Something has to change in ranked MP - this is'nt fun anymore.

There you have it in one, on the racing line and yes I fully understand that the likes of Bathurst etc you can't get off the racing line. I was led to believe that the whole point of machine learning was precisely for these circumstances. The bloody machine learns which is a legit move and which is not. You get a Robert, you tell it to watch hours of idiots going round and round in circles, pointing out to it which is a legit move and which is a no hoper, dive bombing piece of shit, leave it alone for a few days and boom, we have a Robert steward at our disposal. Have I got the wrong end of the stick or is this not how machine learning works?

 

Surely as it stands 50% of all punishments are wrong, I'll take the 1% option please, can I enable this in settings or is it a code hack?

 

Going back to everything I've said in here before: They are no punishments and they cannot be wrong if there is no wrong.

The biggest problem with any Robert will always be that it cannot be smarter than what you feed it with.
https://qz.com/646825/microsofts-ai...racist-jerk-after-less-than-a-day-on-twitter/

 

Oh wait Christian, that is a very bad example. I got -0.2 only because i recieved me last 4 points in the last corner of the last lap from a guy who was off track before and could'nt brake good enough (dirty tires). I've managed to cross the S/F line before i was forced into the pits.
In Februar i was black flagged too, 30 points in Spa. Lost 13.7 points on my reputation score. And that is what i see as a problem for myself. Just my 2 cents in that case...

I have no idea how the game engine detects a contact that is worth being punished (by force?), but would it be an option to increase this value? Such slighty contacs

do not have to be punished.

And thank you for that! If there is anything i can do, i will offer my time and manpower to make RRRE better. I really love this sim and try to support it in every way possible. No matter what car or track will be released, i'll buy it. I've built 8 different steering wheels for myself to enjoy RRRE even more, and created almost 200 dashs (for Dashpanel app), so every single car has it's own dash on my second screen. So please do not misunderstand my critics here, just want to make RRRE even better.

 

Yep this is true. but we are racers we see numbers and we want to have the best ones

Oh and in general i disagree with the thread title saying "its not fun anymore"

Its damn good fun and good racing!

 

It's not fun anymore is the wrong title, it's bloody frustrating and I want to give up but it's sodding addictive, is more to the point. I know how everyone who's been hard done by feels, I amassed 34 points at turn one at Bathurst in one race and still managed to get to the last lap before some plonker pulled out in front of me and got me disqualified. I believe I wrote a similar post, with a similar title right after the event, it kinda makes you feel that way but with a bit of luck and a vaccine, maybe the worst offenders will crawl back under their stones soon enough. I'm not sure it was ever as bad as it is presently and I have to think real hard whether to risk ranking far more than I'd like, be nice to see who's in an event before I commit, there are names I avoid like the plague, you know who you are!!!

 

Yes. There is a minimum impact force that has to be exceeded in order for a contact to trigger an incident. Very slight exchanges of paint and shoulder rubbing should not result in an incident and the last time we tested this (which was a while ago adimittedly) it did work that way. But in general the contact has to be rather mild, if the velocity delta is greater than a few kph it will trigger an incident. Maybe it should get investigated once more...

There is also a logic that should prevent drivers from receiving an incident directly after just having received a contact incident, so you don't end up receiving dozens of incidents while being stuck in a pile-up or after being pushed out of bounds.
As above, this did work when we last gave it a look but I see some room for improvement in this system because we keep hearing from people who end up getting several incidents for what basically was one incident that inevitably lead into another. This is definitely on the list of things to watch and fine-tune.

 

Speaking shortly, since there's no immediate repercussion, we can assign penalty points left and right, both to those who did wrong and those who didn't, and only in the worst cases it ends up with a DQ. Which should mean this person is the bad seed here.

