Maybe the dev's could introduce a serveroption, which only allows players who reached laptimes within a specific percentage of the actual wr. Like the leagues do.
Then you can setup server for the experienced racer, but also open server for newcomers
The thing that people seem to be missing is that most genuine newbies practice offline anyway. There are a lot of us newbies out there capable of taking the faster cars round a track online without crashing into someone and obeying certain racing rules. Why should myself and others be forced into taking lessons when the option is there for us to learn offline and under our own supervision. Lets be blunt here, games where you constantly have to jump through hoops and complete tasks with pin point accuracey before you can play properly are shit.
Another thing is its becoming a little insulting to see we are all being treated as 'noobs and wreckers'. Like i said in my other post its ashame that the more of these posts i read the more i can see there is an element of "them and us" "experienced vs inexperienced". I am beginning to wonder wether i should of taken note of Steve Wand's review afterall. I am sure if he is still reading this and other posts like it he has a smug grin on his face right now.
Another thing is i just cannot beleive that all the pro's out there started playing like Pro's as soon as they plugged the wheel in. Surely you all started off and worked your way up and surely you all crashed a few times by accident. I wish i had £1 for everytime i have seen crashes at turn 1 and elswhere in car racing caused by drivers making mistakes or loosing their heads, or am i watching different races to everyone else ?
On a final note you all harp on about realism in LFS but your not prepared to accept that genuine accidents will happen in races ? we are not all robots and forcing people to take tests to play the game online will not prevent accidents. All it will mean is new people will not be prepared to buy the game and new developments will slow down or stop due to lack of funds.
Just permanently ban the real ars* holes, stop being nice to them and giving them chances because they sware on mommy's life they will change. Then leave the rest of us genuine newbies to get on quietly and learn the game ourselves.
Ditto... well almost....
The problem I have with this idea for testing, is that it is a driving test.
People would either do as looney said or if you did a timed thinge with penalizing cones and whatnot, the disturbed types would only race that much more aggresive and wreckless and sooner or later they will pass that test anyways and will still drive like that even more because that's what they did to pass the test in the first place.
Either that or to make it hard enough to be effective, it would limit the game to just people like Vykos and Flotch being able to play
What about a written exam? Don't you have to take a written exam to drive
a race car? You do for a driver's license.
One hundred questions - 90% or better to pass. One hundred questions? I can't come up with that many, but it'd have to be a lot of questions.
If not, people would still be able to cheat by writing the answers on their arms before they took the test
I'll say it slowly one last time. The tests should be designed to seperate the wreckers from the genuine newbies, not the pro's from the beginners. Happy?
Ok, the following responce is from the CRC Co-Director Stoney and the Staff Co-Ordinator Rogue...
Firstly may I re-state that in June 2005, the CRC changed hands, everything that was old has gone, we are a totally new organistation with different targets etc... We re-opened on the 24th July 2005 and we have been operating strongly ever since.
I remember you suggesting the idea etc, at the time we had the resources to build the websites etc that would have been needed, and I have always been a supporter of this Guaranteed slot idea. Yes when we initially polled on it the idea did sink, but I think with a little more research it could be done.
The CRC is here to provide a clean place for people to race, we have one private server and two public ones. One is on a testing deal, we get the server free as long as there are people using it. At this time, we cannot risk this server not being used, and so we are keeping it public. The other 23 man server will be used for events etc, so sometimes this will be public, sometimes private. And we do have a private server. I am not willing to go into much more detail in public regarding our servers... What I will say is this.. If the community thinks the CRC is not doing its job, come to the website, register and tell us what we should be doing, tell us that this that and the other is wrong, come and show us how to do it... I cannot afford to rent servers at this time. If there is some kind soul that wants to donate, please, please do so, its not for us personally, its for the community.
Yes, as mentioned, we are in a situation where we are providing one Private server 24/7. We are also placing more admins into the servers when possible, mainly at busy times. There is nothin more we can do about this at this time until we get some new staff that dont mind the hard work that is running the CRC.
I think this is wrong, there are plenty of Clean Dedicated racers out there, just getting them all online at the same time is the problem.
