Will there be a Matchmaking and Punishment System?[+Poll]

For a racing simulation game I think that this is a subject that must be discussed.
I don't know if the devs have talked about this but i will open a poll.

 

You should add the option "optional/customizable" too, if we're running a league we should be able to configure what kind of warnings/rules we want, not a "default" punishment system, all should be customizable...

 

Good idea! But i can't seen to find the edit button for the poll. =/

 

No problem, i think it should exist a punishment system but being customizable is a must...

 

I agree with this one, so unfortunately I can't vote in the existing poll.

 

What kind of punishment system would you like? Find people by their IP address and beat them up? +1 like for that. Seriously. I don't really believe in any kind of ban or punishment. Even I hate panalties in racing games, like must slow down for x amount of time, or things like that. If I do an illegal move, lets give +10 sec for my time at the end, and flags are plenty enough. If somebody doing jerk things, he got black-flag and off he can go. I know why are you want to punish people, I know those pricks myself. But, because interactive racing is not perfect yet in judging penalties, we have to accept some sh@t. If we have punishment system what created against fools, it can turn against good players too, by making a couple of mistakes. Example, somebody knock you off from the track and you cut a corner. How the program would be able to judge did you cut the corner deliberately or you just made a mistake. Probably you would say, it was a contact before the corner cutting. But still why you went off? Senna could keep the car on the track, so you are bad driver, you have to be punished. So, I don't like any kind of punishment at all.

 

I don't know if i like the idea of a punishment system, but i thought about a driver rank system that you can see how many races, crashes, corners cut and etc..
Not that the matchmaking would have to do something about that, but it would be good to have that info, of course that it won't be perfect but i guess it's a start.

 

Matchmaking sucks. PERIOD.
It will never work equal good as pure Dedicated Server, doesnt matter which game.
Thats why i love the point, that Kunos will give us Dedicated Server.
A system who punishs crasher kids or rule breaker need to be there, doesnt matter if communities bring it or kunos.

 

I understand you now. Sounds good. But I don't know how useful and accurate it would be. Because as I said, corner cutting, etc.. could happen because others fault. Difficult.

 

well if dedicated servers are given then the people running them can administer, should be a server admin console with warning system that records the reason, from a pick list and a kick, timeout or ban for n number of x etc. function against their guid/steam id rather than name entered in game

I assume a lot of servers would also have a teamspeak or ventrillo server set-up that drivers can join? (I've never raced MP before, but come from the quake, RTCW, W:ET fps world so used to comms)

maybe there could be two types of "reputation" for drivers; one built up (or lost) by number of warnings, kicks, bans etc. weighted more strongly if from multiple independent servers, and another administered automatically in game somehow (exploiter/cheaters)

 

Depends really. With dedicated servers for Battlefield and Hardcore game modes, there is a system of !Punish and !Forgive if you accidentally kill or are killed by a team mate.

If there are competitive and casual race modes in multiplayer for AC maybe a similar system can work, but I wouldn't want that enforced on everyone as rookies like me are still learning the ropes and will make mistakes often.

 

Well i hope for more than guid ban.
GUID, XUID, IP can be spoofed easily with one tool (i know this since CoD MW2 4D1 Dedicated Servers mod being admin/mod there).
Steam ID would be enough as ban i hope.

 

And a call vote function with variable pass percentage

 

The !Punish and !Forgive function is a good idea!

 

In a collision between two cars how would a system know decide who is at fault and how can forgive or punish?

 

Yeah, like the stupid penalty system of iRacing, when i tried it 2 years ago i was in the lead of a race and suddently a guy punted me from behind and i was the one penalized, lool, i've quited the moment after until today

 

Good question! ahahhahaha
I'm not saying it must be done, that's why I created the thread, so we can discuss this.

 

I think it should be more of a community thing where after a race you can either upvote or downvote a driver. or such.

