Driver Ranked Servers

yeah, not allowing unranked servers looks discriminatory. It also might make the game look obscure and intimidating to new players. We all know everything about servers and racing now, but new players don't. It took me a long time to join online races regularly because I didn't know how it worked. If there's a forced rank system and the unranked servers are all hidden behind passwords, online racing is probably going to look very "hardcore" to newcomers, thus making them go to another friendlier game.

 

I'll drop my opinions here:

• Servers without ranking (with just a minimum protection against known wreckers) should be practice servers, or "track day" servers if you want to call them that way. On those servers you just practice, there can be a race every now and then but mostly you get acquainted with the cars, share setups, chat, do some training sessions, etc.

Ranking in general: I pray god that @Minolin , @Lord Kunos and the others take a good look at SRS. The guys who created SimRacingSystem.com had a few good ideas:

1. There is something that is even more important than ranking, and that is purpose. If you race for something, like a short league, you have all the motivation to prepare and race properly. You don't need long and complicated leagues: just create a series of short leagues with different difficulty/combos so there's choice and the effort is acceptable for almost anyone. This is what SRS is doing with much success. Of course ACC will have "big" official leagues, but please also create smaller ones similar to SRS ones for the daily racing "needs" of us. If you also add practice servers, you give a clear choice with different purpose for each choice.
2. Ranking comes in third place: once you have a purpose and clear choices, you can "match" players of similar skills through a safety and performance rating/ranking. SRS is not very sophisticated in this respect, but at least it keeps track of your relative performance, how many crashes you were involved in, and puts you in a "better" server if you have a good rating.
3. Repeating a race is a great idea! If you fail once, you can race again on the same combo during the week, and only your best result will be kept. This is great to avoid a lot of frustration / complaints / protests etc. so it means less moderation / race direction work to do for Kunos!
4. You can provide the servers yourself (I mean you Kunos!), but in order not to create a bunch of empty servers, just have a booking system that adds servers only when there's people for them. Also, having servers in Europe and USA is enough to cover most of the traffic you can have, with decent speed for all (I play from China on US servers on SRS, all good).
5. You can automate stuff: booking, skins, server creation, ranking, broadcasting etc. The SRS guys created a system that can work automatically. That saves a lot of cost.

I will sum up this by saying that ranking alone doesn't create full servers with great drivers. Purpose + ranking + choice does. So you can do together: a) a big fat official GT3 league for the hardcore guys, b) a series of monthly SRS-like leagues with different combos for the semi-serious simracers like me, c) practice servers always open with a race every hour, where casual players can go practice, crash and burn with no risk for the others. This way you have a clear choice, each choice has a different and clear purpose, and so the ranking can do its job that is just being a tool for keeping things in order, and you basically only have to moderate the big official league.

 

In addition to that: of course you can let anyone create their own server and apply the rating they want, but if you as Kunos provide yourselves the aforementioned 3 choices as the "main dish" having your own servers system, you will cover the needs of most of the public, so that the "personal" servers will end up being used for private use and for leagues. Given that there are no mods in the first iteration of ACC, that should do it.

 

Reason I have never used SRS is because they have servers only in US and Europe making 200+ pings to Melbourne Australia, from things Ive heard of others SRS is not exactly clean racing more like MR ABC in an open server. The structuring idea sounds interesting but again due to high pings for us down the bottom of Australia we need some local servers.

I think servers if it was to be something like SRS/Iracing would need to be based in Europe, US, Asia and Australia at least. I dont know how south Americans go ping wise to the US but I know they get the worst pings to Sydney australia at 400-500. Europe is usually 330-380 and the US 170-270.

 

Suggestion 3 variants coexisting:

1. Standard Minorating
2. Continuous Championship - no track selection no scheduled events just points according to online race results, (trophy points).
3. Custom Championships - track selection by Server administrator with scheduled events, (championship points).

 

I'd be more than happy with that and yes, there should be servers in each continent I guess.. I was trying to tell Kunos that they should not worry too much about having gazillions of servers. In other words:

 

I wonder if to encourage people to join the better servers the lower ranked ones could have smaller max player counts.

Just assuming AC MR ratings if W or D is allowed max 10 players, C 15, B 24 and A max track grid limit.

Not sure if its a great idea but most join ABCDN because they are more busy. If the larger fields were in the higher grades it may encourage people to look for those servers and try to get their ratings up. Unrated could be excluded from grid limits but then it encourages more to use those so possibly stricter limits or race length limits for unrated servers.

