Allow servers to push add-ons to clients?

[Alayan]

Maybe quick-play should only lead to vanilla servers. In the case that no vanilla servers are open, it could start up a standard server with standard settings automatically.

In Ring Racers (another kart-racing game), when playing online, there are two categories of servers: "Core" (Vanilla) and "Modded". The question would be, if that distinction would be necessary for STK or if the game would be able to automatically detect the kind of server.
To join a Ring Racers server that uses mods, they all must be downloaded beforehand (see screenshot in the attachments). Resulting in quite large files being transferred on the first join. But after that, everything is settled and done.

Anyways, in Supertuxkart, there are definetly plenty of players out there who would like to go beyond the standard tracks and feel hindered by the current smallest common ground approach. Thus servers exist that require addons to play, be it specific addons or just a big number of them. So I agree with the original post.

Yes, quick play should arguably only lead to servers with standard config and no addons requirement (addons might be available, just not required).

But beyond that, there are multiple different categories that can make classification tricky:
- A server may be running custom code that doesn't affect core gameplay
- A server may require a number of addons from a list, but not necessarily all of them.
- A server may be requiring specific addons (but run standard config)
- A server may use modded settings (such as different powerup probabilities, different kart characteristics...)

The central server that hosts the server list should be made aware of a game server's category and the game itself should be able to use that information when displaying the server list.

Servers opened by recently created online accounts probably should never show near the top of the list or be used for quick play, that way it becomes a lot easier to control cases of servers mis-advertising their capabilities.