Incentive for all players to increase their ratings

Just read this thread, and what I come away with is that we’re all just preaching to the choir.
There’s been a lot of good ideas posted, but unless you have the player base, as others have mentioned, most of it is moot. Look at the numbers Minolin posted on SA ranked people. It’s minuscule. I go online all times of the day and at the busiest times, I may have seen a maximum of five servers that were populated. Most times it’s 2-3. West coast USA, maybe one.

So here’s my idea to possibly help the situation. And as oxy*****ic as it might sound, (maybe just *****ic?) we need LESS servers for open races. Much less. Based on the online population we currently have. Again, look at Minolin’s numbers. Those numbers are depressing. If we joined multiplayer and saw a total of six servers, just as an example, with two Monza servers, one with SA 10 restriction, one SA 50. The numbers could always be adjusted of course and someone like Minolin who has the data could adjust them, especially if they were Kunos servers. Or Mr. McGit. And then two more sets of servers like that, Maybe Milano and Nurburgring for instance. They could change daily. Bottom line is we have to get players to populate the servers that gives each person the best chance for success. So how do we do that? All the ratings that are calculated are truly fantastic, for the most part. We must figure a way that we all benefit from all that hard work. A constant theme on this thread is how the non ranked servers are the most populated. Wouldn’t it be great if the opposite was the norm? Lower ranked people would see the higher ranked servers populated and would want to race there, possibly motivate them? Maybe I’m just dreaming. But those numbers from Minolin...

 

No matter how brilliant the rating system is, as long as a condition of its success is "the end user must participate as intended," that's always going to be the critical point of failure. Maybe I'm cynical, but the user cannot be trusted. Most folks will take the path of least resistance and then toss out a rationalization about how they don't have time to wait for a server to populate - instead they prefer to wait out qualifying on an open server so they can start from the back, try to tiptoe their way through the carnage ahead of them, and ultimately end up wrecked out for their trouble anyways.

For this to work, Kunos must find a way to force it on us, without sacrificing their other goals of building a bigger tent of sim racing fans.

 

I think the solution to the lack of players is to use Kunos' official servers more efficiently. Instead of just having a few more public servers where the only difference is having "Kunos" at the name of the server, they should host scheduled races like on SRS and iRacing.
That way when you open the game you can see there will be a 1 hour race at Spa starting at 14:00 with a minimum safety rating of 70, a 20 minute race at Silverstone starting at 14:30 with a minimum SA of 50 and so on.
That way most of the players will be concentrated on a few servers and will make up for the lack of players online.
Then they can shuffle what event happens where every week so we don't get to do the same race all year long and players have an incentive to learn all the circuits.
And if you're not satisfied with the official servers, there could still be the possibility to join a community server like there is now.

We already have the rating system, now all that's lacking is to use it in an efficient way, to concentrate players and divide them by skill and the ability to keep the wheels on the black stuff without ruining everyone's day.
I believe that when 1.0 comes there will be more active players, but even so I think the best way of having good races all day long is to have scheduled and organized races on official servers, otherwise the rating system is a bit of a waste.

 

No worries. It is that I keep remembering of an era that I miss a lot: back when I started having my first racing online in 2003 in grand prix legends. If you raced that sim in back in its day you know how extremely hardcore those cars where to drive and how extremelly easy was to crash even on a straight line. The potential for chaos was infinite back then, but still the people was really gentelmanly (a lot more than nowadays) and the amount of crashes between drivers where not even as close as now is in modern sims. And people raced hard back in the day, they just keep it clean even having in mind that back then there wasn't even a penalty system, so all was left to the good will of the drivers.

I really miss those days racing with people who could race hard and close but in a fair way for an entire race, those times when if 2 dudes crashed the one at blame would go inmidiatly to the chat and would say: "I'm sorry XX, it was my mistake" and wait on track to give back the position instead of do as if anything happened while the other rat kid waits one lap down and start the 3rd world war against the other driver to have his revenge, and meanwhile keeping the rest of the server prisoner of their feud. I strongly believe that kind people are still a majority, but the few rotten apples that always populate the public servers don't let them showcase it.

 

I think that the TN rating could actually cover this better then it does, I don't know if current implementation of this is final but if it is many will easily get to 100 in this. Possibly this rating could have some more value beyond this with a 4th track medal for setting a laptime within 107% of the 2018 pole time. Then have a 5th star for beating the pole lap time from 2018, these could also be added to the special event as a beat the pole for each track. Have a hotlap session setup to match the time and weather of when the pole lap was set and this could also then add to PC rating as the special events currently do.

I don't really know if unlocking PC after SA would be better or not though it would get more people ratings which isn't a bad thing, the pace rating isn't really a track specific so doesn't say much about the persons ability at any particular track. However with some practice if someone could get a decent PC rating then they can likely get close to this in any combo, maybe a hotstint is a bit different to a hotlap but overall people near the top of any event will be pretty good in both.

This could also provide good data if these beat the pole events were open to all cars, the PC rating should be car specific but it would be nice if you could see data for all cars or car specific ones. This would show how BOP is working and the relative strength and popularity of all cars. The track medals 4 and 5 I think could be able to be achieved with any car in the event. After all qualy is an open field and just because one car got pole it doesn't mean another couldn't have if the team and driver put together a better lap.

In this idea I think the TN rating would be quite hard to get 100 rating as you would need to be able to beat the pole lap at all tracks, also the 4th medal could help admins set servers only to those that know the track and can set a laptime within 107% or whatever percentage is decided to be used. The first 3 stars should almost be compulsory for all servers to indicate someone is capable of getting around a track with reasonable control. It would also provide fixed special events relating well to the real series an something I would really like to see in the final build.

