Final Draft (I hope) of the completed PRS document

mepbmlist
#1

just what exactly is a PR anyway?(my guess: Player
Rating???)

and who cares about it?

Hey Dave, haven't heard from you in a long time. I think we were in LAS2 under GSI together. I'm Darrell Shimel.

I've been a big opponent of the rating system since the moment I heard about it. Best I can figure, it is an easily manipulated system that will rank those that spend the most money or go out of their way to trick the system as the "best players". This list of freely spending and/or manipulative players will then be posted on the web site as the best players, and once a month it will be mailed out to rub your nose in just how good these players are.

are there games that start up that only allow people
in with certain PRs?

It has been said that the rating will be used as a "rule of thumb". Problem is, someone with 5 wins of 10 games will be rated about the same (in at least 1 of the many, many rankings) as someone that has never played.

I pushed the ideas of replacing the impossibly complicated mess with a simple Games Started/Joined, Games won, winning %. Instead of replacing the mess, this ranking was simply added to the mess, making an even bigger mess.

If PR is % won/played, then if you play one and lose,
your PR is 0! Well, that doesn't mean you'll be a bad
player in the middle or long run... Most people lose
the first time they play any game.

There is a whole series of ranking. One that is basically won-lost. In this one, someone 10 of 15 is ranked the same as someone 5 of 5.

Another is an XP type thing where the skill of your teammates times the number of turns played.... Whatever.

Another is bringing back the horrid greedy, un-team-play generating VPs. By being a lousy player, building personal wealth, pops, and characters while avoiding upsetting the enemy while the other members of your alliance do the fighting, you can be ranked as a better player than the guy that thru everything he had at the enemy and won the damn game for your team.

Yet another ranking is one that will be voted on by the players. We get some chunk of points to divide up and vote for who is the best player, or something like that. I haven't paid much attention, as I only intend to vote for Richard Cranium. He deserves all the votes as it would take a real dick head to impose a ranking system on so complicated a game as this.

I'm confused about this PR thing.

Join the pack. Most simply don't care. A few seem to think it is a good idea. The discussion is mute as ME Games has decided to impose this system on the players anyway. They bring it up, there is a crap load of emails exchanged, most doing little but make the messy pile of crap an even bigger pile of messy crap. They then let it die down for weeks or months hoping the opposition will go away. Then it comes back again.... Okay, the "why it goes away for months" is pure speculation on my part.

Is there a web page
somewhere that defines it? I couldn't locate it, but
admittedly, I only did a weak search.

Dave

The real result of this ranking system is that instead of choosing games and positions based on what is fun, many will go back to the bad old days of picking games and positions based on best chance to win.... It is going to suck.

Darrell Shimel

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#2

Hiya Darrell.
Long time no see, er, email

Well, here's an interesting analogy that is taking
place in the U.S. high-tech community right now:
the debate over whether stock options should be
expensed or not. FASB (in its infinite wisdom)
has recommended that stock options be expensed.
Thus, income statements for high-tech companies
(who have traditionally relied on stock options as
one of the major compensation components for the
entire work force - not just exec staff), will seem
much worse than income statements for traditional
companies. Yet, their fundamental economics may
be better...
What will happen? Most analysts that I talk to say
that the "pro forma" financial statements (which
are statements created by management to show the
way the business *really* is running) will exclude
the charges of the stock options, and that they will
be what everyone pays attention to anyway, and people
will come to truly ignore the official financial
statements.

Why the above long-winded analysis of a completely
different topic? Well, it's just my way of saying
that if the PR rating is useful, then people will
use them. If they're not useful, then people will
ignore them. My take on Harlequin so far is that
they seem very customer-oriented. If they're
experimenting with something, great! GSI's problem,
at the end of the day, was that they were a little
too strong willed and unwilling to listen to their
customers (note I said a "little" - I liked GSI
overall, but they could have been more successful,
IMHO, if they'd been a bit more flexible. But they
did create a great game and Stuart is still with us!)
So, here's a toast to continued improvement, which
frankly, must come from experimentation.

Darrell - your observations on the victory point
system and players being me-focused is right on
target.
There was a lot of ugly play in the old games. Let's
hope there's lots less of that now, and my first game
is proving that to be true! It's only turn 1 and we
have awesome team communication & coordination {note
shameless plug for neutrals to join well coordinated
and communicating FP team in 1650 game 71!!!)

cheers Darrell - good to reconnect.
Dave

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