How much would you enjoy public multiplayer racing if races could never be ruined by rammers?
I’d like to explore gameplay design concepts for somehow eliminating all possibilty of ramming while keeping racecraft as a necessary factor for winning.
I don’t have any perfect solutions to suggest (I’m not a professional game designer),
so I’ll mention an imperfect idea (below) to serve as an example & discussion-starter.
I’m hoping if we put our minds together on this, we can refine & combine ideas into an acceptable & actionable approach for breaking the curse of ramming and restoring the art & joy of racing.
~~ Problem Statement ~~
Rammers have been the scourge of so many racing games.
This is a mass-market game/series/genre, and history has shown we can’t expect the masses to know or respect the rules & etiquette of motorsport.
We cannot rely on skill & goodwill among players for enjoyable racing,
and it’s all too easy & all too common for lack of skill and/or lack of sportsmanship to ruin races.
It saps the fun out of multiplayer racing when so much influence over so many race outcomes is in the hands of those with the least skill and/or the least sportsmanship.
~~ Historically Unsuccessful Deterrents ~~
Penalties alone cannot stop rammers from ruining races.
Rammers often don’t care about being penalized.
The knowledge/hope that everyone who rams me gets penalized does not make all my ruined races any more fun for me.
Matchmaking by safety ratings can be problematic.
More factors for filtering/limiting who can be matched results in longer wait times and/or more sparsely-populated lobbies.
When the matchmaking pool of available players gets especially low, the filters might be relaxed, resulting in habitually unsafe drivers being put into lobbies alongside safe drivers.
Plus, lumping all rammers with low safety ratings in lobbies with each other just reinforces their bad habits, and can also be an inescapable purgatory for those who want to improve but are perpetually stuck in ram-fest lobbies.
It’s also inadequate to rely on a loosely & seldomly enforced code-of-conduct that puts the entire burden of diligence on players for evidence collection & reporting.
Ghosting (intangible semi-transparent cars) is a familiar approach that makes ramming impossible,
but ghosting eliminates racecraft since there’s no need to set up passes properly when we can just drive through other cars.
Sacrificing racecraft rips too much of the sport out of a motorsport game.
~~ Suggestion / Solution Concept ~~
Ghosting with time penalties for overlapping through other cars
What if cars were always ghosted/intangible and the game treated the space occupied by other (ghosted) cars as off-limits?
…similar to how there are time penalties for exceeding track limits even though there’s no physical barrier stopping drivers from exceeding those limits.
Factors affecting the severity of overlap penalties could be things like:
• the amount of overlap (as a percentage of the cars’ size/dimensions - perhaps with a tiny bit of leeway/leniency for close bumper-to-bumper & door-to-door racing)
• the duration of the overlap (the longer you overlap, the faster the time penalty stacks)
• the speed difference between overlapping cars (to offset any advantage gained from rocketing through cars in front)
• the direction the cars are facing (so you don’t get penalized for passing through a car in front that spun themselves out & is facing sideways or backwards)
…etc.
Flashing on-screen indicators (& haptic feedback) could inform players when they’re overlapping another car so they know when to adjust accordingly.
…
As I said (above): I know this an imperfect idea full of holes.
I know I haven’t thought through every detail of every aspect of it.
It’s only meant as a discussion-sparking example of a way to achieve the goal of eliminating the possibility for ramming while preserving racecraft.
Something like this completely disarms all rammers while also forcing racers to respect each others’ space if they want to win.
Drivers who push ahead through other ghosted cars may cross the finish line first, but they won’t be able to win that way when penalties are applied, and they won’t be able to ruin anybody else’s race.
Obviously, the penalty system would still need to be smart enough to determine who is at fault during overlaps, as this type of approach could be ripe for abuse from brake-checkers & blockers who swerve in front of others.
This type of approach would remove the realism of car-to-car damage & crashes, but that’s a trade-off I’d be willing to make if it greatly improves race quality.
(Of course, full-contact collisions should remain as an optional setting for custom/private multiplayer lobbies and for single-player modes.)
…
I know it’s a different paradigm and a difficult challenge to solve, but I’m convinced there must be a way to end ramming and make racing so much less frustrating for many/most.