Well then, I still don't understand why you stick to the system with 50%+100% accuracy while at the same time claiming a system with 99%+99% accuracy is unacceptably bad. Who cares if it gets it wrong in 1% cases? If "they are no punishments" anyway? You added a massive failsafe to your pretty inaccurate system and you think the results are good. Then you refuse to switch to a more accurate system because it has to be flawless? As if you can't use the same failsafe with it to mitigate its wrong decisions. This doesn't add up.

If you look at it like that:
System A:
1) sometimes unfair;
2) can't be manipulated;
System B:
1) sometimes unfair;
2) can be manipulated.
- The choice is obvious, System A is better. And the unfairness is mitigated with "they are no punishments". Sounds good.

But when it comes to actual results we see that System A can also be manipulated, so the difference between them comes down to their accuracy. And in that regard 99+99 is much better than 50+100. Anyway, since systems like these are made for players, it's their opinion that should matter. Ask them which one they'd prefer. Ask them if they agree with this:

- or they'd agree to have an imperfect system if it's more accurate in general.

I agreed with that until you said even 99% accuracy in unacceptable. Now I have very serious doubts that your system in the works was less fair, because of how different our understanding of "fair" and "good enough" is. I'm kinda lost here, honestly. I do try to understand your point, your explanations, but they don't add up.

 

A wild idea, a play on words

What if, instead of DQing you, the system applies a terminal damage to your engine/gearbox/whatever? While essentially being the same, it might feel a bit different. Mechanical failures are a natural part of real life racing, can happen to everyone. But getting black flag when you did nothing wrong, isn't.

If you fall victim to the system's... inaccuracy, at least it might feel less unfair if you pretend your car just broke down.

 

I don't know if it's gonna change anything but I have my 2cents on the subject, so.. why not

For the context I had this week two races on the same combo that gave me total opposite result in terme of incident points.
It was on the GTR1-GTR2 @ Imola races.

The first one was almost perfect, I had a blast while disputing my (top-mid field) position against an other driver. It was a fair fight, we exchanged position multiple times, sometimes being side to side along multiples corners. We had some little touches and contacts… but at the end I had 0 incident point (strangely it was my first 0 incident race, while maybe being the closest fight I had in a long time).

The second was an other story. I had a bad quali, starting and the end of the pack. And I don't know if it's because all the "good drivers" where on the weekly event, but it wasn't the same level overall in this one. So, the first lap was a little bit strange. Even being ultra safe. I couldn't avoid some contacts (the only way for me to avoid would have been to stay 500m behind everyone.. But hey it's supposed to be a race no ?). and the end of this first lap I already had 18 points , none of them I could avoid without ghosting myself .
BUT : even if this lap was ruff : neither me nor the drivers I had contact with went of track, had a spin or anything like that. It was only little bump kiss, door-to-door fight etc .. nothing unfair, no "push to pass" manouvre.
At the end of lap 2 : 26 points .. same story.
So I had to do all the race with this Damocles Sword over me. Luckily the pack was spread and I could made it to the end … But It's really unpleasant to have this potential DQ that can come at any moment if I made a little mistake (or an other driver). Feel like we are punished to have a race.

So, I don't think the system is bad. Overall it's better than nothing, I really think It improved the quality of the public server races (well, at least on non-rookies ones). But maybe there's some balance to be find, especially on the contact incident trigger. If for open-wheel car it's clear that you want to avoid any contact, with closed-wheel car the system should take in consideration that some contact are parts of the race.
The fact is that R3E netcode is pretty strong, we are not in a game that make you spin before anyone touch you (looking at you AC ), contacts are pretty well managed by the netcode.

My 2cents on how it could be improved without changing everything:
- incident point for contact threshold should vary according to car type (mostly open wheel Vs close wheel).
- Maybe use some temporisation after a contact for the system to check if both car involved are still close together (in distance and speed): if yes that mean the contact was meaningless, there should not be any incident point given. But keep it in a buffer so it could be used for further contacts between the same players. when buffer is full, give the points to both player to warm them that they are "under watch".
- Allowing player to recover some point for clean racing. Players should also be rewarded, not only be punished (that's why is feel so unfair at times). Why not give back 1 or 2 points after some clean laps ?
=> Reward is most powerful than punishment for education

In comparaison we can look at what is done in ACC.
ACC rating system is complex and far from perfect too. But at least it Safety rating has something to look at: You gain point by racing close to someone (front or back), without contact. When there's a contact it's analysed and you loose points according the strength of the hit and the rest of the lap.