It is also a negative where paying customers that arent as good a driver will be stuck in smaller fields but for them its generally better in smaller numbers.

 

Marty, we've been racing in multiplayer in AC for years now. It's not by working on the ranking or limiting access that you create full servers. You need to create servers with a clear and engaging purpose, and only then regulate them with ranking. Just to be clear: SRS servers are full even if their rating system is much more primitive than MR, and most public servers are empty, no matter how they mix ranking etc.

EDIT: @Minolin of course if you create an outstanding ranking system (and you will I am sure!) it will be awesome for the "official" part of ACC, that is the e-sports thing, a big league with all the big names of simracing. But for the daily players who are the majority of your customers, those who make the big numbers, you need to provide first engaging racing choices, and that is what SRS is doing very well now, so I think they should be taken as a good example.

 

The only thing thay fills a server is having lots of people already in them. You can easily fill an Aussie MR AB server if 10 are already in any combo even if its a stupidly long qualy session as we had for some league practice servers.

You can even easier fill a server with no ratings but all the better drivers will leave after a few minutes of carnage.

Ive filled servers rated mr A or AB for enduro races when just a few league guys are practicing then the server quickly fills. Stricter ratings are needed so the new joiners dont destroy the experiance for everyone else in the server.

People are pretty simple when it comes to joining servers they just look at whats busy then join. Little interest if it will give them a good experiance or a poor one they just want lots of people in. Seeing there are more casuals then more serious racers the casuals determine the servers most used.

They start it off then the others join, many of the better drivers then see there are no good options and so give up on pickup server racing entirely and focus mostly on league racing. When they could easily help keep better servers going with the tools already given to us for AC.

I stick mostly to league racing as I put in lots of time and money to provide better servers but the majority wont join unless first there are 6 to 10 in the server. Otherwise the servers just stay empty for weeks but get some regulars in and they fill with others wondering if you always have servers up as they only see them when busy.

I would have used PC2 more if the ratings were used better but they werent so that left me no interest in that game at all. Im sure Im not the only one but its where I realized that the main issue with poublic server racing is the public.

Something like Iracing (for free) would clearly work but who would pay for it? A one time purchase of a game isnt going to provide that level of service for free for ever. They have a monthly fee to keep it afloat and many seem to think someone will provide the same at no cost which is a bit wishful thinking.

So then you have less options, Kunos arent likely to provide even SRS type worldwide coverage with just a basic game purchase. Whats the other ways of improving pickup server racing if it doesnt involve making a no cost iracing system.

Im sure Iracing would be even more popular if they charged a one off price for the game and a few AC priced DLC's while keeping their mp system as is.

 

Ok, correct. People join public servers that are already populated. Then they leave. So you have totally random stuff where your server is full once or twice a week. But you pay for it anyways, and you have hundreds of other servers like yours, which of course makes things worse for you.

On the other hand, you have leagues. And a league means that you have to join months ahead, prepare, you cannot miss races, etc. Basically hard to join, hard to keep up, not for the average guy.

What (again) SRS does is to offer something in the middle, which can work for the average simracer: simple short leagues that you can join whenever you want and where you can race whenever you want. I am not sure about the cost they sustained but apparently it's not overwhelming. I even think I could pay a small fee to race if it guarantees that I find a good choice of races with full servers.

Now, I am not sure 100% but I guess ACC will have some official league service offered by Kunos. And that means that Kunos will have to work a'la-iRacing. I mean, ACC will be different from AC in this respect. So, once you create the infrastructure for that, you can also use it for the big majority of your customers.
Maybe that's wishful thinking and they are not going to offer any in-house esports service. We'll see.

 

I'm staying out of the league conversation as I don't use them other than to say that if the needs of league racers could be catered for all the better.

On the non league front I think the point regarding being separated from friends on-line because of your rating is an interesting one.
Of course your own password protected server would take care of this but I see the issue if you are on an open ranked server.

Something that may be beneficial is to represent MR ratings as driving licence achievements that enable certain in-game and/or on-line features.

The number of slots in a server idea is also interesting but there is a danger of 100s of low ranked servers.

I think if we acknowledge that people herd together then separating drivers by rating still has benefits as people would all look for populated servers within their own rating

 

The one key advantage ACC will have over AC is the limited content not splitting the community into even smaller niche groups. If all there is is gt3 and 10 tracks then all that want some mp racing will be wanting to race those.

