The removal of the lower league wins from the overall GBG championship rankings is a welcome change, but it doesn't go far enough to address the perverse incentives WITHIN the diamond league in relation to the towers. Because of the way the current matchmaking algorithm works, there is an artificial two-tier system within the diamond league, with the difficult 1000LP maps and the less-competitive 900+LP maps. Inno may consider diamond to be one league, but it does not operate that way for players.
Within the diamond league currently there are a small number of super guilds (Group A) on most servers who can beat all other guilds in GBG. These are the guilds fighting it out for the actual championship win, and they are always on the 1000LP maps. There are also usually a next tier of guilds (Group B), who are competitive but can't beat the super guilds. These guilds usually come in the top half of the rankings each season so also remain in the 1000LP maps. Then we we have Group C - the guilds who are not at all competitive in the 1000LP maps and cannot beat guilds from Group A or B, so bounce between these maps and the 900+ maps. And then there are the guilds which drop out to platinum which have already been addressed.
- Within Group A, one or two (depending on how the matchmaking plays out) will win 5-6 seasons and the Level 2 tower (15-18K fragments).
- Some of Group A (if they meet each other too often) and some of Group B may win a single season and come 2nd the rest of the time and get the Level 1 tower (8K fragments).
- The rest of Group A and B can at best come 2nd in each season and will NOT win enough fragments for a tower (6K fragments at most).
- Group C however can win in the 900+LP map then come 5th-6th in the 1000LP map next season for 3 wins and 3 low places and win a Level 1 tower (9K fragments).
Consequently, Group C end up with more rewards - and the additional strength these towers provide their players - than those guilds in Group A and B who are challenging for the win. This creates a perverse outcome and disincentives guilds (apart from those who can beat everyone) from playing competitively in the 1000LP maps as they are better off bouncing between the 2 maps. It also disincentives guilds from wanting to grow and get stronger to challenge the top guilds as they will lose out along that journey.
Two things could be done to fix this.
1 - the matchmaking algorithm needs to be fixed to remove the artificial two-tier system within the diamond league (I appreciate this may not be simple and may take time), and
2 - the tower fragments awarded for placings in GBG need to be adjusted to reward guilds who TRY to win more than those who play to lose. A simple increase in the amount of fragments awarded for 2nd place from 1000 to 1250 would at least give a guild who came 2nd every season the same rewards as one who came 5th, 1st, 5th, 1st, 5th, 1st (this could be implemented immediately without much difficulty).