But with the introduction of the CRC Challenge Cup, and more organised events from the CRC, we are doing what we can on the limited budget (nothing) with the few members of dedicated staff we now have.
Getting back to the main topic of this thread, Driving tests... A Driving School was something that was always thought about in the old CRC Days, so the idea is nothing new. We are launching soon, there will be driving lessons ranging from the basic skills up to racing skills and real Driving Tests....
I understand you guys want this now, we will be launched at the end of this week. Thanks for your support.
Yeah, your right. it does seem that way. it also seems to be a knee jerk reaction to something that IMO is working itself out on it's own. There aren't nearly as many wreckers and morons as there was right after the release.
I mean it's still happening, but not as bad.
But also Tim, You got to understand. All the people that started LFS after S-2 got all the cars... boom right there. The "elitists" lol we
had to wait like two years or more to be able to play with those cars. we could've took whatever test and it wouldn't have mattered. So yeah, when I stopped and thought about it, it kinda irritates me :P
And with everyone else, I imagine it's like Finally! something FAST! and their skills were finally honed down enough to be able to use the newer, faster cars
they way they were intended. They get in a gtr race on the new track, after MONTHS of waiting. But wait! little Johnny with ADD is there. His parents finally made that BIG FIRST TIME INTERNET purchase. They got johnny LFS as an alternative to counterstrilke at the recommendation of his Psycologist.
So yeah, those "elitists" they're gonna be a little pissed
Another thing Tim, how do you feel about races with more restarts than laps?
You're right alot of those accidents were just that. Accidents. But come on,
it's still a pain. What if there was a way to minimize them?
One last thing. Bringing up that God forsaken article or the blasphemous
author that wrote it is considered Heresy. Don't do that plz
I was not trying to criticise the CRC, just wanted to point out that if you guys can't keep private servers full, maybe a pay server wasn't a usable solution. But if the CRC cannot afford to own private servers, then maybe the pay-to-play server idea is something that would work?
There do seem to be plenty of serious racers, just not when they go online without prior organization. Events are great, but i'm willing to bet that many of us generally have to go for pick-up games when we have time. Personally, between work and family, I'm lucky if i get an hour late at night to do some racing, so I look for the best server then.
Of course, I don't know if things are worse other places and i've been lucky, or maybe i'm too oblivious to notice, but while there are few servers with people around during my time to race (US West Coast, usually 10-mighnight), I have had very good experiences online. There's almost always an AS National GTR race going with 5-10 people and aside from mistakes, everyone seems to be driving cleanly. Maybe i'm the noob that this thread is about -- nobody's complained to me, but I am usually the slow guy
I thought I'd add a few things to what Stoney has already mentioned. The new CRC opened not long ago and in my opinion has accomplished quite a lot, however with a limited number of staff that have done so much work and continue to do so everyday. Also due to the lack of staff we also have the problem of not being able to man the servers 24/7 which causes the noob effect at times. I have to say that there are a hell of a lot of good clean racers out there but it only takes one bad egg to spoil a race. At the moment CRC is advertising positions on the admin team so if you have any website skills or just think you can bring something to CRC that we are missing then please apply.
the idea of tests has some positive points. Not much, but some. First of all, I think that there is enough material on the internet which explains the basics of driving. That's how I did it when I started with GPL 6 years ago. And NO test will get rid of wreckers, as they may pass them easily and ruin the races anyway. And no 5 minute test can teach you what some people learn for months or years. I am no "world champion" and it took me a while to get used to the driving style needed to race a car. Yes, I know, practice offline, learn the stuff and then take a 5 min test, but then you have a question of, WHAT that test should be about to be able to really test your abilities. In the end, the LFS userbase would suffer as a lot of people would be discouraged by such system. And for sure nobody wants devs to have lower income just because of some general racing test right?
