Leagues have ruined chess.com

I've never seen so many low rated players in elite or champion league who have accuracy during arena games in the high 80s and low 90s but they are trash the rest of the time.

In essence, leagues have destroyed the tournaments on this site and I'm fed up having a blitz rating consistently 150 points below my USCF blitz rating because of the sandbagging and engine use that is going on. Chess.com, you essentially encouraged every trashbag scam artist who plays to manipulate ratings so these people could reach high leagues. Thanks a LOT for screwing the rest of us over!

Leagues aren't based on rating though (?)

Rating is taken into account during matching. That's why you see 600 rated players winning arena all the time.

600s were winning arenas even before league, but ok, I think I see what you're saying, that people lose games on purpose to make it even easier.

Looking at you last arena, your performance rating was ~1387 and you gained rating points overall... doesn't really support that idea that people are sandbagging.

Eventually, almost everyone who plays will be in elite/champion/legend league and people will care less over time. 

well then just don't participate in leagues...
i saw that new leagy stuff, i was lazy to learn how it works, i quit it
problem solved

Why do you play online? I mean if it's for fun then I don't see why you would care so much about ratings.

Leagues have made arena even worse than they were before. It isn't the leagues themselves that are the problem, its the way points are calculated for leagues. Bonus points are awarded for arena wins, and that means that people have an even greater incentive to sandbag and/or cheat than they did before.

I initially liked the leagues idea, but I can see how leagues incentivise this behaviour where you play your worst and most careless chess outside of arena tournaments. And then when your rating dropped a few hundred points, you try your best inside the arena tournaments and voila: you went up a league!

Irony is that people who don't do this might become disincentivised to join arena tournaments, which inside arena tournamens could result in even higher percentages of players trying to go up leagues this way.

Lately I was considering joining some tournaments, but this lowers my expectations for that experience. 

First of all, leagues are about how much you play, not about doing well in arenas. I know arenas give bonus trophies, but I wonder what you mean by "voila: you went up a league!" because the only thing required for most levels is just to play a measly 1 hour a day... doubling your time by playing 1 set of bad games and 1 set of good games is hardly a workaround.

Your current silver division requires even less than 1 hour a day... in fact @erema_1925 is currently at the cutoff and averaging 35 trophies per day... that's about 30 minutes of chess per day.

OP needs to get a life.  Seriously.

The premise about leagues being entirely about activity isn't true. The cumulative bonus for winning arena games is huge. I added like 200 league points after a really good arena tournament. I can confirm that people are indeed dropping trophies outside of arena tournaments, then playing at full strength in tournaments, as was noted.

Hai

For sure. If you have a good run in a bullet arena you can more than double your trophies, which is great (3 trophies for a bullet win, plus up to 4 bonus trophies when you're on a streak).

But I'm juts saying... if you win an arena with ~15 wins in a row, then it will take ~15 losses to tank your rating back down. Since they're losses you get no trophies (and if you don't lose enough, then overall your rating goes up, and you can't destroy arenas anymore).

With this system (15-0 in arenas followed by 0-15 outside) I calculate it to be about 12 extra trophies per hour... for non-competitive leagues this just doesn't make sense (plus you can be banned for sandbagging).

I tried hard one week earlier in the year and I got a glimpse of what some players do every week of the year all I can say is it's not a nice way to live.

As a beginner, the leagues give me confidence that I am making progress, and motivate me to continue. It is a reminder to myself that I am participating a lot and working to improve, and it is nice to know that others around me in the league are too. And knowing that I have to at least be good if not the best to make progress in the league (withotice I am playing better I out wearing myself out time wise), is a sign of my improvement. As I seek to win more games to get to the next level, the better I am becoming as a chess player. I understand everyone's complaints, I just want to say that there are non-cheaters like me who benefit greatly from the league as they grow in having fun in the world of chess.

Hmm, but ok, you'd get a lot more than 12 extra trophies per hour if you play simultaneous games (winning the arena games while losing non-arena at the same time), or if you tank your rating super low very quickly (resigning on move 1 or something) followed by playing multiple arenas back to back.

That way you could approximately double your trophies per hour.

But again... to do this when all you need is a few 100 to get promoted... lol.

As this thread discusses, if climbing leagues were extremely important to a person, a way to do it would be for them to tank their rating outside of arenas at the fastest time controls for [bullet/blitz/rapid] and then to play many games in arena in [bullet/blitz/rapid] until their rating climbs. Then repeat.

The idea being to rapidly drop in rating and then pick up easy points in arenas against low-rated opponents.

How many people actually do this? Does chess.com monitor and stop this kind of activity? I don't know.

My highest rating is 600 in rapid and I'm in crystal division along with 1200's and 1400's, if your really that uncomfortable with a no-risk and no-loss free tournament with no intention other than friendly competition, than why even play league?

on the first legend league, more then half of members were titled