Moinsen, I know that much has been written about this topic. But I do not agree with the current situation. As a rookie I am not a perfect driver myself, but I try to drive fairly. Unfortunately I have often been the victim of unfair or incompetent driving. I do not always agree with the division of incident points. You could take the gas pedal position and the steering wheel as possible reference values. If I drive straight ahead and stand on the accelerator and then get hit from behind, it is quite unlikely that I could have provoked the collision. In this case it is obvious that the driver behind caused the accident. You could also define a point in the braking zone where it is impossible to drive the curve according to the rules, so that it is possible to brake properly in another defined area without collecting incident points in a rear-end collision. With these reference values at least a part of the not always fair point sharing could be excluded. Maybe it is possible to implement such a system in an update. Greatings Tom
I've largely shrugged this off because (I assume) it's the same for everyone and also because this is sim-racing, not the real world, but what really bugs me about the present incident point system is receiving double points for what is essentially a single incident. For example, when a car bumps me twice, one hit right after the other, in the first turn at the start of a race, I receive four points for each contact! Plus four more points if being hit from behind in turn causes me to hit any of the cars in front or alongside of me. (On one occasion, I was assessed a total of 20 points at the first corner of a race and the only thing I did was try to hold my position and avoid the carnage that was occurring around me on every side.) Or when a car forcibly pushes me off course as we approach the hairpin at Laguna Seca and I spin into the inside wall as a result, I'm assessed four points for the car-to-car contact and then another four points for making contact with the wall, despite these two incidents clearly being related and neither one of them my fault! This also happens when returning to the course after spinning off and I put a wheel off course on the other side while trying to turn around the car (because of its wide turning circle) only to be assessed another point for "cutting the track" a second time. Or being assessed additional incident points for backing into a wall several times while trying to extricate my car from a gravel trap and free of the car that put me there and is blocking my way. As I said, though, I just shine this on, because I assume everyone is penalized similarly and there are no real-world consequences arising from it, but if I'm completely honest, this does leave a lingering bad taste in my mouth at times. <shrug>
I drive rookie servers sometimes. You have to drive like everyone else is retarded. Dive bombing miles away, ignoring you, weaving and breaking 30+ meters too early is common in every race. It is still fun most of the time. If you want to avoid that, stay safe and far away from everyone else and get enough reputation points to play on the other servers.
There's no denying that the system isn't perfectly fair, and I'm afraid it won't ever be. What I can say and want to emphasise is that we would very much love to avoid penalising the victims of a car-to-car contact. When the rating system was still in its early stages we did try to achieve that, partly with methods like the ones you described but also additional logic in an attempt to only penalise the driver who caused a contact. But even after several rounds of testing and fine-tuning we still saw too many cases in which the system didn't work the way it should, sometimes even resulting in the victim of a contact getting penalised while the "perpetrator" did not. So it was decided that the way we have it now would be the fairest solution. Maybe it can be improved at a later stage but for the time being it is a concession we have to make, although we agree that it is not an ideal solution. Did this happen to you recently? I'm asking because by now there should be a grace period after a contact during which you should not receive additional incident points for contacts, in order to deal with those exact situations you're describing. If it did happen not too long ago and keeps happening in the current public game, the next time it happens to you please collect the game_xxx.log and MW_Transport_xxx.log of that race and attach them in a bug report here or contact us directly, preferrably via Discord. As sad a truth that is, I think it translates to the real world just as well. I never rely on other drivers' supposed competence when driving on public roads. Just like my driving instructor taught me, "always think for everyone around you". In simracing, I avoid assuming that everyone is at the same level as myself. Even faster drivers can prefer vastly different lines with different braking points and so on, so I always drive very cautious, especially in the beginning of a race, until I've acquired a feeling for the style a prefenrences of the drivers around me.