Originally posted by bhall43
That is the whole downfall though. Your promotion system is based off the Ladder games and has nothing to do with the league you are in. Plus the whole thing where WL teams are just constantly playing other WL teams while Joe Schmo is never gonna reach the height of those WL teams during his tenure even though he is slowly rising through the ranks.
That's not true at all. You win the ladder games, you get placed in a higher league. You win that league, you get a bonus to your ELO going into the next season. You lose your league, you get a penalty to your ELO going into the next season. A team that loses the WL would start with a lower ELO in the tourny than a PL team that won theirs. It would allow successful teams to move up faster, to the point where they are playing against teams where they sometimes win and sometimes lose.
The pyramid structure, depending on how tall and how wide you make it, takes a VERY long time to get teams to that point. And the wider you make each level of the pyramid, the less likely you are to have a top to bottom competitive league.