Discussion: hypothetical highway racing league requiring availabilty of online free roam

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As you may or may not know, last October I got hold of a copy of Tokyo Xtreme Racer 3. And, just to prove that all those don't-sue-us-if-you-crash-and-die "keep it on the track" disclaimers don't work, I became fascinated by that kind of racing that can only be done properly on the street, Japanese-style highway racing (don't worry mods, I still don't race in real life, there are other reasons I avoid it). Cliffs for those who don't know, I myself am not sure if this is how it really worked because I've never actually been to Japan: racers cruise along a route, be it the C1, the Wangan (though that one probably wasn't used for this type of racing in real life), whatever, searching for other racers. When one racer flashes his high-beams at another, that's a challenge to battle. If the challenge is accepted, then the drivers start racing and when one driver manages to outrun the other successfully, or push the other to give up, he's won it. If there's a fork in the road and the two drivers take different paths, it ends in a draw.

But remember how it can only truly be done on the street? And also how going really, really fast on the street is illegal? And dangerous (the Mid Night Club disbanded after a race against some drunk bikers ended with fatalities)?

That's where this idea comes in. We have a fairly realistic racing game, and if they ever do add free-roam it'll probably have at least one highway somewhere, so why not start a league for it in Gran Turismo? Thing is, though, getting it right would require a lot of planning. I.E. how much realism should we go for, and in what ways? How do we avoid overcrowding of popular routes and underutilization of others? How do we prevent it from becoming full of kids in max tuned hypercars and race cars bouncing off the barriers, while still allowing those who can control such cars properly to use them? How do we discourage overly rough racing without banning people over moves some professional sanctioned motorsports would allow? I created this thread to get those details hammered out, so if/when a Gran Turismo game adds onilne free-roam (presumably on the PS4, at the very earliest), we can "hit the ground running" so to speak. We can start with issues of routing and route utilization and go from there.

-Grandfather clause: should routes featured in a TXR title be automatically included, even if they interfere with others?

-Splits: in earlier TXR titles, the C1 route included Route Y, which branched off from it along the lower east side of the route and rejoined on the north side, with a road running between them farther north along the east side. In which circumstances should such splits be tolerated? This ties in with the grandfather clause above and with the next question, about route length.

-Route length: what should the minimum length for a route be before it has to be made a part of another route? What about maximum length? Should the entire 40+ miles of, say, Wangan B Westbound be all one route or should it be broken up into smaller sectors? What about truly huge routes like that 100+ mile ring road around London, if that were to be included?

-Should routes all be circuitous, or should point-to-point routes be allowed?

-How to keep the routes in use? Should we register racers to one specific route each? If teams are formed (and they almost certianly will be), should we require all their racers to register to the same route? How can we encourage drivers to use their home route while still allowing them to venture off it?

-It is a very real possibliity that some routes, especially famous routes like C1, Wangan B, and possibly Shin Kanjou, to use Tokyo as an example again, will become so clogged with racers that it will become difficult to race on them. Meanwhile others in the same city, or other entire cities, will be almost completely empty. How strictly should we limit the number of teams and "wanderers" (independent drivers) on each route? Should we limit them seperately or just put a limit on the number of drivers that can be registered to a route?

-And how should we calculate the limit for number of cars per route? Should we use straight-up length or lane-miles?

-For the purpose of calculating lane-miles, should express lanes, exit lanes that haven't exited yet, shoulders wide enough to drive on, etc. be included or excluded? In other words, should lane-miles include only lanes you can cruise in, or should it include parts of the road that can be dodged into to avoid traffic or make a pass during a race?

-And what about the reversible lanes of some freeways?

-Speaking of which, should the system of approved roads be set up so that there is are no dead-ends, so a driver can fully explore the system without having to make a u-turn or drive on a non-route road? Hard to verbalize, so I hope I explained it well.

-As for point-to-point routes, should we require all of them to have bypasses to allow drivers to return to the starts of their home routes without travelling on other "racing" roads?

-If the answer to the above question is yes, should undivided surface roads be allowed for the purpose of putting loops at the end of, or making loops with, highways and divided roads that dead-end or become undivided without connecting to another such road?

-And what about surface street routes where a driver could potentially end up in the oncoming lane during a race? Should that oncoming be included in our lane-miles calculation?

