When I first started GPL-ing, keeping the car on track througout a lap was a
victory. That was enough to make me spend another hour with GPL.
After insane amounts of practise, I could keep on track for several laps in
a row. Suddenly I could beat the AI.
I could even win races at Vroc!
I could win several races without any special effort. Then some unknown
fellow would enter (Jens Burkert, Kevin Firlein, Richardo Nunnini, Jure
Kalisnik etc), even driving slower cars, beating the living daylights out of
me. Then I realized that the difference of skills at pickup races were
huge. I could not measure my skills by the race results alone.
I had read some postings at RAS about a ranking system based on adding the
PBs of the different track. I did not think suce a system would be any
success. Noone would drive Monaco, Mosport, Monaco and the ring, I thought.
I was wrong. Along came GPLrank.
Suddenly there was an offline fight between nr xxx4 and nr xxx5.
From then on, I raced not only to win, but to advance a position at the
GPLrank.
Every driver has his limit. There comes a day where new PBs are hard to get.
That happened to me, too.
Then MonsterRank came along. Suddenly I was motivated to drive the slower
cars as well, which I did. I was very pleased to experience that driving
the slower cars would enable me to go faster in the faster cars :-). In
addition, improving the MonsterRank became just as interesting as improving
my GPLrank.
Point is: GPLrank made me put extra effort into GPL at a point where I could
have thought that I was fast enough. MonsterRank made me put extra effort in
driving every car in GPL. GPLrank adds thrill to GPL.
Thank you, creators of GPLrank. You have given GPL extended lifetime.
Without GPLrank, GPL would become less interesting.
Jon Andersen,
GPL ***