I am reaching into the depths of my brain to get this suggestion, so I need people to assist on ideas that could enhance my idea.
The format of online lobbies would have to change, and this is what it would entail:
1. Ranked lobbies setting is fixed to 25% race, standard damage and simulation damage rate. This means that any minor touching will likely result in damage, therefore clean racing is promoted. People that want any other damage settings will have to go to unranked.
2. For ranked races, quitting to main menu or retiring from session cannot be accessed by pressing pause button. The only way to leave is after the completion of a race in the lobby, or by restarting console (which I will address what happens if you restart console, or exit game completely as a PC user).
3. Any time a driver presses the pause button during a race, AI takes over as usual. However, a new statistic that will appear under a driver's super license will show time in pause/AI. Therefore if someone rage quits, they cannot leave as per what is written above in (2.). If they do want to quit, they will have to restart their console (or exit game completely as a PC user), which will still count as time in AI on their super license. So this number is an indicator as to probability that someone rage quits or goes AI and doesn't spend their time driving in ranked sessions.
4. If someone's time in AI on super license hits a certain number (let's say 15min), something will have to indicate that this is the case. Maybe their name changes to yellow when entering the lobby for 15min accumulated, and red if 30min accumulated. Therefore it is known to everyone upon this person joining the lobby, that they do not spend their time driving in the session, and voting to have the person kicked would be more meaningful.
5. For a session to progress into the one-shot quali, all individuals will have to ready up. So maybe minimum amount of players to race would have to be 10 in the session, and all ten have to ready up. If one person is holding up the lobby from proceeding due to not readying up, people can vote to kick that person.
6. When voting to kick, there will be 3 options: AI time accumulation, not readying up or potential dirty driver. The first two will show up as separate stats under a person's super license (times kicked session due to AI time accumulation & times kicked for not readying up). So having that yellow or red name has its significance; it grants you a better chance of being kicked by people in the lobby. As well, the vote option will only show up (AI time accumulation) if the person's name is yellow or red. As for potential dirty driver, when the first person casts the vote for a dirty driver, everyone can look to the person's super license and see the stats of the individual to determine if based on : number of races driven, AI time accumulation, front wing changes, pit stops, if they should vote to kick the person.
7. To kick someone from a ranked lobby = half of lobby participants for AI time accumulation and potential dirty driver, and all participants for non-readying up.
8. Addressing disconnections for time under AI accumulation: So obviously there is the case of random disconnections, which would add to your AI time accumulation. The rule would have to be that if a person joins back into the lobby and finishes the race, the AI time accumulation would either have to be nullified automatically, or by vote. I'm not exactly sure which would be best, so for the vote route, let's say the race finishes, and it goes back to the lobby screen. The person who disconnected would have to have their name appear still in that lobby (faded out) until the lobby jumps into the next race. If the person who got disconnected gets back in before going to the next race, they can have a lobby vote to have their AI time accumulation not count towards their license. So if half of the participants vote to not have it count, it will get nullified for that person's license, and they can either race or jump out before going into the next race. Unfortunately if they can't do this before the start of the next race, or not enough people vote, then it will count to their license.
9. As far as pooling drivers together, it would go off of average time trial top percentage placement. So (maybe?) make it mandatory that 10 time trial times are completed (any circuits) to access ranked. And the average of your top percentage ranking will determine if you have to access top 1-5%, top 6-10%, top 11-15%, top 16-20%. So you can only access the category that you are in. And even potentially cap ranked at only these categories, where everyone else at 21% or lower cannot access ranked.
10. Also maybe have crossplay 1-5%, console 1-5%, crossplay 6-10%, console 6-10%, etc. I know cheating will come up in conversations (especially for PC), so separating console from altogether crossplay may be the best way to go. Or just have ranked be no crossplay at all.
I think this is all I have for the suggestion, however if I have more I will edit the original post and time/date stamp it. This is a lot, but it may be a decent step to making ranked/multiplayer lobbies better. If anyone has a suggestion or critique, feel free to reply with it.
Edit: approximately 40min later
11. If you do ranked and are top 1-5%, or top 6-10% percent categories, there will be an assists category and no assists category.
