Driver Ranked Servers

I agree with the race director that enforces Blancpain rules.

Out of interest, is there any racing game that has a known successful public racing system? Forza, GT, etc... if so then why does it work? I’ll exclude iRacing as that’s a booking system only and far from a casual mp experience

 

Not sure if this has been mentioned here yet but has been brought up by @MABlosfeld in another thread. A rating system for matching drivers needs to consider both the cleanliness rating as well as the drivers speed. This would potentially mean two different ratings working simultaneously. A driver can be a clean racer but be well off the pace, there wouldn’t be any enjoyment for anyone if he is matched with other clean drivers that are 5 seconds a lap faster then he is. If you end up in a field of 24 cars where some drivers are much faster then others it would just lead to unintentional incidents where the slow drivers are braking earlier and harder then the faster drivers expect.

 

First step: write down the rules inside the game. (Showcase the difference between divebombing/overtaking and weaving/defending...)
Second step: make sure each player reads and understands the rules.
Third step: explain the mechanics behing the rating/matchmaking. (Software cant decide who is to blame/ software cant generate clean drivers)
Fourth step: unlock the multiplayer parts of the game, after confirmation by the player.

In Multiplayer lobby:
Competative/ leaderboard part : locked until you gain a certain grade in the open part of multiplayer + the system decides where you can enter.
Open part is for gathering friends (integrated friend system) and could be configured to be closed/open, with or without grade restriction.

 

That's sort of simular to what we have now in function,the competitive part being Ab servers. We'd may end up with sparcly populated competitive panrts again

 

My 2 cents about a subscription model for ACC:

As I started to randomly race online I had very mixed experiences, a few good races on clean servers but more chaotic races with way too aggressive racers and even a few serious wreckers.
For quite a while these first experiences made me go back to offline hotlapping and AI races, a couple of month later I tried again with MR servers, the experience was better, but with ABCN I had decent races although in the end not that clean or fun to make me keep racing online regularly.
It was only once I stumbled upon the thread about a few guys praising the Street Fight server which I then joined that or the following day where I found good and clean racing which developed into a community.


My conclusion of this:
a) ppl. that haven't raced online yet or want to race online are IMO unlikely to dip into a paid online experience, it's just another hurdle to overcome so online player base in the end might be reduced
(also, if ppl. would try subscription MP and their first experiences are bad, it could be even more likely they won't return to online racing since hardly anybody would pay extra for something they don't enjoy)


b) having a community you can have a chat with during times you don't drive, race with friends and all that was one point that drew me to online racing and kept me going; so a ranked service only without having 'community servers' would be downside of the system for me personally and probably others that race in similar groups
(after trying SRS I was also a bit disappointed by it, it's really about very competitive racing which was a bit more dirty than I expected from the satisfied posts I've read about it; having a community race is more enjoyable for me, it's cleaner while you can still fight tough for each position)

 

In AC you had 170 cars (dlc,mods), plenty of tracks (dlc, mods), the possibility to set 9h practise for 3laps race,
MR could be used in idiotic ways (MR [ABCD])...
Too many options, too little ppl. per option.

In ACC there are far less combinations possible, so i expect this to be much less of an issue.

 

I get the impression the first choice of the majority would be less choice and MR separation particularly because it's a hardcore targeted sim which will have minimal fragmentatiion.

Maybe we need two threads, an ideas thread first purly for genrating alternatives to what has been done before followed by a preference thread with a poll were we state our prefered option including any existing implimentations.

 

I haven't read the whole thread, but the few initial posts, which I agree with. I'm all for locked official graded servers, and it shouldn't be possible to do an open server that counts on offical grades and leaderboards, forcing everyone to join the lowest grade official servers and improve from there.

