Ladies and Gentlemen, and the rest.

Public server racing has lost a lot from it's reputation in the past time. There is a quite big difference between the fast and even the average drivers. I'm quite fed up with the fact that I can't really have good races on public, cause of the pace of the usual day grid. No offense or anything, but I'm sure that many of you faster people feel the same. You get on a server, win the first race from last position, then it's racing alone until someone crashes you off the lead. I don't want to be speed racist or what, but I think you know what I mean. It's also annoying when you can only have good races in bigger leagues with their strict rules, and no real daily good racing.

If the above stated fits you, let me share my idea with you guys.

As most of you know, there was the CTRA. Which wasn't bad, many fast people raced there, had some nice crasher report system and stuff, but it is dead now.

My idea is to bring back high level daily racing, in the following format:

There gonna be a public server, which everyone can use, and race on. There also gonna be another one, but private (doesn't really have to be private, will talk about this later on). So, my idea is to gather all the fast people on one server. How would I do this? On both server there will be an insim app running. It's not final yet what role it would have, just manage the races, or sorting the racers. It would be hard to use a program for picking the fast people, because there are many variables. You just can't pick someone with the most fastest laps, or most wins etc. Also, If 2 fast ppl fight with each other, they gonna be a lot slower from wr, so thats not a good take-off point. Either it will be done manually, or with some really well written, and thought over insim application, we will think it over. (so only those people could join the other server, who are allowed by insim)

So there would be public, and a public/private for the fast guys, giving them the chance to have close, but at the same time fun racing. Since we don't know all the fast racers, at first we gonna add the ones we know from LFSW, and as I said, the well known ones. The rest could qualify weekly on the public server. We are not sure yet in what format, and it really depends on the insim we will have, but on every wekend the 'unknown' or lets say not so known drivers will have their chance to join the elite club.

We just started the project, and I want to hear your opinion guys. I hope you understand the whole idea. So basically one would be a public, and the other would be a server with the 'fast filter' on.
We are also waiting for ideas if you guys like it, how to run them servers and stuff, but thats the near future..

How does it sound? :P

We had the same feeling like you. Your described way is the way the TDRT Public Endurance Server is managed.
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=59979
Check it out some day.

Quote from R.Kolz :

We had the same feeling like you. Your described way is the way the TDRT Public Endurance Server is managed.
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=59979
Check it out some day.

Yeah, but thats endurance racing. I was talking about CTRA, or now LR Race Center like race system. Shorter races, fast rotation etc.

Awesomeness.

reverse starting grid.more fun to see how many cars the fast guys can pass, and to see if the slow guys can stay ahead.....hotlapping sux

Quote from z-ro 8 :

reverse starting grid.more fun to see how many cars the fast guys can pass, and to see if the slow guys can stay ahead.....hotlapping sux

Theres no fun in overtaking poeple who are secs slower than you. It's just pointless.

its a good idea theoricaly and from my point of view the problem is that in fully public server you have 1k potencal players and getting 20 online, so how much you players you have when there will be 100 potential players, there will be low chanches that they will meet in the server, but i would like to see what will happen to this idea. Good luck

I've thought about similar things for quite a while.. Sry to say but your application/idea might be a bit too "racist" There is an argument to be made about how will slower/mid level people progress if you just make them race against their peers and no faster people..

I know I've stalled in progress for the first 6 months until I got to be in team and drive MoE, further progress was made later in better teams (cyber and mercury).. The idea of CTRA was also kinda crap because if you only did enough km and races you would eventually get to a platinum license and be able to drive anything, and the sort of people I've met on the CTRA GTR server were just.. undiserving, they would sping a GT2 FXR in an almost straight line, they didn't have the meaning of blue flags (waved) down or any kind of common sense. I used to have such crashes there I'd lose my mind.. I start a race, get a lead, lead for 10 laps (on endu days) and on lap 11 some nub would join the race in a XFR and he would see no point in getting out of my way and the racing line becuase we were in "different classes"? Yes, but ur 10 laps down.. and then he'd actually try and argue about that with me..

Also, CTRA lacked the option of advancing fast people.. if you never drove CTRA (which many of the fast people didn't, like Sracer and some others) because it did feature a typical sort ot "talent".. if you wanted to race some of your team mates and didn't have a "license" you would have to waste weeks getting to it.

My idea was to have a governing body inside the LFS community, like the FIA is in real life. Now, I don't neccesarily mean exactly like FIA, because they stick their noses where they don't belong too often. But have someone who will issue licenses to drivers. This would be done ONLY manually (no insim no nothing) and I guess there'd have to be a web based database that would hold all the license information (like CTRA website had about each of their drivers). Then anyone who runs a public racing server could decide if they want to participate in our licensing programme or not. If they want, they'd run the insim application that would check a particular license when that driver would join the server and kick them if they didn't have a high enough level license. But we wouldn't force this down anyone's throat.. if you don't want ur server to run this license system, fine, but we would also know if the server has one or not.. so anyone who wanted quality racing just wouldn't drive on non-licensed servers.

