Unfair scores in online GPs?

[Wuzzy]

I noticed the scoring in GPs can be very unfair when you play a GP online.

The score you get after each race depends on the number in that race. So far, so good. As long the player count does not change, there is no problem with that.

However, in online GPs, players can come and go at will, even between races.
This means the possible scores after a GP race can change drastically.
For example, if you start a GP with 20 players, and win a race, you win +50-something points. But if 18 players leave and you play the 2nd race, and win again, your victory is now only worth 1 lousy point.

Another extreme example:
Race with 10 players. In first race, you lose and get no points, first player wins +10 (or so, just a lot of points).
Then 8 players go away before the next race starts, so you play against the winner for 4 more races. You win every time, but each win is now only worth 1 point. The final score is 10-4 for your opponent. You lose, although you have won more races.
This can be deeply frustrating to lose a GP because of weird player leaves/joins.

But wait! It gets even crazier:
GP with 2 players with 10 races. You lose first 9 races, your opponent is 9-0 in the lead. Technically, it should be impossible to win for you at this moment, even if you win the last race. Now in the last race, a lot of players appear. You win, scoring way more points (>9) and winning the GP. This can be abused in a hilarious way by talking to some of your friends to simply join your GP-in-progress.

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The main problem to me is that the possible scores you can get changes with each race. The “worth” of a victory can change drastically between races, between +1 and +50-something. This doesn't seem right.

Now my question to you people: How can the scoring in GPs be made fair so that it's robust against random player leaves/joins?

I am not sure how to answer that question yet. I have multiple ideas:

Idea 1
First race determines scoring for all subsequent races: No matter how many players are in subsequent races, the score scheme is the same. If there are actually MORE players, players in ranks worse than the number of players in the first race all score 0.
Example: First race starts with 3 players, scores are +2, +1, +0 (rank 1, 2, 3). Also, all players in even worse ranks also win no points, should there be more players in subsequent races.

Downside: If a GP starts with 2 players, and then in the 2nd race, 18 players appear, then only the winner scores 1 point while 19 other players win nothing. This approach is still not really robust.

Idea 2
Change GP scoring completely, make sure the winner always gets the same number of points. Worse ranks get scores according to some kind of “scale” / percentage and, similar to what the current scoring does. I don't really know how it could work out yet.

[Alayan]

For GPs to make sense, keeping the same players all along is ideal.

That's because people join/leave too much that these GPs don't make all that much sense.

How can the scoring in GPs be made fair so that it's robust against random player leaves/joins?

Use the max-player setting of the server to determine point attribution, so place 1 always gives the same points, etc.

But of course it's easier to win when you only have two people than when the server is full, and when the server is not full some people would get free points. And winning a GP means less is half of your opponents have raced in only a few of the GP's races.

In the end you can make it "less bad" but not completely good, joins/leaves just mess up GPs.

The GP functionality can be used for some kind of tournament (with a set of players meeting in a private server at an agreed upon time), or for friends playing together and who won't quit to do random stuff, and then it should work well.