At the moment I have only a simple system implemented and VR are ignored always.
The reason is easy: Very rarely there are 3 or more rooms open for a region that accept new guests.

A random shot of the current state grouped by region only looking at the suspend status:
There are not really many choices for a given region. And if connecting by friend list or the host have an different VR than all others, it high level room is already open for low level VR independent of the special Wiimmfi rules.

However, I'll will think about it.

Maybe put the difference between the host's VR and the own VR somewhere inside the calculation which is used to order the records? Rooms which match a player's VR count will then me prioritized a little bit.

Well, there are a lot of players with the MKWii ISO patcher which disables the VR range entirely. Maybe Wiimm can make Wiimmfi obey the VR range by the client if the client is using CTGP to let CTGP take control of the VR range thing.

I like Bean's idea the most. At first, vr search in it's entirety was added to ctww (on August 5), and it got A LOT of people to start playing ctww online for the remainder of the summer (including myself). People who have been playing the game competitively played again since they could play in their competitive 8-9k rooms with friends. And lower ranked, more casual players (some old, some new), wouldn't drop out of rooms constantly after a few rooms (before vr search was instated, a lot of low ranked people, especially ones with new licenses, would constantly quit rooms because they'd get very low spots race after race since the room was split too much in competitive higher ranked players and casual, less experienced players). Once search got added, a lot of casual people would keep on playing for several hours. I remember seeing one particular room where half the people started with 5k on the dot, and they played for well over an hour, and they were placing between 1st and last quite evenly.

Eventually, due to the summer ending, the complete vr search had to be altered to a dynamic search (aka, Bean's feature which disables the search after 100 seconds), but it did the job still. I see rooms regularly on weekends/late nights filled with pros, more relaxed rooms during the weekdays, and people are being ranked similarly when ctww was at it's most active hours. At it's less active hours, ctww people aren't struggling to find rooms either nor are they quitting to search even if they have to wait for the 100 second timer. In fact, Ctww has less players usually than worldwides, and its worked out quite well. If regionals are of any concern, those are always pro high ranks anyway.

I'm in agreement with Bean and Zach, who said it all. For beginner or unskilled players to always be put against 9000 VR players, isn't fair for either type of player. Beginners will rarely have a chance to win to where not even items help them, and skilled players will always have to race on mostly 100cc. There are also shocks being used every 30 seconds by beginners, which becomes highly annoying for everyone when it occurs every race of the session (about 4-5 shocks per race). This has proven to be boring and frustrating in CTGP, which has removed VR-restricted search for about 1.5 years up until recently, well before you have (basically since NWFC shutdown).

Usually when I'm put against 5000 VR, I feel bad for always winning and shutting the beginners out, becoming very boring winning all the time on 100cc, and I'm sure it's very boring and frustrating for the beginners to never able to win. Even when I go on slow vehicles to give them a chance, I still win most races, and I can't dumb-down my skill level, as that would be far, too boring for me to play below my potential. It's not fun for anyone. Nintendo was wise to separate player skill level groups; everybody who plays close to the same skill level as each other has the most fun and also has the biggest chance to develop their racing knowledge; everybody has a chance to win. I speak for a lot of veteran players when I say that I don't play for very long because of this.

Also, I'm a karter (or, I was, anyway). When I kart, I struggle to get out of 4th place and always get thunderclouds when rooms have widely-mixed skill levels such as described. Beginners will always take up the 9th-12th place items I need to catch up because those players never get out of last places, and 9000 VR players will always be too far ahead with wheelies for me to catch up. I had to stop karting because of this and have lost a lot of karting skill due to this ever since NWFC shut-down. More balanced skill rooms, I could easily win races with karts and could avoid thunderclouds.

It was nice when Bean reinstated VR search, as it balanced out rooms nicely even for how small of a player base we have, but he also made VR search dynamic between restricted and unrestricted in case someone out of search range wasn't able to join a room, so it worked out well.
I like this idea.

