F1 2018 F1 2018 Online Multiplayer Licence Explained

[Paul Jeffrey]

With F1 2018 from Codemasters just two days away from release, we learn more about the proposed online multiplayer licence system for the new title.

With just a couple of days left until Formula One 2018 releases on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC this August 24th, developers Codemasters have released a new interview with Senior Games Designer Luke Stephenson, digging a bit deeper into the new online multiplayer licence system.

Luke discusses how Codemasters are making an attempt with the new title to offer a more moderated and ranked online experience with F1 2018, working hard to help gamers find events where similarly skilled and experienced players are taking part and thus improving the online experience and reducing unnecessary incidents with those less serious about their approach to racing with real people.

Hi Luke! Could you tell us what you do on F1® 2018?
“I’m a Senior Games Designer on the F1® team who oversees multiplayer – although I work on many areas throughout the game – and I designed the new Ranked multiplayer and Super Licence systems for F1® 2018.”

Could you tell us what the Super Licence is?
“At its heart the Super Licence is a means to keep track of three things relating to the multiplayer game: your overall skill, the cleanliness of your racecraft, and your time invested. Improvement in each of these areas is something that players can aspire to achieve, and also serves as a point of comparison against the other drivers you encounter online.

“Your ‘skill value’ goes up and down based on the skill of the opponents that you defeat or are defeated by, and this value determines your Rank.

“Next comes your Safety Rating, which evaluates how long you are able to race between incidents. Each incident you are involved in will issue you incident points based on severity, and keeping these to a minimum will improve your Safety Rating over time.

“Finally, your Level increases as you gain ‘experience’ from completing races, finishing in strong positions, and hitting various statistic milestones. This last part of the Super Licence persists across both Ranked and Unranked so that you can continue to build your Super Licence however you play, but it won’t be factored into the Ranked matchmaking process.”

What was the intention behind the Super Licence – how did it come about?
“There were two major motivations driving this. Firstly, we have had lots of feedback from our community members who, when trying to find competitive public games, are frequently put off the experience by one or two disruptive drivers. The Super Licence is our most significant step to date in regards to stamping out that problem, as those disruptive drivers will tend to be placed in different lobbies to those who give each other racing room.

“Secondly, as many will know the inaugural F1® Esports Series last year was an incredible success powered by F1® 2017, and we want to develop that area of our game further by creating an environment that could produce the next generation of esports champions. So we want our multiplayer game to have a meaningful sense of progression, to foster a culture of clean racing, and to allow new talent to emerge, regardless of whether you are dropping in for a casual few races, or trying to reach Master Rank against the best in the world.”

How will Ranks work?
“Players will be matched into the most suitable Ranked lobbies we can find with other players of a similar Skill and Safety Rating. Your Skill value is the number that you’ll see next to your Rank, and that’s what we base all our calculations off. The system will expect a player of higher Skill to beat a player with lower Skill, so if that doesn’t happen than both players will have their skill values adjusted a small amount. Every player is judged against everyone else, so when you’re in a 20 car race you can think of it like having 19 one-on-one races. The more you play, the closer you should trend to your ‘true’ skill level, and the better the racing should become.

“The Skill value is also tied to your Rank, which is the badge that you can see throughout the game. Going from 1900 to 2000 for example may promote you from Silver to Gold, so these can serve as great targets as you climb up the ranks.”

How will the Safety Rating change games?
“Fair drivers want to race against other fair drivers, and that’s what the Safety Rating system is designed to encourage. Drivers that respect their competitors will advance their Safety Rating, get matched against other respectful drivers, and then have even cleaner races. This should encourage more players to give racing room – especially down into turn 1 – and maybe think twice about those dive-bombs from 100 metres back. You don’t have to go for every gap that exists, after all!”

I’m not a fast driver – will this affect me when playing online?
“When racing against other people online, the important thing is not outright pace, but rather your relative pace to other drivers. With Ranks, we are trying to keep drivers of similar ability racing together, which should increase the chances of close, fun races regardless of your speed.

“Of course, whatever level you compete at, it’s important to ensure everyone is competing on an even field; that’s why Ranked races use equal car performance with modern cars, and Spec races are used when racing our wide selection of classic cars.”

F1 2018 will release on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC August 24th 2018.

Check out the Formula One 2018 sub forum here at RaceDepartment for the latest news and community discussion around this exciting new Formula One game. If mods are your thing then fear not, we have you covered! Check out the F1 2018 Mods Forum for the latest and greatest release from the community!.​

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Will you be taking the F1 2018 purchasing plunge on Friday? Looking forward to the title? Let us know in the comments section below!​

 

[jimortality]

Do the simulators F1 teams use in the factory use VR? Or do they use a screen?

I am not saying they should not support it but this dismissing of games/simulators because of no VR is getting beyond the joke. People think just because of having VR that they are some sort of elite sim racer while they sit their in their slippers on their fake wheels and pedals thinking they are Ayrton Senna. Do me a favour.