I think the Rep rating in R3E is similar in a way to the SA in ACC.
Maybe should we throw the incident points and only use Rep rating by displaying it to the player during the race and modifying it live.


Voila.. that was my (long) 2cents

 

I like that a lot!

 

More like a scores worth but worth it all the same, I kinda like the gaining rating back idea, won't really help the 30pts at one corner events but defo helps out on the bargy bargy start to races.
Amassing 30+ points early on in a race definitely tempers any enjoyment from the remaining stressful laps but knowing keeping ones nose clean could mean you will at least finish the race is a Bertie bonus.
What I have noticed is you get almost as many DQ's as we always got just quitters, perhaps the damage idea isn't such a bad one either, rather see smoking mobile chicanes than the plethora of DQ's and quitters off to suck mummy's titties.

 

good post particulalry these two comments...

some implementation of a reward system would be very good to redeem any incident points handed out during a race regardless of percieved fault

Something else to consider instead of or as well as Ranking and Reputation would be an Expereince system per driver and per car and per circuit layout - currently there is nothing stopping a driver from obtaining enough ranking/reputation in a free for all and then joining a 80+ Gold race in an unfamiliar track/car combo. If you cannot acru Experience points off line in single player then i would like to see practise/training servers for that weeks specific race servers
Then maybe said 'experience' score could be used to add/subtract a multipler against any incurred incident point
Of course do not stop the free for all races but for those that want a more 'serious' experience putting the time in should reward you with racing like minded racers

 

a timer that if no incident occurs can remove some incident points would be ok i guess, then you could have overall less incident points. in the 2hrs race 100 is quite a lot of points you can "use" to drive improperly. however if there were 30 but driving without incident for X time could recouperate some of them. stops you abusing too many all in one, because you have overall less, but in the race as a whole you could earn some back by driving safe. and it wouldnt effect your reputation so much in the long term just because of a massive pile-up at the start of the race that was no 1 persons fault.

For every X laps or mins without incident grants 1 point back.

 

This rejoin ACC system. You need to earn stars by driving around a track (offline), 4 clean laps needed for a star then you can join a server with this track (on witch the star limit is applied).
At least you need to have driven cleanly this track once to be able to join a race.

This system could be easily implemented in R3E, there's already a leaderboard. Maybe make a link between ranked server and leaderboard => Player who want to entry this race should have at least one or 2 valid time in the leaderboard.

 

There shouldnt be a need to bring leaderboards into play for this. The game already knows how many valid laps youve done around any given circuit (layout) in any given car

 

Indeed
By it's always connected nature, our profiles are already full of datas.
Shouldn't be too hard to link ranked server with our profils... but as usual it's a "shouldn't be hard" from someone that as zero knowledge about the game backend

 

One shortcoming of such a system is that you cannot earn points unless you're in a battle for position. There are quite a lot of drivers who regularly find themself in a spot where they drive alone once the field has spread out because they cannot keep up with the really fast guys but they're also faster than the second half of the field. Those guys would have a hard time earning points. And once they are in the occasional battle, the driver ahead is largely depending on the driver behind in order to score (or lose) points. If the driver following you decides that you deserve to lose some points, there's little you can do to avoid that (more or less like what we have now).
It could be an additional factor but I think it'd be problematic if that was the only way to gain rep points.

