Hoping to open to a discussion around the rating system that makes it fair, as IMO at the minute the its hard to gain and way too easy to loose, points gained for a win are nowhere near proportional to points lost for a bad result. Bit of context as why I'm writing this as I'm starting to get extremely disheartened and frustrated with the platform. There was an update last Friday, prior to the update I was 2162 and 92. I encountered some issues with controls unbinding like clutch or ffb stop working mid race, throttle cutting in and out and then some invisible cars It was 100% a game issue as after a fresh install all was well, but not before losing 82 rating and 20 rep. Which was extremely frustrating as that was nearly 2 months of wins and podiums. Wanting to get it backup for the DTM championship I decided to clear my evenings and do as many races as I could. So 15 races, 10 wins, 4 P2s and a P5 netted me +35 rating. the P5 was actually -3.44. Race 16 my view in VR flips backward after hitting a kerb ( first and only time its happened) unable to fix it I get a DNF and loose 27.5 basically undoing two days of non stop racing. I kinda took thick and gave up. I was genuinely gutted and didnt go near the sim for the rest of the week. Tonight again on the last corner of all places the lobby crashed and I lost a further 18 rating. Just what is the point in trying when any massive losses are down to bugs ? I would like to see anyone make a argument in favour of how this hugely disproportionate difference in gain vs loss is fair. Now as how to fix it im not sure, maybe less harsh losses for poorer results. But at the moment the way it is is very depressing.
I dont know which if any parameters can be changed behind the scenes but i think largely its just how an elo based system works. If youre at 2150 and for example beat a bunch of 1800-2000 rated drivers youre simply not gonna gain much because youre expected to win that race (more or less anyways) and doing the bare minimum isnt rewarded as if it were anything special. Now if you have technical issues and finish last, suddenly theres 15-20 1800-2000 rated drivers all beating you. For all things rating related that is an extremely poor performance by you and will be punished accordingly. That said i fully get your frustrations. There have been many times where i didnt do any ranked races for some weeks or even months because it felt impossible to make up for the losses caused by disconnects (personally mainly cared about the rep but same thing at the end of the day) and that sentiment just outweighed the positives
I think that’s fundamentally the problem with it a chess / ELO based rating simply doesn’t make sense in motorsport. There are so many things that are outside of your control that contribute. Being taken out by somebody sending a dive bomb or even by a back marker you’re lapping. Then you have server issues etc too. None of those can be accounted for. It makes sense in chess but when Magnus plays Hikaru it’s all down to them, Gotham isn’t gonna appear out of no where and take Magnus queen if that makes sense ? Even the fact that disconnects affect rep makes no sense. How can an server issue have any bearing on how clean you drive it simply doesn’t
Disconnects effecting reputation does make some sense. Reputation stands for how save you are on track. Let's say you habe a ping of 200, you are an absolute nightmare on track because of blinking or teleporting. Then a disconnect is well served and should reflect in reputation. The real problem is that the system can't distinguish (and probably never will be able to) between a bad ping, server issue, or rage quit. And that is why people find the reputation hit unjustified. And i do understand that, but it is not always just one side to a thing.
Can you explain the ping thing please? Because we had several times that someone different has a high ping, playing with cable and good internet connection while someone with WiFi has a low ping with midrate internet connection. Living in the same country. I was once told in the past that Raceroom sometimes takes a sort of average of all drivers on a server, and as a result, even someone with a perfect PC and internet connection can be kicked off the server while someone with Wi-Fi has no problems. Or that those with good connections/PCs are seen flickering and bouncing around the track. By the way, it would be nice if you could configure the dedicated server to exclude Wi-Fi connections as an option. Just like a preference for drivers with or without a steering wheel.
And also even if your connection is fine but you quit every other race id find it fair for that behavior to be reflected in the reputation. However these days im in favor of at least removing the 3 incident points for disconnecting to soften the penalty
Yea I have cable straight to the PC and never have any issues for any other online games apart from the occasional one in RRRE. Really low ping for other games and FPS like cod etc. Position when kicked may be a good indicator, Both occasions I’ve had an issue due to a disconnect I’ve been leading the race
Would it be possible for track limits ro result in, not only a penalty, but also in a time penalty after a repeated offence during a single race?
to me the biggest issue is that here drivers are discouraged to grind quite early let's say u are very good driver, even if the SoF isn't high it takes only like 100 15 min races to hit 2.2k if u was also able to maintain 99 rep after that it's just not worth to drive on this account anymore beside special events if u want to get slots in 1st splits in them cause the gains even if u will win all races in stacked lobby are tiny and any random incident makes u lose like 10 races of progress at least the way ranking system works in iRacing encourage grind till like 10k which itself takes insane amount of time but also there is less pressure cause usually finishing top half, even if u are beaten by some lower rated players is enough to not lose points till like idk 7k maybe even which is territory that "normal" drivers will never ever hit u can say that this grind is also "unhealthy" but the reality is that at least u are motivated to drive more how reputation is calculated also doesn't make any sense example from Nurburgring 2.4h, guy in split 1 got DQ and he lost 0.044 reputation so it's basically impossible to lose points in longer races if u will complete some % of distance being double penalized - not only rating loss for being placed last but also harsh reputation deduction after u got kicked and especially at beginning stage of the race if u have 0 incident points is completely dumb especially since there is even no ping meter anywhere in the game due to the original P2P version was recently removed with a graphical update, not like the previous one was good but it was at least something - there should be some "network" tab similar to the ffb meter u can activate in the UI edited by Andi , due to mike running his mouth nd being disrespectful
Again sometimes track limits are needed, especially since a lot of people online seem to have no concept of blue flags or moving out of the way if being lapped, I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve had to go off track to avoid crashing into a back marker. Ontop of that the track limits tend to be overly strict in RRRE compared to IRL and other sims
track limits are what the Fia says they are , one wheel on the track surface , track surface being the space between tbe white lines and including those lines Now in real life there are drivers meetings where its mentioned where you can and cannot run over these , we dont have and cant have a drivers meeting with a race director and steward before every race Also with this rules its really easy to understand and not have to spend hours finding every exploit on every track For this reason our track limits are correct and perfect by design Andi
I'm happy with the current track limits as they are (a la Formula 1). But in a 15 minute race with a 40 point penalty limit encourages some drivers to take allot of penalties to gain time. If it would directly give and in-race time or even grid penalty, these drivers would think twice than to ignore the penalties. Concerning the blue flags (or any flag for that matter), it would be nice to see a good system that can enforce these.