Hey! Leave the slippers out of it

 

[Nick Phillips]

Hey! Leave the slippers out of it

Frankly I am totally against VR because of the potential to drop my whisky when I go for the glass on a long straight.

 

[Alex Townsend]

Like the "sim" racing community isn't fractured enough as it is.

I was reading the OP and was waiting for E-Sports to come up, and yep, there it is. If that's the way they're going I definitely won't be buying any further Codies F1 games. E-Sports are for the rich minority of 20 somethings who live off the bank account of mummy and daddy and get to sit in front of their current gen consoles and top end best tech money can buy PCs 24/7. I highly doubt any of the current crop of E-Sports participants are people who own a 3 year old PC (or just a PS3 or Xbox 360), and equally or older wheel/pedals or gamepad, and only game at weekends!!

Concentrating on that minority is not the way to build a good game - just ask those who bought Dawn of War III!

Hate to disagree with this but I was recently in a live race for the Malaysia e-sports GT3 challenge on Raceroom recently and yes, there were guys there that had good equipment, there were guys that had only just started wiping their own bums and also guys with wives and kids, also Alex Yoong's son who races F4 IRL I believe.
We all had good races together and some were very close.
You'd expect the kid without a job to be the quickest. And he was quick but was beaten by an older guy with a job.
Alex Yoong's son didn't fair too well and he races for real.
One guy didn't even own his own sim rig at home. He practiced at the event and now and then he would visit the RR cafe here in KL
The guy was almost Alien like in his speed yet didn't own any of the kit nor have the time to spend in front of it all day as he also had a job.
Esports is a good way of finding talent, promoting products and generating funding for future projects and even future drivers careers.
It's not such a bad thing and these live events have shown me that some people just have the talent and some have to practice very hard to get near them.

 

[Alex Townsend]

It is a game just like all the other games featured here at Raceroom.Which game is an "online simulator".

Wait... I know this.... Firefox?

 

[General_RIMT]

I mean, this is good in general, in theory this will retain more online players because of their more consistent fun experiences (races). People will want to come back and do better. Ranked stuff will work best if lots of people playing enough to actually have meaningful separation without impacting race fullness. I mean, i for one think this will mean cleaner races in the long-run and adds an incentive for me to play more online races, while avoiding frustration. But yeah, this system means your banking on healthy online community populations.

 

[Justin]

I think it may be time for mods to start issuing warnings for those who consistently muck up threads with VR begging. I'm sure Codies have heard the feedback by now, so posting it in every news post isn't going to achieve much other than annoying people trying to discuss the actual topic.

As much as I enjoy the concept of safety rankings and "quick matches" to sort you with players of your own skill, there just aren't enough people playing sims on the regular for it to work properly.

Let's say you have a 20 car public lobby, which is a very good car count and a full field in F1.

3 drivers are "A" class skill level.
10 drivers are "B" class skill level.
5 drivers are "C" class skill level.
And 5 drivers just bought the game ten minutes ago.

If you start auto splitting by skill level, you're subjecting some users to a race with just 3 cars in it, and then another race with 5 cars in it.

I would honestly take the public lobby or open session with 20 cars over a 3 car ghost town.

I'm guessing it will only create a new session when the first instance has been filled or hits a certain fill requirement, maybe 50 per cent or so, knocking those with the lowest ranking and SR down the pecking order at the time of searching. Otherwise it would be a disadvantage to rise up the rankings as you'd never find anyone else to race. It could mean that in less busy periods you could get a huge range of skill levels in one race, but under the current system I can't see how else they could do it.

I'm not sure whether you will be able to search through the lobby list like in 2017, and if you can allowing a lobby to be restricted to specific rankings like PC2 could be a decent solution. Organised races on dedicated servers would be the best system obviously, but Codemasters seem to be content with the P2P system sadly.

In the worst case scenario everyone in a lobby may just have to cooperate to votekick a player well outside the rest of the lobby's stats, which is far from ideal.

 

[gamer19]

Alex Yoong's son didn't fair too well and he races for real.

Are you saying he does better in real life ? Let's face it... his father didn't.

 

[Alex Townsend]

Are you saying he does better in real life ? Let's face it... his father didn't.

I'm not saying anything about his RL performance. But it was a comparison of someone who has the money to throw at racing whether it's simulated or real.

And I'm definitely not saying anything about his father. He was better at tv presenting than he was at racing and he wasn't much good at that either...

 

[Davide Sciacca]

I don't have VR, that means I'm not a hardcore racer?

No, you are just poor.
I have a VR headset and now, instead of YOU, I'm broke.






I'm kidding about you, but I'm damn serious about me

 

[farjam]

Pre-Loading now

 

[Alex Townsend]

So tempted to hit the buy button...

