How though? The management team literally just restricted reserves to essentially an E-4 rank that can do debrief/sims if they get explicit permission from the highest possible officer within that faction. The rules also state one must wait two full weeks plus the normal cooldown of the rank they plan on coming back on in order to get off reserves. I imagine within that time frame the person that was on reserves can reconnect with the community and the faction leader can use their discretion to see if said reserves player is still capable of handling the officer position. If said reserves players are immediately coming back and expecting they can resume normal officer duties/responsibilities then they are breaking server rules, and they should have their reserves taken away. I really do not see how that could be in anyway unfair to new players, nor I doubt they would even care. I also don't see how they skipped any forms of progession, they already
Now I agree if a player is still within an active faction and has reserves on other factions, they should have their reserves taken away/removed on said faction. I don't think the complete removal is called for though. I think the current system needs to be revised.
I don't believe it is a pointless feature, plenty of people used the system the way it was written without any issues. There are probably some issues with the current way we do reserves, but I really think it should be looked into getting the system revised rather than just completely removing it.
This is how I'd rework the current reserves system: Do not allow anyone that is in an active faction to have reserves on any other faction. Only allow people who have consistently dedicated their time to one faction the ability to have reserves on said faction. Allow them to play with the reserves rank, but if they choose to return active within the community again then the reserves will be removed. Essentially the person would only be able to retain one reserves spot in one faction, and can not have reserves in multiple factions. Probably explained this like shit but its 6:30 AM I need sleep lol, hopefully I got my point across.
I already went over how I don't see the current reserves system is hurting the progression for players with how the current system is. With the current restrictions and time it takes to get off reserves it shouldn't hurt the community at all, can you explain how you see the current system hurting the progression of players even with the current restrictions that were supposed to be put in place? I know you said that people are apparently coming back and acting like they have any authority over newer players, but that shouldn't be happening.
I probably repeated a lot of stuff in this, and if I did I apologize. I just don't think this is how the reserves system should be, people who used the system properly shouldn't be punished because others abused the system. Especially when there are already other restrictions and rules that come with being on reserves that should be stopping the abuse from happening in the first place.