A unique car for TC Affiliate Teams.

[◄Chuck►]

I stand with what I said before. We only have those 120 available slots and it's hard to explain why we reserve some for a few "chosen ones".
Maybe there is one car for Team A, one car for Team B, and so on. And we know it won't stop at just one car. Soon it will be 2 or 3 and that per team.

And then, someone brings up the idea to allow certain cars only for premium supporters and the whole story starts again.

The idea behind this may be noble but the current limitations and downsides simply outweigh any potential benefit. As there are:
- Prohibiting cars from certain users may spark arguments as it basically creates a two-class system
- The 120 mod limit doesn't give us enough space for such ideas
- Mods cannot be set per player. So there will be cars that you can see but may not drive. -> Frustrating user experience.

And what are the benefits?
I don't see a single one tbh.

[[TC]►Vilix◄]

(2022-06-13 08:08)Chuck Wrote:  I stand with what I said before. We only have those 120 available slots and it's hard to explain why we reserve some for a few "chosen ones".
Maybe there is one car for Team A, one car for Team B, and so on. And we know it won't stop at just one car. Soon it will be 2 or 3 and that per team.

And then, someone brings up the idea to allow certain cars only for premium supporters and the whole story starts again.

The idea behind this may be noble but the current limitations and downsides simply outweigh any potential benefit. As there are:
- Prohibiting cars from certain users may spark arguments as it basically creates a two-class system
- The 120 mod limit doesn't give us enough space for such ideas
- Mods cannot be set per player. So there will be cars that you can see but may not drive. -> Frustrating user experience.

And what are the benefits?
I don't see a single one tbh.

To be honest I'm quite disappointed with this reply, because there are some things mentioned that are already defined, and some which aren't relevant at all.

I just logged into LFS and counted how many mods I haven't seen being used regularly or even semi-regularly the past couple of weeks (and I've been active lately) and right now it stands around 50 mods. I don't agree that the 120 limit is the setback, because currently maximum of 4 cars would be added due to this idea and it would have literally 0 effect on players perceptions of "availability" of mods since they would just go back to playing the same 5-6 mods anyway.

Secondly, it's been expressed that there would be only ONE car per team, which is also enforceable by you, so I don't see how that argument is relevant at all.

Third, when you say that this idea will bring about a frustrating user experience, I don't see how it is any more frustrating than currently with a lack of mods being added. This isn't meant to be an insult or a dig at TC, as I know people have their own lives outside LFS, but realistically speaking the downside of people seeing a car they cannot drive is minuscule in comparison. Furthermore on setting player specific access, I'm not 100% sure on this but I've seen people be able to individually add user access to a mod, and unless you have access you won't even see it in the mod menu.

Fourth, you've made a valid point about the reaction of premium members, and while I don't have a set answer for that, I'm sure there are options out there that can answer that with a little discussion.

Lastly, the point that's quite infuriating is that you say "there's no benefit." If the near 50 people who've already voted yes, and support the idea isn't enough then I'm not sure what's going on. The benefits are broadening the affiliate teams incentives, for players to be able to show off their creativity and commitment to their team, and to have team-based events like cruises with the unique car that just promotes what it really means to be in a "team" rather than just pasting a tag before your name. And while it may not mean much to those who don't care for affiliation, it means a hell of a lot to those people who are dedicated members.

The way I see it, the community supports it and wants it implemented. However, the idea isn't completely polished yet, and TC (more often than not) aren't willing to put in a bit of effort to make it happen, or to properly discuss it.

[Tommer]

(2022-06-13 08:08)Chuck Wrote:  We only have those 120 available slots and it's hard to explain why we reserve some for a few "chosen ones".

(2022-06-13 08:08)Chuck Wrote:  - Mods cannot be set per player. So there will be cars that you can see but may not drive. -> Frustrating user experience.

May I propose a 'workaround' for the user experience issue?

Solving the 120 mod limit issue

So we have 120 mod slots, but actually the server has 40 car slots, so at maximum there would need to be 40 unique mods unlocked to give everyone on the server their own unique vehicle.

So with a bit of InSim trickery we can simply let players 'unlock' the car they want on demand by clicking an insim button. Maybe that means adding a button to the players 'garage' UI to unlock the car, or having a 'Rentals' button with a list of cars to unlock.

Now we can actually have as many mods as we want on [TC] and the LFS limitation is no longer a limitation.

The user experience

OK so, in theory that's great but the user experience will suffer a bit because now players don't see all the cars available to them in the pit screen until they've used the insim to unlock it.

So why don't we mitigate this a little?

Players will typically want to drive the same car they last drove when they last played on [TC]. So for the majority of players, when they log in to the server, simply unlocking the car they last drove automatically via InSim will already avoid inconveniencing most people.

