Season 9 Championship highlights, winners
I like to think of it in terms of regular sports and racing. You know, Brett Favre played better in cold weather than in warm weather. Some teams/players do better on some tracks and crappy on others.
I'm looking at what type of new stats need to be added to the game to help out with stuff like this. I'm only tracking certain data but if I can think about how to crunch all the numbers, I should be able to spit out things like a car's favorite track...or even a player's favorite track. Which tracks favor heavier cars, etc. That kind of stuff makes my inner stat geek excited, even though that stat geek got a D in stats in college....so I might need some of your guys' help to come with interesting/useful data tables and how to arrive there. All in good time...
My only minor critique of the FL as it stands are the differences in the car photos to what's actually being raced. Case in point: The "Heavy Metal Love" tournament hosted by WorpeX. He was thorough enough to post car photos prior to the race(in the FL forums) and I was able to pick the winning AMC Javelin FTE, knowing that a notably faster* FTE1 version was in the roster. But if I had never seen those photos, I wouldn't have picked the winning car.
*FWIW, A similar brown FTE1 Javelin is presently a 'top 10' record holder @ DCR
I hope that my moaning of my poor results this season wasn't taken as bitching about the way things are run. I'm having fun...and when I stop having fun, I'll stop--nobody has to change how everyone is having fun just to try to please me...
THAT SAID...
I have an issue with the fundamental theory this wonderful game Brian's created for us is based on.
(I'm exaggerating a bit for comedic effect.)
I have to admit, I would rather have specific cars race against other specific cars--rather than a "type of car, represented by various cars of that type" against another "type of car, represented by various cars of that type." I like knowing what a specific car has done and imagining what that specific car is capable of doing against another specific car--rather than having to guess what a version of a car might do against a version of another car...
To borrow Brian's Brett Favre analogy--to me, it feels like we're seeing Brett Favre in cold weather one tournament...and then some other quarterback wearing a Brett Favre jersey playing somewhere else the next... How could ANY statistics be predictive of anything in a circumstance like that?
I know that having a travel case of official cars that get sent to each home track would be cost prohibitive (considering how much we all pay for the privilege of playing this no-matter-how-it-goes-it-is-still-fun game, that's a good enough reason for me.)
But, honestly, I don't mind having separate entries for separate individual cars. I don't mind there being separate statistics for WorpeX's AMC Javelin FTE (brown). I wouldn't even mind if Brian had multiple versions of the same cars running at the same time--so that maybe there's a fast Way 2 Fast on the pegs somewhere near Brian...go ahead and let that be "Brian's Way 2 Fast #2" rather than adding to the stats for an overall "Way 2 Fast" entry that is supposed to represent all cars of that type.
That way, it doesn't really have to matter if the host has a similar car collection as Brian. (It does create problems when it comes to both the end of the year championship race...and to retired/Hall of Fame cars...but those are deal-with-able.)
...but after saying all that...as long as everyone's having fun, I wouldn't expect nor would I necessarily want anything to change.
And, to be honest, even if we did change things to do things the way I suggest...I'd probably still get my ass kicked by a ten year old. (And I'd be HAPPY to keep doing that!)
There really isn't a very strict regulation on the Host Tracks involving the cars. It's just "Do you have this car? GREAT!" and all its well and good. Brian does mention that the car should have the same body/chassis but never mentions what the body/chassis of HIS car is so its impossible for the host track to know to the exact detail what car should be allowed besides at face value. Then you also have the wheel difference like the obvious FTE1 vs FTE2 debate.
One thing that we COULD do to solve this problem is to have all the host tracks only race the identical car to what Brian has. Perhaps we can get him to upgrade some of his more obscure variants to a more common one so that the host tracks would have (like the Brian's Way 2 Fast to the First Edition version). Making sure that the host track has the same car in release year and wheel would solve a lot of the problems. (Not necessarily the same paint job though, as Mattel likes to change the paint scheme a lot in the same release year).
Now that we have expanded to host tracks (and almost a new one each week), this opens the doors to possible changes in how things work. Things are the way they are now because it was easier for me to manage, since I was doing most of the racing for a long time. Seattle's Favre analogy is a good one and I agree to some extent.
However, we all know that even the same cars can vary, which is why I settled on boiling it down to car type and not specific car. I could be running a 1986 era Ferrari and a host could run the exact same model and it run entirely different even on the same track. You have to make some assumptions to avoid scope creep to where every car everywhere requires its own rating and data, which just isn't feasible. So if we were to make that kind of assumption, then it's not that far of a jump to start grouping like-cars together even if they have different hub caps or are a different color. It's assumed that a blue 57 Chevy from 2011 should race similarly to a red 57 Chevy from 2011. Everything that *shouldn't* make a difference between same cars is what this game ignores - for the sake of ease for myself and frankly, for players.
