Hello sim racers! It's Wednesday evening and that can only mean one thing.... Competition System blog time! Check out the latest answers from our very own Marcel Offermans here - https://www.studio-397.com/2021/04/competition-system-blog-week-13/ As usual, please discuss in the comments section below, and don't forget to submit your questions for answering next week! Stay safe, see you out on track.
"Will there be any way to see the number of entries in a race before registering? EmanueleMarra 15" This is a HUGE thing for me. And I don't know why this was not though of beforehand. For example the LMP2 races had very few participants recently. And I don't like the fact I have to register for a race, then only to see there are 1-5 other racers registered. I would love to cancel the registration at that point. Not racing will penalize with bad points. I personally wouldn't even register with few participants. I'm using an external CS tool to see which time of day had the most participants and then try to register for exact that race the next day. So knowing how many people are registered for a race and being able to cancel it before it starts (because I don't want to run a race alone) is a very HUGE feature for me. So please consider implementing. I'm sure km not the only one here
That doesn't really make sense in practice. If 15 people all check and see that only 2 people are registered, and don't register, you've just missed an opportunity to have a race with 17 people in it. Just register when you're committed to driving, and be done with it. The points thing is, again, misunderstood and is also only the way it is right now during the beta phase. Long term hourly (or other) races may have an entirely different points system, number of ranked drivers, and then other more specialised series will have their own points systems again. I don't know why people are getting hung up on points at this stage.
Because people want it all, and want it now: They want a full grid, of equally skilled people, so that they can feel they can win, and the victory be worthy , and want recognization for their deed in the score. Their time is too precious and their skill too high to compete for a lesser prize, against lesser people.
I also think that this would only increase the problem because people would wait until enough people are registered, so everyone would wait for each other without any result.
1.Currently, the system for purchasing DLC is very confusing. (You can also purchase purchased content again.) Is there any possibility of renewing the DLC store in the future? 2.In the future, will it be possible to join an online server (and competition system) without having all the DLC cars required to join? Currently we have to buy all 12 cars in order for us to participate in GT3 races.
This is one of the more common complaints with rF2 these days. The 'reason' for requiring all the cars in a pack goes back to the origin of rF2. ISI created a very straightforward system to ensure online racers all used the same cars available to other drivers. Keep in mind, this was loooooong before DLC was any sort of commonly used concept. The server would compare the car logging on and would either boot the user or download(sloowwwwly) the proper car/track to the user. But then S397 purchased the code-base and determined to use DLC as a cash infuser. But that darn pesky anti-cheat system designed years earlier by ISI was still present. Early on, there were several mentions of re-doing the packaging system but at some point such work was either abandoned or considered too time consuming to continue. I don't know if they will return to working on freeing up users from owning all the content, but it certainly would be welcome.
A lot of the Q&A in the week 12 blog was about different event and series formats e.g. team racing with driver swap when, heat racing when, specific league functionality when etc. As a result I'm seeing most of the admittedly "beta" Competition System being short specific tests of particular combinations. Since this is literally testing, its not surprising the number of people taking part is much diminishing over time. Not many people like software testing! So I think where we are at at this point, having the CS in its current form is actually proving a negative for the long term, without having some real competitions that are going to be longer-lived and actually encourage the player base to stay engaged. My suggestion would be to take a couple of series - maybe the Alpine, maybe one of the Tatuus - and create a proper competition season a la iRacing, for 12 weeks of racing, weekly switch over tracks, and have the points systems and rating systems actually start to take effect. I'd also suggest these don't include any third party tracks such as Imola - only S297 core content or DLC. This will also test applying sim updates during the course of a season. I'd schedule sufficient qual and race sessions e.g. every 1 hour or 2 hours, in order to build up knowledge of when people will get together to race. On iRacing, communities create "heat maps" showing the typical number of racers and the average ratings for each time slot, over the course of a season. This gives information to people to know when they can expect to find other like-minded racers at specifc times of day and days of the week, to actually get a meaningful race and build an online community. It's time to actually get the basic, standard online racing out of beta. And not just have elitist GT Challenge. I also have a question. I'm seeing I have multiple versions of Spa on my install. I think an older version is being retained, because its specifically referenced in an old online competition, which are stored as vmods as alternatives to "All Cars and Tracks". However, the UI has no way to delete or remove these vmods (and the last Tatuus one downloaded as just the file name, without the "Tatuus Winter 2021" title assigned to it, so there's another bug). I've no idea if manually going into content manager or into the file system to delete these vmods will actually work, and it'll subsequently then delete the un-referenced old versions of Spa as well. I notice the content manager within the new UI won't let you delete content in the list either. If you are saying the new UI is now the main UI, as opposed to the old UI, you HAVE to provide these management functions in the new UI - basic functionality. Or if not, tell us how to manually maintain what's in the installed stuff, because my disk drive is filling up with old versions of content I don't intend to use.
I made the same experience. Fortunately I recognized my double purchase right away and I was allowed to give it back (to Steam). Definitely something that must be improved, as I also never know what I need and what I have.
I haven't figured out yet, where can we post Competition issues? I mean is someone interested in community feedback with regards to: I cannot join a competition? I am constantly getting CANNOT READ PROPERTY 'FIND' OF UNDEFINED when I try to participate in an LMP3 competition. I am registered and when the race starts, always this message. Am I left alone out there or is there a team /forum which cares to resolve such issues? Btw: I am registered, and I see 'JOIN' button with the count-down. When I click 'JOIN' and the race starts I get this message, followed by an error screen and a background message: "You have not registered for this session" - I have!!
Hi pilots, I have a lot of questions to ask 1) Can you explain to me exactly how points are awarded in the CS? 2) I won several races, started 8 in first place, best race pace, best fastest lap, no accidents and I am awarded fewer points than who finished third, why? 3) For a couple of weeks I have seen few people running on the CS, maybe the community expects updates that haven't been there? 4) I would suggest assigning points on a race basis and up to a certain point, that is, as on iRacing, up to 4 races the best score is taken into account, from race 4 to 9 the average of the 2 best races is made, From 9 to 13 the average of the 3 best, obviously I understand that such a system can happen when the system is consolidated with reputation etc. 5) At the moment I see that points are also awarded to those who do not finish races and retire, wouldn't it be more right not to assign points? Sorry if I have been long in my post but I still have questions to ask but at the moment I stop here
I think this might have been addressed in one of the early blog posts, but this is what Marcel said on discord (this is a pinned message in the CS channel): To briefly sum up some key points: You don't get points from each race. All races in the current event (track) are used to find your ranking among all drivers in that event. Your rank then determines your points at the end of the event - these points are also shown provisionally throughout the event. This points system is currently being used for the CS events, but it doesn't mean the 'final' CS will use this points system. Yes, all 'classified' drivers get ranked, and end up with points. Participation is worth a lot (you can't skip some races and beat someone slower who does all of them, unless we get back to ~250 people in each event). Hope that helps...
From the beginning on there have sometimes been problems with the "too late" message. Now it happened at the GTC series as well today. As it also shows just before joining a session when it works, can you maybe explain what it exactly means? What is the challenge for fixing that error? From my understanding back at the beginning it had to do with steam? just a fun technical question for once
You have the formula E license and you took very fast circuits for that competition at the beginning of the year. Will we see the Valencia e-prix circuit in the simulator too?