Duolingo should focus less on XP achievements

[__CF__]

Crowns, golden owls, they show more of ones progress and/or level in a language, but Duolingo mainly focuses on XP.

This is very discouraging.

[GrahamW]

Several years ago, before the focus on bonus XP, XP correlated quite well to the progress made in a language, when it reflected the number of lessons/practices completed quite well. Achieving Level 25 had some significance. Now XP is pretty meaningless, except as a measure of how much one has "played the game".
Crowns was also a pretty decent measure, but that too will go the way of the dodo on 1 Nov 2022.
Which leaves the Owl. Given the increased length of the 2 most popular courses, Spanish and French, even that is becoming increasingly hard to achieve in a reasonable period of time. Even more so with the new path structure, which forces certain elements into the path that weren't required before. So it will need more work to complete the course than was needed to complete to Crown Level 1. (For example, I used the French course simply as a refresher rather than to learn, so I worked through the course at Crown Level 1. I don't think that will be possible in the path structure.)
Perhaps Duo will introduce some reasonable measure of progress for the new path structure, presumable Units completed. Is the Duome progress tracking ready for the change?

[SweNedGuy]

In about any course, my XP/crown ratio is on the low side (when checked with 'peers' on DuoMe).
Placement tests may explain that for courses on owl-level 1. Yet using the website rather than the app makes a huge difference as well. No XP farming here. Several of my courses don't have stories and for those that do, I am getting tired of reading the same plot in a couple of languages. Sometimes I participate in events (or classes as DL has renamed them). It's a fun way to get some extra practice and getting the 250XP may keep you in diamond if that is any concern.