OPS is essentially the only criteria for promotion/demotion. Rules relating to runs simply ensure that we don't spoil a close game by promoting/demoting you in the middle of a tied game etc.., but runs have zero influence otherwise. When you get promoted/demoted, we take a break from evaluation until the next game because blowouts are normal and it's more interested in how you're doing overall.
The Strategy guide has very limited space, and hence its wording. Formula-wise, OPS is the only thing that matters. But saying it without context would require at least two asterisks.
Ironically, in order for features like Dynamic Difficulty and Quick Counts to get improved they have to be popular enough to justify more time spent. The only way we can know that is to release it, find out if people like it, and then decide if we're ever going to spend another day adding new things to it.
Why not just assume they'll be popular and add a lot of extra features into them to begin with? Well in fact, a huge feature that took ten times as much time as DD and QC combined was cancelled because of this very type of over-thinking. If only we had not assumed what would be popular, DD and QC would have gotten a lot more time to begin with. This irony is underscored by the fact that I could not get a single person excited about DD, and honestly it seemed like we were going to cancel it because of the "other" feature.
Back to the Strategy Guide, I guess I could have spent more time clarifying DD without adding more paragraphs, but that would have been just one more thing taking time away from QC and DD!
The best way to enjoy the game industry is to have a good sense of humor about these things.

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