giedriusr
commented
11 years ago Groups won't be restructured for the next season as there is no time at all for this. We don't say that the current model is frozen, it's just the primary model isn't working the way we expected, so we are always open for ideas/suggestions/improvements.
I'll get back to this again a bit later.
Once again I very strongly recommend to brainstorm about different groups model. My recommendation would be to have 1 class for each different level, instead of having for example 64 Beginner classes. There might be other possible solutions, as I strongly believe that current model has too many drawbacks. Here are some of the drawbacks of current groups model: 1) Limited number of max players; also this model is unsuitable for very small number of players (like currently - see statistics at the bottom of the post) 2) Friends can not compete in the same group 3) Some groups of the same level might be much more difficult than others 4) There will always be some players that will play for several rounds and then stop playing. Game becomes completely uninteresting if most of the players in one group is controlled by bots. Moreover this distorts the key points of the game. For example Advanced-9 group (1st player in this group is now #1 in hall of fame because of TSW, which is natural, when you race against bots for 4-5 rallies in a row). Other groups (like mine Begginer-2) have 20 players (all human-controlled), but only 4 of them are actively playing. 5) There might be situations, when team reach top 3 result overall, but still will remain in the same group next season, because same group had teams that reached #1 and #2 positions. Other much slower players from different groups will still advance. This might happen several seasons in a row - this will definitely hurt players motivation to continue gaming. Even inactive players might advance to higher levels (like advanced10,11 groups) - in this situation it is very likely that higher group next year will not be full from the start. 6) Also it is very strange that some teams are controlled by bots, while some other are still controlled by humans even though that they do not participate in the last 5+ rally events. 7) Competing against bots is completely boring in these types of games. There should be only active human players competing. This suggests either dynamic groups (doesn't make sense IMHO) or single group per level.
In my opinion the game would be much more interesting having one group per level. There are easy ways how to solve advance issues, limiting number of players, live results and other technical issues. Gaming experience should be priority number one, not the technical issues or complexity of implementation. Another idea would be to make some kind of survey for all active players (ideally through dirt rally page) about such important game topics.
Approx number of active players in each level (combined groups, out of 20 in ideal situation): level: AVG / min in group / max in group WC: 0 / 0 / 0 Pro: 7 / 5 / 9 Advanced: 5 / 0! / 14 Beginner: 4 / 3 / 4 (only 3 groups active out of 64!)
So, current model is designed for (64+16+4+1) groups = 1700 players, but for the moment only about 113 players are actively participating.
Would be interesting to hear comments from developers, not only 'this is design solution and won't be changed'.