The only difference is how races will be setup like full sim features or things turned off. Weather, session lengths and ratings should also be more effective as people are all in a familiar car.

Less fragmentation should have more people wanting to race and if there is casual pick up racing and also better standard pick up racing it will cater for everyone better.

 

I just want to stress that restricting options and choices for the player is actually a good thing for online racing. The multiplayer in PC2 is a disappointment because there are to many options. Lots of random pointless races, no purpose, no sturcture, no schedule. It gets old and boring very quickly.
I hope that ACC goes the iracing route and enforces a very strict structured and scheduled racing experience.

Some time ago I made a few suggestions in that direction on the PC2 forum:
http://forum.projectcarsgame.com/sh...le-implementation-of-structured-online-racing

 

While I still think involuntary separation of drivers in a targeted hardcore sim like ACC is a credible option I've come up with another idea.

In Live For Speed there are more driver slots than car slots , if you can't join the track before the race starts you have to spectate.
I know there is talk of speactate and broadcast mode in ACC so all good so far.
What if your rating dictated your place in the queue to join the track?

The scenario is ...
You've joined a server (all servers have no MR restrictions) .
You join a server with 30 slots,
The race is on and the grid is full so you are in spectator mode.
You are the the 30th driver to join.
The grid has 24 race slots therefore you are amongst 6 drivers spectating,
Your rating is B
Of the drivers waiting there are 2 MR As, 1 MR B 2 MRCs
The As are at the head of the queue due to their rating, you join are queue behind the B ( as he joined the server before you) but in front of the Cs.
As drivers leave or are spectated you move up the queue.
If you crash and press " return to pit" you are automatically spectated and rejoin the queue, if you drive back the car can be repaired as per your presets and you can exit the pit and continue racing.

Notes
Cars would have to be undriveable if the damage is severe enough, (which is not unrealistic) and you would have to be spectated for inactivity if you don't return to pits.


There are quite a few benefits that become immediately apparent.
Here are a few that jump out

The more popular the server the more it will have the effect of prioritising better drivers.
Crashers with low MR ratings that do a lot of damage to their cars will be spectated and may have to wait to rejoin (not much fun).
There is a clear incentive to improve your rating.
No hard MR filtering so you can race with friends.

Everyone please jump in with your thoughts
P.S this is only relating to casual open servers not private or leagues

Oh just thought of something else,

How about votes to kick being instantiated by the server based of contact per kilometre during the session?

 

I will be happy with what Kunos decides, I just need a stable race environment.
When running SRS with AC, all is well.
However when I jump on R3E using SRS my ping is through the roof and I'm constantly getting kicked mid race.

 

@Minolin: I have no specific idea but just a general thought.

Don't be shy, you and Kunos, when deciding on appropriate means to ensure cleanish racing. If it means that not all racers can join all servers right away then so be it. I doubt they'll ragequit ACC - is a girl playing hard to catch becoming less interesting?!? No, it's the opposite.

Have courage to do the right things - it's "your" sim and you define the rules. It's called competizione after all and each one needs rules. Wreckless drivers not allowed to race with clean drivers is a valid rule I'd say.

As for "freedom": the only freedom an open server structure provides is for crashers to ruin others races.

 

Id rather see server entry limits on join, if I am MR A and server isnt busy then this meaning the next guy to join can be MR W and they will stay until server is full if they were a hazard I would leave and do something else. Also for the MR D guys joining servers just to spectate seems an odd way to use the grading IMHO.

If everyone was allowed into all servers as in your plan I would simply stick to locked servers, there should be some way of encouraging people to race clean. If the cleaner rated servers are where the better races are and some poorer rated guys want to get into them then all they need to do is clean up their driving. Its not like its a speed based safety rating so it really isn't so hard to achieve the top few grades for anyone that can show basic car control and awareness.

This is what amazes me the most in AC MR and PC2 ratings, PC2 especially more seem to care about the performance number which to me means very little. People seem to think MR A is some elitist club but its just where the guys that will show respect to others on track and not cause massive amounts of collisions end up. I find it really easy to stay at that rating, I think once I dropped to C for not enough attack range but other then that I cant see how I could drop a grade. I don't need to see what rating others are or anyone to care what mine is in a wild west server, If I join a server allowing ABCN or ABCDN then I expect many in there to be very poor to race with.

