*sam* Posted Jul 20, 2007, 10:37 am	Hi all, I'm just back from sunny Spain to rainy Ireland. I see there's quite a few suggestions and some bugs to look at, but the game seemed to have behaved quite well in my absence.. thanks also to Vikk and the Marshals for holding the fort  It will take a day or two to sift thru all the new ideas, but something I want to do ASAP is change the game year from 12 weeks to 6 weeks: I think 12 is too long and the leagues seemed to be fairly much tied up by week 6 (apart from alo's impressive late run in the deathrace league). The mechanics of the leagues would not change, i.e. you'd still be rated on the average result from Sunday to Sunday. The game month would now advance on both Sundays and Wednesdays. Let me know if you think a 6 week year is a good/bad idea?
*viKKing* Posted Jul 20, 2007, 10:39 am	Hello Sam! See my suggestions and comments in the private developpers section.
*sam* Posted Jul 20, 2007, 10:42 am	Yeah, I see your brain has been busy vikk, thanks mate Can you post your comments about the 6 week year in here, in case anyone else has points to raise?
*viKKing* Posted Jul 20, 2007, 10:45 am	Luckily I have forgotten some of the ideas...  Here is my post from the developpers private section: *viKKing* said: You mentionned you wanted to reduce the ingame year time by 6 weeks, instead of 12 as it is currently. As I had already stated weeks ago, I was against that change. But I considered it again and again; and finally changed my mind. Negative points: 1) The league events are in my sense well balanced that way - at least, I'm used to them as they are now. 2) more badges to distribute. Positive points: 1) characters will be aging faster and it can only be positive. But I think, this can only be achieved if: 1) additionnal non league and non pro races are proposed to players, single races, deathraces and combat with a financial income offered for winners on per race basis (we already use such a system), but with a stock car. 2) League events are no more offering financial prizes per event, but on the end of the season; and with a very comfortable amount of money  Maybe we could base the prizes on the number of subscribers? 2a) Tracks are pre-selected for the week, to be sure everyone is running on the same track during that week; as well as cars. This is to avoid the current weakness; as someone can perform league events on its favourite track and hence have a better score. For example, I never race or deathrace on Somerset Speedway... and my too favourite tracks, on which I generally score either first or second are Rally and Northern Foothills.  3) Paid events have their prizes raised depending on number of humans getting involved in the race once it has started. I propose a 2% per player (not per cars) for races, 3% for deathraces and 4% for combats. This comes in addition to Veteran bonuses. Becoming a Veteran requires a 50 events to be performed (an old request  ). Players with 10 performed events are granted an honorific "Adept" (?) badge.
*Zothen* Posted Jul 20, 2007, 10:50 am	Sam? Whos Sam? Oh, I remember a Sam who was here a long, long time ago...! Welcome back! Shorten the league seasons is a very nice idea, but I wouldn suggest to change the lengh of the game year. But the "average thingy" still turns me away from the leagues. I make may 2 races a week and thats all. I also hate it to wait for fuller races (usually not on my timezone) to get more than 20 points! For me its a mess with the average of 1 race and the subscribers-bonus-points ... sry! Its simply not right that I have to plan parts of my RL to get those bigger races! Edit: 2a) If I have to race a full week with 1Ls im out of racing at all! Rather "Senior Member" than "adept", because this rank is used for experienced members, too.
*sam* Posted Jul 20, 2007, 10:55 am	Zothen, something we could try is to bring back the style of league that we used to have a year ago (before the new system was invented). This would be in addition to the current system, of course, so we'd have extra leagues. Basically, the 'old style' leagues each had one event per week, along with several timetrial qualifiers for it. You would sign up for the 'Thursday evening' league for example, and then compete in an event every Thursday at 9pm. This system didn't work well because people play games when they feel like it, not to a predefined schedule. But if it was offered alongside the current system, it might work?
*Zothen* Posted Jul 20, 2007, 11:01 am	Yeah, wonderful idea! Such an addition could make a big difference! Ive also seen an old 1L-league that only lasted 4 weeks! Perhaps something like this could come back to? Additional different League styles (something like viks suggestions: fixed tracks/cars), different league lengths and an offset that not all leagues start at the same time would be my suggestions. Dont get me wrong, my problem is not that the average points of all races are calculated, but rather that you can only become worser when you have a good first race. And when you have one with 40 points it will last before a new race shows up with so much points that I might give it a further try! IMO the bonus systems bugs the league system... Just have a look at most top racers - the do only the biggest race with the biggest points - usually nothing else!
Alocalypse Posted Jul 20, 2007, 11:04 am	Welcome back Sam! I'm mostly impartial to the game year change, but my main concern is how possible it will be to get and keep really good characters if the time ticks away faster (provided that by some miracle you kept them alive for over a year of real time). I think the leagues weren't so intensely competitive this year because a lot of people started halfway through and didn't think they had much of a chance to be competitive. Next year will hopefully be much more interesting. I'd prefer the 12 week leagues because I think it's more challenging the longer they run for as your skill gets tested more. EDIT: I very much like the old leagues you describe Sam Zothen: at first I thought the same about only doing 1 race per week, but it actually takes quite a bit of effort to choose 1 high scoring race per week and win against other human players consistantly in over 12 rounds.
