Wreckers: Auto-detect possible?

[wtccfan]

I thought I can live with wreckers. But actually I can't, the pass weekend was horrible, for a whole day I couldn't get one clean race out of it, at each event there were usually more than one wrecker. I don't think I want to waste time on public servers anymore and I will probably only race in leagues.

Something just come to my mind: seems many people praise the AI of Race 07, why can't the game server itself automatically detect any misbehavior of drivers? I believe the program codes implementing this should be very similar to the AI model and should be nothing more complicated.

Some misbehavior can include:
1. Punt into others without brake at reasonable point.
2. Force other cars outside of the track.
3. Stop and block at racing line.
4. Drive opposite direction for a long time.
5. Stop at one position if the car is still runnable.

Most drivers are not intentional wreckers, but they just don't care that much hitting others out of the track in a pickup race so they drive too agressively. This behavior should be detected too. By comparing a driver 's behavior to AI model the server can even deem a driver 's performance. The admin of the server should have the option to decide how strict these rules apply thus results in how "clean" the race is.

My suggestion is probably not new, and there are whole bunch of suggestions before. It is really annoying that Simbin did zero effort on the wrecker issue except the vote/kick option which has been proved useless. I don't believe none of the solutions will work, just Simbin don't care to do it, for whatever reason.

[SKurj]

1 and 2 would be tough to do

3,4 and 5 have been done before I believe, not sure why they aren't a standard.

[Whoopster]

Welcome to the world of online sim racing

Originally Posted by wtccfan

Something just come to my mind: seems many people praise the AI of Race 07, why can't the game server itself automatically detect any misbehavior of drivers? I believe the program codes implementing this should be very similar to the AI model and should be nothing more complicated.

Most drivers are not intentional wreckers, but they just don't care that much hitting others out of the track in a pickup race so they drive too agressively. This behavior should be detected too. By comparing a driver 's behavior to AI model the server can even deem a driver 's performance. The admin of the server should have the option to decide how strict these rules apply thus results in how "clean" the race is.

My suggestion is probably not new, and there are whole bunch of suggestions before. It is really annoying that Simbin did zero effort on the wrecker issue except the vote/kick option which has been proved useless. I don't believe none of the solutions will work, just Simbin don't care to do it, for whatever reason.

Wreckers often produce much laugh with all the techniques they think of in order to ruin someone's race. But for people who don't have all the day to play, it is very irritating. You are right that the vote/kick option is proven useless, since in most cases, not enough people vote a wrecker out. What you suggest with the AI kicking is a very good thought, which however, i don't know how possible is to be materialized. What i think is that servers should be more responsible though. And i mean people who run the servers would be good to be there and observe the behaviours of the drivers. In GTR2 there where particular servers who kept a close eye on the player's attitude, and kicked them if they wrecked intentionally. It would be nice if all the servers did the same. As for the wreckers by "mistake", they would be more careful if they had some warnings.

[wtccfan]

The reality is that we really don't have a human steward to monitor a pickup race most of the time, and surely this is not an efficient way to get rid of wreckers on public servers.

The simplest solution seems to be the 107%/10x% rule suggested by many others before. This could be implemented in no time, if Simbin want to.

The key point is that Simbin should provide some options for the server admin to prevent wreckers, let the server admin do what he/she want. Say, set it to 102% rule to have real serious races, get rid of those nonsense punting at first corner. Or set it to 107% to allow some newbies and "fast" wreckers joining the grid, but at least get rid of some trouble makers. The server admin devote his/her own resource as a public service, he/she should deserve more options to control the kind of races running there. Letting those idiots making fun out of others are just a waste of public resource.

[ravenmorpheus2k]

It's not just sim racing, this also happens on Forza 2 on the Xbox 360, and pretty much any other racing game.

[darock]

What 107%/10x% rule?

Never heard of it.

107% of the top qual time i think. It used to be in F1 sport once, if i remember correctly those who did not be as fast as the 107% of the top pacer's time, were out of the grid and missed the race.