 

[Sfrost]

As much as I enjoy the concept of safety rankings and "quick matches" to sort you with players of your own skill, there just aren't enough people playing sims on the regular for it to work properly.

Let's say you have a 20 car public lobby, which is a very good car count and a full field in F1.

3 drivers are "A" class skill level.
10 drivers are "B" class skill level.
5 drivers are "C" class skill level.
And 5 drivers just bought the game ten minutes ago.

If you start auto splitting by skill level, you're subjecting some users to a race with just 3 cars in it, and then another race with 5 cars in it.

I would honestly take the public lobby or open session with 20 cars over a 3 car ghost town.

Best solution for this would be allow cross platform play with PC, Xbox 1 and PS4. Increase the pool of players the ranking system can match you with and ensure at anytime you can hop on and find racers.

 

[Andy_J]

Hate to be the one.... but, no VR? Then it's a game, not an online simulator, so if your a hardcore racer then who cares?
Cheers

You had to be the one. Got news for you, all your serious VR sims are games, little programmed games that you play on a computer. You are a gamer. Get used to it. And while I'm at it, stop whining about VR it's boring.

 

[NDG]

Do the simulators F1 teams use in the factory use VR? Or do they use a screen?

I am not saying they should not support it but this dismissing of games/simulators because of no VR is getting beyond the joke. People think just because of having VR that they are some sort of elite sim racer while they sit their in their slippers on their fake wheels and pedals thinking they are Ayrton Senna. Do me a favour.

You need to pick up that mic sir. F1 teams use VR!
https://www.wareable.com/vr/virtual-reality-formula-1-teams-drivers-fans-5554

But I agree though, NO VR doesn't mean no Simulator. But this title is also way way far from being that. I say no more arguments.

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

"What was the intention behind the Super Licence – how did it come about?"
we were jealous of iRacing ...

seriously: this is of course the way to go but you need the numbers. At iRacing, if you have 100+ players at one event in a given series, the system works beautifully. It works well with anything from 25 players upwards.
Since this game (F1 2018) attracts a wide audience, they may just make it work. Codemasters tried the same approach with Dirt04, but as far as I figured, there were always too few players online for this to work out.

 

[NDG]

"What was the intention behind the Super Licence – how did it come about?"
we were jealous of iRacing ...

seriously: this is of course the way to go but you need the numbers. At iRacing, if you have 100+ players at one event in a given series, the system works beautifully. It works well with anything from 25 players upwards.
Since this game (F1 2018) attracts a wide audience, they may just make it work. Codemasters tried the same approach with Dirt04, but as far as I figured, there were always too few players online for this to work out.

Of course it works like that in every other title. The thing with older titles is they don't release a different game title every single year and therefore accumulating audience. Audience are always changing. I think I am the old type who like a game title that simply just updates, well, like iRacing even if I am not there anymore. AC is okay for like a new title in 4 years? I don't know the younger guys if they feel like buying a title every single year is normal or acceptable. I like the updating kind with new DLCs every once in a while.

I bought this game just for career mode. I will surely go online and give it a try. But I doubt I will be the type that will buy the 2019 and 2020 and so on versions if there will be those. I don't like collecting games in my HDD. However, I wonder if they will carry over the superlicense status/ratings in 2018 to a new game when they release one. It's better like that, it should be like that. So drivers don't have to go back to zero every year. But again, I will not do it.

 

[Motowntom]

It is a game just like all the other games featured here at Raceroom.Which game is an "online simulator".

What is raceroom?
Cheers

 

[Motowntom]

Do the simulators F1 teams use in the factory use VR? Or do they use a screen?

I am not saying they should not support it but this dismissing of games/simulators because of no VR is getting beyond the joke. People think just because of having VR that they are some sort of elite sim racer while they sit their in their slippers on their fake wheels and pedals thinking they are Ayrton Senna. Do me a favour.

I am not Elite, don't own slippers, and my pedals and wheel are real, and I don't think I'm Ayrton I think I'm Andrea De Cesaris.
Cheers

 

[Nevini]

I thought this was about F1 2018? Not a discussion on VR. Let it go you non VR users.
Non VR users do seem to make it a big issue, just because one guy likes racing in VR,

Like all codies games this is a game for controllers not sim gear, once you wake up to the concept its easy. If you like arcade games buy it, I know I will.

 

[RobJLee]

Hate to disagree with this but I was recently in a live race for the Malaysia e-sports GT3 challenge on Raceroom.

Sorry but you can give me all the anecdotes you want. As far as I'm concerned, and based on what I've seen of E-Sports, they are for and aimed at the reasonably wealthy minority, especially the high profile competitive one's like the recent F1 E-sports series.

In case you're in any doubt over who I'm talking about, you won't find people who are living on the breadline, barely making ends meet, living in council estates taking part in E-Sports.

And like the VR crowd, those who take part in E-Sports, of any kind, especially racing games, are in a minority, and usually chasing that minority when building a game takes away from what the majority of players want.