If I had the flex jkid2 does, I would do what TimeTrial did, which is to create a rookie team of all my own players, then take them all the way to the Pro leagues leveling every season. Would be interesting to see how I would do at that level and would be a lot of fun. However, I just don't have the funds to do something like that, so I remain in PW and might venture into the Rookie leagues at some point. I had wanted to do that for S32, but it just didn't work out, so maybe in S33, who knows.
And I know that I did win Gold in what many call a watered down season, so not making a big deal about it. However, every team I played in the playoffs wes a challenge and by no means was this an easy trophy. While I would agree that the regular season is watered down some from what it used to be, there are still some very good teams in the playoffs, so I wouldn't call the playoffs watered down by much, if at all.
And if your def of watered down is full-full vs no-no, back in the day you had to boost/ceq as no-no teams just couldn't hang with full-full teams. However, this is a different sim and no-no teams CAN & DO hang with full-full teams, which is why many teams are no longer going full-full. That doesn't mean PWG is weaker, only that many don't consider the high price of a full-full team as being worth it and they make the choice to be no-no or partial-partial.
Personally, I like that no-no teams can compete at nearly the same level as full-full teams. This allows the top teams to go no-no or partial-partial and still remain competitive, but then allows the new teams in PWG to go full-full and be a little more competitive then they normally would. This helps balance things out a bit more. Just wish there were not so many CPU teams in PWG...