That would put a lot of casual racers off this game though. casual as in people who are not speed demons who play this game to death. . Implement this rule and no casual racing fan will buy this game IMO. there has to be a balance. You know this game is NOT easy. it requires 100's of laps JUST to get say within 10seconds of a speed demon if your lucky. You will Alienate this game to only cater for speed demons.
Not really, if you take that 100% from average of best times that people are on that server, then there surely will be server for those casual players too where they can race with other casual racers. That is much better than now where speed demons at every server takes win and casual player is left to bite dust.
107% is good as it brings in some realism too. If you screw up your qualifying lap(s), you don't race (even if you are more than capable of making the time). I like this idea, however, I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't.
I've been racing online since GPL days. Pickup races have indeed always been troublesome. I have been in untold numbers of first turn wrecks. rFactor is probably the worst, partially because you can vote to restart the race... so you take your time... you and several others escape the first turn mayhem... your almost two laps into the race... and then... you're out... just so the kiddies can play their little games all over again. iRacing has the same problems in the Rookie classes, although not nearly as many incidents as in rF1 or rF2. Once past the Rookie classes the racing becomes much cleaner on iRacing. Probably because, if you want to keep racing the higher level cars you must retain the safety rating you worked so hard to get. What bothers me the most are the kids that are only there to make your life miserable. Last night I fell victim to a someone that is years and years overdue for a spanking (literally). I couldn't even get out of the pits onto Spa during practice. I'm hoping that the little brats will get bored/frustrated enough of not being able to control the 60s F1 cars and go back to their Megane Trophy cars. I would like to get into some of the locked servers... but there ain't enough information on the list of servers to figure out how to get a hold of someone to either get a password or how to get in touch with them. There was one named "*****Old Hippies*****. Sounds about my speed, being in my mid 50's but I couldn't find any info on them anywhere... I spent almost an hour surf'n the net look'n. Ok... I'm done... Bryan
I have had to password the 'Online Racing Australia' RF2 server due partly to the stupidity of some who come in. We've seen some really good racers come and go from our server, over the past couple of weeks, but unfortunately with them come morons. I resisted as long as I could, but after being taken out on lap 1 of a race the other night (at the turn 2 hairpin in Malaysia) it was becoming more clear that these guys were better suited to GT5 on the console, and got sick of seeing them ruin everybody else's enjoyment. A real shame.
Yes maybe also reporting server names would be a good idea. If you find a server with console kiddies report in here
No need to start a witch hunt. These losers come and go, from server to server, so naming individual servers will do more harm than good. All we'll end up with is no servers with anybody in them, and nobody willing to race on an open server.
I hope basic "contact information" will be available soon too, Brian. Of course, as we all know from rF1, it also requires that: 1) the server admins WANT to be contacted in the first place; 2) that, if they do, they know how to...and also take the time to...make their contact information available when they set up the server. Right now, the better bet lies with server names of leagues you might already know from rF1 *but you know that too*. ----- I just had a fine battle (which lasted only three laps) at Spa with a car who was slightly quicker than I was (60's F1 cars). He was patient on L1, and got by on L2 when I was a bit slow on the backside exiting a corner. As this happened, a dry race turned wet, and it began to rain. He made the very same small mistake I had (with me lurking) on L3, but also hooked a wheel off the left edge of the pavement...which shot him back across to the right, just as I was closing on his slowing exit and was about to pass him on the right.... So of course I overreacted/overcorrected back left and dropped a wheel off the left edge trying to miss him...and then had a long, slow spinning slide of 300-400 yards right along the left edge of the pavement, which finally tore off a wheel. Oh well. It was very good racing, and was very much reflective too of the TYPE of racing (and passing) done in that late sixties era--you waited for the other driver to make a mistake...tried to goad him into it if you could...and then tried to be close enough to take advantage of it when he did. What you DIDN'T do was start banging wheels...and we two didn't either. ---- That was three laps of some seriously fun "potential!" CS
I don't really agree that it will take 100's of laps to come within 10 seconds on a lap of about 2 minutes..... But having said that, I do think such a feature would be best if it was configurable, so that people can turn it on or off, but also be able to adjust the percentage. I think on something like an oval the percentage could be a bit lower, and on some twisty technical road courses maybe a bit higher, because mistakes are easily made (depending on track).
I have seriously no problem with something like that, a genuine race incident is no problem hell even friendly people that mess up on lap one but are aware of it i have no issue with. There are hower a few back on Rf2 that are just there to ruin everyones races. And sorry but ive yet to see them on iRacings higher tiered series. Hardly have any incidents there. Or start spiiting filt in chat because there ego's get busted.Online racing is just not suited for door banging, there is just to much latency for that on all sims. Thats what puts me off. And i dont have the time either to search the webs for league's. I do hope some sort of extended info box comes back on the server list where league's can put there info on so it's easier to find them.
