Everything is in the eyes of the beholder. Fun in your understanding is a thing not everyone can understand. The only fun in my understanding is when there are more than two strong rivals in the group. Capture provinces at speed. Tactical tricks. A battle at the limit for an important province, with the threat of being knocked off the map. Speed is the key element here. Speed has been taken away from us now. And now the rivalry in diamond will look the same as the rivalry in silver. Wonderful...
You talk all the time about some gold and silver leagues, as if they really exist, as if someone is playing there. I know there are a little more than 200 live guilds on my main world. Maybe 250. 100 are playing in a diamond. The rest are in platinum. If you look at the activity of players in guilds below 200, you will see the live players who enter the game at least once every three days are no more than 1/5. The rest is dead bodies. So do you really want to impose fun in the understanding of this audience on everyone?
Speed can be an element, but it shouldn't be the only element. If you want nothing but speed, GvG is always there with its horribly outdated boost values.
I would replace "strong rivals" with "equal rivals" and then I think we mostly agree. It really doesn't seem to happen much anymore though in my experience.
I talk about platinum a lot - gold and silver I pass through now and then when there's a new guild I'm playing around in - or when I decide to do a little something on an alt world for some reason. There are actual guilds in there, even if they don't measure up to your standards (or mine for that matter)
There has to be, otherwise the number of guilds in diamond would be decreasing as diamond destroys points (from the cap - a 1000 diamond group with 8 guilds will have the top 4's points gain go to the nether, and the bottom 4 lose points) and the thing propping guilds up is new points rising up from copper.
As for imposing "my fun" on everyone, no moreso than "your fun" is imposed on me now. I would like at least variety in the types of rounds I see. Not months and months of farming (when i was in a 1000 guild). Not always easy rounds in platinum and impossible rounds in diamond (in the small-medium guilds which were the last place I used to find fun before so many guilds started fearing diamond that they'll beg you to take 1st in platinum).
For which the meta needs a good shake. I have no doubt there'll still be farmers, especially at first. But over time if the incentive to be farmers isn't as big, there should be other approaches that rise as well giving rounds some more variety. And possibly the matching may improve because of the shift of what makes a guild "strong enough to promote".