*viKKing* Posted Jul 20, 2007, 1:56 pm	Maybe we should delay the next league by one week, to be sure we all - mostly - agree on it.
*Speedealer* Posted Jul 20, 2007, 4:51 pm	Heya Sam! Back from Sangria to Guiness eh? my quick opinions: 1. I don't like trying to cram in a minimum of 6 events for a week with the condensed system. 2. I don't like the proposed change to shorten the length of a Darkwind year (if that would have to happen) 3. I like 98% of Vikk's suggestions. (Can't determine which 2% I don't like, but he can't be 100% right, that would go to his head ) 4. One thing the extra pts did was to make for some fantastic pvp play which was good. 5. Somehow more non-league/pro races need to be added.
*sam* Posted Jul 20, 2007, 5:45 pm	Hi speed, Quote: I don't like trying to cram in a minimum of 6 events for a week with the condensed system. I wasn't proposing to do that. The league would only have 6 rounds, not 12. i.e. one round for each 2 game months. Perhaps I was seeing a problem where there wasn't one. I know I was undecided about 12 or 6 weeks before the current year (2041) and that viKKing convinced me to go for 12. It's very easy for me to leave it at 12..  Quote: Somehow more non-league/pro races need to be added. Also easy to do. Although more pro races means less humans in each, perhaps..
*Speedealer* Posted Jul 20, 2007, 5:59 pm	Quote: Also easy to do. Although more pro races means less humans in each, perhaps.. As it is now, we're lucky if we get 4 people. Usually there's 2-3 of us max, so it couldn't hurt since most of us will try to make 'em. I think just 2 more a day would be fine. But if we make the league races no pay, it would be cool to have non-league stock races as Vikk said. But that being said, I'm getting a new job and won't be able to play during the day in 2 weeks.
Alocalypse Posted Jul 20, 2007, 6:17 pm	*sam* said: Quote: Somehow more non-league/pro races need to be added. Also easy to do. Although more pro races means less humans in each, perhaps.. Or maybe if there's more pro races more people would choose to invest in pro cars and participate - right now there's not much chance to put your racing cars to good use to make them pay for themselves. Since there's usually 3-4 people max in pro races anyway it couldn't get much worse anyway
*viKKing* Posted Jul 20, 2007, 7:04 pm	*Alocalypse* said: Or maybe if there's more pro races more people would choose to invest in pro cars and participate - right now there's not much chance to put your racing cars to good use to make them pay for themselves. Since there's usually 3-4 people max in pro races anyway it couldn't get much worse anyway  Yes, but non subscribers won't be able to join... We need more mixed events (subs and non-subs).
*JD_Basher* jd.basher@charter.net Posted Jul 20, 2007, 7:58 pm	Quote: We need more mixed events (subs and non-subs). I agree with vikk. The way it is now, Non-Subs cannot get into any wilds events. Rightly so, but there needs to be a 'school'/intro for wilds missions to give them a taste of the action outside the city walls. =========== League weeks are fine as they are. I found myself looking forward to racing in all 3 leagues and chasing points from real week to week. @Vikk......Yeah I think you need to make some more League Badges! 1st through 3rd would be nice. I can hear it now......"We don't need no more stinkin Badges!"
*viKKing* Posted Jul 20, 2007, 8:08 pm	I suggested this to Sam, as it has been discussed a lot past weeks. *viKKing* said: It was suggested by Zothen, but I think it's a good idea. Free scouting for non-subscribers, but limited to Somerset's area. Also Somerset is expected by many people to be a relatively safe zone, so new comers can train with a relative security. Before they get hammered while heading to the South. Addendum: we could limit Somerset scouting to Gates of Somerset only.
*JD_Basher* jd.basher@charter.net Posted Jul 20, 2007, 8:15 pm	"Gates of" missions would be good for non-subs. It would give them a chance to see what the wilds are like. randomly generated player cars and opponents would add a bit of diversity.
Atomic Punks Posted Jul 20, 2007, 11:20 pm	Well, here are my thoughts on leagues: I really like the racing / deathracing events, but the league aspect and averaging the event points makes it very difficult to compete. For example, I played a ton of events, but that's because I didn't care about my league standing. And I had a ton of fun playing in events where there were 4+ Player opponents. I was also able to make like 30K in 2 days just from the race purses - that is better than the top prize in the league anyway. The most fun is playing against or with other players. I think that is the aspect of the events that needs to be encouraged without penalizing those who participate often. So I am not sure what the answer is, but I think there needs to be a way to encourage people to play the events, but not penalize them for playing a lot of them and also not disadvantage those that play them infrequently. For instance, I know the old system was to take the best score for the week and use that one instead of the current score averaging. That has the advantage of not penalizing frequent participants, but makes it easy to keep trying to advance your score. But, with the new bonus structure for having more humans on, maybe using the top score is better, it will encourage more humans to enter events and for the players to keep organizing bigger events to get the chance to have a bigger bonus. I also agree that there should be more custom (non-stock) events. I have a ton of vehicles now, but I am never on to play the 1 or 2 professional events available each day and the events I do see are always empty - no human opponents. I would really like to use my custom vehicles for racing / deathracing.