In many virtual racing games there is always an issue about reckless driving.
I think there is a way to make a system to reward a driver who drives safer and penalize a driver who drives without a sense of responsibility.
For an example, limiting drivers who have certain crashes per race to join a popular race server or giving black marks to their LFS license.
Of course there could be innocent drivers who is involved in the crash but in the bigger picture, I believe most of the racers would be more cautious about contacts in racing.
The best way to reward safe driving is make the sim more realistic (better damage modeling, dynamic track conditions, racing line, better tyre modeling in regard to wear and damage due to misuse, etc)
Considering the recent wave of cretins with 25BP in their pockets, I'm afraid that wont cut it.
However, I don't think a system against it will cut it either as those people simply don't care.
I think, LFS has the means to control (to kick, ban, restrict entance), but mostly lacks a feedback mechanism. Somebody can ban you at any time, but few people know if you are a good person or a sh**hog, and you need to misbehave VERY MUCH (and in the same hosts) to really get a bad reputation. That's why we often see the desperate complaints on wreckers in the main forum.
Two things should be done to get a reasonable improvement:
1. Support of teams and associations (of teams) in LFS code (so that team and association membership would be accessible in-game). This would let drivers or teams unite in associations like CRC. LFS should also support entrance restrictions by team and association membership. Being a member of an association with a good reputation can guarantee to others that your intentions are good (This also means that a good association will need to care of their members behaviour and perform clean-ups).
This is better than team tags in names (which can be faked) and an additional restriction mechanism.
2. A CTRA-like mechanism to submit reports to host admin, to the driver's team and association. This is the feedback that LFS lack so far.
This way
- bad behaviour doesn't make you famous
- you don't need to score 100 points daily to have good reputation, just become a member of an association individually or via your team
- only those who care of the order will be in charge of it
- any bad behaviour (including report spamming) is seen by people, so violating a voting mechanism is impossible
- reputation is saved in the good name of a team/association
- there can be several levels of coordination: team, association of teams and inter-association coordination (This means that team is in responsible for a particular person and makes decisions on him/her, an association takes responsibility for teams, and their leaders decide between them which association is good or bad)
Technically few should be done:
1) showing team membership in-game
2) probably association membership
3) reporting mechanism (just select a driver, race and write a complaint, the message goes to host admin and team)
So, not many "artificial" things to do, the most job will be done by racers and admins.
While a proper damage model is under development we could have a simple but more punishing model. The current model could remain basically the same except when you exceed a certain number of g's - your car is totalled and won't start. I think this kind of model would encourage more careful driving.
I hope that once we have a better damage model, bad driving will be punished simply by people getting bad results.
However, I still think a reputation system like forums or Xbox Live has would be good.
You have a good race with someone, you vote them up. You have a bad experience with someone, you vote them down. Servers can be set up to automatically block people with a repuation above or below a certain level.
A system like that would discourage people from doing moronic stuff simply on the basis that they couldn't be sure that any negative vote would end up getting them banned.
Also, because it is one vote per-player per-person means it can't be easily abused. You would need access to multiple accounts (or the ability to persuade people to vote) to get someone banned by yourself.
Two words: radiator damage. It'll transform online play and imho should be the top priority to be introduced.
Sounds like a bad idea to me, as any such system could be open to abuse. We already have/had retards racing each other constantly over 2 laps on the oval to be at the top of the LFSW statistics. Far better to let the physics and reality of the simulation sort the good guys from the bad.