 

Let me explain why this can't - or - wont happen.
You are seriously mistaking this game for lol or cod or battlefield, or any other aaa multiplayer. Those games are based around a central community. Usually around one central database server. They base the multiplayer around one persistant character. You have the same stats - same profile regardless of which server you play on. And mostly there you don't even know which server you are on. You just select a server with low ping and a good amount of players and play. In games like lol, you don't even have to bother with server's. You just hit play, and the game client does the rest for you. A good thing about this is that, since your character (profile, persona, whatever) is stored centrally, there is a central information storage for it. As soon as you connect to a server that server will know all about your character. (previous bans, your skills etc.). So yeah, a punishment system can easely be implemented in such a configuration. Another good thing is that you can have persistant player skills and be matched with similary skilled players. (like iracing)
This system also works nicely for people who *just want to play. It's easy, simple, hassle-free. Perfect for casual gaming.

This all seems fine, however there are some big drawbacks. Some of which will prevent ac having this system. This configuration requires a really hefty main server, which contains the player database, and handles matchmaking. The server needs to be strong, because depending on the amount of players that can be a really big task. And you can't skimp on the performance of this server, because if the main server is slow, the whole MP becomes slow. And if you want matchmaking to work (playing with players with similar skill) kunos would need to have game servers as well. Another big huge expense.
Depending on the optimisation of their net code, hosting 10000+ players in peak hours (assuming that's what peak after release will be) would require server farms more expensive than they ever could afford.

And if they want their matchmaking central server to send players to third party servers (like bf3-4) than they'd need another server which makes sure the game servers aren't hacked / edited in any way.
For matchmaking and persistant stats to work you need a consistent enviroment. You can't have a modified server which gives too much skill per game, for example. Also, you can't have 3rd party server admins banning people and having those bans be applied to all the servers. (just think of admin abuse) Such a system really would require a crazy amount of maintenance from Kunos.

Which brings us to another big problem of such a system. - Lack of modifiability. Like I said before you can't have modified servers, but what if some community wanted to host their league with some special conditions, requiring server modding. How about addon cars? AC was designed with mods in mind. For matchmaking to work, again, Kunos would have to confirm and approve *Every* mod. You can't have godmode cars on ranked servers!

It works in iracing, because there aren't any modded cars. So thats not an issue there. Also, AFAIK iRacing has an iron hand over the servers. You can't host one, you can't just rent a room, right? That is because they need to control all the servers in order for matchmaking to work. Not unlike lol.

Last, but not least, AC, GTR, rf... all these racing sims are based around strong individual communities, and leagues. IMO players / racers join leagues to race against a group of people, and leagues last a long time. So matchmaking really isn't needed at all. Plus AC will never have such a strong central community like lol, iracing... I guess cod and bf3 also have some strong individual server communities, but they are still based around this one central lobby/serverlist....
I don't think AC ever will be like that. I mean, sure now we here in early acces are in this forum. But later a huge part of the AC people will be scattered around several servers/forums.

I hope now you see AC is waay to open to work with matchmaking. Kunos can NEVER have that amount of money to host and maintain the mountain of server hardware needed. However just hosting a server with serverlists is really simple. That tiny server can be run basically for free forever. It's in a wholly different league of costs.
Also imposing a matchmaking and penalty system would hurt AC, because than you'd have 1 set of servers with vanilla content which has this sweet banslist and ranking, and 1 set of servers which don't have shared banlists and ranking, but DO have nice addon cars.

Mind you, there is some middle ground too. Dayz takes a good approach here. They have a central server, called Hive. This hive hosts player data and bans. But doesn't do any ranking, or matchmaking. It also enables seperate communities to have their own hives (player databases) and their own whitelists / banlists. It also enables HUGE customisation. I guess that would work best for AC. Kunos wouldn't need to host anything, yet there could be central servers / hives hosted by groups of people. And since it's not kunos owned it can be modified however the server owners like. Which means that indeed, matchmaking could exist. In a 3rd party enviroment, on a custom server. Free for kunos.

Oh god, that wall of text. How did that happen. Don't know if anyone will read this, since its so long. I guess a tldr is in order

TL;DR: Matchmaking and banlists too expensive and too closed

 

I think it could be quite simple always punish the other guy not me as surely it couldnt have been my fault, other guy thinks the same so maybe give them both a good spanking and get on with it.