"Real" race mode?

[Mr. Bougo]

Hello people!

I'm starting this topic to collect your opinions/suggestions on the "real" race mode (sorry for using "real", it's to avoid confusion with what most race servers have become)
"Real" race consists of a short qualifying phase, where players complete laps to determine who will spawn first on the main racing phase, where player interaction is possible. This is what the race mode was intended to be, before more challenging "puzzly" maps came, and kind of took over the game mode.

Remember, this topic is not about CTS.

I sincerely count on positive contributions, and I hope you'll make an effort to avoid turning this into a flaming argument

[FruitieX]

As a separate game mode, sure. Then at least the maps will be separated.

[TVR]

Perhaps Team Race should be default, then there could be dedicated fraggers and runners on each team.

[divVerent]

Problem is that this would require quite many players on a server to work. Plus, it gets unbalanced if one team has more players than the other.

As for that part, maybe adjusting the scoring could help, just, how? Maybe it should not count 1 point, but as many points as the enemy team has players, for completing a lap? Still would make the lap limit weird, as it would be reached fast with many players and never with few players. Fractional points? Please not

So currently, Team Race only works for pre-set up races, where you know the player count in advance and thus ensure it is equal.

[cortez]

Problem is that this would require quite many players on a server to work. Plus, it gets unbalanced if one team has more players than the other.

isnt auto-team a solution for this ? there it could be really useful

[Mr. Bougo]

We all know that forced autobalance is sometimes wrong... Though here it is true that player counts do matter...

[TVR]

... as it would be reached fast with many players and never with few players.

Not really, as difficulty and time to complete a lap increases with playercount, so its proportional reward.

[Flying Steel]

I think we should remove the qualifying phase and player's starting weapons. Then they just have to pick up weapons as they go, just like every other race game with weapons out there just about. And if mappers want, they can place lasers close by the starting line or half way through the course.

A race mode bot ai would also help.

I feel that those two things would all be enough to fix this problem. Because CTS is just the result of not enough competitive gameplay in this mode's current implementation, I'm thinking; it only becomes a competition when you are fighting other humans online after the qualifying period (assuming you qualify in the first place).

You've got to get the competition started simply and immediately and then these player versus the map maps should start to become less popular.

[PinkRobot]

If you remove start weapons and only give pickups, there is a risk that the first player to reach the first weapon will be the one who wins, for they then are most likely to reach the other weapons first as well. Some options to counter that:

1. Make it impossible to pick up more than one weapon.
2. Slow the player down by 10% with every extra weapon they pick up. Yes, this is an idea I have coined a lot of times before but I think it might actually be of use in this case

[Mr. Bougo]

Pink, I think the base idea would be to have weapons not disappear on pickup... There is a cvar for this...

Now I think it could work for every pickup, including ammo, if it can be picked up once every 20 seconds for each player, for example... Players won't wait there, it's a racing mode after all.
Or they could be picked up once per lap, to avoid campers who would try to turn the race into a deathmatch