Multiplayer Security rating

It might be too soon to speak about multilayer, but I was wondering if there is some sort of security rating planned,

I really think that's the best way to keep MP clean, since people will be scared of it ( when it drops too low, they will race against low SR players - therefor mayhem, while clean players will be rewarded by racing against clean players)

I re-subscribed to iRacing, iRacing felt similar to AC (what I thought) but after driving AC, I simply CAN'T go EVER back to iRacing. That game, even though it's multiplayer it's un-matched, just looks quite bad and the driving physics isn't really that great either.

if AC manages to capture the "essence" of MP racing in iRacing, but having much better graphics, car selection, sound, .. it could really be big one

This I like about i Racing MP , which makes it imo the best are as follows
Racing loby with set time,
if in championship it has predefined calendar, you have to join the game before it starts, you do practisce, warmup , qually and then race
and since it's all predefined, it really feels like real racing,

I guess similar behaviour can be setup with leagues, but I don't like if leagues are being handles by people, where the way they create championship is password protected lobby, they write down results and then manually give points, and at the end of given number of race they announce winner

I would very much prefer all this to be handled by the game ( if too much to ask, have some modding support here)

it will give it more official feeling, where you will log into the game, you will see your MP race calendar, start pratctising, and then join for qually and race. finish, get points and start preparing for next race next day

Second big thing is , as mentioned already, Security rating
- by monitoring how safe the player is, people will be "forced" to drive clean, because if they don't they will ruin the MP experience also for them.

Performance rating
- something that would monitor how fast and consistent the player is, so that he will race with similary paced people, keeping the racing close

Multi class races
- I really like when I can race in multiclass racing, even though I might not be the fastest guy on the ring, I can be fastest in my class , so still leave out with gold after end of race.

things I don't like about iRacing

Locked content
while on paper it sounds good, I don't think its that good idea to lock people from Formula1 (for example) , because that doesn't mean that they can't handle it. Further more, if Security rating is at place, if they can't handle, they will stay away from it, since they rating would go down really fast.


if some of these things can't be done easily, it would be great if at least there was a way to achieve some of this using modding

 

Having being introduced to online racing(MP) on iracing I have the same feelings. I also find it hard to go back into iracing now that I have been hot lapping with AC. I can read from the forums that most of us that have been bitten by the AC bug are a fairly respectful and polite bunch. But my worry is that once it goes full release that every ***** in the world will jumping on board and racing(crashing). I am not sure if the MP structure will be the same/similar as iracing, but I totally agree that there needs to be some inbuilt feature that makes it unattractive to not race cleanly and respectfully. This is such a great platform and it would be a shame that you would be limited to racing AI to have a good time. Having said that, I have every confidence in KUNOS based on what they have already delivered.

 

I never really raced competitively, though I have had my share of online races. The hard part about giving out penalties when someone crashes into you is that everything isn't black and white.
I do want some kind of system that gives a reckless driver a penalty of some sort. But at times, there are more to the crash than just cars colliding. One example is the F1 games when playing AI. I have had so many times where the AI is the sole reason the crash occurred, yet I am the one getting the penalty.

In the heat of the moment, everyone in the crash will blame each other so it will be a fine line to dance on, but hopefully they can get something through.

 

Thats a very valid point Al, one of the downsides of iracings is the rating structure. I suppose there is no way around that unless you have live admins for every race which is obviously not possible. I think its about balancing the system as best you can, iracing is not perfect in that respect but at least it keeps the idiots at bay once you level up. Once you are at that level and if you have a ding and acknowledge it and apologize all is good. I have faith that KUNOS will have looked at all the current set ups and implement one that suits the game.

 

if you take racing seriously , join to a community where they has their onw rules , penalty commit who analyze the problem after the race (or even during the race) , and apply the penalty . has their has own racing schedule and championship where the community takes the decision , and keep all in order, setting the server to that race closing by password to allow the members of that champ race alone . in the other hand maybe you want only play a few short races in open servers for fun , or do some kind of test.

i think AC should has communities , because at the end all want race , has fellowship and everyone has his personal point of view , due that if you dislike how a community take care. just move to another and not stop playing the game because you not feel comfortable with the decision made.

 

but thats exactly what I don't like,
people pretending something that games isn't made for,

If I was to drive a league, I want to register through game itself,
if there should be comittee, let it be part of the game, etc

yes it can work great that way, but I just don't like that
they should at least have their own dedicated servers, having scripts in game that will take care of rules etc.

it's like say you have a Fotball game,
if I want to play champions league 2012, I want to go to the game, pick my team, do the qualify part, then go for the title,

what I don't want is to
- have people that will write schedule, tell me when I should play against what team,
- people using paper or excel tables to figure out points,
- people taking care of the play off,
- and then a webpage which will tell me I was champion

I want all this to be done in the game,
I know it doesnt' make much difference, but to me it does.
Tha'ts why I like iracing, becasue the league is being handled by iRacing, not some guys with excel skills,

 

patrik , of course it will be great has a option to register a league inside the AC , that gives more dynamic , but isnt free that cost a lot in develop and a lot more keep it running , thats why iracing has a subscription method. as far i understand the concept of leagues in iracing its the same of a private server , managed by someone -link here: "league concept by iracing". i dont see the difference . for me its ok managed by ppl with mad excel skils,and better if the know about php and mysql and curl to get a leagues website with all the stuff , and i think kunos shouldnt worries on the leagues and focus on the product "AC" btw best by far out there .