[wtccfan]

Sorry I haven't mentioned the details.

Yes JakeB is exactly right. The 107% rule was used in F1 for one or two years several years back. I don't know the details since I am not a F1 fan anymore Those who are slower than the 107% lap time of the pole sitter will be out of grid. For example, if in Valencia the pole sitter has a lap time of 1:40 which is 100 seconds, then anyone has a lap time slower than 107 seconds will be out of grid. You can see that 107% is quite loose. For any non-wreckers it's very diffcult to be 7 second slower. I am usually in the mid-pack and can stay 1-2 seconds within the pole time. So for those top runners if they want to have some serious race, maybe a 102/103% rule is a good idea.

[darock]

You know, that's an interesting thing to apply to boot wreckers, but truth is, it's got nothing to do with wreckers.

Have you guys actually been online and checked the qualifying times? You'd remove everyone who was just learning the game.

I'd suggest coming up with something that actually has to do with intentional wrecking.

Some of the wreckers are just newbies who dont realize the competion therefore getting annoyed and crash people

I no I felt like doing that in my 1st race but I managed to contain myself!!

[wtccfan]

Originally Posted by RBalfour679

Some of the wreckers are just newbies who dont realize the competion therefore getting annoyed and crash people

I no I felt like doing that in my 1st race but I managed to contain myself!!

Yeah this is true. My point is: The 107% rule is the easiest thing to implement, and just let the server admin to decide to apply it or not. I believe a very large portion of sim drivers want to do serious pickup races but not the league thing. For the public servers, we need to find a way to seperate those wreckers/newbies out from the serious drivers. People always claim, this is unfair to newbies and make them out of the races. That doesn't make sense to me, since the server admin has the right to only allow some serious races there, newbies can always go to other servers with looser rule. Many serious guys just have that much of time and want to have some serious races, they have no responsibility to help training the newbies, it is unfair if their races are disturbed by newbies/wreckers.

I have spent lots of time on public servers, at the peak time with a full grid of 25 drivers, the usual scenario is that the top 10 are within 2-3 secs. I think it is reasonable to eliminate the bottom 5-10 drivers, hopefully at least half of the intentional wreckers are contained in this group. For those newbies not fast enough, this encourage them to put more effort in doing clean laps. If this alone can discourage a newbie from the game, I would say this guy won't stay long in serious sims anyway.

One more thing come up my mind: Many wreckers have an excuse "I am using keyboard/gamepad, can't control, sorry!". So just like the forced cockpit view option, why not have a forced steering wheel option for server?

[darock]

Just because it's easy doesn't fix it's main problem. The 107% rule does nothing about wreckers. But it absolutely closes online to developing drivers. Shoot your legs off to cure hemorrhoids.

As for wreckers having any excuses..... I've never seen chat from one that says anything about why they do it other than everyone else is f****s***A**A****s who can't stop them.

In GTR2 there was an alien-wrecker. He used to set his qual time and then start doing what he knew best. Guys were asking: you are fast, why are you wrecking? No answer. He was like: I AM THE FASTEST! RESPECT! I AM COMPETITIVE! F***U! F***U! No explanations. Real fun. Every driver who braked before the turn was slower. He was even unwilling to answer simple questions like "where are you from". He was like: FROM UR TIGHT ***! There was not a single time i saw him racing. Man... you've gotta love this guy!

[Phaethon]

I'm starting to believe he was one of the very few extremely fast drivers and just changed names when he wanted to have some fun wrecking people. He can't have been that quick without practicing online among others :cool::confused:

Yes, very possible. It is a bit unlikely that he bought the game just for wrecking, or never had the need to race.

Some people find wrecking fun though Jake

[UKFireman]

"Some of the wreckers are just newbies who dont realize the competion therefore getting annoyed and crash people

I no I felt like doing that in my 1st race but I managed to contain myself!!"

LOL RB your kidding you would be auto kicked every race

Lol very funny im not a wrecker im just commited lol