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Suggestions on improving SRS
#1
Hi,

I would like to propose some changes. I'm really liking SRS and it's community, but there are some things that could be improved in my opinion.

The points system.
If you win you get 102 points. If you have an incident, you get less points. In itself it's an understandable system, but not always fair. Today I had a nice race in the Cupra. I was in the lead and had a good battle. Suddenly the guy behind me started lagging. He disappeared and reappeared a bit further back. After the a long straight, we had a corner. He was still far back, but suddenly he lagged and crashed into me. Causing me to get an incident point. So instead of 102 I got 99 points. And I have more examples like this. It also happens, that someone slightly bumps you from behind. Nothing really happened but both of us get points reduced. Even the guy in front, who wasn't at fault. Not always fair I would say.
Worst case scenario, you win, someone messes up, and you wont get the full points, and you may lose a championship because of that. That's not really fair in my opinion. It also doesn't work like that in the real world.
I think full points should be awarded in any case. Except when somebody makes an illegal move or bumped somebody of track. That's what the protest form is for. If somebody protest you succesfully, you could get banned and your points should be reduced by a certain amount for that race. And the postition should not count anymore. Or maybe last position or something similar.

Incident average
The incident average should have more weight. So if your have a higher incident average, you wont come into split 1. Or something similar. And if you behave very well for the next, say 10 or 20 races, your incident average gets dropped to the average of the last 20 races, or something similar. That way, people that improve their game get a better incident rating. People behaving badly, get a higher incident rating more quickly. 

Real penalty tool
Real penalty tool on Race Department
Could this be a good implementation for SRS? I'm not familiar with this tool. What I'm aiming at, is that when you cut a track, be it by accident or on purpose, you get a time penalty at some tracks. Even if  you didn't gain time. People then try to get rid of that penalty in the weirdest places. Maybe some kind of warnig system could be in place. And after multiple warnings you get a time penalty, added to your total time. That way the race carries on, and nobody gets in eachothers way. Not sure if something like this can be done with that tool. It has some good features:
Penalty and race features:
  • cutting

  • cutting only in predefined sectors (#)

  • invalid next qualify lap after cutting the last corner (#)

  • speeding in pit lane

  • jump start

  • crossing pit lane exit line (#)

  • more accurate pit lane entry indicator (#)

  • illegal DRS use (thanks to @AdderSwim and his app "ACRL DRS")

  • safety car

  • assign penalty from race direction (from stracker as admin)

  • configurable drive through, stop&go disqualify or time penalty

  • rolling start

  • force internal view

  • blue flag in qualify out lap

  • sol check

  • auto kick for driver wihtout the app, sol (if required) and disqualified (penalty not taken)

  • additional track checksum (model and kn5 files)

  • weather checksum

  • additional track checksum

  • helicorsa integrated - impossible to disable!

  • manually live penalty

  • additional car checksum (collider included)


I hope these suggestions can be implemented to improve SRS! Let me know what you think. And of course, what does SRS think about this.

Kind regards
Maurice Klerken
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#2
Agree.

The actual punishing system is too hard for clean drivers, and too soft for bad/troll drivers.

Not sure what changes could improve this
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#3
Hi Maurice, I'm glad you shared your ideas and I'll explain my point of view about it. Surely a constructive discussion will emerge and we hope it will also bring some pleasant news.
The Point System
I agree with you on eliminating the 3-point penalty linked to accidents. Let me explain: it happened to me, as I think to others, that in T1 someone collided with me from behind making me turn and several cars ended up on me. The AC system does not precisely count the accidents, but the contacts. In this way, being a criterion that does not analyze the dynamics, it risks penalizing those who are perhaps fighting for a championship, as you have well said. The worst case is when the contact is due to a backmarker in the last laps (or as in my case, in the penultimate corner while I was fighting for the first place ... I lost 2 positions and accumulated several "contacts"). So I am perfectly okay with you, in delegating any penalties to the analysis of an administrator who analyzes the protests. In this way, as often happens to me, it is clarified via PM, no one suffers further penalties due to the accident and the event is less serious.

Incident Average
For your proposal I am a bit skeptical, but because it is based on the "contact" system I have already mentioned. Sure, an average of accidents over a sample of 20 races could be interesting, but I don't know if it is feasible or not to implement.

Real penalty tool
it is a system that I have used but I seem to remember that there is still the need for an administrator to check compliance with the penalties. Then I don't think it's suitable for a "register and compete" system like SRS but more for single events. I think that one of the strengths of SRS is precisely its simplicity, just install the plugin and you can already play, the app for skins is already optional and does not even require SOL, thus managing to be within everyone's reach.

These were my ideas about it, I hope they can be useful.

Dario
www.4funsimracing.com
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#4
I agree that the penalty system is harsh, but there are a couple of major problems that no penalty system can solve:
  • There's no way for any automated system to fairly judge fault in a collision. Only human stewards can do that. And no one has time for that.
  • No penalty system is going to work against people who simply don't care. We have many people who want to win not only races, but championships, but we have many more who are just here to jump in and race, consequences be damned. You even saw this with professional drivers in officially-sanctioned events in 2020, so it's not going to be better with a bunch of blokes in basements here. Big Grin

Further, IIRC part of the philosophy here is that SRS doesn't want to require more mods than they have to, in order to keep the barrier of entry as low as possible. So a system like Real Penalty, while good for private leagues who can impose whatever standards they want, is likely to be too much overhead, particularly given how many car and track mods you already have to deal with as a member. (And before you say "What about SRS Skin app", it's not required in order to race.)

