A Bad Driver Stat for Online Play (Suggestion)

[Hastatus]

It is a fact that there are many bad drivers online and many clean drivers would like a way to avoid them. I think that PD should create a bad driver stat:

Front end collisions per hour ratio (or something similar for online play only).

Only front end collisions that occur without a prior side or rear end collision would count. i.e. if your car was pushed sideways or from the rear before your car hit someone else’s or a wall it would not be held against you.

It is a fact that most kids are obsessed with stats and they would probably dislike being perceived as a bad driver (in permanent print) so they would try to drive cleaner than they currently do.

In order to promote good driving, PD could give drivers a car dealership discount for having a sufficiently low bad driver stat and perhaps they could make one of the seasonal bonus races limited to those with a sufficiently low bad driver’s stat (a reward for being a good driver).

It would be possible for hosts to turn the bad driver stat penalties off if he so chooses: so they can have bumper car rooms if they want.

This is a real driving sim and there should be penalties for being a bad driver in situations where people want to race more realistically.

The point is that rooms could also be set up so that only those with a reasonably low bad driver stat could enter.

I think this would get more people thinking about how they drive, being able to compare themselves with others, and help produce more good drivers in general.

Do you think this would be a good thing for PD to implement?

 

[White & Nerdy]

The problem with that is, if someone brakes early in front of you (or brake checks you on purpose) and you can't react fast enough, it's a permanent blot on your ratio. Obsessive brake checkers would be the new X2010 punter.

 

[zk523]

The problem with that is, if someone brakes early in front of you (or brake checks you on purpose) and you can't react fast enough, it's a permanent blot on your ratio. Obsessive brake checkers would be the new X2010 punter.

Umm...isnt this how it works in real life? People that brake check excessively would just be hurting their lap times.

Anyways, its the same thing as far as taking a loss on jumping into a losing game at the end in Modern Warfare 2...it affects everyone equally.

 

[Hastatus]

The problem with that is, if someone brakes early in front of you (or brake checks you on purpose) and you can't react fast enough, it's a permanent blot on your ratio. Obsessive brake checkers would be the new X2010 punter.

I have only had 2 people ever brake check me on a straightway (the developer's should be able to determine intentional braking in a none-breaking zone: they can measure distance form red area on driver's line).

As for how people brake in turns, it's entirely up to them and if you hit someone because you don't know their skill level or the braking properties of their car, it's your fault for following too closely. Most of the time people who rear end others in turns are braking too late because they are trying to make up time because they know they are behind. Or they hope to fly through and get lucky. I'm sure they could measure speed at impact and differentiate minor bumps from those who just wait too late and slam on the brakes.

 

[CerealKiller]

iRacing maintains a safety ratio based on collisions and any times you run off track. No attempt to determine who was at fault if I recall correctly, all parties take the safety rating hit. Seemed pretty fair to me at the time. (been away for awhile)

 

[ElSecundo]

I think it's a great idea. iRacing maintains data on each driver's safety rating, so we know it's possible to do.

It should be possible to set each room to either record or not record that data, and to require a certain safety level of the drivers. The idea behind not recording that data is that if friends want to get together and bash the heck out of their cars, they should be able to without messing up their stats.

How about 'impacts per mile', instead of impacts per hour? The mileage stat is already kept. Also, include some kind of delay, o that if you accidentally get caught up in a multi-car wreck, each impact in that wreck doesn't keep racking up the impacts.

 

[Hastatus]

How about 'impacts per mile', instead of impacts per hour? The mileage stat is already kept.

Yes but the mileage stat also includes B-spec; I suggested so many collisions per hour because there would need to be a measure specific to the time during actual races: i.e. it wouldn't include free driving etc and I suspect it is easier for PD to make use to the total time it took you to race a race (which is already timed). If they recycled a distance measure I have a bad feeling they might include practice distance or grinding Indy in A-spec, etc which could allow for people to artificially lower their bad driver stat. So it needs to be a measure of something online only against real people. They could measure distance driven during races but then there might be issues of km vs mile units. I guess I felt that collisions per hour would be more meaningful to people: i.e. I would guess the average amount of time you spend playing with a random person online is about an hour, while how far you will drive while they are around is less clear (I can't say I care much about memorizing the length of tracks). Time is more intelligible to most than distance.
e.g. seeing someone who gets into 20 collisions per hour seems more significant than the same person getting into 0.1 collision per mile (assuming average speed of 200 miles per hour: 20/200=0.1)

To everyone:
I hope people realize that when I don't reply to comments you make, it is usually because I agree with what you said.

 

[ElSecundo]

Don't worry, the km/mile conversion is already handled via the interface. Everybody would see stats that are meaningful to them.

Whether you do it as impacts/hour or impacts/mile doesn't really matter -- you're still going to have a number that's relatively meaningless until people compare it to other drivers' ratings. These numbers should only be maintained for online play.

The reason for impacts/mile is that if you do it as impacts/hour, some people are online for hours and run one race, where some people are rapid-firing their races. If you did it as 'impacts per racing hour', that would be valuable. 👍 I'd also want to know the average number of opponents, since 2 impacts per hour vs. 3 opponents is quite a bit different from 2 impacts per hour vs. 12 opponents.

 

[Barra333]

People that brake check excessively would just be hurting their lap times.

I dont think this would really bother the punters or the driving backwards crowd. Punters knock you off track, drive a bunch of crappy, unskilled laps until you catch up again, and then repeat the dose.

The idea of the collision stat is fine, but given the effectiveness (inconsistency) of the current penalty system, I wouldn't hold your breath for a good implementation of it.

 

[Spade13]

It is a fact that there are many bad drivers online and many clean drivers would like a way to avoid them. I think that PD should create a bad driver stat:

Front end collisions per hour ratio (or something similar for online play only).

Only front end collisions that occur without a prior side or rear end collision would count. i.e. if your car was pushed sideways or from the rear before your car hit someone else’s or a wall it would not be held against you.

It is a fact that most kids are obsessed with stats and they would probably dislike being perceived as a bad driver (in permanent print) so they would try to drive cleaner than they currently do.

In order to promote good driving, PD could give drivers a car dealership discount for having a sufficiently low bad driver stat and perhaps they could make one of the seasonal bonus races limited to those with a sufficiently low bad driver’s stat (a reward for being a good driver).

It would be possible for hosts to turn the bad driver stat penalties off if he so chooses: so they can have bumper car rooms if they want.

This is a real driving sim and there should be penalties for being a bad driver in situations where people want to race more realistically.

The point is that rooms could also be set up so that only those with a reasonably low bad driver stat could enter.

I think this would get more people thinking about how they drive, being able to compare themselves with others, and help produce more good drivers in general.

Do you think this would be a good thing for PD to implement?

It may sound easy on paper, but it will probably take months of production to get it down. It's hard for the computer to know you hit the car, and that it wasn't caused by you, and take all of other stuff into account. In all though, I would say it's a very good idea.

 

[Patrocles]

good idea to have a "safety rating." As others have mentioned the no-fault iRacing system works very well. If you end up with one jerk always wrecking people then he will eventually get noted by his high rating. He may wreck you once but if you are like most of us you would not stick around this jerk and be a glutton for his antics.

and even better if a host could screenout wreckers by chosing what level of pilots can enter (e.g. if it is a point system where high numbers are bad then the host can have an option to only allow any pilot with a rating of <XX to enter his room).