@Minolin, I'm confident that you're thinking about and developing the mp system 24/7 and will come up with great stuff.
What's you view on the simracing mp in general, compared to f.i. the regular FPS, RTS etc? In other games, if a novice joins an open server, he can only ruin the teamwork, but the opponents will cream him.
In simracing, it's the other way around, the novice has the power to ruin opponents race. I haven't given it much thought, but maybe you have, is there ever a solution or is simracing just the way it is?
Just thinking: could potential wreckers, N-grades whatever, have non-physical cars while the grading system still works for them, granting them a physical car once they reach a certain beginner-grade? I remember that Gran Turismo 3 or 4 had a non-physic collision system for mp (maybe speed based), the idea was clear, but it obviously made the racing boring after a while, not advancing to physical collisions between skilled drivers.
I wouldn't mind starting up in ACC lowest tier with non-collision activated for the first 1-10 races, till I advanced. On the other hand, if I had to plow through public mayhem for a while, to make that rank up, it'll be more tedious.
I can imagine that if the casual players first online ACC experience is full of mayhem, they get demotivated, regardless how much fault they have on their side.
Anyway, can you shed a light on what you've had in mind? Not particularly what is going to end up in ACC, if you can't tell, but more what you ideally would like?

 

Thanks for the answer, appreciated! Now back in your hole, soldier!

 

In short: I would like to see a superp system with integrated community hubs
and no free roam, but basic multiplayer for those that dont want to take simracing serious.
I tried to put that together...

( point 1, superb, kind of anonymized sytem)
When i read the name of the game: "Assetto corsa competition, official Blancpain GT series game."
I expect a title focused on competition. In my head there will be a global leaderboard across all customers. (Your rank: #1.504.612 /no prices)
Then there would be the national leaderboard, where the top 10% get access to european, asian, american...championships. (small prices)
The top ten% of those get invited to the world championship/live events. (Big prices)

(Point 2)
The majority of customers cant be bothered to practice offline until they can keep their car under control.
They are all naturally born aces of car handling, they want to go online right away...
let them jump into official kunos provided entry level servers, no hosting allowed.
Those that dont want to improve as a simracer cant be forced to do so. Now they have a place to race online.

(Incentive towards point 1)
Show them their crash/distance index and visualize how close to "C"-grade they where before the first races and how far they are after the race.
They will start to blame the system, so they also need to see that some of those that faced the same opponents in the same race did advance to "C".
And they have to read that C-graders can host short, dry, daytime sprint races for 5 of the ones in their friendlist at a time. As an incentive to at least try to be clean.
Once they progress to "C" they need to see that "B-grade" drivers are allowed to set up a server in the same format as the ones that actually count for competition points, but only for a limited number of their friends at a time.

(to Point 1)
A-level should be the place where you can
compete for points and titles in official and community based events.
At this level leagues like Aloog, teams like redline, or youtubers like emptybox make sense,
as they could host championships in an easy, professional looking way.
(broadcast with the build in tools and overlays, use the built in championship tools)
The users could get involved in their communities as driver, engineer, test pilot, marshall, commentator, video cutter.

 

It sounds quite good even though I sense omissions (can't put a finger on them, though).

What I especially like is your point 2 - it's simple and seems legit. People have bought the game and have a right to use its MP functionality. So they can, no matter how poor drivers they are.
Addition to your point 2:

• Make sure servers are relatively full by not giving people full choice on which server to join exactly. Let them choose car and track of choice and then send them to the respective server. This way there'll be less complaints about empty servers AND it'll be easier to increase one's rating.
  
• Allow, say, 3 friends to join in the same server. I think you just can't justify taking away the "play with friends" factor.
  
• Once a week, provide a wildcard for 1 race in the next higher level (no friend join option) in case someone struggles to establish a good rating in the wild west servers. Wildcard "extends" with clean races and after x clean races causes the driver to obtain the next higher rating.

The free for all servers will be a massive crashfest with wreckers driving wrong way, parking on apex and turning into every car they can find. The next higher level might be ABC style - expect T1 pileup every race and then a 50% chance of a crash-free race in case you survive that. The first cleanish level of racing will be in the 3rd level from the bottom IMO.