Hi, I really like this idea and in fact I just spent the last few hours grinding up my main account to the Silver medal for OU. I know a survey is coming out soon but I just wanted to leave two suggestions I had off the bat, one big and one small.
The Small - is there a way to have the medals displayed on your user card? For example, in the free space here
As of right now, the medals only show up in battles, which imo feels a bit redundant because if we're in a battle together you already know my ELO with or without a medal. It'd be nice if someone clicked on my name in a PS! room or something they could see the cool badge I grinded for.
The Big - I would really prefer if when you earnt a medal, you got to keep it until the end of the season. It's a little disheartening knowing that even after grinding, I'll probably lose the medal while I'm asleep without getting a real chance to show it off, and I personally think it would be a lot better if I could show off my ladder peak for the whole month duration of the season. You'd still only give the prize to the top 100 at the deadline, whatever that prize may be, but I would just like the thing I spent time grinding for to last for more than an hour or two. If I hit like, Diamond in League of Legends it doesn't go away when other people hit Diamond, if that makes sense. It would also make laddering less stressful because I wouldn't have to worry about losing my top 30 position or whatever. Overall I think making the medals a bit less ephemeral would make them a lot more satisfying to earn.
Overall, I do like this idea and I think it's a great step forward for giving ladder a reward actually worth playing for, instead of being the Sisyphean fight against ELO Decay that it currently is. These are just two areas for improvement that stand out to me a lot, personally. Thanks for the hard work and all that.