League 1 of 2018 had several issues. I'll share my thoughts and suggestions. Maybe there is something interesting that the LOs can use.
Only 3 people made it to the required 20 matches to qualify for prizes. All of them got a nymph/mark code. It feels mandetory to play that many.
I feel the minimum amount of matches required is intended to make people play more games, but it just doesn't motivate people to play more then 3 games if they started with losses.
People who started with losses never wanted to complete 20 matches anyway. If you started with wins you needed to find enough people who wanted to join league, despite some people losing interest.
I think league rewards a combination of activity and winning, but activity is more important now.
I think it would be better to seperate quality and activity. Most people didnt play many more matches then 10, so just require 10 games minimum. To make sure you dont always beat up the same guy, you cannot play more then 50% of your matches against the same player. Unless you won 9 or 10 of the first games you played, there is a good chance you wanna play more games to end higher.
To reward quality you could reward the player with most games played (+ maybe a minimum winrate) with one of the nymph/mark (or shard) codes, but not reward the icon. This lets players play more matches and hopefully compete for this prize. League will be more active if some people offer to play league games all the time.
Seperating quality and quantity makes people take league more serious. Even though I took first place in league I probably didn't do it with the highest ELO.
League prizes (specifically the icon) shouldn't turn into participation trophies, but reflect quality.
League playoffs
People lose motivation to play after a while, due to their low rating. To make the league more exciting, even towards the end, a playoffs system might work out.
Players can decide on their own rules during the regular/qualification games. At the end of the season there will be a tournament, best of 3 or 5. The placing in the regular season is used for seeding and upgrades. The highest rated player plays against the number 8 of the season first. The number 1 also gets more upgrades during this tournament then the number 2, then number 2 has more upgrades then the number 3 etc. This means that, during the regular season you should always try to get a higher ranking.
If people cannot make it to the final tournament they can get a player to substitute for them. Substitutes win the nymph/mark codes, but the absent player gets the icon.
I hope some of my ideas are interesting. You can always take an idea from the list and modify it.