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

IIrc we tried private qualifyings (where you drive on your own and start driving at the LB spawn point) in ranked servers but most people disliked it and preferred not being alone during practice/quali.
Difficult to decide which way to go, I can understand both opinions...

 

Personally I'm glad you didn't take that route. I believe that is what online multiplayer is meant for. Experiencing with others. I find quali sessions to be more interesting if looking for space on track is involved, that also creates emotions

There's a huge variety of competitions and leaderboard challenges if I feel like comparing my best laptimes to others.

 

"No outlap" and "Private qualification" is not the same, though. An issue with cars spawning in front of you would need to be solved, but it's doable. The most straightforward but maybe least elegant solution is spawn ghosted and unghost when the car crosses the start-finish line.

I'm not advocating for "no outlap", it's just a thought.

 

i dont mind a tactical qualify. some may qualify a lot faster than others but if they happen to get stuck in traffic it can change things up a bit. luck is worth a lot in racing...

 

All or nothing is my motto. Wait in pitlane a minute or so and then out for one single flying lap. Sometimes you win, sometimes you loose, at least there is no other in front of me blocking. So any fault is on my own.

 

That's my strategy. Waiting for the pack to do 2/3 of the out-lap. Often it give good opportunity for clean laps. But you'll have less time so only one or 2 hot lap max. No error allowed
Only an issue on short tracks, when the server is full with 30 cars you may not have a clean line whenever you start.

TBH, I don't mind this, it's part of the sport, dealing with traffic.
But still, no pit lane limit ?.. during quali if you're going of track even by a little bit (or if you tank it in the gravel) you get incident points, but nothing for the pit lane limit ? It's a little bit paradoxal.

 

I think there's practical reasons behind this.

In practice and qualifying sessions you don't really have to drive to your garage when you want to return to the pits. You can just hold ESC and warp back. If the limit was enabled pretty much everybody would circumvent it by warping back (which most people do anyway).

And when leaving the pit lane the distance you would have to travel at limited speed varies a lot depending on which garage you get assigned randomly. So I guess it's also a bit of a concession towards those who are "unlucky" and get one of the spots in the back, which would mean they'd have to spend a much longer time to get on the track than those lucky ones in the first spots. If the practice/quali session is short enough you might even struggle to put in more than one timed lap.

 

Well, beside the "practical" reason, I think more about the mindset and what you want the game to be: Something that simulate motorsport with the rules that come from or something like Mario Kart with it's own rules ?

I do think that allowing to speed in the pit lane doesn't show players a good direction.
It's the first thing you have to do when you take the car out of the box, by forcing drivers to respect this single rule you immediately make a point: there are rules and you'll need to follow them.
Other game do make you respect pit limit during practice and Quali (most of the time), I don't see a reason why it should not be the case in R3E.
It's not about the "press ESC to come back" or getting your spot for a clean hot lap in quali (if you can drive a car you should have the brain capacity to know how long it take you to drive through the pit lane regarding your box place), it's more about why this rule is not here when other are (getting incident points when you spin alone during a Quali ?).

Moreover: with no pit limit you often get in weird situation at the pit exit with car coming at very different speeds, crashing into each other because as soon as the line is crossed you're not ghosted anymore. Or joining the car relentlessly, not taking care about car coming behind them.
At least a mandatory pit limiter would avoid this pit lane exit mayhem.

 

If you want to simulate motorsport then a mandatory pit limiter isnt the way to go either. Theres nothing stopping you from going through the pit lane at 300 kph but youll only do it once before losing your licence . Banning players from the ranked servers for speeding in the pit lane (which in game doesnt endanger anybodys health and except for the pit lane exit problem doesnt even result in other cars being damaged) seems a bit extreme tho. Handing out incident points would be a little sign of hey youre not supposed to do this but when it comes down to it a couple incident points in quali that dont affect your reputation vs potentially qualifying worse, getting stuck in mid field battles in the race, collecting plenty of incident points and losing rating and reputation is quite an easy choice if youre generally willing to sacrifice the immersion aspect for those few seconds in quali so i dont really see what could be done about it (other than quali without others on track but in terms of realism thats far from great as well)

 

Except for those who have a DD wheel, simracing will neither endanger anybody health .. but we still have rules for trying to keep it "safe".
And I don't think being far from the Truth when I say that what most of us are looking at in a sim-racing game is having a experience as close as possible to real racing when it come to race an event.

Meanwhile: nobody's talking about DQ someone for speeding in pit lane
And as a matter of fact, there's other solution than incident points or DQ. You can give player a qualification penalty for this: 5 places on the grid => speeding in pit lane affecting your race, I think it's a good enough incentive for not doing it (of course those who don't care would still don't care, but we're not talking about the idiots)

 

I don´t think we need any more penalties. Is this driving school simulator?

 

Speeding in pitlane = 1 week ban.

Moaning about non blame incident system on forums as if it's never been mentioned before = 1 week ban

 

I would prefer incident points for speeding in pitlane. As close to realism as possible...

 

A drive through is enough punishment, no need for double jeopardy.

 

I suppose thatd be a decent solution but i have no idea whether something like a grid penalty is possible at the moment and if it isnt how much work implementing it would be. If its a good bit of work then its too far down on my priority list to be worth pursuing

 

If you have grid penalties for speeding then you will need them for blocking other players on hot laps or not respecting blue flags and in the end it becomes Euro Truck or Bus simulator where following endless rules is the gameplay.

Personally, I find following pre race and post race protocols such as warm ups and cool down laps very tedious and not at all immersive. It´s like having assembly or parade before class at school- gives some people who are no good at the actual subjects something to do.

That stuff can be perfectly well handled in single player mode if need be - the whole point of multiplayer is surely to compete in actual races against real opponents using skill, tactics and strategy. I never understand all these servers with 3h practice sessions for a 5 minute race but surely I missed the memo on that.

 

Talking 'bout Quali.

 

Points don´t count for anything in qualifying, though. At worst you get kicked and lose your times but can rejoin again.

 

That's dumb me old mate, allowing the poor souls who get a bum garage spot the ability to speed just creates a traffic jam, would it not be better to just make sure people get random garage spots rather than placed in the order of entry to the server? I'm sorry but speeding in a pit lane just seems plain wrong, plus you're penalizing the law abiding and helping the rule breakers. There is a sign with a pit speed limit written on it but we don't have to adhere to it, that's not how motorsport works, there are rules we all follow, else you are omitted, straight forward, something we all understand and can all follow. IMHO not having a limit at all times is just starting each session off with ill will, so annoying having someone power past and nick your spot and as I've said before, if you slow up to make space, someone else over takes, all this because there is no control speed, it's not supposed to be a guessing game, my technical and strategy teams are struggling with the chaos!

 

I don't disagree with anything you said.

This is also true, but in real life motorsports you don't (have/get to) do 10 minute qualifying sessions. Like I said, it is my take on why this is handled the way it is. Especially in ranked servers people don't want to spend too much time in practice and quali sessions, many users complained about it when we had longer p/q sessions.
So in my mind it's a concession, to make these servers as attractive (un-boring if you will) as possible while allowing everyone to do at least 1 or 2 timed laps.