I'll disagree with this idea for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, there are now a few thousand games in MAME and only a hundred or so competitors that could be seen as regular competitors here at MARP (less than a hundred, really). If you have to wait until three people try it, there could be a decent wait for any points on some games. The most recent example I can think of is Logic Pro 2. This game came out in .37b5, but is just now enjoying some competition. Granted, several games in that particular beta got lost in the shuffle because of the .inp playback problems, but I don't see the point of penalizing players who get to a game first for my second reason.(posted 9195 days ago)There are those at MARP who actually profit from the gold rush, and I don't mean the gold rushers. There are those who know who the weaker players tend to be, and exploit that knowledge now and then if said player is holding what seems to be a weak first, or if they have little competition for the crown on that particular game. That might sound cruel to some, but it's really just business as usual here at MARP. Raising the bar was always the point of this venture, if I remember.
And that brings me to the final point, one that pretty much mirrors Game Guru's sentiments. We have a leaderboard that works, and frankly I don't put any stock in it. We have Hisa-Chan down somewhere below 50th place and alphabet uploaders in the top ten. What score you have on the leaderboard is no indicator of skill, it's an indicator of how many games you can play. I don't think this kind of behavior needs to be reinforced by making groups of players come after games for the sake of everyone getting points for it. I can just see somebody registering three names at MARP and going to town.
I just don't think this is a good idea for MARP. Let the gold rushers have their moment of glory. They make themselves prey for the rest of the site. ;)
Cheers, Brian McLean