We've made similar suggestions in the past and the devs didn't seem very fond of the idea. Lending the terminology UK_SPAWN used above, there might be people who "use" their remaining incident points strategically to harm other drivers. If you give back points for completing a goal (drive x clean laps or minutes f.e.) you'd give those guys even more possibilities to wreak havoc because they could "spend" some points to wreck sb, then drive cleanly for a bit to recover those points and use them once more to harm sb else.
Like I said, the devs aren't very positive about systems that, at the end of the day, mean drivers get free strikes and I think the main reason is that they see the possibility that those free strikes get abused strategically.

I think this is sth worth looking into, but I can also see some pitfalls. What if both cars ram each other off the track and into the gravel or guardrails? They'd still be close by each other and they'd still have the same speed (both zero) but the contact was far from meaningless. I guess you could introduce more conditions, like "both cars cannot leave the track surface after the contact" but even then they could spin out of control but stay on-track near each other, again not a trivial incident.
More checks would possibly be able to cover even those accidents, so as I said above this might be worth looking into, but in the end an additional system also has to be economical. RR is CPU-heavy as it is so any overly intricate system can have a negative impact on performance, which is also sth to bear in mind when adding checks and monitors.

Again, I'm not trying to convince anyone that your suggestions are wrong. Do keep them coming, we are reading along and taking note of interesting ideas.
I mainly wrote this down to let you guys know that we do discuss these things and already brought some of your suggestions to the table, and what some of the concerns were the devs had towards them.

 

You're right, system is far from perfect. It has it's drawback
As stated here, no automated system will ever be perfect with any technology we have today.
It's just a matter of finding the right balance so player get not too frustrated by the experience. And according to the relativ succes of online racing in ACC this system seems to have a point to look at.

Current system doesn't prevent this behavior either. If someone want to wreck you he will do it, regardless, only it will be DQ faster that's all, but someone race will be ruined whatever.
Again: It's about finding the right balance. If you are given 4 points for a contact, and only retrieve 2 after 2-3 clean laps you don't get much more strikes opportunities in a 15min sprint race. But you'll give a little breeze for those who had bad firsts laps.

I really think we must think REWARD vs PUNISHEMENT.

Pure punishment NEVER work for education, and never prevent bad behavior (talking in general, not only in sim racing).
The current R3E system only work with punishment in mind: getting incident point, too much and your DQ. You have no way to show good behavior to the game and get reward for it during a race. Only you get a Rep rating modulation after the fact that may prevent you to access the server next time. But you can style go back to rookies server, gain back some Rep ... and return to a 80+ Rep server to do any mayhem you want...

I really do think players need some reward during a race for clean racing.. That's why I think ACC SA has a good point: each lap you can see your SA going up or down, it's not only getting "bad points" during the race.

Well.. this is a pretty edge case scenario
ASAIK, never goe to see (in game) 2 cars staying close together after a crash/spin, at least not as close as they can be while driving both on the track on the same direction . It would be a nice ballet to look at
Even so: you don't need to add a lot of comput power to check this very very very very rare possibility. Netcode should already know and check car relative distance and speed at any time , it's a matter of using this values. The math is already done by the incident point system

 

I agree wholeheartedly. But a lot of the complaints we see are in regard to wreckers, people who just don't care or ram others intentionally. And I'm not sure there's a way to educate those players because they don't want to get better. They draw their fun from making others miserable and they couldn't care less about points and ratings.

I think this is also the main reason we don't have sth like you suggested here:

Wreckers aren't necessarily bad drivers and they generally take many hurdles to do what they want to do. So imposing this requirement will most likely not deter the majority of wreckers, for them it'd be just another hurdle to jump before they can troll others.
You say ACC has this system so my question is: Are there less wreckers/trolls in ACC? Does ACC's system actually improve the quality of races? I've read quite a number of comments regarding wrecking in ACC, so I'm not sure their system achieves it's only goal.

It absolutely is an unlikely scenario. But unlikely doesn't mean impossible so any automated system has to cover these cases. And while part of the data needed for all the checks is indeed already there, it still has to be monitored and analysed in the background while all the other calculations have to be carried out still.
Once again, I'm not saying it's impossible but merely pointing out possible problems from the dev's pov.