I went on a multiplayer server to do some audio testing and holy cow! The intentional crashing was unbelievable...the DQ's were a nice touch. But I propose a new penalty for these types of players. Multiple DQ's and all of your cars in your inventory look and drive like this.....
Intentional crashing and verbal abuse is present everywhere, it sucks :/ I hopped into a server and the first thing that I witnessed was a crash, after wich the 2 players started a small flamewar. Really annoying to see these toxic people.
A safety rating system needs to be created. It could be based on per match or over all. If in said match, a player has earned a certain amount of contact points, the player gets booted and blocked from that server with safety ratings enabled. This could be done a server by server basis. Its been recommended before. I am not sure of that outcome, but many agree something needs to be done about the crashers. I beleive stats tracking needs to be done 2 ways. Overall which is pretty much in place, and per match. Its a long debate, but if you think about the idea it is pretty obvious. I hope maybe this gets some real attention this time around now that R3E is a lot more popular. http://steamcharts.com/app/211500#All I don't think nerfing the cars will have any positive impact. Auto booting player for x amount of contact points is the way to go.
Firstly we'll approach this as a game-wide system: In a free to play game a system like this doesn't really solve anything in the free content rooms. Once someone's rating gets low enough, they just go make another account and are placed back at the default rating to enact their chaos once again. In terms of non-free content rooms, one of the biggest 'tricks' with a system like this is offering redemption avenues without having a system that is easily abused. For example, there's a rather infamous individual on the forums here with a 'famous' chosen last name that used to be an utter menace any time they were in a race. But for the last month or more every time they pop into a room nothing untoward happens, it's just a decent and clean event and no on even makes a fuss about it in chat anymore. Given this kind of system, a person who sees that there is a problem and wants to address and potentially fix their 'chaos' problem would now be stuck with other people who may not have any desire to get better. So now their options are drastically limited to the point where they might just feel like either quitting or just doing online races by themselves in order to get their 'safety' points back, neither of which are good options. As a player, having those people quit might seem like an okay thing, but R3E has a small user-base to begin with, the last thing we need is paying customers quitting. Their other option of just trundling along in multiplayer alone doesn't actually teach them anything at all, it just creates incentives for them to 'farm' their rating back up until they can join the servers they want to play in again. One obvious 'solution' would be to mandate a minimum number of people before a race is counted, but again with the small user-base this could be difficult if not near impossible for some people to achieve. Also what servers are allowed to count? Only official servers? Are there only certain car and track combinations that count? You can see how quickly this evolves into an entire multiplayer overhaul instead of just a rating system. Now, we'll approach this as a server-side only system: In this scenario the options for redemption become nearly impossible. Assetto Corsa has a system like this called MinoRating that many servers run where each server has a specific rating assigned to drivers that exists only for that one server. So in this scenario once your rating is below a certain threshold you can just never join that server again. The only exception is if the server wipes the ratings. In this instance there is literally no way for people to redeem themselves or learn, instead they are just greeted with a wall for certain servers no matter their behavior in the rest of the game. This effectively disjoints and further splinters the multiplayer arena. Essentially someone looking to improve after some mistakes would never have the opportunity to rejoin a community since they are simply locked out of that option forever. There are options to implement things like decaying ratings that shift back towards a center, but it would be difficult to find a time frame that satisfied people on either side of the argument. People who can't get into a server would want the decay to be fairly rapid while people allowed in would want the decay to be fairly long. Ultimately, what most of this boils down to is there seems to be this large feeling that a lot of people who 'crash' are doing it on purpose and just want to cause chaos. I can definitely say in my experience of doing 99% public multiplayer racing across a wide range of games, this is nearly never the case. In R3E, even in the free content servers, most people there just want to race. You'll see the occasional person going backwards until they get DQ'd, or the person who spins and rages and just takes people out, but most people are just there to race. The bulk of the accidents are usually just honest mistakes from pushing too hard, a lack of skill, or a lack of experience. These are very very very important things to truly understand. What most racing games lack, more than anything, is a way to get less skilled, less experienced drivers up to a 'standard' of racing. Some of us who have been playing racing games for over a decade and are immersed in racing culture know much more than we realize. Simple things like consistent braking points, smooth acceleration and steering, scanning ahead on track with your eyes, accident avoidance, and even how to rejoin a track safely after going off track. These are the sort of things that basically no racing game actually teaches in any way and could drastically alleviate many of the problems. Many of the 'first corner mayhem' problems stem from people simply not understanding that your initial brake point will be much earlier, but lighter, for that initial corner because of how many drivers are funneling down. Not understanding that often leads to someone towards the back being punted up into the rest of the field. It is rarely malicious, more often simply being someone who needs time on tracks and with starts in order to understand how to drive in various situations. Basically, as much as everyone, often and frequently, speaks out about wanting a rating system, what would go infinitely further towards facilitating good and clean online racing would actually be better introductions to racing and racing situations for people who are still learning. This is no small undertaking by any stretch of the imagination, and is part of why few racing games even bother to try, but it would be a much better use of time than trying to gate off some people from others.
