Codemasters in-game league support

Hey guys and gals

I know how much you love having your say in things, so here's an excellent opportunity for just that

Please direct your constructive criticism below, thank you.

Hi all,

Lee from Codmasters here.

We're currently toying with the idea of adding proper full on league support to one of our upcoming titles but we need your help with it.
We want to make sure we get the design of it right and while we have our own ideas about how it should work I think it's really important that we speak to the people that would hopefully use it the most (we don't want to do it half arsed).

I don't want to colour your thoughts with what we're thinking of doing so I won't post that just yet (though I promise to post up one of our ideas for the feature later)

We have at our disposal the game and the website and I want to know how would you would want league support to work? What kind of things do you want control over? What kind of info do you want displayed in game? How do you want to manage your league? and more importantly would you want to use it or do you prefer the way you currently run your leagues?

That kinda stuff, open to all ideas

Like Call of Duty but racing style! Like, ban certain cars, make specific builds, make it fair so cars are never too different and drive very similarly. Settings such as pits, simulation aspects, weather effects or make presets for many kinds of eSport racing.

That's really cool they have come asking this.

Just think of all the things FM5 missed out and that should give us a good list! Spectating in lobbies etc

HCR Bellmond wrote:That's really cool they have come asking this.

Just think of all the things FM5 missed out and that should give us a good list! Spectating in lobbies etc

Want to expand on that a bit?

What about a "broadcast mode" in spectator mode or replays, where you get either F1-style bottom-of-screen position updates, or a US-style top-of-screen scrolling leaderboard during the race itself? Theoretically there could even be an online editing program on Codemasters' website where you can program exactly how you want this to be displayed, for instance:

• Ability to insert TORA logo on-screen, as if it were the channel you were watching it on
  
• Ability to adjust placement of the leaderboard ticker, like I mentioned in the paragraph
  
• Ability to set "hotkeys" to the controller to bring certain graphics up on-command (press "X" to jump between onboard or TV cams, for example)
  

Also, everything that has been implemented into the TEC needs to be standard in this mythical game. Distances covered, time settings, etc, just to name some examples.

Lastly, you would NEED a Forza-style livery editor. That's a huge part of what makes online leagues like TORA what they are.

HCR Bellmond wrote:That's really cool they have come asking this.

Just think of all the things FM5 missed out and that should give us a good list! Spectating in lobbies etc

bellmond if we did a list we will be here all night with what FM5 missed

Being able to set the grid in the lobby before starting a race would be great.

Amen to that^

- Having a 'finish current lap' ability when timer runs out instead of just stopping the race.

- have XX.xx miles and km distances in distance races like on FM3

- I like Travis' idea with the broadcast mode, would be awesome

- in lobby balancing is crucial, and not just power/grip handicaps (although at 1% incriments) but weight as well.

- Race sim settings (similar to F1) so tyres/fuel can last a certain percentage of the real life race depending on the race length. So tyres wear 4 times quicker in a 6hrs of Le Mans or twice as fast for 12 hours. Same as fuel (and car dependant)

- Dynamic weather is a must. I think CodeMasters does weather quite well (except an AI driving fine on slicks in a monsoon while I struggle on wets) as well as day/night cycle

- A high lap/time counter, 100-200 lap maximum in 1 session and 6-12 hour maximum for timed events.

- Live driver changes. Would be difficult, but iRacing does as far as I know. So with the above, set the lobby to 12 hours and every so often one driver subs in for another without resetting the lobby.

- BIG livery editor. Enough said.

- More player 'buckets' for balancing cars. 4 can be difficult

- Realistic assist options. Ie you can have custom ones, such as TORA standard assists (no ABS, no ESC, manual or clutch) or realistic assists, so forced off TCS and clutch for down shift on a V8SC or ESC and TCS on and semi auto trans for a GT car) etc etc

For me, I would like to see more race-spec cars of different classes and categories (eg. GT3, DTM, BTCC, V8 Supercar) with a good selection of cars in each class (where possible) like in Project Cars where there will be 8 or 9 GT3 spec cars for example, not 4 GTE cars like on FM5. This, along with most of the points mentioned above

Id love to see a real time pit crew like they had in one of the older f1 games were you saw the pit crew actually change the tires and refuel and bring back real damage like loosing a wheel or even a puncher more parts of your car falling off other than the front bumper lol..car paint an decal designer maybe a helmet designer.lol

Actually hang on I have one word for codemasters......
.......TOCA........

the ones I refer to are 1 & 2 all the rest were absolutely pants....

Guys this isn't about what sort of cars, tracks, visuals you want in a game. This is more about league in-game support, as the title says. Things like results tables on their website/game, replays etc etc etc

This isn't also necessarily about a track-based racing game, either...

Create your own league would be a nice touch.

RiverMerc KB wrote:

HCR Bellmond wrote:That's really cool they have come asking this.

Just think of all the things FM5 missed out and that should give us a good list! Spectating in lobbies etc

bellmond if we did a list we will be here all night with what FM5 missed

But these are the things we want surely!!

Stan al get something together and post it today matey

The option to have more than one tier in a league with promotion and relegation at the end of a 'season'.
Could be used to create pro-am style driver rankings for multi-class endurance events.

Ability to give points handicaps to individuals at any point during the 'season'.
To work as outcomes for potential SI's.

In race live timing and pit stop tracking or at least a data sheet that shows position and time gaps after each lap.
Preferrably sortable by Overall and then by each class according to the leader of each class.
Possibly more difficult to implement on console than pc?

restrictors and ballast

The ability to add ballast opens up the possibility to utilize such things as "reward weight" to the podium of race 1 for race two. That could make things interesting.

Having automated points in lobby would be great, with the ability to select what point system you may be using (NASCAR's 43-1 or F1's top ten as examples)

Rolling/standing start options... where the race timer actually starts at the end of the parade lap, or in a standing start, anyone who jumps the start triggers some sort of in lobby notification (maybe a red light icon with their tag next to it?)

Suggestions:

- Ability to set your own grid
- Make the results of each race available on your website (for example)
- Session based multiplayer (Practice, Qualifying, Race), where the "race director" is the one who chooses everything, from grid order, to the times of each session, etc
- Broadcast/Spectactor mode where one individual can control the camera and observe current race positions.
- Simple flag system
- Ability to restrict/choose which cars can race and those who can´t
- A bit more complex, but an actual point leaderboard system on your website, so basically, just transfer a file with the position from last race to this leaderboard and the champioship points are automatically adjusted

In a simple way, give the host the ability to control each session, car restrictions and grid order and then, when the race is over, hand him a sheet with the results of the race.