I like the premise, but would hate the reality of it,
First of all there is no AI system yet that can work out who was at fault in racing incidents, hence the dodgy penalty system in GT5, you get rammed and you get the penalty, or you get knocked off the track and you get a cutting penalty for the trouble, etc. etc., So when this happens regardless if it was your fault your rating goes down?
So your rating would only be good if you never encounter a dirty driver, if you race in open rooms with strangers who dont care about thier rating then yours would disapeer, etc etc, it would be chaos, and lead to arguments as even an inocent accident with a friend would drop his rating.
Theres a system like this in Iracing, and for Iracing it works because Iracing costs a fortune and only has guys intent on racing the right way to start with, GT5 has a huge amount people who are intent on racing the "wrong way" who will go the wrong way round the track, cause accidents etc. etc., so those of us who want to race "correctly" will have thier rating subject to those who want to see who can cause the biggest accident in open lobbies.
I believe all of your concerns are easily handled by the programming already in the game. Let me give some examples.
First, if you are going to have rooms keeping track of your driver rating, you must also have the option of opening rooms where it's a free for all and anything goes. In time, a great deal of the players with bad ratings will gather here and good drivers will avoid them for the most part, except for things like dirty Nascar and the like. Could also be used for drag racing, cruising, testing etc.
Driving backwards? Easy, the game knows the right direction on the track..the "
wrong way" signal pops up. It knows when you are accelerating, not just sitting on the track backwards too. Accelerating or moving at speed backwards?...automatically your fault and...insta-kick from the room or just back to the lobby (host option?) before you make contact. Do it say twice in 24 hours and get a 24 hour ban from rated rooms only...go from there.
Rammed from behind? Easy. Game has a driving line already so it roughly knows where the braking zones are, not to the inch but close enough for most cases. So if you are in the braking zone and braking and get hit from behind, it's their fault. Since it knows where the racing line is, if you aren't knocked off line because it's a love tap, then it's a wash and doesn't affect the rating. However, if you are nowhere near the braking zone, say on the middle of the straight, and you hit the brakes for no reason, that's brake checking and your fault.
Divebomb? A little more complicated but the game is capable of calculating overlap and the beginning of the braking zone or when you turn the wheels, however you want to define it. If someone makes a legal pass attempt and gets parallel for the corner, then you both have a right your own line. Not hard to calculate from there who moves off their line and who doesn't. Again, a little push or rub should be a wash but if you are pushed off line on the outside or turn into someone sharply on the inside, fault is easy to determine.
The system doesn't have to be perfect because over time each of us "
clean" drivers will be subject to the same % of dirty drivers. If 10% are dirty for the sake of argument, it's the same for me and you and randomly will affect us the same, over time. Not in one night, but over weeks and months yes. So long as the majority of the common incidents are covered the majority of the time, it will work, there's no doubt about it.
The ways to keep things clean is to motivate and reward people for being clean. Too many systems are based on punishing the bad drivers instead of rewarding the good.
There will always be douches that drive badly on purpose, but those people exist regardless. They exist even on stuff like iRacing, and they just have to be tolerated.
Without a doubt, incentivizing good driving is the way to go. There has to be a punitive aspect to it for repeat offenders but I believe the rating number itself will become a source of pride for many drivers and something to shoot for. A whole sub-culture will develop around ways to avoid incidents and drive cleaner because it'll be more important. Rewarding good driver ratings with bonus content, be it paint chips, car liveries, free cars or suits or even a gold star will also make it something to shoot for.
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