 

GTR was my first online simracing experience, and I've only heard / seen videos about GPL. I've seen the behaviour you talk about, it happens more than you think. I see an equal amount of raging and apologizing in chat. Might just be my experience is different to yours, but I'm quite optimistic. Sure, the overall level will probably take a small hit once the full release hits the market, but lets show those newcomers how we do things 'round here!

 

Didnt realise I was Scottish and/or a rapper. :O

 

What about the numbers ? Those graphs tells us very little about the mean number of SA rated racers you usually find online at various day times.
Even if there are no absolute values of the players num we can get an idea using that info about the 9 racers with 100 SA rating, finding out there are approx XXXX players with SA > 50.
But that still tells us very lil, how many of them play online often enuff ? How many in public server and how many mainly with friends ? etc etc

What you think wud be a good number of online players around at every hour ?

I personally know 10+ peeps with ACC, and i'm the only one using it atm.
Most of them still play AC because of the lack of MSAA for VR In ACC (and so i'm not sure they will ever start really using ACC), some are waiting for it to get finished and a couple of them plays mainly offline.

 

As we are talking about SA, i found a really really good, at least in my eyes, suggestion on other part of the forums, and i would hate if this is not considered, at least

@Minolin : One suggestion regarding SA could be: when you hit lapped cars (or to be lapped cars), you get much less SA reduction. Reason being that there is a high probability that an accident with a lapped car is actually caused by the lapped car. On contrary, a lapped car could get a stronger SA penalty/reduction for crashing a car that is far ahead and tries to lap you (stronger meaning more severe penalty compared to the SA reduction when crashing a car that you are racing with for position).

I am not sure who posted it, all credits go to him, but this is really good idea. Almost every single race i've had this problem, lapped car's, at least some, not most, luckily, don't care about blue flag and will fight you and not rarely, will end up in crashing you. My SA is always screwed and i don't care much about single player to put my SA up...

 

The only way I see this happen is if Kunos did what iRacing does, but for free.

Kunos sets up the servers, the races, the schedule, the minimum requirements. Groups together the drivers without the driver having a choice.

Plus, in iRacing, if you register for a race but don’t turn up, you get penalised and you can’t join a race in progress.

I’m really enjoying single player in ACC especially now I have found a good AI set of parameters, and a good graphic settings combination that looks good and delivers high FPS.
I am also enjoying the new ratings, I love to get those numbers up, all of them.

I would be happy to concede a class system (like in iRacing) is not even necessary for ACC.

But Kunos must lead the way and build a structured server offering with clean racing.

 

Just for a quick demostration, today I grinded my way in order to get 65+SA, cause the server with higest SA is 65. And when I reach it and finnaly get to the server, here I am, waiting for someone to enter, while a sever in Monza that only need TR 2 is 24/24

 

Yep, and that's why we need proper matchmaking with timed races like GT sport or iRacing.

Currently this system is just recreating the exact same thing that happened in project cars 2. I.e. a system that isn't used properly because it relies on the user selecting the server.

 

I'm not sure if this is a good idea. AFAIK blue flags are not compulsory like on F1, that means, by regulation if you want to be an *****le and defend against a driver that's a lap up, you're entitled to do so. Having different penalties for both drivers would just mean the driver that's a lap ahead would feel he has the right to just ram the other driver out of the way.

Another benefit of this: not only would it help concentrate and divide players based on their ability, it would also provide the chance to suspend from the official servers all the players that are actively trying to ruin everyone's race.
I still have hopes that this can happen, Kunos has talked from the start about matchmaking, I really don't think what we have right now qualifies.

 

Agree. The only option here I think is to close server during the race. That should probably be server config option. The "annoying" people are generally the ones that come out of pits midway the race and start racing you, the truly lapped drivers aren't that bad.

 

Sorry about that. Had a great race on your Monza server last night, barring the genius that rammed me three times on the grid.

 

In my dreamland, with scheduled races based on safety and skill, if you don't join by the time qualifying ends, you don't join at all.
Seriously, I recently signed iRacing for 6 months to see how it works, and there's nothing overwhelming about their system.
It's just like I said, there are several events, usually the longer and more difficult ones are for higher Safety Ratings, and the shorter ones with slower cars are for the lower safety ratings. The session has a scheduled starting time and most of them happen every 1 or 2 hours. Up until the starting time there's an open practice session, then there's 8 minutes of qualifying on a closed session for every player where you're allowed to do 2 flying laps. After that the race starts and that's that. Then there are the X points if you go off track, lose control or get in contact with another player and so on.
I've seen a lot of players saying "It's impossible to have a system like iRacing if the players don't pay a monthly subscription" and I really don't see why that would be the case.
Anyway, I'm doing my best to bring my expectations down, but if Assetto Corsa is really going to focus on the "Competizione" part, I believe that's the way to go.

 

It's the way to go, and is so easy with the existing system, just official server (which there are already) that opens at a certain time and everybody can enter in them, but the system classifies the players in tier of SA and RC. What I want to say it's that the worst part of the system is already in the game, Kunis only need to tweak it a little. And I hope they do it

 

I'm exactly like that, doing my best to no bring expectations down because it's a good game, but seeing as they do not comment about it at all I think it's impossible to not be massively let down if the game launches with the current system. You want to launch a competitive game in 2019 only using lobby system? I'm sorry, that won't be enough. This is not early 2000's where I'm playing Counter Strike/Dota and looking through lobbies to join one. Staring at the lobby screen, scrolling through dozens of lobbies, searching for a "possible good one" is just horrible. Nobody is asking to remove them obviously, it's good to have both the lobby system and real matchmaking.

In the end, if we stay with lobbies only, this will probably become another simracing game where it has it's small dedicated community and that's it.

 

Only good part about a small dedicated community is that given that the physics engine of ACC is the best at the moment, we will have great and close racing when the wreckers leave the game