I know this is an old thread to bump, but some people have been discussing this over Skype recently. I'd like to bump this to bring up some ideas for people to talk about with reinstating vr search in some way shape or form. Especially in the ct community, if possible at the very least, could it be reinstated for certain regions (like ctgp's regions)? CTGP already has a built in dynamic search that keeps vr search activated for 100 seconds before it goes away. When we first introduced this feature, it got a lot of people playing again. It'd be nice if the search could be reactivated for ctgp's regions.

I think it would be smart as well if people could respond to their opinions on reactivating it for worldwides and other regions in general too.

So what Astro, Bean, and Zach said is all true, and I can try to add to it from my experiences. VR searching range benefited WiimmFi when it was a thing in an immense way. Speaking from the competitive community myself as a player there, I can easily say it is frustrating when a "less skilled player" of 5k or 6k joins an already good CTWW. As much as I don't like saying this, they suck the fun out of it. Granted it's not their fault, and they are probably equally just as frustrated too, not being able to keep up with the skilled players. And with forced 100cc in many situations, the skilled players will remember how their CTWW experience went and think "Well, if I'm gonna be forced to play 100cc in the rooms I like, then what is the point in playing?" And the less skilled players think this way too, vise versa. Overused shocks and bad tracks can also add to the frustration. But what I find the worst out of all this, is that sometimes, when a player with 4500VR or less joins a room, the skilled players (at least the ones who know who to talk to about with this kind of situation) will ask a WiimmFi Ban Moderator to kick the person out of the CTWW so a better player can join. I have seen this many, many times, and it really isn't fair to the less skilled players who want to just have some fun playing a video game, but they can't because they don't meet the "qualifications", if you wanna call it that, of the room they unfortunately joined. With all that said, even just what we used to have (VR search range for 100 seconds of searching) would still greatly benefit the cause, and save a lot of rooms. In fact, on the WW side of things, some of the more skilled WWers have started (and this may have been a thing for a while, I just see it more nowadays) going to the US regionals side of WiimmFi just to be able to create good rooms that they can enjoy with their skilled friends who are their same level (When I look at the WiimmFi status page sometimes, I see US Regionals with about 8 or 9 skilled players, trying to have a good time). They should not have to go that kind of an extent to play a game that should be easily enjoyed. They just don't want to race with the less skilled, and this is their way of avoiding it. They should not have to go into Regionals to have fun, is my point. So, you can see it is effecting both CTWW players and WW players. With all this said from me, I hope to someday see the VR search range implemented back into WiimmFi in some way, shape, or form. It will make a bunch of people in this community happy and relieved, and save a lot of frustration.

Definitely not, because it is replaced by another devaluation algorithm: Matchmaking results are sorted 1. by timeouts ) and 2. by vr difference.

However, VR is always compared to the hosts VR and becomes irrelevant, if only 1-3 rooms are open for new guests. But there are very very rarely 3 or more open rooms for a single region with exception to global (3 open rooms at the moment).

A note about comparing VR:
Selecting a host by comparing the VR works only, if there are many available hosts. But is the VR of a host is really relevant for the the room strength? I think no.

Example:
* Room opener vr 5000
* guest A enters with 3000 VR
* guest B enters with 7500.
* guest C can't enter because of 8000. So B will never meet stringer players.
* A leaves and B becomes host.
* Now only players in the range from 1-5500 can enter the room.
The value ranges are not exact, but the classic matchmaking is really bad with only few rooms. It worked only, because if a player reconnects he had a good chance to find a host with similar VR if >10 rooms are available.

I agree with bean, zak, astro and fruitz here. It really is no fun when there is a 4800vr player in a room forcing 100cc all the time. Like shit like This needs to stop. Even if you just turn it on for CTGP's regions that would be fine, and a lot of people would be really happy. Something else i thought of was for joining a new room, instead of looking at just the hosts VR, cant it take an average of the whole room's VR? (idk how this works tho so it is probably impossible)

If it is possible to add in vr search solely for ctgp's regions, that would be wonderful. Just those regions, and if somehow it causes issues for ctgp players, then it'll be our problem to deal with.

"But is the VR of a host is really relevant for the the room strength? I think no."

