Competitive Duolingo Is Miserable

Duolingo's Competitive scene is a jungle. Constant online controlled feature testing ensures that we are always playing different versions of Duolingo from each other at any given time. And that's before some of us pay an annual fee for the Super tier, which builds several advantages on top of the chaos.

But what unites us all in the competitive scene is a desire to climb the leagues each week. To conquer the Diamond League Tournament Final and earn the coveted gold medal. In that pursuit, only getting the most XP matters. And it's a bad time!

It's not strictly possible to give advice on the most efficient XP-maxing strategies for Duolingo because of the aforementioned feature testing policies! For instance, even though I do not subscribe to Duolingo Super, my experience both in the browser and on my phone is ad-free, and I have unlimited lives. This is not universal. I get a 15-minute XP Boosting potion whenever I complete a set of lessons, and when I complete my third daily quest of the day. This is also not a universal experience. Depending on how far into the future you're reading this post, it may not even be my experience anymore!

But whatever. Life is hard and industrious winners never worry about a level playing field. As long as privilege favours you, reaching #1 at any cost is the goal. But this too is a bad time!

Mastering a language in Duolingo gets progressively more difficult as you progress. Learning to speak at a higher CEFR level is simply harder work than mastering the basics. This stands to reason. But generally speaking, the XP earned per lesson remains static as the difficulty increases. Someone who completes 10 lessons of Beginner Spanish earns the same XP as someone who completes 10 lessons of Intermediate Polish. Can you see where this is going?

If you want to earn 500 XP quickly to climb a few leaderboard spots, you're incentivized to earn the most XP per unit time possible, and this often means reviewing easier lessons (good!) but can also mean splashing out into other languages (okay...?) or grinding out redundant lessons in your mother tongue (bad!) whilst also trying to do as much of this grinding activity while under the influence of those purple XP-boosting potions, which bring their own problems.

I've caught myself deferring progress in my 'main' language (Spanish) because I'm about to complete a set of lessons that will reward me with a non-delayable dose of purple XP drink that I won't be able to capitalize on because I'm too busy for a long session. At any given time I may have a series of languages for which my latest lesson set is but one lesson short of completion. I call this 'loading the chambers'. This means that when I have more time, I can cash in all of these potions and go on an XP-grinding joyride. I am horrified at what I've become and I am going to stop doing it. But this is the best way to grind for XP in Duolingo. It's just a shame that it's also a terrible way to engage with Duolingo as a language-learning app!

A healthy bit of competition can encourage certain player types to get more out of their learning, and lower-level leagues on the app retain this feeling of being a low-impact contest which simply results in a few more language lessons here and there. But the high-level leagues become at best a sales tactic for the paid tier of the app, and at worst a miserable prison for those who lose sight of the real reason we should all be here, to get better at speaking fluently with our suegrita adorada bonita de Madrid on our llamada telefónica semanal.