not much. I think leagues were boring from the start.
i really think it just took some people longer to realize it, and the real problem is, that personal enthusiasm masked it, also for me. E.g. if you are in a corp, that atm. has active play and good teams, and you get new good players, because all other corporations slowly die out, due to the mistakes of the past, and the general decline, you might overlook it longer, as long as “your corp” doesnt suffer yet. In fact, “your corp” might even become more successful, as you pick up more people who search for the last corporations which still offer some hardcore mentality, while at the same time, its basicly just the same people who started playing 3 years ago, and almost no “veterans” from the last few years, so it just gets fewer groups with the same people, searching for glory they missed in the past.
Now I do play other games, where I am way not as adept, as in SC, and have fun in “competitive” endgame scenarios, which are often also way more rewarding in terms of ingame rewards aswell, just to make it interesting. All of these games however offer me a less competitive way of playing with my peer group, and certainly are aware of themselves being a hardcore game, also in design.
But SC wasnt designed this way, it got branched into PvE game modes so much, the claim to be a hardcore competitive game just doesnt add up. It claimed to be an MMO game, but the interaction between people online did not get extensions, instead limitations. And for a space game, where you expect some kind of sandbox, all we had is a map we should fight over with a broken extra game mode.
Finally, removing the squads through all the tiers, even the late game tiers, where they actually would be great to increase the “longing” for a more “closed competitive” setup basicly creates a door without stairs leading to it. It simply won’t work without squads in general pvp and that’s why this theme always comes up.
And let’s not talk about mechanics, like destroyers, or the new ceptor gun dead zone, which still divides everyone.
In a nutshell, I see leagues as a good technical development, something that could have been made way earlier, but I think it does it wrong.
Also, while e.g. dirty bomb works fine in its “respawn mode games” and offers a fun clusterf*ck, it also works great as a 5v5 CS-like game for more competitiveness with higher tickrates, lower player numbers and no-respawn mechanics, with the same game units offering new ways of gameplay and importance; SC CtB does not, it’s basicly star conflict light or simply games you only get if the queue is “bad”.
Getting prepared for a good team like DESU with classic team setups and gunship heavy kill-play and then being beacon rushed by some other team; then switching to a more balanced setup or an anti-beacon-rush-setup, or even do the dirty beacon rush yourself, basicly just ends in the next enemy coming prepared for a real fight, and then you suffer yet again. It’s even not fun, if you win a lot, or even the few games, where we came prepared and got exactly the enemy we hoped for, like DESU, and even won a few.
The price just to get that far, usually is so bitter, even that game means nothing anymore.
I don’t even look at the rewards, because in most cases the offered rewards look like insults, and never really make you happy; less is sometimes more.
we are talking about fixing branches of a dying tree, but the roots are rotten.