-Now on to matters of policing and housekeeping. I propose a licensing system whereby drivers and teams will be subject to PP limits, and some sort of money system. The PP limits would involve some sort of licensing & testing sytem, ensuring that people don't try to race cars they don't handle. I propose a system whereby a driver has to submit a video of themselves running/lapping the route they plan to register for. They must supply a car of appropriate PP and submit a video of themselves lapping or running the route the register on. They must beat a reference time based on the PP level they're applying for, set to ensure they drive more or less at 10/10ths while still being able to back off when conditions require. If the run takes significantly less than 10 minutes, they can fill the rest of that time with street hooning for extra credit. And it must be done in an online lobby, with traffic enabled if possible. During all this time there must be no harsh contact with traffic, other players, visible walls, or invisible walls if the car would've come into harsh contact with one of the above anyway. A limited exception could be made for certain extenuating circumstances, for example, a player trying to be a cop chases the driver and tries to run him or her off the road. However, if the police, player or NPC, do show up, the player has to lose them with the camera still rolling. Meanwhile a monetary system should be put in place as well - perhaps a player could be given some starting cash based on their main in-game financial status and the PP level they're approved to race at, then awarded monetary prizes for winning races. These two things should prevent the exclusive use of max tuned and/or exotic cars, ensuring drivers have to work their way up, while also keeping obnoxious kids in gold hypercars from ruining everything. Of course, a Forza-style system of being able to donate credits to people will make this about a million times easier.

-Meanwhile, a player police force will keep the use of street-illegal race cars in check by chasing them on sight.

-But then, how do we ensure competition? If one team on a route is only qualified for, say, 300 HP tuned cars, and the other is good to go for 850 HP exotics, each team will only race against itself. There might be some independents caught in the middle somewhere.

-Domestic markets. Should the cars usable on a given map be restricted to those that can be bought in or legally imported to that country, making those "illegal" subject to the same chase-on-sight rule as race cars? For example, the only Skylines available to drivers in U.S. environments would be R33 GTR, very early R32, and anything older than that.

-Draws: if a driver is far behind and takes a different path at a fork, should that count as a loss to prevent a losing driver from trying to save face by taking a different turn? Should the whole "instant draw" thing be rethought and a review of the race used to determine the winner?

-Dirty driving: Come on, it's street racing, it's not going to be GTP-OLR clean. And I'd even go so far as to say a modicum of aggressive driving should be allowed. So how do we prevent things from getting to rowdy? Perhaps a hybrid of votekick and steward's review whereby a sufficiently ill-tempered driver can be penalized or booted from the league?

And I've probably forgotten some. Discuss away!
 
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I love the concept.

Pretty sure it wont make it into GT though, I remember Kaz stating that he is very anti street racing.

I also can't see a proper free roam any time soon.

People would be expecting 1000+ fully customisable premium cars, all the current tracks plus more, and then a free roam world on par with GTAV size wise...

Not sure even ps4 games are that capable?

I certainly wouldn't be willing to lose a load of tracks or cars for a free roam, but if they could implement it without compromising the rest of the game, I'd be all for it.

You've obviously put alot of thought into it.

I do enjoy the odd bit of wangan after some hard 'proper' racing, so id enjoy cruising about and challenging other racers, but I'd want 'normal' town roads and twisty country /mountain roads linked to the highways. I've always like the idea of SSR7 with SSR5 at one end and R246 at the other.

:cheers:
 
Will there be traffic lights?

That's the one big problem I'd thought of. If GT does implement free-roam functionality I'm sure those'll be implemented - and probably speed cameras & whatever due to the attitude FussyFez mentioned. So surface street loops might end up becoming hybridized with stoplight drag races, who knows.

@FussyFez I never said this idea had to have too much official support. I don't think Kaz would torpedo all possibility of online free roam because some players were planning to do street racing with it. I mean, he already gave us SSR7 which is pretty much made for SR and does get used for it. As for the environment, I never said they have to be all highways. The intent is more along the lines of "we use whatever highways are present in the cities we have to free-roam in i.e. Tokyo, Seattle, GT City, whatever." Theoretically it could become part of a larger league that also runs trackdays, rallies, series, other forms of street racing such as circuits, sprints, street/parking lot drift, stoplight & normal drag races, etc, with a player-run police force using standardized equipment to make the "street" portion of all that more realistic.
 
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Yes I agree, as i said, I love the concept.

I would love an open free roam environment, so I can drive to the track, do some laps, drive over to a drift track and drift about, then head back onto the streets for some naughtiness. All with GT physics. Would be great fun and add a huge extra element to the game.


But as I say, the size of environment that we would likely expect to see, I think, would cause a few tracks to be lost. I wouldn't want this trade off.

If they could add something like this, without losing anything, then I'm all for it :cheers:
 
This type of racing happens in GT6 on SSR7 all the time...

Not to be a dink, but 99% of America and Euro SSR7 rooms that I enter, people are either drag racing, pull racing, or cruising. But if you find a good JPN room, they do proper Wangan style racing.

Rooms are usually limited to about 700-900hp, 1000-1050kg minimum, Sport Soft, real grip, weak or real slipstream. If you drive like a dink, you get kicked. If you purposely smash off walls instead of braking, you get kicked.

