The current format of the de-facto one league is casing several problems, like allowing bots with low-level cards to harvest large chunk of rewards and forces well playing gamers to face opponents with much higher leveled cards further in the season.
Several concerns and solutions expressed @j6969 in his post The Incoherent Ravings of a Mad Man. He also proposes a league format change based on the DEC value of the cards, which is interested and worth further investigation.
Over a year ago I have proposed a League Format Improvement modeled on European football leagues.
In a nutshell, the differences to current rules would be: - a number of team in each league is fixed - a player cannot move between leagues during the season - at the end of the season, a number of top players in each league are promoted to a higher league - at the end of the season, a number of bottom players in each league are relegated to a lower league
Based on the current number of active players (accounts) I think the following could be introduced:
Champions League - 200 players - bottom 20 are relegated
Diamond League - 400 players - top 20 are promoted to Champions League - bottom 40 are relegated
Gold League - 600 players - top 40 are promoted to Diamond League - bottom 80 are relegated to Silver
Silver League - 800 players - top 80 are promoted - bottom 80 are relegated
Bronze League - 1000 players - top 80 are promoted - bottom 160 are relegated
Novice League - all the rest of the players - top 160 are promoted
The above numbers would require further investigation and fine-tuning.
Benefits:
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With the above changes, I expect any starter pack only (spellbook) accounts would have a tough time to go over the Bonze league, and with a larger player base would be stuck in Novice, thus they would not be able to farm rewards in-proportionate to deck strength and value.
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Players would be able to compete for Silver League Champion title etc, making the game more entertaining.
- Developers would have more control over the number of rewards distributed each season
When the player base will get larger, each league can be divided to three sub-leagues, i.e Gold League to Gold I, Gold II, Gold III and the number of players (teams), promotions and relegations in each league adjusted.