Well, at least the serial code knights are all balanced to be around as good as event girls, so they won't be very useful from a min/max standpoint.

That said, I think one important distinction between DMM and Nutaku's management of FKG is that, had the DMM side announced such a mechanic and gotten such a reception, they would've held an emergency maintenance, dismantled the offending system, and handed out apology stones by now. We know this because they did it before, repeatedly, on both substantial and trivial issues.

There was a case where a banner on the site featured a promotional character with glasses for a few hours, this banner was eventually changed to remove her glasses (a capital offense, to be sure, but read on) and the players questioned what was going on. Their response was to come up with a complete new system that allows you to change between the glasses and non-glasses versions of that character, satisfying both glasses fans and I guess the odd disgusting abomination who doesn't like bespectacled girls (it's hard to believe that people can have such terrible tastes, but they apparently exist).

Similarly, Calla's event initially involved a girl-locking mechanic a la Kancolle, which was immediately hated by every player for obvious reasons. DMM's response, rather than telling their players to deal with it, was to take the game down for a day, remove all traces of the locking system, and give out a bunch of items in compensation. Cherry Sage's blooming art miffed the lolicon crowd because she suddenly gained an appreciable bustline, and they responded by re-commissioning her art and giving out flower stones to everyone. Character equipment was found to be useless by the players and got both a dedicated slot and a special upgrade system to take it up to scratch.

There are many other examples of poorly received systems being revamped or removed, and this kind of attitude is precisely why FKG has an incredibly loyal player base on the DMM side, all development is user-centric and tries to eliminate player complaints rather than offering an endless menagerie of excuses and damage control attempts. So yeah, here's hoping that Nutaku realizes what makes this game so popular, and either changes or decides against implementing this ranking rewards mechanic that has most of the community in an uproar.