On Wed, 9 May 2001, Karthik Arumugham wrote: > You mean the original version that pulled everyone off continuum so they This was at a time when continuum had bag lag for a lot of people and often didn't have t-mode. Now that I see queue 16 some times, maybe pulling players away would be a good thing. > could scum rank with skewed stats caused by bots playing? This WAS an > "everyone is an Admiral" version just as much as the others, since any > random twink could just sit there scumming 10+ stats. How many people were admirals? I seem to remember it only being a small fraction of the player base. I think you are getting stuck in this stupid idea that the purpose of rank to to reward people that you think "deserve" it. When people you don't like get rank, you think there is something wrong. The real purpose of rank is to entice people into playing longer, by giving them positive feedback if the stick around and play. If you give the feedback too easily, like the tutorial version, it's not worth anything to people. You've got to make people want rank, and make them stick around to get it. > many people would hate to see that happen, as it arguably caused significant > damage to the Netrek community last time. I seem to remember it caused in increase in the player base. The problem was that these were "new" players and the ancient dinosaur clue didn't like the "new" players and wanted them gone. It bothered the archaeclue that newbies were playing the game against easy bots and having fun. To an archaeclue, the purpose of a newbie is to die repeatedly and be awed by the archaeclue's skill, thus boosting the archaeclue's ego.