progressing the 'Game' part of RF2 - championships

Firstly I want to say Bravo to ISI for the latest update as it has fixed probably the most annoying issue of the game for me, which was the AI train. Previously it looked like the cars were being driven by the exact same driver like a meter behind each other. Apart from looking unrealistic, results for me were usually first or last, as you make 1 mistake and you're now at the back of the line. With the new AI Range slider + exaggerated effect it now feels really good with faster drivers ahead and small groups of cars battling it out. Going wide into the grass might only cost 1 or 2 places, not 20.

So it feels to me that the 'Sim' part of the game is getting really good, but the 'game' part is still rather woeful. When I play a game, I want to feel some sort of progression and challenge. I know RF2 will never have an involved career like some others, but I really feel they at least need to get championships sorted out. There's a couple of great tools out now where you can setup virtual champs, but the big problem is getting the same cars to stay in the next race. There's some involved MAS tool hacking one can do to get this done, but it's messy and laborious and many non tech minded people won't have the ability. What I think is really needed is a custom ingame championship. If I'm brutally honest, I just don't understand how they ever released this game without it, for me it would have been the number 1 priority after getting some basic content out.

 

+1

Since I'm an offline-racer for 90% of the time, single races can be fun, but a championship really motivates me to give my best.
I really like the idea of fighting for a championship, making decisions about how much to risk for an overtaking move and how close to drive to the limit, keeping in mind I have to score points.
A single race does not give me this 'pressure'. If I crew up, I can just hit escape or restart the race.

 

That is the difference between a game and a sim to me. A game has an end-scenario, allowing you to beat it, through gameplay, on a certain difficulty, collecting stuff, getting stronger, getting better, advancing through events, etc.

When you want to play a game, maybe settle for a codemasters game instead?

 

umm, because real life race drivers don't race in, or care about championships? ..oh wait.

(sorry to be snarky, but I've seen others make similar comments about championships not belonging in a sim and it's annoying because of how false it is)

edit: ok I see how I'm kinda contradicting myself by making the title - 'developing the game part', I should have said 'completing the package' or something. Fact is championships exist in real life, therefore they belong in a sim.

 

I think that there is a difference between 'career mode' and 'championship mode'. You are describing a career mode.
I don't even want a career mode, because I can make up my own career in my head, for instance:
- Starting in karting, progressing through to Skip Barber->F3.5->F1->WEC
- Only allowing myself to progress to a higher Formula if I finish top 3 in the championship.
- Starting in new series with a back-marker team, then progressing to a team if I perform well.
- etc.

What I can't do in my head is creating a Championship:
- Running a season with a defined set of cars/teams/drivers/tracks/race settings/points-system, etc.
- Keeping score of points during the whole season
- Some basic statistics (driver and team standings per class, wins, poles, etc.)

I don't like to fuss with paper and pen, excel, whatever. I'd like the sim to sort this out for me. I think it was available in all previous ISI-games, so I still don't really see why they left it out of rF2.

 

Regarding restarts, they are bad and should never be used and you should always drive like you own it and that you life depends on it regardless of whether you are in a championship.

Championships can indeed deliver a valid and meaningful level of context (and risk decisions are certainly valid and meaningful) just like a race delivers more context than a single lap.

While admittedly not the same as a championship, context / meaning can also be achieved via progression and improvement.

Championships can be done on paper and while this may sound ridiculous to do, it gives you 100% control. And existing tools help you to get results into a spreadsheet (and rfla does calcs for you with felxible rules) so you don't have to key in data. Additionally, including championship functionality can be a slippery slope because by including it ISI would then be open to criticism about it and then people would want more functionality which can be more complex to implement and bug fix etc. and then become a distraction.

Having said all that I believe a distinction should be made as to what the true gaps are and why.

For example, there are tools for championship yet some say it has to be in the UI. Why? Some will say it's more immersive which again leads down the slippery slope of devs being responsible for immersion a instead of physics.

Regarding consistent drivers across races this is somewhat difficult because have to consider flexibility vs ease. For example, how many AI can your PC run? If you can't run all the cars then what should you do? Should ISI make AI work well with any number of cars? And how? And then you have modders who rarely get it right and even ISI cars have duplicate drivers but then again maybe that is realistic because that is how it was IRL or what do you do when it is like that in IRL? Etc etc etc.

There is much more to it than meets the eye. One thing I can think of that would help is driver lists with team/car names that make it easy to select drivers at the track because how they show up can sometimes be car or team or driver so can require looking up in mas files which is why I have my race kit at professionalsimracing.com so I can reference, for example, fastest drivers, etc.

Regardless there are many complexities to this beynd what meets the eyes and to really solve it well would require some innovation, particularly given how rF2 is very single weekend centric in its underlying design.

An example innovation might be storing drivers in player.json instead of having to select every race.

 

Regarding @Leeniepen I remember championship not working well in rf1 for some mods like HistorX without fiddling but I could be wrong and also was there support for flexible rules? Also there are tools that solve paper and pen. No?

 

yeh definitely a fair amount of complexity involved, but my guess is that spending their time developing championships in an effective manner would improve their sales + customer satisfaction far more than a couple new cars / tracks.