This is the best thing I have read in a long time and you are so spot on, that mostly the actual problem of crashing isn't a problem of malicious driving just a matter of experience that need to be harvest.
Does dislikes hurt you profile? Oh and I gave you a like, but oops you gave me a dislike. Thx. I don't want this account to end up like my imgur account. -100k or something.
WOW! I was just trying to approach this topic with some humor, when I started this thread. Sometimes, intentional crashing can also be misinterpreted. I have seen a few videos where the participants were having a great time crashing each other. The race didn't start out that way, but it just escalated from a little "rubbin" to "leaning" to "put 'em in the wall" kinda tit for tat among friends. They were laughing hysterically and I have to admit, it was amusing. Since they were on voip, no one else understood what was going on. How about something to indicate your intentions or level of seriousness? As you enter a server, have a check box indicating the level of your participation (your intentions). 1) To have fun: for the people who want to include "contact" so they can crash friends without penalty. 2) Serious: For people of all skill levels who want to try and race cleanly together. Incidental contact will exist. Maybe your name is a different color. White - for fun, blue - serious. Then, you can form strategy during the race to stay clear of the people in there to "have fun". In the end, trolls are difficult to police, due to the free to play model. As has been indicated....develop a bad reputation...just create a new account. Maybe I need to change my perspective..... it's a game....someone's gonna crash (intentional or not) and I'm gonna get caught up in it. Expect it every race. Simple as that. It's not as if I'm paying entry fees to get into these multiplayer races or pay for damage to my car.
oooh, I like that...... multiplayer servers that you can manually raise and lower a safety rating acceptance level. You can't enter that race, if your safety rating is below the minimum set. People who are prone to contact with other cars (even unintentional contact)....need to improve that rating through clean races on other servers. But........until, a game can determine fault, this would be difficult to implement. I would hate to be hit 4 or 5 times during a race and leave with a crappy safety rating through no fault of my own.
Its not a perfect solution, but a forward collision rule would cover most scenarios. Also obvious rules for driving the wrong way, and parking on the track. Add exceptions for parking on track side. Then build from there. Its a start. Game is permanently in Beta for now, so experimentation seems to be on the table. They could test this in close beta MP servers and if it pans out then migrate it to open. Other games already have something of this sort in it. WreckFest gives you points for it. Other games like Dirt have a color system and they all seem to follow basic rules. iRacing has it as well. I really hope the devs start considering something. Its also a direct stat we all could work on.
Nah, little secret, dislikes add to your positive overall rating just like likes. How else do you think a person like myself got thousands of positive ratings? But hey, after all, there is a like in dis-like.
Can't see how it will ever be possible to do a fair rating system as arsewipes who are intent on crashing are the same knobheads who find a way around whatever system is implemented, kick ban per server would sort it out, leaving free content RR servers as the gauntlet runners they can be and all the rest can decide themselves what rules to set.
Very good point there and makes sense..though like you said it might never happen. What can be done I guess is to still generate ratings per drivers, based on their racing....and then there will be servers where only drivers with a certain rating are allowed to race. Like this you wont block beginners from making mistakes and banned forever. Drivers with low ratings (or maybe class/license based on their rating) cannot race with drivers of higher ratings.
Every novice driver should watch this video several times. It really teaches you what a real racing line is and why. I will sometimes spam to this to crashers. Its a great video. Its helps both your game and real life driving. Iracing has one that's more step by step, but I can't find that list for now.