new llamas to purchase every season. The max tier llama requires 27 of the lowest tier (270 LTs total), and unlocking all tiers of the llamas requires an additional 13 llamas (400 LTs total). On top of that, Wings of Ascension cost 125 LTs, and PvP ascended armor costs 50 LTs per piece. With the seven current llamas and the Wings of Ascension, it would costs 2925 LTs to receive all possible rewards from LTs. That's 30 PvP seasons, and an additional three for every set of Legendary Armor you want to make through PvP. Additional sources of LTs, especially through such a limited source, would give players more methods to work towards these rewards without significantly devaluing them.

Ascended Shard of Glory

Ascended Shards of Glory (Shards) were originally very valuable rewards due to how easy it was to acquire Ascended gear with them. However, with the addition of the Grandmaster marks, their value has dropped drastically. They now serve primarily as a method for obtaining Ardent Glorious skins and generic Ascended trinkets. The value of Ascended trinkets has already been destroyed by the maps added through Living Story Season 3. Making them a little easier to obtain in PvP would do no harm. Also, most PvP players already gained almost an entire set of Ardent Glorious armor from season 5. There is no real prestige tied to the skins, since anybody who PvPed already has a full set, and the Ascended versions are gated behind massive gold and crafting sinks. While less useful than LTs because they are already easier to get, at least it would provide some non-liquid rewards to the dATs.

Other Ideas

• Champion's Rest Pass (1 day) - With a cost of 50-150 QPs, the Champion's Rest Pass would still stay fairly exclusive to players who place highly in ATs. The mAT has several other prestigious rewards that can still be exclusive to it.
• Champion's Rest has small machines that do small things to the dueling arena. Players with the pass can fire them off to their heart's content. Another possible dump for QPs is to charge a small amount of QPs to fire the mechanics off once.
• Custom Arena Time Tokens and Custom Arena Starter Kits are currently fairly large gold sinks for players that want their own servers, but they could be made purchasable through QPs. I'm not sure what cost would be fair, though.
• Open to ideas :D

Personally I just ignore ATs and mATs. Adding more liquid rewards I can get in other places of the game or changing the way qualifying points work, would likely do nothing about it.

1) The sheduling is often colliding with other activities I would like to do.2) You can only sign up as a full team.3) All exclusive rewards are just for the top rankings in the mAT. Years of consecutively becoming 1st to unlock all the miniatures? Just terrible and not worth my time.4) Wins in the ATs do not even advance the ranked game achievement, so I am better off just playing normal (un)ranked matches whenever it fits into the shedule.

Tl;dr: too much stress for nothing to have nothing to show for it unless you have an insanely good premade team

@OlrunTheBlade.1486 said:Ascended Shards of Glory (Shards) were originally very valuable rewards due to how easy it was to acquire Ascended gear with them. However, with the addition of the Grandmaster marks, their value has dropped drastically. They now serve primarily as a method for obtaining Ardent Glorious skins and generic Ascended trinkets. The value of Ascended trinkets has already been destroyed by the maps added through Living Story Season 3. Making them a little easier to obtain in PvP would do no harm. Also, most PvP players already gained almost an entire set of Ardent Glorious armor from season 5. There is no real prestige tied to the skins, since anybody who PvPed already has a full set, and the Ascended versions are gated behind massive gold and crafting sinks. While less useful than LTs because they are already easier to get, at least it would provide some non-liquid rewards to the dATs.

Special mention the skins are one of the ugliest heavy armor sets.

the ranked up "competition" is messed up at a point that it would be better to eliminate it for good.

My suggestions would be:

1-delete the ranked.2-Leave the pve stuff to be obtained in the unraked.3-Prestige items like rank, badges being moved to tournaments.

I agree that QPs could be better, but I'm not really seeing the same problems as the OP.

Re: OP's Issues:

• Gating entry to the monthly AT is perfectly fine. Even though only ~20 teams play the NA monthly, that's about the same amount who play during NA primetime. So I don't see it as being a QP issue.
• Seeding concept is perfectly fine. If you view QPs as inconsequential after 100, that's your problem.

Alternate Suggestions:

• QPs are only earned from daily tournaments on a win or placement in top 4. Right now, you can spam join tournaments and still make it to monthly. By making a win a requirement to earn QP, it works better as a filter.
• AT matches advance your ranked reward track. The tickets are supposed to be time-gated; this would address the ascended shards of glory and incentivize winning as well as participation. Adding some tickets to monthly would be okay.

Other

• Daily AT times need adjusted. There needs to always be at least one during primetime for that server. Right now, there's always one in the middle of the night which is easy to farm for people in different regions or who stay up late. Further, the constantly changing times and lack of availability make it hard to have a real team to participate.

There is no in-game method to form teams for the mAT. You can't tell how many QP somebody has. Another option would be to make a LFG category that you can only post in if you have enough QP, but that's just a band-aid solution. I pointed out why removing the QP restriction wouldn't cause issues, though. Also, my issue isn't that I see seeding as meaningless. The issue is that half the top teams barely have enough QP to qualify, so the whole tournament is essentially randomized seeding.

Tickets are having more sinks added than you can earn them. No other currency in the game is like this. On top of that, the PvP timegate for Legendary armor is 9 months, compared to a 3 month time gate in PvE. The tickets come through casual play, though, so increasing the rate across the board would just make it too easy to get. Dropping through ATs makes it so people won't hop in to farm them, but still normalizes that timegate.

The AT timers are one every eight hours, and it adjusts by one hour every day. It gives players of every time zone and schedule a chance to play. I think they should change it to be the same time for each day of the week and just skip two hours on Sunday. Then you can schedule around them easier, while also still allowing all time zones to play.