I will just say it again If driver A hits driver B in the rear or side above X speed then Driver A is auto pitted and the momentum is not sent to driver B. You would only need this rule on for first 30 seconds or first lap of a race as all crashing after that is normally fairly avoidable or a fair race incident People keep coming up with all these convoluted solutions when all you have to do is remove the rear end insane crashers at the start of the race/first lap. What I have said above would instantly cause people to take it easy at the start of a race and allow for absolute noobs to drive with good drivers. After 1 lap people that race at different speeds are normally spaced out so that you have people of similar ability racing each-other. Having Timing rules and exclusions that take place before the race just puts people off and penalizes drivers that are slow but are also safe ( which makes up a good proption of sim racers) the only valid point to counter my system someone made was that the people in front can brake early on perpouse which is true but all that means is that if you are behind you soon learn to give space on lap 1 for this possibly ( as drivers in real life do making crashes even less likely) also the x speed velocity would be set so that small bumps are fine its stopping those people that plow into everyone that's the key issue. small crashes at the mid to rear of the field on t1 are common place in real racing so its something that will likely stay to some extent regardless of systems in place. In those cases to keep the game "fun" which is general why people are playing on a pub server ( casual racing but with realistic physics) Race length needs to be 4-6 laps with no practice session , only a 5-8 Min qualification and damage needs to be set to off or low. Its not that much of an issue if I am punted off on T1 so long as my car still works I can then work my way up and I know its only 8 or so minutes until I get another chance at a fair race.
I'm an A license rated drive in iRacing. Contact with another driver costs me 4 incident points. I need to average 1 incident point every 84 corners to maintain a mid level A license. For a track with 10 corners that means I am allowed 1 contact with another car every 36 laps. Considering most of my incident points are 2 pts for a self spin or 1 point for going off track with half the car, then I average a contact with another car much less than once every 32 laps. How people can say iRacing is not cleaner is beyond me. Maybe if you speak of rookie races, but higher level races are very very clean. They have to be for the A and B lincensed drivers to maintain their A and B licenses. IRacing at the higher levels is cleaner than most leagues. rFactor is for leagues not for public racing. If you want arrive and drive public racing in a structured format then it's either iRacing or put up with mayhem in rFactor public races.
Then it will alienate and split the community a lot. Ok Then, try and get within 107% of a speed demon driving a F1 60's car around nurburgring(when that rack gets releases) or even the 60's spa in just doing 20 or 30 laps practice. No chance mate unless you are a speed demon yourself. it takes ALOT of practise to even get into that 107% barrier on certain tracks and cars. That is why this idea wont work as it will put off alot of people online. Even if its optional, any servers with it turned on will be servers with no one on it. You underestimate just how difficult this game really is. this aint for the faint hearted. takes 100's of hours to get good at this and when you are competing with people who have 1000's of hours put into lots of Sim racing hardcore games and you implement a 107% based on there speed, well good luck with getting even 5 people qualified under the 107% race rule on a public server. Another point is, some think that every single crash = because someone is a noob/childish. i disagree. mos crashes are racing incidents/accidents. none unintentional. People say a lot of the crashes happen in the first corner. well guess what, thats how its like in F1 too! many of the crashes happens in the first lap. Are you telling me the likes of Hamilton and other pr f1 drivers are noobs/childish drivers? Hell no. crashes simply CANNOT be avoidable simple as that. if you implement some rule like iracing where you get banned for crasing more hen twice in 35laps(someone mentioned it here) then that will destroy the fun out of this game and also destroy any chance of people wanting to try and do an overtake as you and i know, some overtakes can lead to contact which is exactly how its like in real life. No one would wanna overtake. races will become boring and the whole experience ruined IMO. Yes there should be some sort of system in place to distinguished the genuine childish drivers out there but IMO 107% rule or iracings system is not the answer as it will IMO kill the game. So in a nutshell, being slower then a speed demon (over 107%) doesnt mean you are a childish/noob driver and colliding with someone doesnt mean you are a childish/noob driver either. The main issue in online play is the blatent crashing into people. It has nothing to do with legit collision with others and/or being slow. You can be slow as a snail and still wont cause a huge pile up and you can collide with someone legitametly by accident without it being intentional. the underlining issue is "how would you know a crash incident is intentional" That is what we should be discussing. Eradicate that problem and it will make rf2 public servers a joy to race and identical to a typical club/private race. Just last night i was in a private club race and on turn 1 there was a few people who collided with eahother. Are they noobs and childish drivers? Nope because those drivers were experienced and members of that servers racing club and there is not a chance that community would allow a childish driver to join
