I personally would hate it if Skelve’s suggestion is ever implemented. It comes down to the fear that anyone else will benefit from your hard work and that all must add equal effort. If your fellowship is build around that kind of requirements, just kick out the perceived lazy bones and perceived benefit stealers.
I find it more satisfying helping my fellows that struggle by enabling whatever benefits for them. That way they progress faster. True slackers won’t last long in any case as they will loose interest and will see the door without even noticing it.
Part of me agrees wityh you, on the other hand I also see how complacency affects performace.
I see people who easily make it to the top of the spire, but are lazy when it comes to the tournament, even if they do little they still get the prizes anyway.
So it looks like they spire system is a good motivator for players.
If that motivation helps them improve / stay sharp than it might be a good thing.
So it's not about if I am afraid they get more then they earn, I can do that easily by simply kicking them out of the fellowship, it's more about the motivation people seem to get from such a scheme. and as a result they might actually like the tournaments eventually.
Why? because of they want more prizes they need to do better, and you need to reach a certain point to get access to the goodies.
Once a player gets to the stage they get a lot of KP out of the tournaments they seem to improve a lot fairly quick, but people that never reach it don't seem to see the benefit to do more than nessesary.
People are lazy by nature, if your boss pays you your salary, and told you I don't care of you work 1 hour or 100 hours, how long do you think it takes before many of your collegues maybe including yourself will do less than 30 hours of work?