Saying that someone that's been playing a long time and is in D grade, I have little interest in racing them when they have been identified as poor racers. I don't want to stop them from racing in MP I just don't want them to get into the same servers I do that limit entry to those that can race at a similar standard to me. Why bother developing a rating system to identify clean and dirty races then stick them all into every server then get people to try and kick all the dirty guys from the servers they are allowed in. They are easier avoided by stricter limit entry where you basically choose how clean you want people to enter the server.

In AC before MR running my own server with strict admins you needed 3 or 4 in a server to basically spectate and keep the bad eggs out. A big majority of new joiners were just ramming cars or doing donuts mid track, why would you want to try and sort of racing with these guys in the server. Since MR numbers in pub servers I race are down but everyone that joins doesn't need a babysitter as the ratings system has already identified they are ok to race with if they are allowed in.

 

I agree with most of what you say that's why my first preference is to separate drivers and take the choice away.

My second idea was in response to the criticism that friends with different ratings couldn't race together (other than in locked servers)
I wouldn't say the result of my second idea is that bad drivers couldn't race online, I'd anticipate them having to queue more than they would like to and then they would find another server , probably a empty or poorly populated one, so they would be the ones that leave.
Also within the session the server could monitor their crashes per kilometre, and as the ratio rises it could warn them first, then if they don't change their behaviour it could initiate a vote , and the final stage if the crashes/ kilometre reaches the predeturmined threshold could be the server kicks them itself.

 

It’s good to see a productive discussion about all this, it’s sure not an easy problem to solve.

I’m seeing that most of the chatter in this thread is focusing on how to keep those who crash often away from those who don’t, which is good but I think there‘s also scope to discuss how ACC can help reduce the number crashers in the first place.

I think it would be useful to identify the different reasons why some people crash more than others. Ideally we’d survey crashers to find out what their reasons are but I would guess they likely come down to one or more of the following (additions welcomed):

1. Inexperience of sim racing
2. Inability to control the car properly
3. Ignorance of the rules of racing
4. Frustration at not being as competitive as they’d expected
5. Vengeance for previous racing incidents
6. General malice
7. Boredom

Unfortunately I don’t see a single magic bullet solution to the above but here’s a few that popped into my head:

Training: When I first started playing AC online it was quite obvious that a fair number of drivers either didn’t know or properly understand the rules of racing. It would be great if ACC could explicitly state and explain them. The guides on minorating.com are very helpful, something similar should be in-game.

Tests: Gran Turismo had its racing licenses which taught car control and restricted which class of offline race you could compete in. They were useful but I think most found them a bit tedious as they were just an artificial blocking game mechanic. I think they would be a much better fit for teaching the rules of racing. Personally I’d approve of forcing users to have to prove themselves capable against the AI before they can play MP, as much like in real life you need a racing license to compete and while not being up to standard is pretty unlikely to result in the death of any simracers, it sure can make a whole load of people very grumpy, very quickly. I’m sure others will disagree though.

Chat: I would guess that in-game apologies go a long way to calming aggrieved opponents when the inevitable stupid shunt happens. I know there are various tools to help with canned responses, I would hope that functionality could be be built into ACC (especially as we won’t have mod apps). If the game could also gently prompt people to apologise after a collision that might help too (and maybe allow you to overload buttons assigned to other controls temporarily too). Using a keyboard in VR post-crash is no easy feat.

S**tlist: Being able to mark players as problematic and having the game warn you if that player is in a server you’re considering joining might be helpful. I’ve tried my best to race clean and have held an MR A rating for a while now but have still managed to make a few enemies. E.g. one dude that was adamant that running me off the track repeatedly when I tried to overtake him on the main straight was a valid way to defend. Another who insisted it was my fault that we collided when he reversed onto the track after a spin (he refused to use any aids, like the map because “that wasn’t authentic”) oh and another charming chap who “has a rule” that if anyone hits him he’ll spend the rest of the race lurking and trying to wreck them. Unsurprisingly, no amount of politely explaining what was wrong with their outlook helped. There’s lots of additional functionality that could be built off of that by sharing lists with others or making the game act on them, but I have a gut feeling that could get a bit knotty.

Stewarding: However clever an automated system is, devious buggers will always find a way around it. It might be helpful to have functionality where users can request a stewards’ enquiry into an incident and then, at the end of the race, the game shows replays to a number of other players who weren’t involved. They can then determine who might have been at fault and vote on penalties.

I’d also be interested to know what restrictions (if any) could be placed on wreckers from just resetting their account all the time.

I hope the above doesn’t fall into the banned wishlist category, but thought some might be interested to hear.