Then, we can also maintain a list of the most driven mods in the last month, and use that to automatically keep say the top 80 mods left unlocked automatically by InSim.

It doesn't solve the inconvenience completely but it drastically reduces it enough that it's liveable as the players last car and the most popular mods are always immediately available and it means we can have an infinite number of mods on [TC] which will encourage people to make more mods for [TC]

**edit - I wrote top 10 mods initially, but on reflection this can be much higher

[[TC]►Ras◄]

I am personally not against this idea. It's a cool concept for sure.

(2022-06-13 10:20)Vilix Wrote:  The way I see it, the community supports it and wants it implemented. However, the idea isn't completely polished yet, and TC (more often than not) aren't willing to put in a bit of effort to make it happen, or to properly discuss it.

Your last sentence is not really something you could possibly have a dig at. You don't know what we are discussing behind closed doors and what we put effort into in general. Lets just stick to the actual topic.

[[TC]►Vilix◄]

(2022-06-13 14:30)Ras Wrote:  I am personally not against this idea. It's a cool concept for sure.

(2022-06-13 10:20)Vilix Wrote:  The way I see it, the community supports it and wants it implemented. However, the idea isn't completely polished yet, and TC (more often than not) aren't willing to put in a bit of effort to make it happen, or to properly discuss it.

Your last sentence is not really something you could possibly have a dig at. You don't know what we are discussing behind closed doors and what we put effort into in general. Lets just stick to the actual topic.

I said that from my own experiences and the experiences of others I've talked to, and you're right I don't know what discussions there are from your side, but that's why a bit more communication would be nice. But you are right, it's offtopic.

[Felipe Jardim]

We have 4 affiliate teams. I don't see the harm in 4 of the lowest used mods being removed so each team can have ONE unique car. This is the easiest and most practical way IMO.

[M6nsh]

(2022-06-13 08:08)Chuck Wrote:  And then, someone brings up the idea to allow certain cars only for premium supporters and the whole story starts again.

hhhhhhhhh

[KiiT1337]

(2022-06-12 20:38)SIMOX Wrote:  Problem 1:
1.Team leader uploads mod as custom access.
2.Only he can manage who gets access to the mod.
3.Team leader leaves the team, stops playing LFS, etc.

Problem 2:
1.Chuck uploads the mod as custom access.
2.Chuck never leaves LFS so he can give access.
3.Chuck won't do this because it's too much work.

Problem/Solution 3?:
1.Anyone upload it as public access.
2.Drive it on any server freely.
3.Insim lets you use that car on TC only if you have certain team tag on.
4.Not sure if possible
5.Ask Chuck.

Best problem/solution explanation to any further questions, and im against any kind of "restricted" mods, they came to be innovation for everyone, and these guys are trying to cut off people to get access to any mod like "ha, you dont deserve to use this mod, just see it". Im do not agree with that kind of stuff.

(2022-06-12 22:39)Callys Wrote:  

(2022-06-12 20:38)SIMOX Wrote:  Problem/Solution 3?:
1.Anyone upload it as public access.
2.Drive it on any server freely.
3.Insim lets you use that car on TC only if you have certain team tag on.
4.Not sure if possible
5.Ask Chuck.

I don't think ''drive it on any server freely'' would be a good idea because it would take the exclusivity of it, which is one of the advantages.
''3.Insim lets you use that car on TC only if you have certain team tag on.'' i also don't think that is possible, because, as example the cars with lightbars, they could be restricted to med/cop/res roles, yet they aren't probably because there's no way for such.

About your "idea", there are private options and only access to players straight from mods on the lfs hosts, if im not mistaken, you just put a whitelist and add account usernames, so no big deal with that. But the point is, Chuck won't be 100% of time online to allow new mods, just as he is not nowadays, so, that aint be a good way out for that case.

And insim can easily solve that question about people being able or not to use specific vehicles, that's a thing Chuck would have to sort out later.

[Ghutra]

Right now its -1 from me only because of the 120 whitelist cap

If Scawen can find a solution to allow a higher (aka 500, 1000 or even unlimited) list cap then I wouldn't mind it at all.

[KiiT1337]

(2022-06-17 01:24)Ghutra Wrote:  Right now its -1 from me only because of the 120 whitelist cap

If Scawen can find a solution to allow a higher (aka 500, 1000 or even unlimited) list cap then I wouldn't mind it at all.

That is possible to happen btw, but people would spam creepy mods trying to get out of pits, and Chuck would have to code that (which i think it would gather some time to be put togheter), to only filtered vehicles by insim, that can be driven / rental / bought. As we already have, but to thousands of mods, uploaded almost daily.