That being said, adding some sort of "variant" option for hosts to fill in when they match up their cars with mine isn't out of the question. What worries me there is just data integrity but that's all on my programming the game properly and nothing else, but I sense that is a bigger undertaking that it sounds. And then that leads me to worrying about more trivial things like car photos and stuff...guaranteeing consistency could become a concern.
And while I echo Seattle's statement about picking on these seemingly minor details for a game that we all enjoy and have fun with anyway, It's all about balance. The game shouldn't become overly hardcore but it shouldn't be so simple that it ends up being boring. And to be honest, as the guy that has built and tries to run this thing, dealing with these type of challenges is a lot of the fun for me. I love building things like this web site and game, and thinking about how to make it better while still being manageable is what keeps me up at night...well, that and a 3-month old baby.
I've been building web software most of my life and graduated college with an art degree, so I'm used to getting feedback both good and bad (in art, mostly bad). I like it because it challenges me to translate those feelings something people can enjoy overall. So please...keep the thoughts coming and the debates churning. No feelings will get hurt and I appreciate all that each of you contribute to this site.
Brian had talked about a database of sorts that we create as a community for the races. I think thats still a great idea. If we could all submit our race results to a part of the site as a collective. then having ten way 2 fast race results averaged to say ya this thing is fast most of the time would be a good measure. and also show that host track x has this car and its a dud would be more information the players could use in picking.
AND would so unfortunatley make those that want to submit to the DB spend oh so much more time on this little web gem we have all found (tips hat to sir brian). Could also be a way for us to manage race results instead of searching for that holy grail software or creating massive scale excel sheets and/or access databases on our own.
also could be the start of a true iphone app database managed by the great RDR community as we stick our fingers in the air at mattel for not creating this already.
Brian i know your reading this and seeing massive code to write and tons of work most likely. Im just trying to think of something down the line that can help expand the game for you. and could potentially save you from doing quite as much data entry by having users, or even just the host track people putting in their own data for the races.
But i am so happy i found this site and other "grown ups" drag racing freakin hotwheels cars and documenting every race as if it were the world series of racing on tv! My wife thinks im crazy doing this. and i look at her and hold my nose in the air and hands on the hips and say there or lots of adults that do this as much or more than i do everyday and i can prove it! so leave me alon woman i have races to complete before i go to bed!
So a big thanks to Brian for all of his hard work, and dedication to the sport. you dont have to change another thing if you dont want to its a masterpiece as it is.
But i am so happy i found this site and other "grown ups" drag racing freakin hotwheels cars and documenting every race as if it were the world series of racing on tv! My wife thinks im crazy doing this. and i look at her and hold my nose in the air and hands on the hips and say there or lots of adults that do this as much or more than i do everyday and i can prove it! so leave me alon woman i have races to complete before i go to bed!
It's funny because it's soo true!
Thanks for all the input, Mike...and thanks for the kind words. Everything you outlined are great ideas, it's just finding the right way to implement them and also finding the time. Honestly, doing all the programming and web stuff is the easy part, that just requires time. The hard part is always trying to look far enough head that things are built well and scale but not looking so far ahead that it's overwhelming (which is my problem). I start hearing these good ideas and I just want to jump in but you just can't do that and come out with a maintainable product.
As I mentioned in my iPhone App review, user-generated data is incredibly hard to manage and normalize but it's not impossible. But frankly, I would trust most everyone of you guys to wield such power responsibly and maintain quality...it's all the riff raff you have to worry about But you're right...that type of database would be a way into the mobile space - and it would be better than what's out there now, I guarantee it.
The other trick to all these great ideas is how to work on them while still working everything else. One problem I still haven't quite solved is how to split time to work on brand new products while also wanting to add things to the Fantasy League. I took way too long in getting the Mail-in Manager up and going. I think it serves a good purpose (so use it! ha!) but then some Fantasy League improvements took a back seat. My attitude has kind of been League first, new products second because fact of the matter is that people are actively playing the game and rely on it to work, nobody is relying on something that doesn't exist yet.
But all in all, I do believe the concern over cars on different League tracks will solve itself as time goes on and more racing is held on those tracks. Players paying attention will know on which tracks a car like Way 2 Fast perform well and on which ones there a dud. Until then, yes, there's some guessing and some luck but IMHO that's a big part of the fun. Even with all the ratings and weights listed for each car, for many tournaments I still pick the cars that "look fast" compared to others.
And now that I'm thinking about all of this........but lets start a new thread, shall we? Pick up this conversation over here: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=913
I agree! For example, the Way 2 Fast is typically a very quick car... but Brian just doens't seem to have found a very good one. Luckily, JDC and I both have one which is obnoxiously fast.