Clean online racing - possible? Suggestions and discussions!

Exactly, you would need to remove skins and make things anonymous, it's not just friends but people that are well known in the community will get different treatment (either good or bad), I love making the cars different colors to make the voting easier, great.

 

This is very important thread because it would really be about time to be able to do good clean public racing.

One of the big problems is that there are quite many things that the casual racers want, that all promote reckless racing.

1. Casual gamers don't want practice sessions. Often most hit the race without knowing the brake points or the grip levels very well with the car/track combo they are driving.

2. Casual gamers want short races. Like 2 or 3 laps. This forces everyone to be impatient and use any half-*** passing opportunity they may get.

Additionally, the newest Forza implemented a drivatar system that is loved by most casual racers, even though it is basically a simulation of what happens in public servers. Even the AI is driving like a lunatic now.

If you want the sim to succeed, you can't completely alienate those people either. I think it boils down to server settings and voting systems. It would be nice to be able to directly find from the server screen either "insta-race" servers where people can just hit the track for short races, and more serious servers where there are qualy/practice sessions, and little bit longer races. That way the less serious racers would naturally propagate to their own servers.

Second thing is, there could be crash counters on the servers which were made visible to all the players on the server, so it would be easy to vote to change the collisions on some players who are reckless. I think it's unnecessary and alienating to kick the players, as you could just make the collisions of the reckless drivers not affect the other cars, while they would be affected themselves. Basically they get damage, and thrown off the track, but you don't. That way, if it was just a case of them being bad drivers, they have a chance to practice and learn how to race. Otherwise they are forced to just quit and move on to other games.

Third associated issue, you really need to make people feel comfortable coming online even if they are slow. Racing games tend to be quite alienating and people just hide out in offline mode. Some kind of ladder system would really work wonders.

-Anssi

 

apportioning blame to racing incidents is still a long way off, until that day comes then we just have to put up with being dive bombed by mindless drivers, iRacings system is the best yet for promoting fair and clean racing but it still grinds on me when i get rear ended and i lose safety rating, id happily pay a premium for clean race servers and be able to race with like minded people, also i would hope that there's a hard core option, ie locked cockpit view, no assists, these kind of options usually scare away the crashers and first corner hero's

 

I had a MX-5 and let me tell you it was nothing like the one in i(ce)Racing !

AC is for a true driving experience while i(ce)Racing seems to be more for the social driving experience !

I'd pick AC over i(ce)Racing any day
I have no doubt that the MP is going to be as top notch as the rest of AC

 

yeah that really sucked in i(ce)Racing and was one of the reason that I quit !

 

Unfortunately most idiots are attracted to these kind of servers because they think they are superior to everyone else (that's why they are idiots) so you'll end up with more crashes than if all assists are allowed.

 

iRacing also has a very nice Awareness feature- you are constantly told: "There's a guy on your left!", "On your right!". THis really encourages lane discipline when you know that there are opponents in your blind spots. A lot of wrecking happens when people change lanes genuinely not knowing that another car's nose is to the side of their rear wheel.

 

I like this too. It does give the sim a bump in immersion too.

 

Having interesting racing among racers you do not know, like racing on open servers is, in my POV, an utopia.
It would not even work IRL, where your car and personal safety would be at risk. Open track any one race anyone else anonymously? really?
Iracing is the proof of it, it is as organized as online racing on open server can be and the result is not totally conclusive.
Rules have never prevented crimes to happened, they merely allow to determine a sentence.
Good behavior is what we are after, and it comes from feeling responsible and accepting the rules from a determined organized group, in our world it is called league racing.
Once your start knowing your adversaries an tracks, and even more important when you start respecting them, then the fun began. Then also began the interest as being faster. Being faster than a total stranger is not nearly as much satisfaction as beating a well-known ( slightly faster) opponent.
The goal of racing is not really winning, it is racing a fair and hard race. Winning by a mile is closer to hot lapping. I always rather finished a close second to a fellow racer I respect and can always hope to beat next time.
But this kind of racing is not possible, by design, on an open server, if only because you don’t even know who you are racing with.
MP can be fun but it always requires a little bit of preparation and organization to be interesting, there is not short cut possible.

 

I've always wondered why he sound like a Australian hillbilly

 

I think clean, courteous racing should be the premium, as I'm betting there are (like me) many racers that practice clean racing, don't use assists, race from the cockpit and are aware of what's going on around them but simply aren't very fast. I'm simply a mid to back of the pack racer. The promise of a more serious experience is what got me off the consoles and onto AC. I'm betting I'm not alone and I'm betting quality pack fodder would be welcome in any race. My point is, those who will be establishing these management strategies for MP may want to consider controls that would allow for the advancement of clean slower racers as well as the fast guys. BTW, I'm really impressed by the solution oriented, thoughtful ideas you guys are putting forth. I think the AC MP experience is in very good hands.

 

I totally agree and being a relative noob to online racing it would appear that clean, closed leagues are going to be the answer. It appears to me that self policing online racing communities have the best chance of succeeding in attracting a membership that is both competative and willing to stick to the rules. In that environment there could be beginners, intermediate and pro divisions (not to mention others) within the league providing an added incentive to do well and progress to pro (or whatever) status. It may be that we only get to drive certain cars at certain levels- yet another incentive to drive well and cleanly. Rules are made and followed, just like any other club. If the initial structure is good with absolute clarity on the rules, everyone can enjoy what I believe is potentially the best driving simulator ever!