This explanation doesn't make sense to me. One, in the vast majority of cases you are not responsible for your ping or connection quality unless you deliberately did something to make it worse, which would be extremely rare. Especially since in the new ranked system you cannon select the region of the race anymore. Two, if the game cannot handle higher pings (but within ping limit) without making the player a hazard on the track, that's the game's fault. Three, a car jumping all over the place and a disconnect are two different issues and don't always come one after the other. You can be disconnected without causing any issues to other players. The only reason you're penalized for a disconnect is rage quit protection.
In fact I think this is now active. I explain: I've made a track limits on a turn and (due I'm a noob on that circuit) I've made another track limits immediately on the next turn, giving me a slow down penalty (Not sure if this is the name). So I think this "slow down" penalties are perfectly well served.
No, it's a different thing. As far as I know, slow downs in multiplayer aren't cumulative, but some places on the circuit give you a slow down if you go off-track and some don't. Then, with each slow down you get its duration increases. Also, they are far from perfect and need a lot of fixing. Sometimes they are triggered where you can't really gain any time; sometimes you can gain so much that even after a slow down you've still gained time. There's also a bunch of issues serving it: sometimes you need slow down so much that you end up losing a couple seconds while trying to serve a slow down of a few tenths; sometimes you don't need to do anything at all and it gradually vanishes in each braking zone with your regular race pace.
Another thing that doesn't seem to be penalised is ignoring blue flags, I've had a lot of races ruined by back markers not letting leaders through, either been taken out because they try to defend and race or they don't move and you loose all the gap to the car behind. I'm noy sure how to implement it but its ignoring a flag and should be severely punished. On track limits surely it would be possible to have the first 3 free before points start being applied ? Again I think the biggest issue is how fundamentally flawed an ELO based system is in motorsport where there are multiple things outside your control that can lead to poor result. I cant fathom hoe anyone thinks its fair that being taken out by some idiot can equate to loose the same rating as you gained from a over a weeks worth of wins and podium. Id a couple of bad races due to glitches from the last update and lost 2 and a half months worth of rating in one evening. That simply isn't fair and fundamentally flawed as a system. Elo is fundamentally built around the idea that if one Player A is stronger than Player B, then over time Player A should beat Player B more often. The system works best head to head, all moves are recorded and outside interference is non existant Sim racing violates almost all of those assumptions. So, if Magnus loses to Hikaru the result is almost entirely down to decisions made by those two. Theres is no third player who can accidentally destroy Magnus’s position by taking his queen or something. There is no mechanical failure that randomly removes a rook, no backmarkers who can spin into Magnus in the end game and ruin it. The only significant variable is the quality of play by the two playing. In sim racing your finish position isnt 100% determined by your own skill. Other drivers can directly affect your result regardless of whether you made a mistake. A driver behind can miss their braking point and take you out, reckless divebomb can damage your car, lapped car can unsafe rejoin and take you out, T1 shenanigans connection issues etc can end your race through no fault of your own. In all of these scenarios the Elo system sees only the final result. It doesnt know whether you finished 18th because you lacked pace or because another driver used your car as an emergency brake marker. In a chess match there is one winner and one loser. simple. In a 30 car grid every driver is racing against 29 others simultaneously, that creates a issue where the rating system often confuses race result with driving ability and doesnt consider any external factors, So say you qualify on pole, lead most of the race and set the fastest lap. only to get wrecked by another driver on the last lap. The Elo based system frequently assumes that you performed poorly because the finishing position was poor, despite the performance demonstrating the opposite, A final criticism is that Elo assumes all losses carry similar informational value. In chess, losing generally tells you something about relative playing strength. In racing a DNF caused by a reckless driver tells almost nothing about the victim’s skill level. Yet the rating systems still punishes them because the algorithm cannot distinguish between a bad day where you're off the pace, the other guy was just quicker or some idiot just wiped me out. Even take last season of F1 as an example, Yes Lando won the championship, but nobody could argue Max wasn't the best or "highest rated" driver on the grid by some margin.
1) They tried enforcing them in the past but it's open to exploits, like the car behind deliberately hanging on the back of a lapped car to cause them to get a penalty. Realistically it should be very rare, but it's still possible. 2) Blue flags aren't always enforced IRL. From what I heard, in the majority of races blue flag only informs the driver that a faster car is behind, but the driver isn't obligated to jump out of the way like they need in Formula 1. Reputation is an entirely separate system from rating. I wouldn't mix these topics here and rather create a new thread because there's a lot to be discussed about reputation. Other than that, I agree with the points you raised about ELO and how it doesn't fit racing. It's curious that no one seems to talk about that, even though the arguments that you presented are very compelling and in some way quite obvious. I wonder if anyone can suggest a better idea how to estimate a driver's strength.