AFAIK, the only solution here is to join a decent league. In any league people are motivated to have a good race, naturally, mistakes happen as in any type of competition, but more/less everyone know what he/she is doing. Public servers are gonna be what they are - public. You will never know against whom you are gonna be driving. I still remember the old days of GPL, where everyone knew how to drive a race car, but still there was a wreck in T1 in almost every pickup race. But, nobody was raising the question of "lets have a test here", because in this case, it was about patience... And that cannot be "tested" so easily
In the end, may be I am wrong, but that is how I see this question of tests.
I shall say this slowly one last time too, maybe you should read other peoples contributions to this thread and now read mine properly.
Try and see it from the point of view of a newbie and imagine what it feels like to read some of the oppinions of the Pro's on newbies in this thread. The fact that we should all pass tests before we can join in is not very welcoming to newbies. Its also hard as a newbie not to feel slightly belittled when you read some of the posts in this thread. I also do not beleive people should have to pass tests to gain the full features of a game they have paid money for. I dont expect to pay £24 for a game that is predominantly played online only to find i have to pass tests to unlock the fast cars for online racing.
So what i have been trying to say all along is instead of making everyone's gaming experience harder with more tests just make the idiots gaming experience harder. Then accept that accidents will happen and people will crash newbies or pro's alike. Because from what it looks like people still think that all newbies are just another form of wrecker.
Look, I am genearlly glad to help a beginner with advice online if they are struggling and so on... but the point I'm trying to make is that there are newbies (beginners to racing who want to co-operate and learn to race properly as fast as possible) and idiots (people that want to ruin others' fun). Perhaps this should be implemented in the demo only then, as wreckers would be unable to pass tests and therefore be completely discouraged from ever buying the full version. The problem is that some newbies will see this as something against them and not agains the wreckers and be discouraged from buying the game too and this would have an impact on sales.
a test won't get rid of wreckers correct, and it will discourage some noobs, but to be honest it'll only discourage those who don't wish to progress with the game.
Iv'e NEVER said i didn't like noobs! in fact i'm still not all that far from noob status myself. BUT i've spent the bast part of 18 months playing this game and once you've done a couple of thousand miles you've seen the difference between a noob and a wanker, it's the wanker's with no respect, and no intelligence that we should be concentrating on.
if we develop an 'Us Vs Them' attitude then we'll only end up lonely online
oh and the test would be to get onto PRO or QUICK servers, you can still pay your £24 and drive all the cars and all the tracks, you just won't be allowed into a pro server until you have a professional attitude.
I personally don't care how fast you are, just if you're enjoyable company to drive with, THAT is the ONLY thing that matters IMHO
I made a suggestion back on RSC a while back, and I think it was somewhat regarded as a pretty decent idea for solving the wrecker problem:
I personally think that a racer's reputation should be recorded, the same way Personal Bests are. When you hit another car during a race, your reputation should drop (proportional to the amount of damage you caused).
I think the receiving end should have the option to forgive the incident, if it was indeed a genuine mistake (much like BattleField 2's team killing forgive/punish system). If the player chooses to punish, their reputation takes a hit.
When your rep drops below a certain point, you must race cleanly offline to regain your reputation.
Repeat offenders should be flagged and reviewed... if their rep drops enough times, it would make sense to revoke their license.
YES, there is a difference beatween new drivers, and new idiot drivers!!
I don't know why are you guys finding yourself offended?? As long as you are fair driver, and want to learn the game, and you are interested in driving/racing, then you know that we are not talking about you, but the IDIOTS, who park in the line, people who have blinking BLUE FLAG all over the screen, and yet they go into pushing with you, like he is first, and i am second?! People who drive in the wrong way, people who can't for 10 restarts, drive at least one race, NORMALY in the T1, people who don't look left, right, or behind.. that sort of people we are talking about..
That's a good idea there, Theafro, restrict access to certain servers and in order to gain access to them you have to spend all of 10 minutes of your (extremely valuable) life (*gasp*) to gain access to them. They should not be called PRO or QUICK IMHO because that would lead to people thinking that we are trying to seperate Professional drivers from beginners (which is not at all the point as many people have tried to explain). Perhaps CLEAN... or something like that...
i think it would be better if you do a test for one class, because for each car to do the lessons would be boring...
