Incentive for all players to increase their ratings

Well, the OP has a point. The people is populating the servers with more drivers on them, and the servers more populated right now are the ones with the lowest safety rating because it is a barrier right now. That's root of this issue, drivers must have an incentive to improve their safety rating. Personally I can't care less about matchmaking people of the same pace, seriously I have taken part in leages with people 6 seconds slower than me and they never where a problem to anybody because they had a respect to the rules. The safety rating must be strongly enforced with incentives, I'm tired from years of people reversing in pitlanes without penalties, people crossing the pit exit line, lapped drivers blocking leaders just because, wreckers, jumpstarts... Now we have been blessed with a rating system that can take care of all of that, but if everybody goes to where everybody else is (the servers with the lowest safety rating) because the barrier is lower to the novices and causal users then all the effort loose it's purpose.

Nobody sould be discouraged to join a server by the safety rating, only a handfull have alien pace, but anybody can have a high safety rating just by following the rules of racing, that also are the rules of common sense. The safety rating is easy enough to get offline, I support the idea of awarding a kind of a F1 superlicense in order to join the multiplayer, anybody with less than a certain amount of safety rating should have the multiplayer locked until he reaches it.

 

That's why there always be open servers. I don't think restriction will lead to decrease in player count. More like restructuring. Lower rates players will choose open servers due to having no choice whereas higher rated drivers will naturally steer towards a cleaner experience.
However I have something to add to the list of ideas. How about having the open servers only affecting players under certain SA. For example if you hit 50 SA you can't go lower on a public server. Stuff like that

 

Another idea: then why not do the opposite?. I mean making that all the newbies can only join servers with 0 safety rating, but once they reach lets say a 40 or 60 then they can't access those 0 rating servers again. That way the people with good ratings won't be forced to join servers with really low rating, newbies get a place to hone their skills, and casuals get a place to play.

 

Indeed, elitism in simracing is an oft discussed point.

For myself, it's trying to turn the "them" and "us" attitude into "everybody" instead, simracing in general would be much better off if this was the general attitude.

 

I don't think clean racing is really elitism, everyone can do it if they take a bit of care and learn basic car control. I don't really agree on filtering by pace as I don't really care if people are fast or slow just that they all try their best to respect all others on track, get a full server there will likely be people at all levels to battle with. If they are fairly clean they will had reasonable pace as it takes some control to be able to race next to others without hitting them.

The incentive to use rated servers really isn't there atm and hasn't really been in any game with ratings like AC with MR or PC2 and their ratings. Iracing is different as ratings are mostly forced on for all and per class, in ACC, AC and PC2 it was up to users to use this or not. Most seem to mostly chose not to but then complain the racing isn't great.

I like the OP's first point about restricting types of sessions to rated servers and personally would take it a step further. Only pass worded servers and maybe open practice servers could be unrated and then all race sessions be at set rating limits or maybe have lower max numbers in unrated servers, having smaller fields of new guys will help them get into MP a bit easier as its the full and open servers that tend to be messiest. If large fields were only cleaner servers and the open ones were limited to say 6-10 then many would look for the larger fields and how to get into these servers.

If to get into larger fields or longer races needs a better rating it gives an incentive to race cleaner and improve the rating, you don't necessarily need to be an alien you can be 5 seconds off the pace like some real AM drivers but as long as your aware of others and can leaver enough racing room there is no issue with anyone racing those people.

The dynamic rating I wouldn't be much of a fan of, really wouldn't want to be looking at a server that says its got say SA80 but then the first 10 guys may be unrated. Then you will have the usual issue of the cleaner guys wanting to kick the poor racers that were in the server first and the reason they joined. This I see as a fairly common thing about many better racers that only look for busy or full servers and don't care if there is entry restrictions. They then somehow want to kick most of these early guys when its better to join servers only the better guys can get in. The others can fairly easily join in by simply cleaning up their race craft, its not like were forcing them to be within 1 second of WR pace.

I really don't care how fast someone is if they aren't clean and fair to race and even the fast guys need to get their rating up to show they can race cleanly.

 

Or drivers with below 40-50 SA won't impact your SA if they hit you?
Or SA penalties on low SA servers are capped at low values. Or SA penalties when colliding with low SA drivers are capped.

Capped means that regardless of severity the penalty will be as if you made slight contact, even if it causes a spin, or multiple cars get involved.

The thing to be mindful about is to avoid these servers than becoming easy farm opportunities with too low risk of losing SA.

 

They will still hit you though. Wreckers' delight if you give them license like that. The ratings have to be universal surely, or there is no incentive to improve them.

 

It's more an incentive for high SA players to still play on public servers without losing their SA because they get hit in the back. To avoid segregation where high SA players only play on high SA servers because their SA rating would get destroyed on public servers without requirements.
For low SA players nothing would change regarding SA penalties.

 

I do have a server up for two weeks now with 50 SA, daily track rotation, extended Saturday/Sunday p/q/r times. Haven’t seen more than 2 people in there. While no SA servers have full grid.