 

There are too many variables to peoples' opinions of what racing is, to not have a community 'dictating' rules on servers, especially when open to the public. Go to any community's website and there will be rules to follow. If you don't like them go else where. When I say variables, as examples, there are some long time players of other sims who still think it's OK to weave across the track multiple times to prevent overtaking. Others think it's OK to bump you off the track "because I'm faster than you and you were holding me up". Of course you also get revenge attacks, but we won't go there. These are the kind of players (I refer to them as 'subtle wreckers') who can only realistically be dealt with by human intervention i.e watching replays, assigning blame then kick/banning from servers. Voting to kick does NOT work and IS abused.

As I've said on other threads, unless Kunos has written revolutionary script to accurately assign blame and deal with crashers or even minor incidents, then community lead servers are essential otherwise it will just be chaos. Then if Kunos doesn't support dedi servers where the community can set and manage rules, then I am not looking forward to MP at all, and it will be a deal breaker for me and I'm sure lots of others too.

Bear in mind, iracing is a subscription based game, so if you screw up you can potentially lose financially. This may be all that keeps some players in check.
As far as I know AC will not be like this, so once you have bought the game you can't lose anything else, other than freedom to play in online servers if you are caught wrecking. Unfortunately some people just don't care about their reputation, that's if they have one. To some (I fear the majority of buyers) it's 'just a game', to others it's more.

It may be good to see some sort of licensing scheme, allowing certain levels of players to only play against each other but again, without human intervention it will be open to abuse. Also, how can you get better if you can't race against better players?

With such a great game produced so far, Kunos MUST get MP right or in 12-18 months it will be a fond memory of what could have been...

 

Pretty sure that I read several months ago that Kunos has no plans to become "iracing like" as far as online. From what I gathered if somebody had the funds and was so inclined they are free to rent a server farm and start up their own "iracing type service" using AC. They would have to implement their own "safety rating" and protest systems and I'm not sure how monetizing it would work. Sadly, if you want clean organized racing you will have to join a league or two; otherwise set up a server the way you like and keep a quick finger on the boot key until you end up with a group of like minded guys to race with every day. This is what I did on Forza 2 years ago and I have a group of friends that still race together every day (well for now we hotlap lol) all these years later.

edit: I was a member or iracing for three years and all this talk of clean racing because of irating, protesting, and paying monthly memberships is a myth from my experience. Every now and then there would be a good clean competitive race but for the most part half or more of the field gets destroyed in the first two turns no matter the split or road/oval.

 

Politically I'm very liberal, but with online PC racing I have grown to have fascist tendencies! This is because the amount of times I've been smashed off at the first corner is just too many. Simbin games have been the worst offenders. Just no built in protection, nothing to stop some ***** ruining your race. Although I've had some very fun online racing with Auzzie V8s in RF1 more than half online racing has been so bad it's sent me back to racing with AI only on many occasions.

Of course people will say 'join a league', but not everyone lives on European time and has the time to join races on specific days, and obtain passwords and may need to dedicate weekends to family. I'd be very happy to drive basic pickup races with a mixture of AI and whoever is online at the time. There could be a 2 fold way in which they work. Possibly one way could be worked in to the career mode, so that you need to earn a license offline by being able to match certain lap times, similar to the Steam challenges, but also consistent laps within a time, then maybe also clean races with AI but with maybe a couple of real online drivers who would be matched up when available, then giving each driver a 'safety rating'.

In my view anything that prevents wreckers would be welcome, other than permanently banning drivers. Also though not as bad as wreckers, with PC sim racing are cheaters, some people seem to go a bit too fast, and have developed some kind of maximum speed AI bot, it would be nice if there was a way to figure out who are genuine aliens and who are cheaters, which seems pretty hard actually.

 

if I can join custom league through game, I'm fine with that as well, taking the burden of all the coding out of the Kunos hands,

if AC is really meant as racing platform, then I guess I thought about it wrongly,

if that means that you can build your own game using AC as engine, then I suppose you can deal with all the content in a way you like. but I just want to be able to do that in game, not on webpage/forum , not in excel

also, to add
the problem with custom leagues is that they will run certain cars/tracks .. so if you are in the mood for different cars at different times, you would have to join multiple leagues ..

whereas if it's handled in game, you just pick what you want
and with something like race calendar, it would be easier to see if things don't coincide with others