But thats the whole problem with it, the way it looks to be set up now is you must become as skilled and fast as a platinum driver before you start earning points to the next level license/server. When in fact you should only have to become as fast and skilled as a silver license driver while you earn points to race on the silver server. Then on silver you become as fast and skilled as gold, and so on and so on. Its called progression.
See Becky as done what all game devs do, created content that must be unlocked by some form of leveling (nothing wrong with that). And gamers will do what gamers do, find the fastest way to unlock said content. This, in my opinion, will lead to a hotlap mentality to gain points as fast as possible (all points are now heavily based on 1 lap time if the posts in these thread are to be believed), but will do nothing to promote good race craft and clean racing. Will see I guess.
Would be sort of interesting to know how much of a difference it makes whether you finish first with a lap time of 106% of the CTRA lap record or with a lap time of 100.1%.
Well that's rubbish. I'm silver-licensed and nowhere near the quick guys, and yet I score points in every race that I don't make a complete mess of. So to me the system looks quite well-balanced - you don't score many points until you're about ready to advance to the next tier, which is how it should work.
If you'd spent any time on the servers you would have found that the quality of racing is actually rather good. Sure, full grids into a tight T1 will still lead to a fair bit of barging for position, but that's unavoidable. What you'll also see is faster drivers stuck in your mirrors for several laps if they can't find a clean way past - which you won't see on many public servers. You'll also see people lifting to avoid pile-ups, not using other cars as brakes, not cutting the track to gain time, not turning in on overtaking cars, etc. And if you do see any bad behaviour you can report it and the offending driver gets a slap on the wrist.
Fast-tracking your way through the license stages by hotlapping and barging anybody who gets in your way won't be any use when you get all your points stripped for driving like a dickhead, so the system shouldn't promote bad habits as you say it will.
106% is a wide margin. On the shortest circuits - say, a 50 second lap - 106% would be a 53 second lap. If you can't hit those sort of times you won't be competitive on the later servers.
Leadtail's post brings to light something. for the 106% of the record lap for points, is that the record lap of a Copper/Bronze licensed user, or just the general record lap of anyone who happens to make it on the server? As Leadtail eludes to, you should be competing on the Copper/Bronze server against a relevant time to a Copper/Bronze record, not a Platinum/Titanium record time. I am thinking the server record is just the record of all server users, rather than the particular class the server is for. Copper/Bronze racers shouldn't be expected really to be close to WR times since it is indeed the "beginer" license.
Perhaps the 106% will make much more sense if it was based on the record of the particular server's licensing required user. This goes the same for all the servers.
Though, thinking more, this doesn't really work well either because there could be WR holders or other long time veterans whom have never driven the CTRA servers, thus, they are not exactly beginners in LFS. So, just some more thoughts on it here.....
Edit: Well, first off, they posted a few posts while I typed this, and I guess what I say here in the first part of my post, is exactly what Leadtail says. I am reading stuff quite rapidly as I'm at work and didn't really catch his post. Just remembered something from it and posted this..... But it still stands that points in a beginner's server should not be based on laptimes of someone 3 tiers up from the beginners...
It's 106% of the track's fastest lap, on all servers, with that particular and specific layout (if any). NOT the WR, either.
106% is as wide as it needs to be, I think. The lap records could just as easily be set by a Bronze driver as any other. In point of fact, they have been, many times.
Is it just me or are there more higher level racers on the lower servers now? I just don't remember it being like this before the switch over. Is this a taste of things to come or just growing pains? My main reason for wanting to get my silver licence was to move out of the T1 crashing. I'm not the fastest by far, but I'm fair and love racing against other fair racers even if they are faster.
This is still the best racing to be had on LFS!
I was on CTRA race 1 just now, and the winner (a Platinum racer) got 18 points, second was something like 6. Then after 6th place everyone got 0 points, which is fair enough. But in 14th and 15th were a Platinum and Silver racer, who got 2 and 1 points respectively. Plus their fastest laps were some 6 seconds off the winner's fastest lap. Is this a malfunction?
In the old system those could not get those points if i remember correct. Once you had a license you could race on "lower" servers, but more for fun then points.