The Issues With Skybuilder Rankings

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Hi all! I've been wanting to post this for awhile but have held off to see ho things would change throughout the week, but I think now is a good time to post this. It might be a little long, so forgive me for that but I'd really appreciate it if you could take your time to read through it all! As an aside, this is mainly focused on the gatherer rankings, if you are familiar with the crafting side of things please feel free to add to this!

Health concerns and 'no-lifers':

Currently I hold rank 1 on my server, and being completely honest, i totally no life'd it. The first problem with this ranking system is that it expects players to spend pretty much full days inside the diadem to maintain their rank. Thankfully I hold a pretty comfortable score at the moment, getting around 60-80k points a day which has allowed me to take roughly 30 minutes to an hour break between instances, get at least 4-5 hours of sleep (which is still not a lot) and make sure I take proper care of myself. A lot of people don't allow themselves that, to keep up they have to keep themselves to a strict schedule, sacrificing sleep, basic needs and excerise so they can reach their goal. You should always take care of yourself before a game, but as another forum post mentioned, a lot of people believe this is the only season that will take place in this patch.

Because of the way the ranking system has been introduced, it's more of an endurance test rather than anything else, and that already alienates those who have full-time jobs, and are just overall busy people. They don't stand a chance with the current system. Should those who do have the time be blamed? Not at all, this is an oversight on the dev teams side. People who are sinking their hours into this system are doing so because they have no other choice if they want to be on the leaderboard.

Botting and account sharing:

There's two sides to this. First off, any kind of cheating-- including account sharing should be punished. Gaining a cheap advantage over the ones who put in their time and dedication is wrong, I don't think anyone would disagree with that, other than those who actively do it. But, some of the things I've seen said by the community have been hurtful, I have seen accusations towards not only me, but others with high scores and I have read just some of the most disheartening things. I love this game, I love the community-- there is nothing wrong with wanting to make sure bots are punished, but please keep in mind that the account owner has likely earned that score without any methods of cheating. Let's be kind to each other.

On the other hand, I can't really blame the community, as again this is another error on the dev team's part. This system is built in a way that openly invites that kind of speculation and behaviour. This really needs to change in the next season-- but with the current gathering mechanics, I'm unsure how they could make it a skill test rather than endurance.

Please, if you're aiming to end this season in the leaderboards, please take care of yourself. I think this was the worst possible time for the rankings to drop. And to those who simply don't have enough time on their hands to aim for a rank, I know it's so frustrating. I hope the dev team hears us and changes this system in a way that is fair and available to anyone who wants to take part in it.

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