The problem is the rewards, you earn less in an antag match …
Exactly, it's just dragging things out and it does not bring the slightest benefit to the end result.
And that raises the question, why should somebody play against an antag? Unfortunately somebody have to, because it's not optional. Make it optional or change something in the reward system.
The only issue with just adding better rewards is that it will cause a lot of players to become antagonists, which will only increase the forced pvp on more people that don't really enjoy it. This also doesn't fix one of the biggest problems with the whole antagonist system matchmaking. With the way it currently is you could end up with extremely high lv gaps in the team. Like a lv 12 antagonist could end up againts a team of lv 100s or a team of lv 30s against a lv 200 antag. It's completely broken and unbalanced so imo the best thing they could do is make it optional and focus on increasing the player base by fixing/adding better pve content.