We're not referring to the stability of the room in terms of Internet connection. We are referring to how well the room plays in terms of how people drive, how they use items, how often are they spamming items, is it just a couple of people blowing the rest of the room away or a couple of people constantly straggling back having a miserable time, are races interesting and close, etc......

I think a good question to ask is: Would it be possible to have the old vr search implemented solely for ctgp regions while keeping the new algorithm you developed for worldwides and all other regions?

I can only agree with what Lukas, Bean, Astro, etc said. And if it's possible to implement the system that implements VR range but allows people to join any room regardless of VR after 100 seconds, I see no reason not to implement it. The only bad part is you have to wait like 40 extra seconds, and that's barely anything.

As pointed out neither VR group wishes to play with one another. If two players with high VR can meet up it's much easier to create a good room fast, and with low vr players it's much easier to create a room of their skill level instead of having everything mixed.

Often there is a 12 player room with very good players and usually at least 3-6 players (often due to someone streaming it as well) who wish to join that room. If those players of high VR wish to play, they could manage to create a new room, things would get easier so it isn't all about that one room. It also makes things just a little bit easier when full high VR rooms disconnect entirely and everyone has to find each other again.

If B is host and has 7500vr, how come only players in the vr range 1-5500 can join? Is that how the old VR model works?

Either way, a player with above 8000vr would never want to join a room with 5000vr players.

Now tell me how many NEW people have 5000 VR and how many people just use a new Savegame with 5000 VR.

I would guess that 99% of the 5000 VR players are those who either are cheaters who get a new Profile because of a ban, old people who start with a new profile because Wiimmfi does not have their FC, just use a new Profile for Riivolution based Distributions or just use a new profile from the 4 possible.

All of those above mentioned know how to play Mario Kart Wii and even if the CTGP method would be activated, 5XXX VR people would just have to wait for 100 seconds before they get into the 9000 VR groups.

Edit: Currently there are 3 CTGPR Race rooms open:

One host has 5258 VR with 3 guests which have 6997, 6936 and 5043 VR which seems pretty good.

One host has 6084 VR with 3 guest which have 7865, 6624 and 5206 VR which also is close enough.

The last host has 8820 VR with 3 guests which have 5862, 4998 and 7156 VR which is not perfect but to be honest I would rather drive in ONE room with 12 people instead of 3 small rooms.

Well Wiimm said that it currently is programmed to just ignore VR Range everywhere. Wiimm would have to change this and this would take up his precious time.

I dont really care whether this gets done or not but in the end it is Wiimms decision whether it is worth it.

I have compiled evidence illustrating why players of various skill levels need to be separated. It took me hours to put this together, so I appreciate you taking the time to look it over and carefully consider it, Wiimm. Sorry for the size.

I agree. I am a relatively novice player compared to you all. I cannot get my VR above 6000 despite a lot of time and effort. I do feel that a VR matching system would benefit both beginners and experts. It is discouraging to never win and I feel like I anger the high ranked players when I do well in a race.

I've been the same way with Wimmfi (and WFC when it was still active) for years, except I could never stay over 8000 VR. Sometimes I'd be up there about to break over 8100 VR - and then be stomped down by a horrid losing streak, tumbling my VR all the way down to 6500 over the course of just 6 races. I got lucky with one of my profiles a while back though - I got stuck in a room with a FTL hacker that boosted my VR (as well as several other players') all the way up to 9999 in one night. He was awfully generous.

I personally think that VR searching should be enabled again. It gets annoying to see constant 100cc in a high level room as it is possible to see many times. And low VR players often take too long in races which can be annoying as well.

i would like to see 100cc disabled completly. after so many years its just unneccesary to have that casual mode. I bet 97% of the players going online already beat all 150ccm and mirror mode cups of the offline 1 player mode. furthermore CT Creators wouldnt have to mind about gaps that cant be done on 100cc :p

Personally I wouldn't necessarily want 100cc to be completely gone (and this might be the worst lie I've ever told) but only if it were much less frequent than it actually is, because it's actually more frequent than it should be if you ask me