 

a couple new cars would improve my satisfaction more ++ .....i really only race online though - i still feel some empathy for offline racers......and dont agree its complicated for isi to have included a championship building tool. im shocked actually rf2 doesnt have one - you can race any car combo on any track in a multitude of conditions - how hard would it have been or be to add an additional multiple race building tool - im not buying the 'its complicated' excuse. its either a purposeful decision , or an oversight. I think in hindsight it should have been there from the beginning and fits well with the 'customize control connect' motto of rfactor in general- i would probably race offline more if there was one - i think offline peeps want the software to do it not do it themselves on paper , thats a silly response to a realistic expectation.

maybe the new 'rules plug in ' will ultimately make it more accessible

 

Don't we already have Log Analyzer and Champ R-esult to championships?

Also I don't buy the lack of immersion argument due to it being external out-of-game tools. We already use external tools for telemetry (although I would like that in-game too like in Crammond's GP series) and that's even during a session, as opposed to at the end of a race weekend.

ISI also said:

 

yeh those tools are great, but the big problem is drivers changing from race to race. If you want to ensure consistency you have to edit MAS files and rebuild packages. A hassle that I'm putting up with, but it is a hassle. No doubt there are plenty untechnically minded guys who won't even attempt it.

 

This is what Tim Wheatley said a year ago in this thread: http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/18188-Can-you-run-championships-with-the-AI

"There's no championship mode in the software, and there won't be one in the software. This doesn't mean there won't be some way of doing it eventually."
...
"IF we do it, it'll be a Web based solution that we've been thinking about bringing in for league support. Supporting a single player 'league' championship. That's about as much as I can say about what we WANT to do."

 

I don't believe this is a trade-off that can be made b/c different resources involved.

If anyone with a dog in the fight wants to define "realistic expectation" I'll be happy to respond.

Yep

Couldn't agree more. Something can and should be done about this. Doesn't @Noel Hibbard have some sort of packaging tool? And if someone else could create some sort of RCD and VEH tool to autoconfigure those text files that might be cool.

 

Booting unwanted AI isn't enough? Or making use of the "create your own AI" (and booting)? For me, that's been plenty.

 

You can load AI you want on track. Just start with no AI at all!
A proper In-Game championship-mode would be better though.
Please ISI!

 

+1

 

Agree regarding select/boot AI from track but that can involve keeping lists etc. and re-selecting every race in a championship can get old. Also many won't know how to do this and won't ask and also in my case I need to check VEH and RCD to decide which to select etc. but yeah not a show stopper for me but if something can be done to improve without distracting from other priorities then should be done

 

The "core" of the engine already has it, and it's a brilliant feature that was so heavily over-looked and under utilized in rFactor 1. Combined with the championship/season mode, it can make for an amazingly fun experience...

I'm talking about the credits and upgrade system.


A. Winning money and trying to decide which part you want to upgrade (e.g. diff, weight reduction, clutch, engine, ecu, tyres, front aero, hood scoop, hood, etc.) and each of those upgrades having multiple upgrades of themselves (eg. street tyres, high performance street tyres, street legal semi-slicks, racing slicks, or, different engines, or progressively lighter and more free flowing exhausts, etc.) as you progress through an offline championship/season.


B. Imagine point "A" for on online league but do one of the following instead of credits being handed-out according to finishing order:

1. Everyone receives the same amount of credits every race - they then choose what to buy/upgrade or of-course they can save the credits for later use for expensive parts or for a complete package of parts which is less expensive to purchase than each part individually.

2. The amount of credits won is dependent on reverse finishing order or championship standings (or whatever formula you decide to use) - sort of like the weight addition rule in some real-life series but for relatively more credits, and therefore upgrades, for the lower placed cars rather than added weight for the higher placed cars.


C. For online racing - even for online pick-up racing - have a set amount of credits each player begins with and they then can use that money to buy whatever sort of upgrades they want before joining the server. Once in the server, the player should also be able to later buy upgrades (if they have credits remaining) by clicking on the "Car Select" button rather than having to exit the server and rejoin and start the process of buying upgrades all over again.


Imagine how much fun this would be? The strategies of different upgrade paths? Looking at the next race or the next few races trying to decide what to upgrade? Trying to upgrade according to your car's weakness or maybe just your own driving's weakness relative to your rivals? Imagine the variability and depth this would add to the racing and the strategy?

This could be huge if executed properly (execution is important, simply having the feature "hidden" in the background will just mean no one uses it or knows about it). It's all about execution, not just simply having the feature.


P.S. I saw some line of code in the multiplayer.ini file regarding starting credits (can't remember if it was RF2 or SCE). It's probably some old line that doesn't even work but it definitely shows that it's been thought of by ISI. That alone gives me hope.

 

yes, more SP experience would be definitely great, especially if you can still customize it , so that you could do something like FIA WEC season ...etc

 

I've been using the latter perfectly fine for yonks, simple to use and works just fine. Sure an in game one would be better and is something I wish ISI would get around to doing so they could implement their own stuff.