 

Because you need someone to set an example of good racing for those newbies. Throwing them in a kiddie pool exclusively won't learn them how to swim. You need a proper way to teach them, and one of those ways is showing them by example.

It's better to let them race against AI than have some low priority pool teach them it is somehow okay to hit others because everyone around them is doing that.

Low prio pool should be a punishment, and you don't start someone's experience of a new game with a punishment.

You also lump in together new sim racers and experienced sim racers looking for a new thrill, who would immediately turn around and exit ACC.

So many things wrong with this statement XD

 

Yeah, good point. I suppose it would lead to a good environment for less skilled but willing drivers to improve without fear of vitriol from an accident. That could be good for low rated drivers who actually do want to race properly. Let's assume that is the majority of people when they start the game.

 

I was using the server list as any other server list around...so scrolling down in search of high populated server (and whining cuz they oftere were pretty down in the list)...the resulted races were far from perfect.
Then browsing the forum i saw a minolin post where he was describing the idea behind it , so i started using it properly (to make it short, pick one of the first proposed servers) and things started to get way better.
Often the hinted servers are low populated (10-15 driver) but a race with 10 good racers is WAY better than one with 24 monkeys , and anyway 10 players is a number high enuff to attrack other players filling up the server before race start.
Once the system offered me a server populated by 1 person and i accepted it, for testing purpose tbh... i was suprised to notice we were in 6 already when i was coming out tha boxes for the first time (thanks to the system pushing...not forcing..peeps to join) ...but then i fleed the server cuz it was night and rain ...and i was driving like a granny...but thats another story.
Reading minoling description of the idea behind the srv list made me think it was a lil optimistic to be honest, but in the end i got way way waaay better races following the idea behind it.
So if there is a big enuff playerbase and a part of the good drivers start using the srv list as intended i'm starting to think it might actually do the trick !

I'm a lil more concearned on how easily you push up your SA rating instead, i got up to about 70 in about 1 week of just MP races and honestly i'm not driving so so clean, i'm not a wrecker but i saw my SA growing up in races were honestly i think i should have been scolded instead.

 

I understant what You want to say, and up to centain point share it, but what is the alternative?, I really don't know how to fix this but something has to be done. If we keep the actual status quo then everybody will drive mostly in the no safety rated servers because the newbies don't have the rating needed, and the seasoned drivers don't have anybody to join them in the safety rated servers, so they end up forced to join safety free servers and have the same online experience than they had in AC1. The idea should be to educate the newbies how to behave but that should be done by the game instead of the other drivers, tutorials won't work because nobody wants to be bored to death by them, so they will skip them. Until at least 50 safety rating is achieved the game should be really strict with the rules, and after a rule violation the game should show a message really big and impossible to close for 20 seconds indicating what the driver has done wrong and how to avoid future penalties for the same cause.

 

Proper teaching through tutorials paired with some introduction versus AI to get a baseline skill rating (i.e. ~30). Give the driver a shot in proper servers. If he fails? Put him in the low prio or let him grind against AI some more. If he succeeds? Let him continue to grow his experience in the 50+ SA pool -> i.e. let the system as @Minolin envisioned do its thing. I am experiencing that it actually works.

I personally think that people who (not all, of course) complain a lot about other drivers are themselves not driving cleanly, making rash decisions and moves where you can't realistically overtake making themselves at least partly to blame for any incidents. Sometimes you just have to be a bit more patient. Just because you are a second a lap quicker than the guy in front, it doesn't give you an automatic right to push said guy aside. Please bear in mind that I am not accusing you of anything, this is just an observation of people I see complaining in the chat ingame.

 

For me this all comes back to a blame factor. I can’t remember if @Minolin has said that in a collision both people receive the same deduction?

If yes then e.g. when Car 3 rearends Car 2 then Car 3 is primarily to blame (as in real life on normal roads), as a result if Car 2 rearends Car 1 then Car 2 is primarily to blame for that collision, which is unfortunate. So the question is why can’t this type of logic be applied so that a higher proportion of the SA is taken from Car 2 and Car 3? After all the only car not at fault was Car 1. Couldn’t something like this sort out starts? Perhaps even display deduction in real-time to make it apparent.

Sure you’ll get idiots that’ll slam on brakes (Car 1 perhaps) etc. to cause an accident but then as the following car you need to either leave a gap or trust the car in front (because they have an SA that warrants that trust).

 

I can improve my Pace Rating! Iam stuck at 28. I have done the special events but i can improve more.

Is there another way except by the special events to improve the Pace?

I dont have steering wheel so i can't go fast like other guys...

If someone can help me i apreciate!!!

 

Sorry, if you can't improve on Pace without a steering wheel, the only way to improve is to get a steering wheel. There are no other factors in deciding pace rating.

 

Your Pace is how fast you are in comparison to others, so to improve your Pace you need to improve your Pace . At the moment your rank is correct.

Obvious answer is to practice. Other options are choose an unpopular event, sometimes you can get a higher rank that way or perhaps a Hot Stint event where consistency is important rather than Hot Lap. Your best rank in an event is the one that counts.