Just fwiw, I actually stumbled across this last night:
Originally posted by azirish
Now onto the more critical information. Last year, when we were much lower-levelled (started the year with mostly level 7s and 8s before boosting), the "late-boost" advantage was about 1.5 levels per player. This was a result of the dramatically different in-game XP gains - a lvl 8 had a max in-game XP of about 380 XP while a lvl 12's max in-game XP was 305. Over 16 games, that was about a level - and the difference in daily XP was about a third of a level.
Now, the situation is VERY different, as it turns out. That 1.5 level gain (or about 1450 XP) we enjoyed last year has shrunk to a 440 XP or 0.4 level difference this season.
I ran the numbers to compare two situations - (1) Level 16 player DOES NOT boost, gets 40 plays/game, then boosts on day 32 (end regular season)...(2) Level 16 player BOOSTS to level 19, gets 40 plays/game. Here is where each of those players stands at the start of the playoffs:
Situation (1): 4550 XP, level 23
Situation (2): 4110 XP, level 23
So...it would seem that boosting late has a very small advantage at this point. 1.5 levels is a fairly big deal...less than half a level really isn't. The reason for this is that the difference in daily XP is negligible at our current levels (42 XP/day at lvl 16, 29 XP/day at lvl 17, 37 XP/day at lvl 18, etc) and the difference in game XP isn't nearly as huge as at lower levels (225 XP/game at lvl 16, 215 XP/game at lvl 17, 205 XP/game at lvl 18).
