Like everyone here, I find myself extremely frustrated racing on-line. What should be amazing turns out to be awful all too often. Typically I’m in R class racing a host of miss matched vehicles but that’s another story. I think I have some really good ideas on how we can improve on-line game play for all classes so the driving experience matches the reality the game is trying to create with the cars and tracks themselves. These aren’t huge development dollars and should be reasonably easy to implement.
Suggestions:
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All cars, no matter what view, have access to a rear view mirror. The recent upgrade is a patch but not in keeping with a realistic experience.
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Create a post race drivers report to include recognition for:
*Best finish in division
*Most passes
*Most collisions
*Most clean laps
*Most laps led
*others I may have missed germane to critical racing stats, this would be easy and interesting and create a ‘race within the race’. -
Black flags - Again, in real racing (GT) if you are part of preventable accidents you get black flagged. Two high-speed collisions and you go dead stick to the pits and can’t quit the game until the game ends. If we want realism this is it. Clean up the racing. Very few people would want to be black flag before even getting to turn one. In addition, the algorithms can be smart enough to recognize high speed versus low-speed contact which is mostly fine.
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Driver ranking versus experience points. You shouldn’t be a level 4, jump in a Bugatti and race R class only to smash into every driver along the way. There should be some kind of earned ability to race in faster classes. It doesn’t have to be onerous but fair to the capable drivers already in those lobbies.
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Make voting to kick players easier to find so people who trash the experience can be rewarded properly.
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Have a few servers dedicated to ‘collision on’ racing so players can opt into more realistic racing if desired.
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Standing water is awful and not realistic game play, rain mode is fine, standing water has to go…
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Balance the R Class GT cars, the Corvette shouldn’t be slow, the Aston and GTR shouldn’t dominate that’s not realistic in anyway, there’s a ton of great GT3 cars nobody uses because of BOP issues. Why create all these great cars that no one uses?
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Give Hyper cars their own classification and out of R class racing.
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I don’t have a tenth suggestion other than to say, it wouldn’t take that much effort on Turn 10’s part to clean up the on-line experience. For all the investment in realism, to throw the on-line segment to the wolves makes no sense. No other game frustrates on-line users quite like this one does, indeed, no other game has people quite as dedicated to the sport both in real world and on-line applications. It’s my great hope that the game can realize it’s true potential by implementing some simple standards that will compel drivers to race with more respect for others and recognize more acheivements through the race. In the end this makes for better racers.