I guess if Vic/Scawen could add tags for "cruise" servers into LFS, a tag for some kind of a "licensing system" could be added easily too, so when you refresh your host list you can pick so that it only shows licensed servers.

About the licensing itself: I didn't really think about what kind of licenses there would be, but obviously some people who are good in open wheel cars suck in heavy road cars or racing gt cars, but licenses themselves wouldn't be based on raw speed. What I'd care about in a system like that is that everyone had a brain, i.e. if someone is lapping you - be fair and predictable, move out of the way. If you're joining mid-race to figure out your setup for the next restart - stay out of everyone's way. When racing do so with absolutley no contact or pushing and stick to basic rules about defending and overtaking: if you are parallel and have the inside, the line is yours - outside driver can't push you out of the way or force his way beside you. Same if you don't have an overlap or ur behind, you lift and let him take the line, there will be no destruction-derby driving and then saying "sorry" when ur in front. Defending is allowed once and to return to your line, etc.

If you are half a sec slower per lap, you can race, it's not a problem. Just be clean and follow the rules, there just isn't enough simiarly-fast drivers so we can all finish within 2 tenths of each other at any given combo/race.

Ofcourse, to skip through all the unnecesarry work: a few "admins" would be picked (consistng of good drivers) and a list of people who would get A-level licenses would be made. There is just no point in having (insert-fast-guy-nick) drive some combos only to be "licensed", we know who is fast and who can race, licensing system would be there to avoid people who crash on public servers and don't know basic rules about racing. Also, if you go through the trouble of having urself licensed and read some of the material that will be prepared and go through the actual tests.. chances are you're not gonna wanna screw up intentionally and lose ur license.

Yeah, the root of the whole idea was what you wrote scipy. It would be all about the licensing system, to have them drivers inside a certain % of each others laptime, and not to have clueless NFS racers spinning around. Most problems are caused by the really slow ones. I don't want to gather only the WR pace drivers, just the fast and clean ones.

It's simple, and easy to make. The question is that how popular would it be?

Well I think your idea of having only one or two servers is flawed.. I for sure wouldn't drive more than once a month in some XRG/XFG server or FBM/FOX on combo's like SO6R or whatnot.. This is why it'd be great if a licensing system would be outside the server and then any server can pick it up.. so if I want to do endu races on thursday on TDRT server or do some FBM on a decent track the other day, I could choose for myself and not be forced into some track rotiations that I don't wanna drive.

Your way would just force everyone who wanted clean racing into a single server, not taking into consideration what they actually want to drive. It could work, but I doubt it. On the other hand, having more servers populated by good drivers who prefere their specific class of car would be uber.

Quote from RevengeR :

Theres no fun in overtaking poeple who are secs slower than you. It's just pointless.

ok so tell me the point of the fastest guy starting on pole then just leaving everyone behind. isn't that what yer trying to get away from? short races without a forced pit aren't races for the fast guys, just hotlap sessions.it's supposed to be RACING, not follow-the-leader....just my opinion...btw, AKM servers already made you put in a minimum lap time on one server before you could move to the next, where the fast guys were.....

Erm, he argued the same point? Did you even read his post? He isn't saying he wants a clean track in front of him and to do some hotlaps, he just doens't see a point in racing people who are classes beneath him. i.e. he wants faster people on the server, and it's your problem if you can't keep up or the leader looks as if he's hotlapping.. improve and catch up.

I wasn't thinking about a fixed car class or anything, it could vary. Or multiple servers with different classes are also a good idea.

+1 to Spicy's thoughts he sums it up very well, and explains the short comings of past systems. I'd almost have to think for such a "universal" system to take hold though that it would have to be endorsed and supported by the dev's or at least be seen to be non team owned but rather community owned in some way...

guess I misunderstood what you are looking for.....good luck anyways ;-p

oh FFS, this is the 2nd time today someone in the forums called me SPICY. stop et.

Quote from scipy :

oh FFS, this is the 2nd time today someone in the forums called me SPICY. stop et.

With those flames, you just can't say scipy

I like the idea alot. I hated the fact that I was MUCH quicker than other racers who had higher licenses in CTRA but wasn't allowed to race the cars I liked because I wouldn't spend weeks/months driving the XFG/XRG. You would earn licenses by racing alot, not by being good.

The easiest way to admin this would be to check if someone had at least 1 time within 101% of any WR (except Oval).

I rekon you have some very good ideas there, it would be good if you got it going