 

One thing I didn't see in this thread (skimmed all the post), is also a VERY important consideration for online (pick-up) races: the incentive to finish your races.

If you make a mistake when doing a online pick up race, it's very tempting to esc-quit the race. IRacing's iRating gives an excellent incentive, reason, to finish your race, although you might be even one lap down. I loved that. Most road races in iRacing I did, I saw maybe 3-4 people leaving (out of 20 something).

When pick-up racing in GTR1/2, most races started with 20 something people, and finished with 3! Some kind of rating system would be SO Helpfull. Also, people would drive much safer, as actually crashing would be bad for your rating.

Would it be possible to create a rating system like iRacing's, and keep track of it on a open database like the RSR app?

 

I agree with this. If you are new, and make mistakes, but you try as much as you can to finish races, or nurse your car back to pit for repairs, etc., this at least shows positive intent and should be rewarded, as opposed to someone who just can't be bothered. That should help distinguish those that are trying to learn and are investing time in getting better from those that just jump into races without putting in any effort.

 

Voting systems are too biased. How could a high ranking person that's ahead of the pack vote anything about someone ten seconds after him/her? So the votes would only be valid if there was any kind of actual battle or such between specific spots. Otherwise, if I just pass someone or get passed for a sec or two, how would I know how this person drove for the rest of the race?

And if I was keeping my line, raced cleanly but simply didnt let this guy behind me pass as he wished, would that lower my rating because he became pissed when he thought I was blocking while I actually was just racing?

 

From what I've read on various Kunos related twitter accounts Kunos probably just want the MP to work as smooth as possible and that includes eliminating the wreckers.

All ranking related ideas is fully up to the community to work out which basically means the use of leagues !

 

Wh not a 'RSR public-ranking' app?

Succesfull pick up racing would mean so much for AC! We, as a community, now have so much more options to help AC become great rather than just good. We should use this opportunity and combine thinking, intellect, coding intelligence and what now to give AC great pick up racing.

Imagine being able to join a random race at any moment with total strangers and have close battles with fair competition? Bliss. About the only thing I miss from iRacing

 

It might sound good on paper but when you think about random races and what it means is that you often end up with a car or track or both you're not familiar with and ends up at a crashing party anyway

Occasionally you might have a great race or two but I am skeptical if that would work as a successful concept

I think the easiest way for close battle racing is by leagues and pass worded races where you get to know the other drivers just like you would on your local racing club

If someone behaves badly several times they are banned just like in real life

You can check RSR or similar apps to see which drivers you like to race with and then invite them to you leauge

 

In the hey-day of LFS (surely the number one "online pick-up racing" sim ever) you had clean racing servers with passwords, and you had clean racing servers without passwords, good hosts which you always looked for on the list, and others you knew weren't run so diligently.
You have to accept that if you're going to do the public online racing thing, there will be poor or discourteous drivers out there, especially if AC becomes popular. What you need, therefore, is such a sheer volume of available pick-up racing that you don't care that every now and then some muppet decides to get themselves banned by taking you out.
The more regimented, restricted and limited you make online racing, the bigger this issue becomes (imo). If I only get one race when I log on for a couple of hours or so, it's a big deal if there's a "wrecker" on the server. If the race is restarted within 20 seconds by votes of considerate drivers, or even if it's not and it's only one of 4 or 5 races I might have that session, then I forget about it, it's a non-issue.

What's more important to me is a welcoming and simple environment for new players to find racing and communicate with regular players who want to play fair, not some elitist tiered nonsense to segregate them. If you don't get that right you push people away.

 

Well I think having some sort of public safety rating is important for 2 reasons:

1) To provide motivation for people to drive safely
2) So severs can be setup to deny those trying to join with a poor safety rating.

I really like the idea of, instead of banning certain drivers, making their car transparent (or untouchable) instead. I think this gives people who might have done the wrong thing the chance to redeem themselves by participating without effecting another's race. And lets face it, the more people racing the better.

Now the question is, should the safety rating be user moderated or automated?

Like most things in life, I think a little bit of both. I think if it would be "doable", coding for automated decisions is a must, but then knowing that not all of these decisions would be correct each racer gets 3 chances to appeal the automated decision and send the footage of their indiscretion to a fellow highly ranked racer to decide - as mentioned above - whether the automated decision was correct. Upon completion without infraction of every race/two races/(or as determined) you get one appeal back, and so there is the incentive to finish races and not to waste your appeals.

The only thing would be whether to send "appeal" videos to racers within the race where the appeal was submitted, or to others who generally have a good ranking. Those that do decide to view and make judgement could also receive some sort of public recognition or "kudos".

The problem with having certain people vote on every incident is...well lets do the math (which is probably going to be wrong but anyhow):
* Lets say there are 1000 racers online in a week, each participating in 3 races each = 3000.
* Average field of a race might be around 8, so 3000/8 = 375 races per week
* How many incidents in each race? Heaps of factors to consider but lets pick a figure of 5.
* So potentially there could be 1875 incidents each week that need to be reviewed. That is a huge number when many will not bother to vote or be away, etc.

What do you guys think?