Race Start

I'm sure many of you tried the official races, but why does it take one hour to start?
Do we have such a small userbase nowadays? NO
Those races usually have enough players under 1 minute so my suggestion is:

Start official races as soon as there are enough players

R+++
Great suggestion!

Official race provide race point if win?

yes please please please

you get racing points depending on how well you did, and you gain driving skill.

at last, someone said it... YES!

yes

Racing points would be far to easy to gain. Its not supposed to quick and easy.

Up!

I think you're on to something and there is clearly a high demand for this to be implemented, but it's not as simple as reducing the waiting period for ALL races. There's more to it than that if this is going to improve racing in a fair way.

Perhaps if we had the option to lower waiting time with a penalty of reduced ammount of racing points, maybe that would suffice.

For example only the winner gets 1 racing point, but the race can start within 15 minutes instead of 1 hour. That way it's more risky (because only the winner gets 1 racing point & more opportunities to crash) but can race more often.

Despite the racing point penalty on races with reduced waiting time, there should NOT be a penalty at all for experience gained. That way people have the choice to either focus more on faster DS gains (with more races every hour on quick start mode), or extra racing points (with more racing points every hour on normal mode). This way the more active high DS racers can focus on raising that DS which rises so slowly at their level, and the lower DS racers which gain DS faster anyway can focus on building up their garage while still gaining DS at a faster pace than high DS racers.

You would STILL have the option to race normally with one hour waiting period and no racing point penalty.

I think something like this would make the play style of racing more sophisticated and open up another path. You would have to be tactical and switch up your play style back and forth depending on your circumstances.

Perhaps if we had the option to...

But who are "we" and how do "we" choose?

Unless you actually are imagining something like all 6 people in an official race voting to start it instantly...

That wouldn't be very practical, if one person doesn't vote, then the normal time remains

Better to change it for everyone or not

And my answer is a definite no, there really is no point to make racing points easier to get

I would be in support of more racing merits to make racing worthwhile though lol

It would NEVER make racing points easier to get. It would either make them HARDER to get (by racing for only 1 point if you get 1st place on fast mode), or the same points as you get now (by racing normal mode and getting the normal amount of points).

The way it could be implemented is you could select what type of race to start (official quick start, or official normal). That way depending on what type of race you select it would direct you to the right group of players waiting to start the race. Simular to how official and custom races are seperated by different tabs.

I repeat... racing points are NOT easier (but HARDER) to get in this mode. Only the person in 1st place gets ONE point! Everyone else gets ZERO points. Also you would risk crashing, because you're doing more races per hour and thus risk crashing more often and losing points rather than gaining them. This would force players to switch modes accordingly depending on the circumstances. This is the kind of thing that will make racing more sophisticated and open up another path of play style.

There would be NO penalty to DS gained on quick start official races for the reasons I stated in my previous post.

sorry, my comment about making racing points easier to get was more directed towards OP lol

i still dont see the point of having 2 modes, it just increases complexity of the system for a rather confusing reason

I have earned over 30 racing points in a day with the current waiting period. If you take that away i might have days where i earn double that - or more if i get enough races in. Do we really want them to be that easy to get?

I know you could award fewer points or something, but the current system actually works pretty well. If i want points, i enter the slower official races. If i just want to race for xp or to try for a new best lap i go custom race with a short wait.

Why is it making a new post when I try to edit my current post to add a quote? Is this a bug?

I don't think the current system is working as well as you do Rogue. Have a look at the likes versus dislikes on this thread. 22 likes vs 2 dislikes. The players are obviously expressing that we have a problem with the current system here.

People don't mind if racing points are hard to get, they just want to get involved more with racing and enjoy this fun game more often. There's a way to achieve that without making points easier to get. It would make the racing game you love more popular and enrich it with a more active and satisfied player base. Isn't that what we all want? As long as it's done FAIRLY and carefully!

Right now the only way to race more often is by doing custom races all the time which is not beneficial at all. We can solve this, but it MUST be done very carefully and above all FAIRLY.

I think that's very good that we have people on both sides to discuss this topic

Lots of people have done an awful lot of official races to get the cars they have. Shortening the wait would be a slap in the face to those that have played they game knowing there would be no instant gratification.

This has been suggested and failed a lot of times, using the current likes and dislikes as a guide is false data.

I will explain myself further for the point of discussion.

The background for judging all these racing suggestions:

First, like it or not, ched has stated he considers racing a niche part of Torn. This by default will limit developer time allocated to racing.

Second, the current system with two types of races is basically unchanged for at least the four years I've been racing. So the powers that be must think the core format of racing requires appropriate effort and time from players to reach the three merits (class A, 250 wins same car, 10 DS).

Third, there is a 100 R+ suggestion that ched was open to adding small prize money to official races so racing is not such a loss vs flying - since the two are mutually exclusive. Ched had also implied somewhere else that more merits are planned for racing. 

In short - racing will not get developer focus for a major overhaul soon because ched does not consider it necessary (and nothing really until after crimes 2.0). 


So when you measure a suggestion that changes the balance of time and effort to reach those merits 100% in favor of the players, you have to understand it's not going to be implemented even if it gets 100 R+. There needs to be balance.

Your ideas around fewer points per race but shorter waits would have some balance,  but remember custom races with the possibility of no wait time enable faster driving skill gain. If you eliminate the wait from official races then they are equal or better than custom races in all aspects. So the balance is broken even with that idea.