So yes, all good ideas, but all have been mentioned in the past and explored.
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#5
I agree with you Maurice
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#6
SRS has provided a platform for sim racers that is a step away from the usual public servers where there has been a reputation of sketchy competitiveness and quality of driving....not in all cases but, in general. As SRS has increased its membership due to its popularity and quality, there has been a trend towards more incidents in races. I recall racing many times during my daytime hours (evening in Europe) and having smaller numbers, great competition and clean racing. It was very, very rare to see races where the total incident count on server 1 went past 50. I don't race the dailies any longer due to the tendency towards generally higher incident counts which change the nature of racing from clean and tight to bump and run racing. Some drivers like that aggressive style whereas some don't. So I choose to stay away from those races. There are still plenty of people joining and racing so, for SRS, it is not likely to be an issue worth addressing with additional controls.
Regardless, I would like to suggest consideration of a concept to curb the tendency to make higher incident rates a new normal. Suggest that there be an incident rate standard set which would require each driver to attain a certain level of incident rate at a specific stage of their SRS driving career. For example, incident rate <3 by race #100, and then maintain an incident rate <3 at each century mark after that. In that way, drivers could manage their driving and risk levels (even if someone hits you, there is often something you could have done differently to avoid the contact) to make sure they stay under the threshold by the next "100" race anniversary. If they fail to do so, perhaps prevented from racing server 1 until they get their rating back below the threshold. This may also drive a bit more incident reporting which is not a bad thing in an environment where contacts is becoming a new normal for some drivers.
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#7
(03-14-2021, 02:15 PM)Pasha Paterson Wrote:  I agree that the penalty system is harsh, but there are a couple of major problems that no penalty system can solve:
  • There's no way for any automated system to fairly judge fault in a collision. Only human stewards can do that. And no one has time for that.
  • No penalty system is going to work against people who simply don't care. We have many people who want to win not only races, but championships, but we have many more who are just here to jump in and race, consequences be damned. You even saw this with professional drivers in officially-sanctioned events in 2020, so it's not going to be better with a bunch of blokes in basements here. Big Grin

Further, IIRC part of the philosophy here is that SRS doesn't want to require more mods than they have to, in order to keep the barrier of entry as low as possible. So a system like Real Penalty, while good for private leagues who can impose whatever standards they want, is likely to be too much overhead, particularly given how many car and track mods you already have to deal with as a member. (And before you say "What about SRS Skin app", it's not required in order to race.)

So yes, all good ideas, but all have been mentioned in the past and explored.

On your first point.
An automated system wont fairly judge the collision. That what the protest system is for.

Second point:
If you do have people that don't care, they will get reported. Like it is now. If they collide too much, they will be placed in split 2, with my proposition.
What also could work, is that the rating system in SRS could be overhauled. Say you have a high incident rating, your general rating should be much lower. And therefore, you wont be placed in split 1.
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#8
I may be wrong, but incident rating is already lowering your "hidden rating", placing a player with 600 points behind players with half their points but a better incident average. This - it depends on the number of racers joining the event - would put the "bad" racers on lower servers.

The contact system is probably the only possible (automated) system, even if (I've seen it myself in wednesday race) being more "sensitive" than automated ACC collision detector: on first lap, a car spun and I barely brushed it avoiding it. No warning from the game (and it's usually quite "punitive"), two incident points from SRS.

People who doesn't care, as you pointed out, is likely going to collect reports and get banned, ruining a number of races before the actual ban, though. As you know, I'm really unexperienced on sim racing and its communities and I only joined a few races here for now. I too noticed a increase in dangerous drivers recently (by watching the streams, especially) on races with less players: that's where the "hidden rating" (again: I may be wrong on it) doesn't work.

There's a lot of racers here, but not enough for some sort of "reformation server" where players with low experience / high incident average could race to (possibly) lower that score and gain access again to the main server.

If you competitive racers (the ones who actually try to win races and championships) say the penalty system is harsh, then I can only trust you.
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#9
Every system system has its problems and it is not really possible to solve everything fair automatically, you would need race control to check every incident and do it all manually to be somehow fair which is not really possible.
to the second point: try imagine this, you are one the best drivers around you have very low incident rating and you are winning races, now there comes monza weekend with 3 races in italy, you win the Quali, but after start someone hits you from behind, sends you to the wall, you bounce back on track going backwards and get collected by half the field, second race same thing happens, you get massive incident average for last ten races because of that. You did not do any mistake nor could you do anything about it, does it mean you should not be allowed to start on server 1 because you incident average for last races is high ? This is just to ilustrate that every automatic system will have its issues and wont be completely fair.
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#10
(03-15-2021, 09:44 AM)Michal Ringes Wrote:  Every system system has its problems and it is not really possible to solve everything fair automatically, you would need race control to check every incident and do it all manually to be somehow fair which is not really possible.
to the second point: try imagine this, you are one the best drivers around you have very low incident rating and you are winning races, now there comes monza weekend with 3 races in italy, you win the Quali, but after start someone hits you from behind, sends you to the wall, you bounce back on track going backwards and get collected by half the field, second race same thing happens, you get massive incident average for last ten races because of that. You did not do any mistake nor could you do anything about it, does it mean you should not be allowed to start on server 1 because you incident average for last races is high ? This is just to ilustrate that every automatic system will have its issues and wont be completely fair.
Yes. The "automatic system" would send you to server 2 for the next races. With the serial killers. And you are going to be there forever. MWHUWAHWUHAWUHUA!

I see your point, and agree with it. Balance is needed for a system like that and, off course, with the number of current racers, I don't think it would be completely doable (you'd need two servers always full to have a proper "reformation server").
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