Driver Ranked Servers

Hi Guys and Girls,

I just watched part 2 of the interview on Race Department.
You touched on ranked servers and that tyou were still deciding what to implement.
Could I respectfully ask that you don't make the mistake of allowing open servers with no effective ranking as we will end up with everyone in those servers and no one in the raked ones.
Un-ranked (or all ranked) servers need to be locked or better still not allowed at all.

Thanks for your time and continued great work.

 

I'm not sure I'm getting this right. You mean open servers (like the one I have rented with rackservice) shouldn't be allowed? I like the idea of a good ranking system, but I also like wacky races with my friends from time to time.
Is there a place for these kind of racing in your vision?

 

Its a tricky one as I would only ever race on servers with ratings and strict safety entry. But I see why some would want unranked servers, actually in AC I only use MR servers with AB or A limits nearly always.

However many seem to fail to see the benefits of these and so rather join unranked open servers then complain about those in it or want to kick all the bad drivers from the servers they are actually allowed in to. Rather then just join servers the bad racers cant get into but they could if they simply cleaned up their racing a bit. Its not an elitest mentality as being clean really isnt hard it just means you need to show others in servers some respect, trying your best not to ruin others experiance.

PC2 has shown that the general user will fail to give themselves a better experiance that ranked servers give when they have full free choice. Most chose to not use the ratings but love to complain about them not having the rating they thinknthey deserve. They also like to complain about lower rated guys crashing into them when the reason they are rated lower is because they regularly crash into others. Performance ratings dont mean so much to me and I would only filter by strength if servers with strictes safety rating were also easily filling up.

There needs to be some way to encourage people to want to participate in ranked servers and to want to get as good a rating as possible to get into the best racing servers. There needs to be some sort of incentive to make people want to join the cleaner servers, I thought this was a no brainer as the stricter entry servers are a much better racing experiance. I really have nonidea how this can be done so loom forward to what Kunos and @Minolin try in this regard.

 

What I mean is if you want to run a server which is open to all drivers whether by setting the ranking that way or if kunos allows for servers to disable ranking then they should be password protected so you can share the password with friends and set the server up however you want.

So if you like .. private servers = password protected and set it up as you like, public however (not password protected) must be ranked. that way the system will work for everyone.

Presently with MR everyone is forced to either enter an usually empty ranked server (hoping to protect their rating) or join a dirty server with everyone else and wait for the carnage.

 

Also now I think about it this feeds into the conversation regarding fragmentation caused by DLC .
Hopefully Kunos will design in a way to prevent this i.e you don't have to own a car to see someone else with it in multilayer.
So provided you have the track and at least one of the cars you can join.
Ideally the only fragmentation should be track and ranking related but that probably isn't possible all of the time.

 

Thats kind of where I think peoples general mentality surprises me. I dont join stricter ranked servers to protect my rating I do it because it means all that can get in are competant in traffic and the mp experiance is way better for it. I see no point in joining a busy open server where the majority cant even complete a lap or drive next to anyone without hitting them.

I dont have any issues with the poorer guys racing in MP but until they get to a competant level in traffic I really see no point in being in the same server as them. These guys if they want to avoid the wreckfest type servers can see easily how to clean up their driving and improve their rating to also avoid those types of servers.

If everyone in these servers also tries to clean up their driving a bit the more open servers will also become slightly better. A server with no ratings at all means no standards really, so would encourage wreckers mostly so I again would see no reason to want to join an open unrated server. Some find wrecking everyone fun but I dont which is why I avoid such servers and others should too.

Ironically these "open" servers are worse the more people that are in them yet the vast majority only joins them when they are near full and at their worst.

 

It’s weird how people consider the rank as the goal or some kind of status symbol. The goal is to race well with others I though, not to attain some artificial rank...

 

For many its sadly just a status symbol but it actually has a purpose. To allow you to race with other people at a similar standard. Which is the entire point of a ranking system.

If someone for example finds it easy to get to and hold MR A then racing people that cant manage this means they are clearly worse in traffic and so cause way more collisions then guys rated higher. The rank simply shows how likely others are at racing cleanly so you choose how clean you want the others your racing with to be.

If you dont care if others on average hit another car every lap they drive then join servers accepting D grade. C grade may hit someone every 2 or 3 laps, B grade every 5 to 8 and A grade guys will hit someone less then once every 20 laps or so. Many less then a couple times every 1000km.

