02-14-2020, 07:55 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-14-2020, 08:57 PM by Martin Smith.)
Some have suggested removing high incident drivers from top splits, or of forming different league levels to separate the better and worse drivers.
I have an idea that I think can do this effectively while being fair, and improve the racing experience for the majority of drivers here.
Simply, it would be a matter of filtering all drivers with an incident rate above a given threshold into their own server, then letting the rest of the drivers race each other on their servers according to the usual way they are split; by championship rank and performance rank.
This way regular drivers aren't forced to compete with high-risk drivers in any way. But high incident drivers will be forced to compete against each other instead of only suffering some performance rating.
This would effectively create two levels of competition; the regular one we have now (but a bit safer) and a second high-risk (AKA Mad Max) level. When servers are being populated, all the regular drivers should be given priority placement and then the risky drivers can be assigned to whatever server remains, if any. The high-risk server would have to award fewer points to finishers to prevent anyone from gaining a rating advantage from that split.
![[Image: th?id=OIP.cZjgwtv0n2JDOVaqrZXV5AFNC7&pid=Api&f=1]](https://tse1.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.cZjgwtv0n2JDOVaqrZXV5AFNC7&pid=Api&f=1)
So the 'Mad Max' split would serve as a deterrent in many ways, but it would also serve as a 'rehabilitation' system for high risk drivers, because they'd have to learn what it takes to drive extra, extra, safe to bring their IR below the threshold so they can rejoin regular races (hopefully having learned that it's OK to slow down when fighting for position).
There are a couple of optional benefits that might also be exploited from this server assignment method:
The 1st is that people with 0 races could be put in the high risk server as a sort of trial by fire. If they manage to leave that race with IR below the threshold then their second race can be with regular drivers.
The 2nd could be to take anyone who had >20 incidents in their previous race and put them in the high-risk split for their next race instead of being suspended, to remind them of what it takes to drive safely.
The threshold IR could be anything, and if Henrique likes this idea maybe that can be debated. But for the sake of argument I've been looking at a threshold of 4.0 incident rate. About 20-25% of members here have > 4.0 IR so if there were 4 servers full of signups for a race, 3 would be for regular drivers and 1 would be for 'Mad Max' drivers. If the threshold is set too low, like 3.0, it can make it harder for races to go official (40% of us have an IR above 3.0) It also ends up collecting some good (but not fast) drivers who have an IR >3.0 because they end up mid-pack with many of the high-risk drivers, so they end up in more collisions despite their best efforts. I expect that if such a system is implemented, there should end up being much fewer people with IR between 3.0 and 4.0, and those above 4.0 won't be a problem to regular drivers. The threshold can be reduced over time if drivers improve overall, which I would expect.
Implementing this would take some new code in the back end to assign splits and points, and maybe in the front end too so people can tell how many people will be in the regular server versus the 'rehab' server. At the same time it could be a good opportunity to try splitting up servers evenly as is suggested in another thread. I think it's worthwhile and will explain in that thread, but of course that's an entirely distinct decision from this one. Either one can be implemented or not independent of the other.
The bottom line is I think this idea would encourage cleaner racing from all, while ensuring cleaner splits for regular drivers, and provide a method to teach safe driving to those who need it most, all for the sake of driving more participation at SRS.
I have an idea that I think can do this effectively while being fair, and improve the racing experience for the majority of drivers here.
Simply, it would be a matter of filtering all drivers with an incident rate above a given threshold into their own server, then letting the rest of the drivers race each other on their servers according to the usual way they are split; by championship rank and performance rank.
This way regular drivers aren't forced to compete with high-risk drivers in any way. But high incident drivers will be forced to compete against each other instead of only suffering some performance rating.
This would effectively create two levels of competition; the regular one we have now (but a bit safer) and a second high-risk (AKA Mad Max) level. When servers are being populated, all the regular drivers should be given priority placement and then the risky drivers can be assigned to whatever server remains, if any. The high-risk server would have to award fewer points to finishers to prevent anyone from gaining a rating advantage from that split.
So the 'Mad Max' split would serve as a deterrent in many ways, but it would also serve as a 'rehabilitation' system for high risk drivers, because they'd have to learn what it takes to drive extra, extra, safe to bring their IR below the threshold so they can rejoin regular races (hopefully having learned that it's OK to slow down when fighting for position).
There are a couple of optional benefits that might also be exploited from this server assignment method:
The 1st is that people with 0 races could be put in the high risk server as a sort of trial by fire. If they manage to leave that race with IR below the threshold then their second race can be with regular drivers.
The 2nd could be to take anyone who had >20 incidents in their previous race and put them in the high-risk split for their next race instead of being suspended, to remind them of what it takes to drive safely.
The threshold IR could be anything, and if Henrique likes this idea maybe that can be debated. But for the sake of argument I've been looking at a threshold of 4.0 incident rate. About 20-25% of members here have > 4.0 IR so if there were 4 servers full of signups for a race, 3 would be for regular drivers and 1 would be for 'Mad Max' drivers. If the threshold is set too low, like 3.0, it can make it harder for races to go official (40% of us have an IR above 3.0) It also ends up collecting some good (but not fast) drivers who have an IR >3.0 because they end up mid-pack with many of the high-risk drivers, so they end up in more collisions despite their best efforts. I expect that if such a system is implemented, there should end up being much fewer people with IR between 3.0 and 4.0, and those above 4.0 won't be a problem to regular drivers. The threshold can be reduced over time if drivers improve overall, which I would expect.
Implementing this would take some new code in the back end to assign splits and points, and maybe in the front end too so people can tell how many people will be in the regular server versus the 'rehab' server. At the same time it could be a good opportunity to try splitting up servers evenly as is suggested in another thread. I think it's worthwhile and will explain in that thread, but of course that's an entirely distinct decision from this one. Either one can be implemented or not independent of the other.
The bottom line is I think this idea would encourage cleaner racing from all, while ensuring cleaner splits for regular drivers, and provide a method to teach safe driving to those who need it most, all for the sake of driving more participation at SRS.