I think this sort of system is perfect for GT5.
While team sports, such as high end football, require every single gamer to participate in every event, racing is centered around one vehicle. When it comes to entry level motorsports and teams run by privateers, participation is often related to funding and/or circumstance. If You crash hard during practice - or the trailer suffers a broken axle just outside Copenhagen the last night before You're supposed to be on Estoril - the team may be forced out of that round.
Considering it is quite a struggle just to appear on track come race day, this system actually adds to the realism. If one player does not participate in one round, assume he had problems getting the car together or maybe just could not afford a lengthy transportation. Perhaps the team even planned to participate in select events only? This is common even among top competitors in high end championships, national and international. It is after all a money sport.
The rest of the field have one competitor less to worry about, and the championship is still alive.
Walkovers like this is expected in all sports without replaceable players, such as: tennis, swimming, marathon, shooting clay, yachting ... or even football teams on a tight budget.
Very true, I guess if an individual was not able to participate then it is just a DNF/DNS like in real life, and only 15 out of the 16 can start on the grid. Perhaps if somebody is particularly unreliable and misses more races than acceptable then perhaps they can be disqualified etc.
To make it work though I would imagine region specific championships, just like in the USA with Ice hockey, baseball and American football, leagues are split into regions, saves one team having to travel several thousand miles to play another team. In GTP's case with many members being in different times zones it would be hard to maintain a league of 16 players with many people operating out of different time zones.
I am not sure how we could do it, perhaps for official GTP leagues in the way we describe, with multiple championships etc. Each weekend a single race could take place, where a driver would have the opportunity to practice and qualify etc.
As for managing the whole thing, I guess for each race that takes place, we can have allocated people to watch live or review races for any incidents where drivers may have been bumped off etc.
I think GT5 from what we know will let us record the whole race live, so if say I got bumped off the track illegally then I could report the incident to be reviewed by a GTP mod/admin or any other member that has been allocated the job of being referee. Of course with a 32 person lobby, 16 referees can be watching every racer, but if we have 30 leagues running simultaniously then we may be a little short on refs!!
If we did have say 30 leagues from entry level to the top level, split amongs 480 players, if we have more players wanting to join up, then we can either create another league to sit at the bottom, or simply new drivers can wait for the season to end, with the bottom 2 or 3 of the bottom league can be exited out of the championship, giving 2 or 3 new guys the chance. Imagine starting at the bottom of the lowest division and working your way up, would be great!!
Each league could run 10 races over 10 weeks on 10 tracks, for a fast turn around.
Initially, much like the gold bronze and silver divisional system we have in place now, a qualifer will determine what league/class you start in and once that has taken place at the end of the season, new drivers wanting to participate will simply have to start in the bottom leagues and work there way up.
I guess their is a lot to be worked out, but the possibilites are very exciting.
Opelgt1969's" ideals:idea:
