Competition System Blog | Week 18

Discussion in 'News & Notifications' started by Paul Jeffrey, Jul 7, 2021.

  1. Paul Jeffrey

    Paul Jeffrey

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  2. instinkt

    instinkt Registered

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    o_O say what?
    this quote feels to me like bad joke looking at what these people were able to achieve and what you (devs) provided at this time
    and I don't expect anything more than another inept actions tbh

    new content is nice but you really should finally focus on fixing bugs and user experience because people slowly loosing their patience
    especially when there is more and more good alternatives
     
    Last edited: Jul 7, 2021
  3. AlexHeuskat

    AlexHeuskat Registered

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    Really ? tell me what.
     
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  4. burgesjl

    burgesjl Registered

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    Well, hate to be the one to actually come out and say it, but: the Competition System has been a complete failure so far.

    The primary issue I continue to have is the ethos of what you are building; you are seeing it as a software development process, not an online community building process. I give you a couple of statistics, from iRacing 2021 Season 2. First, Mazda Mx-5 Cup, some 45,780 drivers completed races in that season. Now, this is their most basic, arguably slowest car on the service. The next most popular was the Production Car Challenge, using woefully outdated cars (Pontiac Solstice, a brand not in existence for many years!) also got 25,509 drivers. Sure to be some overlap here. GT3 Fixed - 19,168. IMSA series (without a DPi), 17,908. F3, 10,005. Porsche Cup, 8,439.

    Now, Rome was not built in a day. But the series you have running - BMW 2, GT Challenge, soon Formula Challenge - aren't getting anywhere close to these sorts of numbers, they are rounding error. The Blog states this is "plenty to race again soon" - it isn't.

    It's imperative you start run "standard" series, like every other online sim does. Those should be: Porsche Cup, BMW or some other touring car, F4/F3 single seaters, possibly F1 historics, GT3 (maybe fixed and open). We need to start building participation numbers! And the only way to do that, is to offer something people know is always going to be there, bread-and-butter events and series.

    The other thing you need, as a UI for viewing past results (and in future, history of any ratings). This is foundational, it should have been part of "release 1.0" as it was the day iRacing went live in 2008. You say you are storing these in the backend; hopefully so. iRacing have the UI's for individual events, including lap charts and lap graphs, series standings, weekly summary results (if a weekly series), etc. and they had all this on day 1, and they've pretty much never changed in the whole time. (They did do a backend change, and now I can't see very old race results and individual laps and such, but they've got at least 5 years of all this detail history from 100,000s of drivers and billions of laps turned).

    You really need to help yourselves here. Until the CS is properly built out, and with all the remaining issues on UI, AI on single player etc., it really isn't worth spending any more time on this sim. Or buying more content.
     
  5. Remco Majoor

    Remco Majoor Registered

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    They are better off trying to get the numbers in when the system is out of beta and in a 1.0 stage with stuff like ratings, linked sessions, protests etc. In place. If they do it like you say people will leave just as quick as they try it out atm.

    All those players at iracing are usually stuck at iracing because of the money they pay there. If one wants to steal them, you better have a flawless system to lure them in.

    Ps. Funny you say we need f1 historics to get player numbers, they arent even popular in iracing.
     
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  6. instinkt

    instinkt Registered

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    this is not true at all
    people "are stuck" at iceRacing because for long time that was (and for america/australia still mostly is) the only platform providing regular online racing without messing with 10 leagues at once - for EU (mostly) just recently R3E became good alternative for that kind of racing
    and that system is just convenient especially for adult people with their busy lives so they're just ready to overpay for it
     
    Last edited: Jul 10, 2021
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  7. Bill Worrel

    Bill Worrel Registered

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    When you say day 1 of iRacing launch, it was in closed beta for some time (I think years), before it launched to the general public.
     
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  8. Remco Majoor

    Remco Majoor Registered

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    I've got first hand experience of it lol. I know quite a few people who literally say they are staying at iRacing because they have already spent a big amount in it.

    Most Americans you wont ever get, since iRacing is an American made product, with very American marketing, which Americans love to boast about.

    ACC managed to get a bit of the GT3 crowd over from iRacing, because they focussed on just that and did it quite well. So when iRacers tried it, they stayed. That's why S397 needs to have a '1.0' state of both the UI and CS before they should focus on the marketing. They only market the GT and Formula challenge right now, as that's what this system can do very well ATM.
     
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  9. Bill Worrel

    Bill Worrel Registered

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    And rFactor started out as an American made product.

    There are quite a few Americans who don't want to pay for iRacing and use rFactor for stock car, sports car and formula racing series.

    I'm sure there will be many who will not want to continue to pay $13 per month once there is another place to get a similar experience for less.

    Ermin has a video iRacing & the Psychology of Monitization that's interesting.
     
    Last edited: Jul 10, 2021
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  10. Love Guitars n Cars

    Love Guitars n Cars Registered

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    Comparing iRacing to the online system here is apples to bowling balls.
     
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  11. williang83

    williang83 Registered

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    Well as much as i dislike iracing monetization, let's be honest and admit that multiplayer wise it is simply superior, and actually by far. I know it hits some EGO but given the numbers and premium price combination, it is definitely a success with no real rival at the moment. Why? Because others much cheaper games cannot even come close to iRacing numbers.

    I bet my *** that if iRacing would be more accessible (eg. keep costing 13$ monthly but all contents free), their number would skyrocket and literally crash today competition. This would either make racing game development not interesting anymore (commercially wise) or force any developer to offer a good online system to start with.....i'm saying this as a primary single play gamer .

    I know end users has little knowledge about costs but, given the nature of my work, I understand that operational cost (investment, risk, infrastructure cost, revenue) is not low, so the 13$ price is unavoidable, simple as that. This is the reason why no one else can/want offer the same quality that iRacing offers and at the same time offer the same quality.

    We might argue the netcode, the tire model, etc.... but that's unrelated because iRacing team has clearly shown that they make investment and keep improving the product (eg. AI), it is just that their roadmap might not fit some expectations but they do have one.

    That being said, i believe that eSports visibility might help to mitigate all the cost due to sponsorship of brands, it is just a matter of having a minimum guaranteed player base and all the marketing machine will get started. However, whatever was hit by marketing, that thing got worse so i'm very skeptical whether this worth.

    Another interesting point is that contrary to when iRacing started, today we have a lot of cloud options. There is no need to create its own network infrastructure. Today investing on a proper online system is not as scary as before. What holds developers back is the fact that there is uncertainty about which numbers they will hit, in others words if it worth the effort. Sure rF2 is trying something with competition, but money and workforce investments are extremely low in comparison on what a real dive into MP would be.

    BTW, I currently only play rF2
     
    Last edited: Jul 12, 2021
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  12. victor jimenez

    victor jimenez Registered

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    We needs races with ranked and rating system, more numbers of races, and more and diferentes hours of races
     
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  13. victor jimenez

    victor jimenez Registered

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    And finish the Tyre model, rf2 it's very good, but finish several fix

    Thanks for your work
     
  14. smithaz

    smithaz Registered

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    Are you planning on doing some real quickfire races where you're one and done within 30mins? I'm talking 10/15min quali for a bit of practise then throw down in a quick ten or fifteen minute race and then you're thrown in to the next quali to refine your angle of attack?
     
  15. Remco Majoor

    Remco Majoor Registered

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    more empty races? There are already hardly any participants, even on the Class 1
     
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  16. Adrian Blasco

    Adrian Blasco Registered

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    It would be nice to give the repetitions a touch of effect such as a bit of motion blur when the camera moves, I think it would give it a more beautiful touch.
     
  17. pilAUTO

    pilAUTO Registered

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    I have always thought, perhaps wrongly, that the vast majority of rF2 users primarily use rF2 offline, and even for a significant part (of which I am a part), exclusively offline.

    Was it smart to put the almost complete focus on online ?

    Frankly I believe this is a major and time consuming error, which adds to a long list of prioritization errors in developments (with some real successes of course).

    This almost exclusive focus on online, without success honestly, frankly, "makes my hair stand out".
     
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  18. Love Guitars n Cars

    Love Guitars n Cars Registered

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    In my opinion racing online is a progression. An enjoyable offline experience must first be developed (championship season) to get people to consider racing online.
     
  19. Andrew Waddington

    Andrew Waddington Registered

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    When will a ranked system be implemented akin to iracing?

    Personally I'm not interested in single player on rf2 and never have been but I appreciate some people only do offline racing. That said I don't think it's wrong of Devs to focus more on multiplayer now though. It is likely a solid multiplayer system could increase the longevity of the sim as well as popularity if some major drawbacks like buying all content to race just one car are resolved.
     
  20. Remco Majoor

    Remco Majoor Registered

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    We will see when the comp system goes out of beta. The thing is, online for the longest time didn't have any love. There was no pick up racing, everything was league racing (which echoes in what is getting the numbers in the comp system atm).

    About the numbers SP vs MP, although its still lots of guess work, the VEC lemans race was at the 29th of may this year. They had 3 splits of 3-6 drivers. 40 cars per split (although div 3 might be less. This means from the 850 people playing rF2 at that moment, 400ish drivers were doing only 1 league race. This is without the people doing other leagues (there are quite a few) and people practicing for other leagues.

    I personally would've done it differently, but I don't think going full on online is a bad thing for the game. Sucks for SP only drivers who got a broken AI now I understand, but thats just how the market is right now
     
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