What about replacing the negative reputation score with a reliability score (postive points for races finished, clean sectors and consistent lap times) and working on 4 strikes and out for track cuts and collisions per 15 min in races? You could even do a DT penalty after 3 then last chance saloon before DSQ. That´s how it works in real life and it is supposed to be a sim after all. Obviously in longer races the leeway would be higher.
It is quite funny to see a racer suddenly settle down and quit driving like a maniac when they get close to DQ.
Getting on what you say after you comeback and even you know I loved too the way we drived... Your actual rating shows when you look back at your standings... You are not a rookie ;-). Said that. Actual problem of lack of people and more than that... losing people after they get a level is the game itself not offering nothing more than starter servers get just "new" people and not just a summer thing. After the initial experience game is lost.What I try is to make an easy modification to keep the game giving something attractive... even you are not more a rookie (over 70% of the people with a rating over 1.6k are gone due to they don't wanna race rookies... But that, does not mean you don't want to race starter pack, or fixed. Even you call rookies a starter combo, it is wrong said "rookies" should be just "starter". The reason to go on gold, silver, etc... names it is just about to keep what game has already done so is using same language in a more accurated way. Ex. saying something is "silver" you quickly know you have to be +1550 and +75 to race it. That keeps you on the search of something more.... Your daily champs would be a nice idea but first we need to keep the people. That said... it has a huge problem. Same problem actual special events has. People loved and voted to have more things on weekends (and we already did 2 months with many problems and bus coming to game). Same as any other sim, sport, event, etc... big things should be done on prime time... And prime days. Just this sim is ignoring that and just doing things from Monday - Friday and on a "CET" timing. 18.00 starting servers... and 19.30 starting races on a wednesday or even a friday... simply has no sense if you want to go big. IF intention is not about making this game bigger and it is just about justyfing... Many its done, ok... But I cannot get that from any enterprise. Second community in size terms of use is Spain (by far)... How many spaniards can race? How many brits and Portuguese having to start being on server.... At 17:00¿?¿?¿? It seems to keep on what raceroom did 5 years ago... And we are getting on the same numbers of use 300 players avg... You have to give costumers what they want but essentially when they can... Now it is just about a kind of FUBU event sim (For Us By Us) e-sports community, not for the global rankeds system itself or casual users that is the big numbers. Do you imagine ACC or iracing doing main events ... Thursday at 19:00¿?
You can take numbers from the json (it is easy) and do it yourself... Numbers right now Total players with more than 1.6K that have played RR rankeds at some point: 5.455 Total active players (4 or 5 activity) with more than 1.6K: 913 (16%). Total "totally inactive players" (activity = 0) with more than 1.6K: 4.009 73% If you need more... numbers are easy to check and does not differ so much from may... or now. You can get conclusion by yourself or just talk to some of those 73% some of them really known. Lack of competitivity and proper races are the most common explanation on why they have left game... If only "racing in rookies" is allowed or there is people they are not interested. And that is for me, a huge problem with a really easy solution but you have to break a bit on what rankeds are though and the way people used to go just for winning with rookies just because field is more "numbered" in fact... you don't win anything, just race with 4 as much... and pray for others to respect blue flags. That's why I think the way to recover good people... is to offer them easy good races. A proper example... it has been demanded many times something nice and fixed outside from rookies... you get the Ferrari, and there has been people almost every time with full grids. Ah! Thanks to be scheduled... another thing it was demanded, but someone decided to go back to none. People gone crazy hyped on the champ thing.. tbh we all honeslty love to race with same level or close poeple... And the "splitted" idea finally gived real sense to rankeds name itself. Problem? Even the hype was high it was just for best 72... And schedule doesn't look to get as many people (publicity) as possible. If you look for that you don't go on wednesdays 18.00.
I think 3 races per week are enough: 1- Rookies < open to all, 15min - Free Content 2- AM > 75SR rating, 25min - with content of Pro Pack 3- Pro > 80SR rating open to all, 45min + mandatory pit - with content of Premium Pack
I agree with the above, but one additional idea is that I think there should be six rookie servers. Three for free content and the other three with paid content. Paid content could be both the car and the track or a mixture of free and paid car and track combo. I’m not a fan of this two week schedule, I much preferred the one week schedule. I think it’s smart having the Ferrari GT3 fixed series too. That’s been popular in I Racing and I hope it remains as a constant in raceroom. It’s a great and fun car to drive! I’ve had really enjoyable races in rookies and as long as you qualify in the top ten, in my experience you get good quality clean racing. I found the rookie lobbies to be really convenient time wise too.
Any free content combo for ranked servers is probably out of question. They've always went out of their way to avoid those, even preventing players from using free Lada in Touring Car Cup class in order to achieve that.
Rankeds needs servers, servers need to be payed... Free content does not give money. But as you say is what I was trying to apply in some ways. Forget about starter content being called just rookies. Starter pack should have Rookes but alos "bronze" +75 rep or +1600. Fixed content is damn fun. AM is pro content series OK... it will go with TCR, DTM, GT3 and GT4 (even you have cars to access this from starter). PRO comes with premium content - and a minimum of 80 rep. Anyway from that point you still need to use rating if you call it ranked you can be just 1.2 and 84 rep... and that will still kill competitivity in the game so no progress in racing is demanded.