The Future of 22RS Multiplayer

As an esport racing series, multiplayer is a focal point of development for 22RS with a lot of thought going into the design. In this interview Garth explains how the new multiplayer game mechanics will provide players and teams with even more flexibility to define their race strategy and he gives us some insights into what we can expect from 22RS’s multiplayer in the future.

• Play in real time with up to 100 other players simultaneously
• Compete as a single player against others with tournaments and challenges that may remain open for days, weeks, months
• With loud-outs, players will have the ability set roles suited to their driving style preferences and team strategies
• Soon-to-be unveiled of all new, never seen before, racing modes and racing features
• New and unique team racing modes for in-depth racing strategies and esports competitions

Watch the PAX 2020 AMA interview for the full discussion

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp3Lqw0wq58

Synchronous vs Asynchronous Multiplayer

Up until now, 22RS players on Pavillion have had access to asynchronous multiplayer and local multiplayer. Asynchronous Multiplayer is where online players can compete against each-other, but rather than doing it in real-time, they’re playing locally against each-other’s lap times that are saved to the global online leaderboards. Local multiplayer allows people to compete against other players in real-time, but they’ve got to be on the same network/in the same location.

‘We’re excited to be nearing the release of our online (synchronous) multiplayer. This will take our already very competitive competition to the next level, not only because you’ll have players from different locations to competing against one-another in real-time, but it’ll really open up our new team game modes and it’ll allow us to launch our ‘royale’ race modes, with numbers of con-current players never seen before in racing games. It’s going to Epic.

Players will be pleased to know that development of real-time multiplayer is nearing completion, with release expected in the coming months.

Multiplayer Game Mechanics

One of the unique twists to 22RS is the loadout mechanics, which give a player a choice of different ‘upgrades’ and ‘abilities’ which they can take into a race. This really opens up the racing genre, because now you have whole new ways to think about race strategy, both in your setup going into a race (what’s the best loadout for the track, your play style, and depending on who you’re racing against) and how your race strategy during a race.

These new mechanics apply to free-for-all races, where it’s every racer for themselves, but also to the team modes, where you’re able to work out the best mix of loadouts amongst you and your team mates.

This is really uncharted territory when it comes to racing games, so we’re excited to see where it goes, and what racers can do with it!!

1. What are the Loadouts?

These are separated into two categories, Upgrades and Abilities.

Upgrades – These allow players to upgrade features fitted to their vehicle. They include; Engine HP, boost turbine thrust, capacitor energy storage and ERS collection speed/efficiency.

Abilities – These are areas of effect that you can paint onto the track that can be used by you and your team, or can affect opponents only, depending on the ability. Abilities include things like extra boost, extra energy, stealing energy (from opponents) and adding extra friction to the track, to slow opponents down. All of the abilities have different area’s of affect on the track, as well as the strength of the ability and cost to use it, so there are lots of different combo’s of abilities that are available.

Players can adjust their vehicle’s loadout to suit their individual driving character and preferred race strategy before heading into a race, taking full advantage of their unique strengths. For the team modes, different loadout combinations can be categorised intro ‘roles’, ranging from support and engineering to defence and offense. We’ll cover each of these in detail in another article.

2. New Game Modes

Free-for-All Events

‘Free-for-All’ is designed for players who just want to jump in and start playing without too much fuss. Keeping it simple and making it easy to find and join a race is our priority, along with providing choice for different game modes and styles, so that players can find race modes that suit their own style of play.

Free-for-All is arguably the most inviting of all the multiplayer modes and we expect to see the team running lots of these events in future. This includes the new epic battle-royale style race mode, aptly titled ‘Race Royale’, an elimination race where the last player through each sector of a track gets eliminated – that’s a frantic pace of a player being eliminated every 5-10 secs (depending on the size of the track) – until the final three players do a last lap shootout.

Stay tuned for announcements of new Free-for-All events as they’re released.

New Team Modes

22’s Team Mode involve two or more teams competing against each other in a number of event types:

• Team Tournaments: A race or series of races of any duration (day long to season long grand prix’s) on any combination of tracks and in any combination of game modes)
• Team Race: A lap based race. First player to cross the finish line wins for the team
• Team Capture: First team to capture all sectors in a race and hold them for 30 secs wins.

Team Mode and the corresponding team event types are pivotal features for the series as they also pave the way for additional gameplay opportunities that are characteristic of traditional motorsports and esports, such as brand sponsorships and technical career pathways. Together these will create the most comprehensive and streamlined esports ecosystem in the games industry today.

Race Royale - 100 Concurrent Racers!?

At the time of writing, the games industry record for the maximum number of simultaneous players in any online race sits at 40, in the game GRID, enabled by Google’s latest browser technology, Google Edge.

PC Gamer’s headline announcement for this claims that GRID’s 40 car mode “isn’t possible with other hardware.”

Using a combination of our features in proprietary engine technology ‘RevGen’ and unique twists to how we’re designing our multiplayer modes in alignment with our server architecture, we’re looking forward to raising the bar with up to (and maybe even beyond) 100 simultaneous players.

You can have a sneak peek of what this 100-player action looks like in the header video featured on our homepage. The ‘Race Royale’ will be one of the Free-for-All game modes that supports 100 players, but it will also be available in other event types, each with their own unique objectives for victory.

Keep your eyes peeled for more details on our race royale modes closer to release.