I've always watched my rank standing to evaluate my progress, w/o using an arc I moved thru the story questline while I advanced up the rankings at a steady constant pace. The principle reason I even bothered with it at all was to be a generous contributor to my friends' buildings. I'm still moving along pretty well, at rank 226 going back and forth with person ahead of me. Like passing on the highway, don't want to let me pass, but as they say resistance is futile. My build is quite different from the going top dogs, most I've looked at are big fighters, but not big fp producers. Early on I decided not rely on getting fps from others and building up fighting skills last. 1500 fps/daily plus so now i'm moving along well. A lot of players don't watch ranking but more do as u move up, the same is true in the tower, seems to create a chain reaction and forces players to spend metals to keep up. It's amusing that in the end my build and the fighters will be quite similar except I use space for fps while they've chosen fighting skills. With the best buildings u can have both, slow to get make duplicates of the best.