What you say is not a grind. It's a prove of your raw skills. If you can take the most competitive, you can take anything below. Taking many ez WR's is grind. However, this is slightly too simplified because surf maps are diverse, e.g., taking surf_cyberwave (which is considered the most competitive I believe) is not gonna prove that you can take surf__tronic wr because the surf style is so different. This is generalized ofc. You have to take maybe 5 of the most competitive ones, and then people have to be firm about that you are legit as well ofc.
I can tell you about how the actual rank works in surf. It's a lot about who you beat. Some surfers choose to not beat a WR's purposely because it is held by what they consider a "noob". So that's a WR that doesn't give actual points, for some surfers it even gives minus points in some way. Some surfers also choose to purposefully not go for a WR because it is "gay" (we use that term, sorry) which in general means it has a lot of guessing game elements (e.g. blind angles). In general, what is considered competitive gives actual points, AND what has a prospect of being competitive (you could say as well) give actual points (just like shares on the market where value is derived from what you expect of the future).
People get confused. Why would surfers go for what is competitive, when they can take an easy WR and get ez points! Because surfers hunt the actual points, lol. This means competition accumulates, it doesn't balance. The groups will balance because noobs care about points. But the WR's will not that much.
I mean. How difficult is it to understand? Since 2014 there has been a more close connection between dominating topwr/topwrb and being considered the best surfer, than dominating topwr, WHILST topwrcp and topwrb didn't give points until 2016 (and that was so little, then since the points increased slightly after slightly, but still gives little points). The pro surfers want to economize their time so they spend most of their time using their raw skills and not stupid guessing games, learning maps, sorting thousand of ramps (surf_classics), etc. Many surfers don't know this exactly consciously, just as markets have followed supply/demand curves before they understood it.
I even foresaw that surfers will a start a movement against max vel years ago. Why? Because max vel cancels the "surplus of speed" (which great surfers can utilize against the worse surfers), and when you max vel surf, you surf on a straight line that requires very few raw skills (which great surfers cannot utilize against the worse surfers). It's all about economics.
And the best surfers will frown upon those maps that are not economically favorable to utilize raw skills. Which they do lol. And they give less in actual points in general. Even omnific with the most legendary reputation took 2 years before it was somewhat worthy. You had guys like Rautavari contesting it a long time after release. Rautavari was a bad surfer (not to hate on him, I like every surfer who has contributed to the advancement of surf by taking records. but i can say this because I even won against him in a racing video on Youtube and I specced him many times)
Sure they do. People who grind long maps etc. deserve some kind of respect I agree. I want a normal rank system something like you use already, but just fix that group system because it's weird as hell. I'm not against groups by the way! It just shouldn't discriminate high tier maps and favor low tier maps. By the way, I don't want a system that lays more weight on raw skills etc. I don't want people only to grind wrbs and wrcps. I like there is a system that counteracts this somehow. But I want the system to counteract it as naturally as possible, so it doesn't confuse the actual rank system too much. In some sense that is my "philosophy".
So no, I don't want a social rank system!!!
I won't comment on the rest because I can't see the coherence in the argument by any means. The only reason I want to weigh tier is because you use # completions that favor low tier. When I proposed my rank system solution where I used map time has been out as parameter for measuring competitiveness way back in times, I didn't include tier. Why? Because that parameter have no connection to tier that has to be adjusted. But I'm against my old rank system solution because I believe the map has been out parameter will first be accurate about maybe in hundred of years (which is another very weird discussion 😃)