Knowing that when you see in the server list if its MR ABCDN then you know what to axpect from those in there. Choosing what grades arent allowed in will determine the minimum standard of those getting in. No point complaining about driving standards in a server when you chose a server that allows people already identifeid as having poor driving standards.

If you dont use the ratings filter entry limits of those allowed into the server then it means nothing at all and may as well not be there.

 

Can I just say the term 'protecting your ranking' refers to maintaining your ranking so that if ever against all odds there is a populated ranked ( Ab only for instance) server you can still get in it. Clearly the rank has no other value.

The reason peple join dirty low ranked servers is because of the flaws in the current implementation and user are left with a choice of no multiplayer or dirty races.I can't tell you the hours I have spent in empty AB servers waiting for someone to join.

The surprising thing is not that people who would like clean racing choose a dirty server in preference to no racing, it's that you can have a ranking system that allows configuration such as ABCDN along with no ranking at all.

What about the following presents a problem....

Say a 5 tier ranking system,the lowest being the crasher lever, the next one up being entry level, then 3 levels above that,drivers can join their level or the one below. All public (no password), for private password protected your own configuration. What problems does this present and what does it not do that people want?

Thanks

 

Look I completely get your logic but yor are missing sometning.

You know that when a software engineer writes a piece of software there is alaway the danger of users doing something really odd you hadn't predicted , also by the way it's not unusual for people to be protective or precious about their ideas.
The reality is that people are doing exactly that , being unpredictable and setting up for instance ABCDN servers, this is the bigest part of the issue and logically non ranked servers also. Rather than bemoan the behavour you could just fix the system.This is a great opportunity to get it
right

 

People leave servers ABCN to get large numbers. If you want serious racing it’s best to join a league, even if you don’t necessarily want to race in their championships you will still know when they have practice and can join then. I think hoping to get decent size grids of skilled drivers spontaneously is sadly a bit much to ask.

 

People say this all the time but I think it shouldn't have to be either/ or .
Someone has gone to the bother of creating the system to solve a problem , it just needs perfecting. Also as many have said, they like to join races on-line casually when they have time.Horses for courses and all that.

Additionally it would be good for everyone if new users could have a good on-line experience from the off.
Leagues have their place and no one is advocating getting rid of them.
This is about the on-line open server experience.

 

Is there anything about my proposal you don't like or that you think would cause unforeseen issues

 

The main thing I’d say is you really can’t remove people’s options. It’s not commercialy wise. It would be less impacting if the sim community was much larger. If I check servers in Australia now I’ll be lucky to see 20 people online Australia wide, and at least half will be drifting. Forcing global ranking on everyone may complicate multiplayer server set up for people as well but unsure how much of an issue if any this would be.

One problem I’ve just though of is this: sometimes I set up a server for me and a friend to do laps and a bit of casual racing, his net is terrible though and it’s not uncommon to have contact due to packet loss. As this is a casual stuff around sort of thing we don’t really care that much but if a global rank was forced on both of us it could drop bellow what’s needed to join more serious servers

 

The reason many better drivers dont join pickup servers is because there arent many that enforce reasonable standards so getting half decent racing is unlikely. There are plenty anyone can join and ABCN may as well not have ratings so its pretty much a complete waste of a good system.

If people know its easy to jump into casual pickup servers where all in the server will be decent to race with then Im sure more would be up for this outside of league racing.

Id much rather be in a server with others then hotlapping on my own even if its league practice. But I dont want guys in there that make it pointless as they are complete hazards and thats why a good and well used rating system can really help with pickup racing.

Its not like the complete casuals wont have somewhere to still race but without ratings it really only leaves leagues and closed servers for those that want some proper racing.

 

Hi Serge M

The idea is that password protected servers can run what ever the like including no rating at all.

Also , I didn't think servers where region locked so don't we all the the global community anyway?

If so and the numbers are too low no system will work

 

There is no region locking but I do hope that ACC does have ping limits, we really dont need people with 400+ pings to get into aussie servers but ping limits should be something configurable by admins.

I dont know if a force all users into ratings is a great idea what we need is a way to encourage people to want to use ratings and to get the better end experience this can provide.

 

Ping limits are a must I think, wonder why they were never implemented, every FPS I’ve played before has them. I think high ping and packet loss is a contributing factor to the carnage on public servers.

 

Yeah, as said above. Just not viable playing on any servers past about New Zealand as the ping is way to high and you just cause problems for others

 

Ranked servers are my preference, but why not allowing unranked servers? We live in a free world, no?