... because if you can drive the XFR it should not be a problem to learn the UFR, or take the LX6 and its class.
Firstly, who said anything about having to pass a test to unlock the faster cars? hmmm, this is not the point of this thread, most of us are simply saying that if Tests were provided, its more of a confidence thing to see that another driver has passed (to a cirtain level) a test that shows they are capable of driving a car on the limit without having to worry about losing it...Or something along those lines.
Second, I think the general driver reputation thing is a bad idea, it would seperate drivers and restrict the busy servers. It would put a lot of people out / off racing online and the community would become segrigated (sorry for the spelling)!!
Passing a lesson, or a test, to end up with a Licence to say that you are a good, safe, clean driver of that car (class) etc, is a good alternative. We are not saying that people should take these tests etc, but I think (normally), if a driver sees another driver with a CRC tag (for example), they might worry less about the chances of that driver taking them out...
Thats a somewhat personal view of things, sorry if it doesnt make much sense, not much does at 5.05AM!!
I did some 20 laps with FOX in single player before going online for the first time ever in S2, and although the first few races I had seen quite a share of blue flags, I did not cause havoc or be a pain in the *ss.
after 5 races I was able to get into the top 10 each race, and improved more and more. Don't see the need to play against AI in single player first before I get the option to race any car online.
GT4 has these license tests, but I must say that these are a pain in the *ss
you can't seperate a wrecker with a test - a wrecker like most of us use the word wrecks because he thinks it'S fun
so if someone wants to drive the wrong way, loves to take out all the cars trying to lap him and looks forward to full speed T1 crashing, there is no test in the world that will prevent him from doing so...
you can only separate good/experienced drivers from newcomers with a driving test - and you're putting off a large percentage of these newbies by that
you'll also turn off a lot of the newcomers from different sims liek GPL/GTR/rFactor/GP4/F1C... because a lot of people with a 3 or 4 year simracing career do not like forced tests to prove their ability to race online. they've proven it a thousand times with other sims
if i want tests, i go and buy GT4 - i bought S1 and then S2 when it came out, because i wanted an online racing sim and no offline driving test...
the possibility to make some host settings like the PB-percentage from the WR needed to join (offer the server host to chose a number between 100 and 120% or set it to 0% for no limit) would be a great way to filter - maybe another possibility would be to offer another host filter - like minimum distance driven in a certain car or on a certain track online
the driving tests from my point of view will make the game worse instead of better, if you force anyone to take them
if you want to teach racing rules, make a little screen after or before the account unlock in LfS where the basic rules (blue flag, yellow flag, some hints for turn 1 ...) will be shown and which stays on screen for forced 45 seconds - this could help much more than any test
so how would that work if you want to race a certain car/track combination for the first time so there is no pb for that combination in your lfsworld profile ?
youd get blocked by the server even though you either have practiced that combination until you got within a few seconds of the wr time or you know that track and that car in and out but you just didnt have time to combine that knowledge yet
look at the number of servers with absolutely no filters at all - around 50% of the servers right now accept all cars - those are the servers, where all is allowed and the host didn't take time or didn't want to think about any filters. and he probably won't do that in the future
and there's still the option to host a game for one or two laps to get your first lap online - or in other words, to qualify for a server with required PB
but those are the kind of servers that newbies with common sense (ie the ones you want to seperate from the wreckes) will avoid anyway ...
so newbies that want do drive clean and experienced drivers that either have a sim background other than lfs or that havent raced that combination online yet will have to jump through hoops just to get that good clean race they deserve ?
and what would happen if the track changed or the driver switches to another car that he hasnt raced on that track yet ? autokick ?
Err dude, Open up lfs and tell me if you need to pass a test to access the faster car? No...Didnt think so, which is why I posted what I did...I may have been tired, but not stupid.
The point I was making was that unlike some other games, you dont HAVE to do a test to drive a faster car, we just wanted to provide the option to.
? we are not all robots and forcing people to take tests to play the game online will not prevent accidents. All it will mean is new people will not be prepared to buy the game and new developments will slow down or stop due to lack of funds. 
