My apologies then. I thought you were trying to pick a fight. 
Usually, when I buy six tiers, I donât make it to the leaderboards. But right now I am. This tells me that either fewer people are bothering with the event, or, that people arenât doing as well as they normally do.
Wouldnât this be an indicator of how many players are not bothering with the event, possibly due to its design quality?
e.g. While i usually use all my sigils out of principle, after i hit a wall of Dracos lvl 316 that instakill left and right while waiting for the skull lottery, the event was over for me (i am aware that there are alternatives to increase my reach, such as using multiple sigils or buying past Tier 2 in shop, but we all individually determine where we draw lines in gaming)
World events have had the consistent effect of pushing casual players in my guild away from showing up daily, compliments of the restrictions (particularly, weapon restrictions): so when the usually poor design gets magnified by poor medal support, it isnât surprising that leaderboards become less crowded.
Definitely an option too. People could just be skipping the event. Some in my guild are. These events are poorly designed. 
I said that 4 hours ago. Lol 
Skipping the event is rude. A guild requires, at least, implied (if not obligated) participation in events for the benefit of everyone. I believe this one only requires the free sigil usage by everyone to complete.
In my guild I require a certain gold donation and event participation but I canât in good conscience require people to do an event that I even hate to do. So I took away event participation requirement unless itâs guild wars until someone that designs this nonsense stops trying to piss off most of the player base.
It would depend on the guild. There could be guilds that are collectively skipping it. 
I personally donât see the logic in that (at least do some easy levels!), but it wouldnât shock me.
Or it could be both. I notice this happening on the Playstation side too. I usually spend only up to tier 4 on guild events. That usually places me in the top 10% according to the game but not in the top 100. In this event, I am currently on the leaderboard and that was with a non-perfect play (had a few failed battles). Very unusual.
Iâd like to say that the devs noticed the reduced activity and will tweak the events in the future but I seriously doubt that.
I believe that anything that discourages guild participation flies in the face of the most powerful aspect of the game.
Enjoyment, advancement & longevity in the game are enhanced by guild camaraderie.
I think itâs worth considering when designing (or dedicating time to improving) these events.
Wow, that is quite a commitment, I gave up at around level 130 when battles started taking too much time. The event is not too hard, especially for those who want to buy upper tiers, and even at tier 1. However, it is simply tedious to the extreme and very boring imho. World events are generally very tedious and boring with a few exceptions. Our guild has very casual attitude, so we do not enforce or even encourage participation.
A clear goal here is to âsoftlyâ force gem spending. Officially, it is possible to complete at tier 1. So, all looks good on the surface. However, artificial limitations and weird level scaling push towards buying upper tiers. It looks like âsoftâ manipulation of game mechanics. Seems like a well and thoroughly tested event. 
If you are looking at the world events from a purely casual guild standpoint, your assessment, along with many others is valid and makes a lot of sense. But the problem I see is that players take for granted the rewards you get from these events. The final two tiers include 2 minor orbs and a major orb. So if you are in a casual guild that doesnât care about these as much, sure, this event sucks and can be completely ignored.
On the other hand if you have a guild full of 30 active members you not only can reduce the amount of tiers you would need to buy per player because everyone is contributing, but the event is a little easier cause you get extra badges/medals naturally from reward tiers.
I guess my point is you are rewarded for the time you put into the events. If a guild chooses not to engage in world events for whatever reason, thatâs perfectly fine. The events are not meant to be a cakewalk every single week for every single guild. I wish that were the case, but then they might as well just give all players a major orb without anyone playing any of the events. I will agree, that I think they had to know how tough this event was with non scaling, allowing lower tier purchases to reach final rewards. They just miscalculate how frustrating this event is, even at that point.
If this time is not enjoyable and simply involves tedious matches, IMHO, most of casual players donât care about rewards however generous they are.
I have iirc, about 200 orbs of growth plus 80 major plus 200 orbs of wisdom. The upper players in the guild have similar numbers. IMHO, the only thing that remains is gambling for a rather minuscule chance to get an orb of ascension. So, we are getting back to where we started, which is random. IMHO, having an event that requires this considerable amount of dedication, basically double the time of other events, and is not particularly enjoyable or interesting for a random chancy reward is unreasonable, especially if it involves forcing other 29 players to do something that they donât particularly fancy.
On Xbox, I used all sigil from a tier 1 purchase. I finished top 20%, which means to me that 80% of players didnât even do that. Normally I wouldnât either, but I figured if I was going to fight 22 battles with a Merlantis team (3 Mermaids and a Tidecaller) and 15 battles with an Adana team (3 Ghiralee and a Mechanist), I might as well do something that helps the guild a little.
I donât know what the participation levels are on other platforms, but top 20% on tier 1 suggests to me that players didnât like this event too much.
I did fail twice with my Merlantis team and once with the Adana crew, and one bird got awayâŚstill top 20%.