Ranks
Competitive play is important online, as the best races are most often the closest. So by implementing a ranking system which grades players based upon how many Cheap Rift Gold they have beat and been beaten by, it allows us in conjunction with the matchmaking to gather players of the same or similar ranking together to provide the fairest and most exciting possible racing experience. There is also a Ranked leaderboard which lists every player, showing who really is the best MotorStorm player in the world.
Groups
Playing online is always more fun with friends, and we wanted to make it as easy as possible to do so. We’ve done this through Groups; these are quite simply a way of keeping friends together. They are initiated by sending a friend an invite; when they accept they become part of your Group, and wherever you go they then go with you, until they decide to leave (or if you choose to kick them from your group). Groups can be up 12 players, but when playing Ranked it is only possible with groups of 4 or less (to avoid cheating).
General
On top of these 3 major improvements, we also made online play global, so that wherever you are in the world you can play against anyone else who happens to be online. There is now the ability to check and compare other player’s statistics, side by side, and not just online statistics, either: this includes all the offline ones, too. We’ve improved the voice chat – not just in terms of general quality, but also the number of players that can talk simultaneously: in the lobby up to 8 players can talk at once, and during an event it’s 4 – that’s twice as many as in the original MotorStorm!