Players meet at the area after T2. Once a pair or group is gathered, we usually wait for the person parked at the front to flinch (a double tap of the brake lights is a common warning), and once they do, it's game on. People maintain their order (ie no passing), but it is a race to the first right hand corner, there is no waiting around for slowpokes. We also out the hammer down coming out of T4 as soon as possible. Cars need to have extreme acceleration in gears 1, 2, 3, and 4, because if you lose the draft of the group, you are done for.

Once you reach the main highway, passing is allowed, but bumping is not. The turn before the tunnel is take at full speed, and again, if you mess up the line and are slow, you lose the draft and are hooped.

The tollbooth turn-around is taken at full speed, and again requires a clean exit to keep up with the group, same with the kink after the tunnel. We the usually play a game of chicken as to who can brake latest for the last turn (which is actually T1), and the run ends on the off ramp.

Players NEVER park on the racing line. Players joining the track watch the map, and don't join until there is a clear gap. Racers usually avoid the middle lane approaching the finish line (where cars spawn).

And it goes without saying, these guys are fast as 🤬 When I first started joining these rooms, my cars that were reasonably fast in US and Euro rooms were getting dusted as if I was down 200hp. It's taken some time, and some help from friendly people, but I've got my cars to the point where I can comfortably keep up on the straights. Just need more practice through the turns now :)
 
Ah, so I was right, flash + pull isn't exactly how it was done on the Wangan. But then, why not both... I see no reason why "business as usual" couldn't take place as per the OP, with pitched battles taking place as described above, and possibly involving multiple players.
 
Ah, so I was right, flash + pull isn't exactly how it was done on the Wangan. But then, why not both... I see no reason why "business as usual" couldn't take place as per the OP, with pitched battles taking place as described above, and possibly involving multiple players.

I'm sure "flash + pull" did/does happen on the Wangan, but there's lots of other kinds of races too. I think for the most part though, it's just people going freeway blasting at crazy speeds for the fun of it...high speed cruising, if you will.

I think the whole "racing" side of it is played up in the manga, anime, and of course in the games.
 
You know there's a Wangan racing league here on GTP right?

It's not running at the moment, as the creator is working on transferring everything over from GT5, but I've heard they plan on running again in the near future.
 
I'd heard of such things, but there's only one route, maybe 4 if you count the other SSR tracks, to run on.

Not much to base a large league on, certainly. Doesn't seem like it would be quite the same with just four closed-off routes.
 
I'd heard of such things, but there's only one route, maybe 4 if you count the other SSR tracks, to run on.

Not much to base a large league on, certainly. Doesn't seem like it would be quite the same with just four closed-off routes.

Well, it's certainly better than nothing :)

It's no TXR, ITC, or Wangan Midnight in terms of the roads/tracks available, but it's not horrible. We definitely have more cars to chose from in GT6 (although with much less customization).

The biggest pro that GT6 has though, is that unlike those other games, it has a full online mode. I know ITC and WM had online leaderboards, but no actual head to head racing, or online free roam (I'd still be playing them if they did haha)

SSRX is pretty boring, except in cars that can cruise at 310mph and up, of which there are only a few in the game.

SSR5 is one of my favourite tracks (street drifting 👍), but is a little bit cramped for full on Wangan monsters. I have a lot of fun on it in cars 550pp and under though (500 is actually better, I find even 550 to be a bit excessive for SSR5). If everyone in the room cooperates, it is possible to run this track both directions at the same time....everyone just needs to stick right, or left, whichever the room decides on (since it's JDM racing, might as well be the left IMO). It's also fun to bomb this track in Civics, Kanjo style. With a full room, you can get people to cruise at traffic speed while a couple people tear it up.

And then there's SSR7. Easily one of my favourite tracks in the game :D Even though it's one of the simplest in terms of visuals (but perhaps one of the best in the rain?), it is one of the most immersive tracks for me. It's pretty sweet being in a pack of 5 or 6 cars, crossing the bridge at 240mph, and seeing another pack flying by the other way....that kind of stuff turns me on :lol: I also find SSR7 to be pretty challenging at 230+mph on SS tires. The tunnels are a little boring, but the rest is good. PD seems to have designed the track to have pretty tricky braking zones while at top speed, which keeps you on your toes.

The glass is half full my friend :cheers:
 
A few years ago I tried to apply a formula similar to TXR into GT5 but I had very poorly organized it and it just didn't work right. I wouldn't really bother doing it unless you can really get a full room going, and maybe even traffic.

The biggest pro that GT6 has though, is that unlike those other games, it has a full online mode. I know ITC and WM had online leaderboards, but no actual head to head racing, or online free roam (I'd still be playing them if they did haha)

I don't know what ITC is, but you can race in Wangan Midnight. Did so some months ago with another GTP member.
 
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