Idea for multiplayer

[phutc]

I think a lot more people would be racing multiplayer if there were some sort of easy opt in. This is a couple of ideas I had:

1) While online or playing AMS 2 you can mark yourself available and mark all the cars and tracks you would like to race. Then at the top of every hour an algorithm would make the fewest number of races to cover the cars and tracks people want to drive (I'd say you need 10-20 participants to create an event). Everybody who wants to race then gets sent an invitation for at least one combination they selected. Hopefully this will lead to relatively few races with a lot of people in each event. Next you have a 15-20 minute qualifying on a busy track where you must complete 5 laps, the aim is to get a good lap time while keeping your nose clean. Players are then ranked in terms of speed and safety and put into a roughly 20 minute race. Repeat every hour.

2) Alternatively we have an iRacing light where the car and track combos are pre-decided by Reina each day/week like iRacing (e.g. Caterhams are at Brands hatch this week). Players register interested at the top of every hour the same qualifying race process occurs.

Maybe each series could have a proper best of the best 3 month season running, so the 20 best drivers in the ranking in the caterhams over the past 3 months are invited to the official series broadcast on youtube and compete to be overall champion over the next 3 months. i.e. all the hourly racing mentioned above is a way to earn points and the eventual invitation to European Caterham Championship which is only for the best 20 caterham drivers over past 3 months in the hourly races.

What do you guys think? Any other suggestions to get more competitive online racing? Also online racing with a sense of purpose over a longe period of time?

 

[Andy-R]

For me good old fashioned public server racing with a safety system just like Minorating can't be beat. Best way to do MP that I have found so far anyway.

 

[phutc]

I think I a ideal world you are right but at the moment it seems like a miracle to find a good multiplayer race. I've been looking for almost a month and have yet to find one. At the moment you might have one or two servers properly populated but you would be extremely lucky to have a desirable car track combo plus you have to come along just when it is starting.

I was just thinking about getting the races populated, to do this you have to take a little bit of choice out of it i.e. the exact time and exact car/track combo. This way you can concentrate the online population into a small number of events, everybody who registers interest would have an invite pop up. If you are getting 100s of people in a single event every hour you are almost guaranteed some good racing I think.


Maybe it could be as simple as Mondays are this type of car etc.

 

[UMC 22]

... it seems like a miracle to find a good multiplayer race.

I'm not sure that this is particularly surprising or representative since AMS 2 is still in very Early Access. A lot of people won't even be interested in buying the sim until it's finished, and the lack of a dedicated server app right now means hosting races is far from ideal. Once the game makes it to v1.0 and we have the ability to make dedi's, I'd expect the number of online players in this sim to skyrocket.

 

[Andy-R]

I think I a ideal world you are right but at the moment it seems like a miracle to find a good multiplayer race. I've been looking for almost a month and have yet to find one. At the moment you might have one or two servers properly populated but you would be extremely lucky to have a desirable car track combo plus you have to come along just when it is starting.

I was just thinking about getting the races populated, to do this you have to take a little bit of choice out of it i.e. the exact time and exact car/track combo. This way you can concentrate the online population into a small number of events, everybody who registers interest would have an invite pop up. If you are getting 100s of people in a single event every hour you are almost guaranteed some good racing I think.


Maybe it could be as simple as Mondays are this type of car etc.

I think it is a well thought out idea I'm looking at it as something like SRS vs Minorating A or A&B only servers (if you are familiar with Minorating and SRS.)

Personally I would rather race with say 5-10 guys that are fair and fun to race with over a packed server of unknown drivers. I never had a decent race on SRS (did about 30 races on there I guess) and the servers were normally packed but used to have 5 or more great races of an evening with Minorating. Dedicated servers would help so you can find or create a community server with regulars joining that you get to know and trust on track. Given the choice of nothing or what you are suggesting I would definitely take what you suggest but for me the best thing would be dedicated/persistent (not sure the correct phrase but 24/7 servers basically) servers and a safety rating that can be used to limit access to the server for people with x rating or above.

I totally agree we need something, I have been hosting practice sessions so far as it is the only thing that really works with the current MP IMO. The bugs dont really matter so much nor the collision issues or race start issues when in practice. Also wreckers arent really achieving much and havent seen one yet in the 10 or more practice sessions I've hosted. I have only joined one actual race and there was a wrecker in there luckily he was soo bad he missed every attempt at crashing into my car

 

[phutc]

@andy I'm not really familiar with Minorating but it sounds like it worked well and I'd love to see something like that, especially if it works! I suppose it doesn't really matter how you get to decent races as long as you get there.

As far as it being Early Access of course it's unfair to judge the product on the Multiplayer experience right now (and I really wasn't criticising) but what I would say is that at any one time now there around 50 players on multiplayer and probably 3x that number who would be if there were decent races. I suppose all I'm saying is I would like Reiza to do a bit of handholding by taking a bit of freedom away but forcing people together in fewer races with some kind of ranking. Hopefully they have got that planned but a vibrant online racing system is surely the golden ticket in these days of lockdown!