IKR! I remember when I was just starting this game, I would look at PvP Ranked table and said “Look at those people in the top 10, they’re crazy.”
Who’s crazy now? 
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Congratulations, @ZooKeeper. That’s quite an accomplishment.
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I commend you. My highest was 4th place. Never. Never again.
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Who’s crazy now?
I think it’s clear, it was you last week.
Haha, kudos though.
Thanks for all kudos 
As much as I love it, I’d like to see more discussion on solution / ideas regarding current PvP system / rewards.
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oh dear, busted.
Are you for real? 
How can you possibly think about someone that he is a cheater just because he created himself a better performing gaming environment than you? Or is in better situation, circumstances or wtv. ? Or simply have no other choice but to share the device or acc with someone?
Neah you gotta be kidding me. You want to say that someone should limit the time I, or anyone else, spend in game just because u wanna get an easier way to the top?
Last update brought on us so many limits that people feel overwhelming boredom and drastical decrease of enthusiasm for playing. The main race now, for endgamers, concerns who will get his Sand Cobra to mythic first.What do you think would happen after adding just another limits to the game?
The only thing I agree with you is the matter of rewards, they surely should get boosted, coz for now they are more than low. Especially now after all these rewards nerfs. Basicly whole that pvp system is wrong. Matching is terrible, I keep playing 20 same ppl every single day. I feel like a damn stalker at the end of the week. I started to simply close the game after facing same team for the Xth time this day. Gold is worthless, exp doesnt really matter. The only thing worth the fighting time are trophies. At some hours servers are so heavy so it happens u get nothing but errors after fights. Etc etc…
And after all, we have got this system some time ago already, we could monitor how the pvp race and ladder climbing looks like for quite a long time. Deciding to take a part of this race you had to be aware how its going to look like in practice and yet you decided to join the journey. So I just wonder now, if you took the top spot, going through all this disadvantages you were complaining about, were your actions fully legit? 
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I think any game mechanic/reward system that encourages players to endanger their lives for some kind of potential reward should be discouraged. I’m not talking about making everyone wear a helmet and rounding over every corner; life should come with some risk, yadda yadda yadda. What I am talking about is developers implementing a gameplay mechanic that makes it impossible to compete without cheating or engaging in unhealthy behavior. Sleep deprivation has been shown to cause many long-term health problems and a system like the current ranked system encourages this type of behavior. I play GoW probably way more than is healthy already and I can’t even break the top 100 without putting in way more time than I already do. And before anyone makes assumptions, I’m relatively high rank, or high enough anyway and I have decently fast teams, so the issue isn’t my speed but just the sheer volume of play time.
Like @ZooKeeper, I’d rather the ranked system be more competitive in terms of actual gameplay and not just reward those who put in the most hours. Not only is that unhealthy and very limiting for most players but I’d argue most players find that boring. Here’s hoping the devs are already working on fixing this with a better, more rewarding type of competitive gameplay.
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I think the fact that the top rewards are pretty lame for the time required to get them prevents tons of people from spending an unhealthy amount of time trying to get to number one at this point. I’ve tracked the names on the leaderboard since it arrived. It usually has around the same people on it every week. You get some newcomers of course. But, the core people are generally the same week after week. So, most players obviously are not playing an unhealthy amount of GoW just to get on the leaderboard.
Now, if the leaderboard rewards were fabulous, it might be a different story.
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Other than the current points-in-a-week system, how else could you quantify it? Assign points to how you play, such as number of turns it takes to win, or how often you missed match-4s? Encourage/enforce team building rules? I agree that the current system is not ideal to encourage equitable and healthy play, but I am not certain of the alternatives either, as the last thing I’d want is a different system that just encourages the same min-max meta all the dang time, or that restricts creativity and flexibility (especially in an environment that has such a large pool of possibilities).
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My highest career rank on the leaderboard was at #5, with @nimhain and @sirrian at 1-2. I will forever be proud of that achievement.
