Scaff
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Based on my experience with the GTS beta its not doing anything to change that, deliberate griefers and crash fans were just as present, even in the later stages of the beta and at higher driver ratings.Consumers don't always know what they want. There is no console racing game out at the moment* that has a well-designed online system that is easy to use and fun to take part in. Offline racing games have taught casual gamers to behave like idiots on track, which is acceptable against AI drivers, but when a group of such gamers races, it's frustrating for all of them. If casual gamers were to learn how to behave properly on track, online racing would be a lot more enjoyable to them, since racing humans is a lot more interesting and exciting than racing the AI.
I personally think iRacing already demonstrated that online racing is superior to offline racing, and that an implementation can work effectively if the right measures are in place: skill and safety ratings, a realistic damage model, and strict penalties for bad behavior (not just crashing into others, but stuff like corner-cutting).
* Project Cars 2's servers aren't online yet, so we don't know how well it is designed.
Using iRacing as a model also has its issues, given that it has I believe around 60k active users, if that's all it can attract then GTS will not succeed on the same model at all.
Your comments above I actually agree a lot with, however they apply to the 5%, and possibly some of the 10%. The rest however I remain to be convinced about, given that GTS is not offering anything unique to the genre to attract them and retain them. Its a conversation that's been had many times here and part of the appeal of offline racing for casual gamers is that they can set it up so they win far more often than not (and as soon as that stops, so do they - drop out rates grow as off-line racing gets tougher, regardless of the title). In on-line racing no matter how well balanced the matchmaking is, only one of those taking part is going to win, and for the casual driver that is simply not appealing.
The only factor that I can see PD and Sony using in this regard is that historically for GT the 5% and 10% are much larger pools of people, but a lot of that this time around is going to be based on how the title is received, and for the first time ever I'm not sure that the gaming press is going to be quite so pro GT.