"rFactor is for leagues not for public racing. If you want arrive and drive public racing in a structured format then it's either iRacing or put up with mayhem in rFactor public races" No its not that's the point of this discussion (RF2 can work just fine for both) the fact is as I have clearly said there are some things you can do that mitigate crashes and the impact of crashes that allow for more enjoyable pub races to take place. I think its defiantly the case that public servers are only ever really suited to short sprint races and for anything of length and more serous it will always be suited to a organized race meeting found with leagues. The SR system in I racing does little to negate crashes in beginner races the SR system also has negative effects in that . 1) bad drivers still crash on T1 regardless penalising good drivers ( which resulted in many A , B class drivers staying away from rooky racing) 2) you have many racers that don't even race and just pull over due to absolute feer of losing SR points 3) when you are doing a 25+40 lap race after lap 10 people don't tend to crash others out anyway unless it was an accident or something similar to what happens in real life. For RF public servers 6-10 laps should really be the absolute maximum race length any longer and its more suited to an organized 1 off event or a league. though I do think giving drivers a safety rating in general is a good idea so long as a driver with a low SR can still join a server .SR could work really well with Rfactor if it was used as a metric to allow people to be vote kicked/ banned more easily. For example if you have a negative SR or a very low SR it could take less votes to kick that person from any given server than sumone with a high SR It also helps server Mods if they should give sum one the benefit of the doubt or not. Just look at FPS games and FPS public servers you have some people that team kill for fun and some that TK by accident but consistently . The way you stop this happening in servers is by having the server auto kick people that do x number of Team kills. Many servers also have it set up so that at player spawn if you shoot a team mate then you get kicked or spectated instantly this is analogous to T1 crashers and this is also how T1 crashers should be delt with using the system I stated above. I am going to stop talking about this issue I'm sure I am boring everyone to death. If its not implemented in Rf2 I'm certain it will be in another sim by the end of the decade. Whoever does do it will reap the benefits of a better on-line experience for its more casual user base and in turn its core user base that just want a quick race outside of there League events. Some of the more popular public LFS servers have implemented what I have said so there are working examples We just need a sim like RF2 that offers more content to do the same.
Iracing is definately cleaner and racing is much more enjoyable than rfactor atm. However I do not agree that rfactor should adopt the same pricing model as Iracing. I have not renewed my Iracing membership because of the mounting cost of all the content... tracks, cars etc. Could Rfactor adopt the license/ incentive model without the unreasonable costs involved with Iracing?
That is easy, those who are crashing on purpose will have lot higher crashing stats than others. How 107% avg rule would alienate community when it would be option to use it or not, leading having servers with option set on and some set off? Wouldn't it more likely be set the way majority of users wishes it to be? Does Leagues Alienate community? In bigger leagues they probably still put racers to different servers based on their qualifying times, how else to do events that can participate 400 people. As always, everyone is talking about option, not enforced practise. Another good option would be incident (car to car) / driven online race mileage ratio, server admin could have possibility set it so that only better than level he sets is allowed to race. You don't need to go only with one and I think everyone would find their place, surely it would be different than now, but I think in a better way?
So how does 107% rule help with your above issue then? See where i am getting at? the 107% is not the answer. having crashing stats is more of an answer to the underlining issue. League races dont have a 107% rule as far as i know. anyone can enter and race so long as you are a clean racer. So again the main issue all of us have is "intentional car crashes"
Why not have both? When I was running league server we did use similar ruling to put racers into servers, every event had hundreds of racers participating, so it was kind of class system, best online racing I have ever had.
Guys, listen up. There's a lot of ideas in this thread, but unfortunately no solutions. Pick up races have ALWAYS been the same, wreckfests usually with occaisional great races that keep us coming back. The solution to better racing is to race with idiots (impatient retards, guys that don't know how to brake with a car in front, winning at any cost, etc) as little as possible. This gives EVERYONE a much better chance of having good/great races. You want great races? Race with better people on a consistant basis. And when I say better, I don't mean faster. I mean people that respect each other and have the mind set that the number one goal is not to hit anyone, and finish the race. In GPL we started a group called the "Average Drivers Club" or ADC. Believe me, we had aliens in there and slower drivers and everyone had a great time. Fast guys really had respect for the slower people in the group, as well as the opposite. We were all pretty friendly, and the races were the best I ever had. We have six pages of people complaining about shi@@y drivers...let's get together and start a clean racing club here with rF2. Several people in this thread have servers, let's use them!! I'll have one up next week and will post a new thread in this forum looking for like minded people that want to have FUN, first and foremost. To me, that means racing close with people that can also race close, people that trust each other and give room when necessary, etc. Like I said, if you want great races you have to race with great people!! Let's make it happen. I race almost every night 7:30-10pm est. On the servers, my name is Todd Scholl. Let's post our names and look for each other. In a week or so when I get the server up, we can start organizing a little better. All we would need is a couple of good guys to get started. Todd
