I don’t want to get into talking about how hypothetical future leaderboards will work because they aren’t here today and I have already wasted a lot of my life with worry and anxiety about the future.
Keep in mind my complaint isn’t “you have to spend gems to LB” because as people who reflexively defend everything point out you need a lot of sigils. My complaint is ‘with enough potions, your troops, kingdoms, traits, and factions don’t matter’.
A smaller leaderboard could be better. I’ve played games where the top spots were unattainable without spending a lot, but the player base was happy because the somewhat lower tiers still had exceptional rewards and were reachable. Right now GoW only feels like it doles out worthy rewards to about 50 players.
I don’t care if someone can buy the #1 spot if I know I can fight, for free, to get a #100 spot that feels like it gives me a relevant reward. For comparison, in the other game I mentioned, the prizes for fighting to the tiers I always tried to reach started with something as strong as an Orb of Ascension, and if I could get past that tier it turned into 3 Orbs and quickly escalated. Current LBs don’t really dole out that much to anyone but the very top.