A season is a fixed window — a month, a quarter — in which players accumulate points and are sorted into divisions that promote and relegate. A mission is about today, a tournament is about this weekend, a season is about whether you show up for six weeks. It is also the mechanic most easily built wrong, because the obvious way to score it turns a loyalty programme into a spending leaderboard.
Scoring a season on amounts wagered is the default implementation, because that figure is already in the warehouse. It produces a top division made of the players who spent the most, and a ladder that visibly rewards volume is a ladder that encourages it — which is where safer-gambling scrutiny lands hardest.
Ludora's season engine scores actions instead. Completing a mission, earning a badge, playing on a given day, extending a streak, entering a tournament, taking a draw spin: each carries a fixed number of points and deliberately none of them is an amount of money. A player who had an awful night still climbs, because they did the things the season counts.
Bronze through diamond exist so a player competes against a comparable cohort rather than against the whole player base. The failure is running all five tiers regardless of how many players entered: a diamond division with three people in it is not a competition. Ludora sizes the ladder from the population — a minimum of eight players per division — so a season with two hundred entrants runs fewer tiers than one with twenty thousand, and every tier that exists has a standing worth reading. Promotion and relegation default to five each way.
A player who joins in the final week cannot catch a leaderboard built over six. They are ranked, so the standing stays honest, but exempt from relegation for that season — penalising a player for arriving applies the punishment to exactly the newly acquired player an operator most wants to keep.
At the end of a season, points reset. What must not reset is anything already awarded: a badge earned is earned, a credited reward stays credited. A season boundary is a line under a standing, not a clawback. Division placement carries forward as the next season's starting position, which is what makes the end of a season worth playing for.
A season is a fixed window — commonly a month or a quarter — in which players accumulate points and are placed in divisions that promote and relegate at the end. It gives a retention programme a medium-term arc between daily missions and long-term VIP status, and the fixed ending is what creates a reason to keep playing in the final weeks.
No. Scoring on amounts turns the ladder into a spending leaderboard, which encourages volume and attracts safer-gambling scrutiny. Points should come from actions — completing missions, earning badges, playing on a given day, extending a streak, entering a tournament — so that a player having a losing night still climbs by doing the things the season counts.
As many as the player population can fill. Five tiers is a common maximum, but a division needs enough players to be a competition at all — Ludora uses a minimum of eight per division and collapses the ladder to fewer tiers for smaller seasons. Running five near-empty divisions produces standings nobody can read and promotions nobody earned.
They are ranked, so the standing stays honest and they can see where they are, but they are exempt from relegation for that season. Penalising a player for arriving would apply the punishment to exactly the newly acquired player an operator most wants to keep. The next season starts them level.
Points reset; awarded value does not. Badges earned stay earned and credited rewards stay credited — a reset draws a line under a standing rather than clawing anything back. Division placement carries into the next season as the player's starting position, which is what makes the end of a season worth playing for.