Plus I’m sure they weren’t botting. At least… Yes I’m quite sure they weren’t botting.
You can’t seriously be suggesting you limit the PvP time an account can play because of the grind it takes to get to the #1 spot.
The devs should be hunting down real cheaters - if someone actually has a system where they hand off their account to someone else, that’s perfectly acceptable. If they are using a bot, that’s not.
They should be limiting the amount of time for play period. Not for “unfair” reasons. Someone died recently from playing a video game for 24 hours straight. The amount of hours you have to play to get to the #1 spot in pvp is too much period. I’m not sure if the Devs knew it would take that many or not. I think they underestimated the dedication. I have stayed up 24 hours-48 hours on multiple occasions. Now I’ve never died (not that I know of) but it can happen obviously. I think they really messed up pvp when they made it about how many clicks and time you can put in, in a week. They need to “balance” the system geared toward other things than longer time. When someone says they’re spending 18+ hours a day to go for something that means very little right now, it’s like huh?
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Well, what is the alternative?
People only have themselves to blame for spending 18+ hours a day on a video game… especially just to rank on a leaderboard… that means nothing other than who played the most
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They could always make a point system per match.
+10 points for 1 trophy win
+20 points for 2 trophy win
+30 points for 3 trophy win
-50 for a 1 trophy lose
-40 for a 2 trophy lose
-30 for a 3 trophy lose
+30 points for winning on turn 1
+20 points for winning in 2-5 AI turns
+10 points for winning in 6-10 AI turns
+15 points for ending a match with 4 troops
-5 per missing troop at the end of battle
Then just scale up all negative effects listed above by 2x when reaching over 10,000 rating, 3x for over 25,000 rating, and 5x for over 50,000 rating. This would fix the inconsistency in rating gains that everyone has for doing the same amount of work and would keep people from just grinding to death the leader board. Many of the players on the top 10 of the leader board each week have a lower win rate percent than those towards the bottom.
The week I did my week long stream in attempt to get #1, I finished with a 98.5% win rate. I ended up getting rank 3 due to a now banned bot and the unnamed person passing me. Both of them had under a 80% win rate. The only reason they were higher was due to more time to grind and likely the use of forfeiting to reduce the length of unfavorable AI luck.
I strongly believe the leader board in Gems of War needs to start punishing loses more at the higher rating values. If nothing is added to slow down the top 10% of the leader board, it will always just be composed of the people with the most time. This would have no effect on a good majority of players in the game and would make for healthier competition towards the top.
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Exactly Tier 1 means nothing right now other than you had more time to waste in the week. Congratulations. Tier 1 should be a true accomplishment. Now you can argue that it is currently an accomplishment that you had more time to spend then the other people, but I don’t see it so. I think the way they have to balance it based on current system, is a higher punishment for losses. It has to come down to points.
(I do however respect the dedication those players put in, I don’t respect the Tier 1 rank)
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They have to figure out how to balance it for everyone else so they don’t get up-in-arms about losses carrying more punishment, but I really see punishment as the only way to go. Maybe punishment only kicks in AFTER you reach rank 1 in pvp?
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Some people keep saying that the devs should change the system because there is this extremely small percentage of people that play an unhealthy amount of time to reach the top spot. But, like Mitheithel said, what exactly can they do that’s fair? You play against an AI not a person. So, beyond a certain player level, you have a 99% win rate on invades.
Someone suggested limiting how much time a person can play during a week. How exactly will that stop the unhealthy player from playing the max time? You’ll still have the same people at the top. Those that play more would still have the advantage.
The only way you’ll ever have a competitive leaderboard that is based more on skill than time investment is if/when they bring in actual player vs player gameplay.
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As long as they start triggering a lost punishment around 10,000 rating, it would only effect 1-5% of the player base at most.
If they started the reductions at 5,000+ rating, it would still only effect around 20% of the player base on a given week.
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It’s not about “nerfing” the same people from getting to the top each week, it’s about at the very least bringing the time spent down to healthier levels.