Multiplayer Features in Assetto Corsa 2

[BrightCandle]

Multiplayer is an extremely important part of any racing game today, its the reason iRacing has the dominant position it does and many of us would happily race Assetto Corsa in preference. I think getting this right is critical to a genuinely successful game that could knock iRacing off its positioning without adopting the obnoxious centralisation and pricing model. This is my proposal for what would make this a great experience in the AC modded way.

1. Racing Schedule
Alongside the basic server browser we should also have a racing schedule browser that exposes community run servers that themselves are defined with a schedule, so as a community owner want Skip Barber races every hour on certain tracks I should be able to setup that schedule and future scheduled races and have that exposed in a common way alongside other community servers doing the same thing. Uses mostly just see todays current races but could look at the week and next week and months out filtering on community as well as cars and tracks.

2. Event/league server browser
Finding active leagues and communities that do what you want is a big way in which people stay in games and I think this is one area AC2 could really excel compared to the centralised scheduled model of iRacing. Having this linked with the schedule browser so we can find the communty league races we find from their public scheduled or pickup races.

3. Stats
We need public safety and pacing tracked, I doubt we need more than that for splitting appropriately. Pace should start low but safety should start in good standing and drop on incidents. Its really hard to attribute blame but can we please do better than iRacing with offtracks avoiding obvious incidents and attributing more blame to the following car especially when they just punt a vehicle that braked in a reasonable window. Penalties and safety done well, better than currently and certainly better than AC would be a big boon to the game.

4. Wreckers
We need to be able to report intentional wrecks that are at least accumulated automatically so patterns can be determined and maybe algorithmic holidays granted on high report rates.

5. Server splits
Public community servers should be able to run multiple instances for splits, on different servers if need be and set pace/safety requirements for different splits as a minimum.

6. Mod downloading
This is going to be a big part of making this great in the way AC only does best, having servers server up content so that its easy to get going on a server will really benefit the game and its multiplayer. This likely requires more direct modding support than currently available in AC to accomodate not just content.

In essence we should be able to get pickup races, scheduled races and events/league races as well as community finding all in game. Modding gets enhanced with automatically downloads and races can have multiple server instances for splits and overspill alongside minimum driving standards.

 

[AccAkut]

I would go the complete other direction, and say that servers should have a lot more freedom and capability to control themselves and its users.
Like ability to change cars and tracks on the fly. Assign vehicles per player. Allow user votes on the track rotation, and those changes without anyone having to leave the server. Custom ranking system that unlock cars.

Some may notice that what i describe is pretty much what INSIM is for LFS (or, more recently, Wreckfest's online mode has some of these things too), which IMO still has the most easy to use and most versatile online mode I have ever seen. Admins could create full leaderboards and administration systems on the server itself, no need as a user to tab to the browser and enter credentials outside the sim. I remember a server once which had a Tetris game running on itself, just as a proof of concept.