I'm mostly, and deliberately, ignoring the gamified parts of Duolingo, at least for now. "Maintain your streak" is gamified talk for "do at least a little every day," and I want to keep that up, because it's easier to maintain that sort of habit than "I will do French at least four days a week" or the like.

I was looking at the "league promotion" bit when I first started, because I had a bunch of free time, and found the early lessons extremely easy. Right now, I'm doing intro French as much for listening practice as vocabulary. It's still at the point where I know most of the words before Duolingo "teaches" them to me, many via Spanish cognates or borrowed English (it has me practicing that the French for "weekend" is "week-end") or picked up from menus and signs in Montreal. But I can't go too fast right now, because typing can strain my left hand.

I suspect the gamification would work better for me if I was doing this with people, friends or in a class, or if all those "lingots" I earn for things like meeting my daily goal were usable for anything I remotely wanted.