I'm going to be quite blunt here; I'm quite disappointed by your response. On another GAC thread I thought you had well thought out and reasoned arguments (for somebody who hasn't experienced the other GAC). However, supporting this idea is just garbanzo beans. No offence to the OP, but sorry it has zero merit.
Do you think a lot of Arena shards are healthy places? They are not, and can be quite scary. There is no way they wouldn't become clicky with group discords. That is super unhealthy.
CheeseEmperor0 wrote:it disincentivizes quitting
How does it? It punishes quitting, but it doesn't disincentivise quitting. That's 2 very different things. Reasons for quitting usually are becoming bored, jaded, don't have time, want to try something new etc. The threat of being punished in your GAC shard for not keeping up with the Joneses is not motivation not to quit. If anything, it's motivation to quit and not come back.
CheeseEmperor0 wrote:This or a beginners league would be the way to go to
Well we talked about this. I believe it was my idea to introduce a beginners league. I'd go as far as say that it's become necessary. It's quite clear the spirit of the game is not in full effect for people new to GAC. This shard idea though, isn't very beneficial to beginners, and gets more and more horrid the longer you go on. You won't be a beginner forever, you need to consider everybody.
Another idea I saw, and I thought was pretty genius. Egnard (on the whole wants GAC to be too rigid), but one idea he had was an 'activity' score. You gain and lose activity points depending on how engaged you are with your GAC matches. You then face other players with the same activity score. The is a very elegant and unobtrusive fix to the free-falling problem.
CheeseEmperor0 wrote:It’s already hard for new players to climb, facing on average 3-6 million GP differences.
I'm not sure the free-falling accounts are a reason for new players finding it difficult to climb. After all if these players played all the time they'd be above them on the ladder anyway, right?
The issue isn't win percentages, but the gaming experience. The spirit of GAC should be match ups you can engage in and have fun. It shouldn't be try to win one and hope your opponent doesn't play. That's just really stinky. I think if you're playing well, you'll climb regardless, just it should be an engaging, strategic and fun experience.
My big worry is how many players are entering GAC have a stinky experience and being done with it. I'd say the health of GAC, a 'tadpole' league is a necessity.