When are ISI going to step up to their responsibility to their subscribers, and begin marketing the software aggressively? The servers are still barren. I am lucky if there are 30 people driving in the entire world at once (including private). I know a large portion of your drivers personally. It has always been this way. Approaching 2 years in just a few months. Most of us joined up to support the driving community as a whole. This community is larger than the pool of drivers required, to average the current rF2 server load. Why are you not appealing to them? Why are you not appealing at all? As a supporter, I am tired of this. Too often do I shutdown rF2, because there is nothing happening online. I haven't played for days as a result. Starting your own server is pointless. So. What are you going to do? Edit: Apparently this is 'badgering', and does not deserve a reply.
Seeing that this sim has still many problems I wouldn't recommend marketing this just yet... which is of course sad because I also hope that online numbers would go way up.
rf2 may still have problems, but it's the best sim to play by far, at least for me. Had a look here? Gives some insight on where people are and what they're playing: http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/rF2_mmstats_v1_01/ByHour?:embed=y&:display_count=no As you say, it could be more players, of course. At some point, I would expect people moving on from rf1 though.
Thanks for the link. Basically it confirms that there is life on the ISR Megane servers, the rest are pretty much useless.
Yep, the server with nice track variation, with a car that most can get along with nicely and have a great race is the one that has people in it. Funny that XD I've sat in a 60's F1 server and watched as people would come in, go crazy, and then leave within a few laps. For public racing, the "easy to drive" cars are the ones that thrive. I hear it's the same in iRacing too...
Yes, with the exception that for each rF2 online user, you have 20 at iRacing. So the lower classes have more users (also because it's cheaper), but other series have still enough people.
Sad but true but I cannot see what ISI can do about it. It is not that they dont care http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/14768-League-Admins-League-essential-features what can you do though if people just dont join? Very untrue. ISR is doing very good, but we are doing good too, we have regular cheduled races with full attendance for the last two years, our everyday open server has regular people there too. I have noticed other servers having regular attendance too, dont generalize please.
To OP: For pubby racing, I don't ever see rFactor2 being very popular (not like iRacing). This is a niche market and drivers will have best experiences driving in a club or a league. It's due to a lot of things, not the least of which is that rF2 is moddable, not just a pick-up-and-drive game. That makes it more difficult to match up players. Stick with it, join a group or start one on your own. No other new gen sim that is on the market right now offers the same sort of flexibility and freedom as rFactor2. The downside is, it's hard to just pick up and drive in a race online.
That is very nice, but from a comercial point of view that's still nothing. rFactor 2 needs much more online activity, otherwise it's going to be a huge fairly soon.
This is one of the issues I think, or at least for new drivers, casual drivers and new admins. too much confusion about the platform, endless file tweaking to get simple stuff to work, the almost constant need to find out how to get something to work, from skins to vmods to simply wanting the UI to keep cars in a list and not revert back to tiles every time it restarts. Some of those are normal, like vmods, you just have to spend a bit of time innit, other stuff is just silly. why does one need to do a search on ISI forums to find out how to change its username? Driving rf2 is hard enough as it is (well done!) but for new users the added complexity of the sim and the required investigations into small and often redundant items is just off putting. And the more you 'get' rf2 the more you want to tweak things as well, just like setting up a car but without the gratification of having fun as a result. Comparing it with iracing is just silly btw, it has a massive headstart and should be compared with rf1. and rf1 does have the numbers still. Which raises the question, why haven't those peeps embraced rf2 yet? Imo that is partly what OP was going on about, rf2 is still hanging somewhere in-between beta and final. And on that note I suspect allot of core simracers are just not convinced yet rf2 is ready. consequently communities as well, not convinced. In the thread Nikos posted Tim asked why leagues haven't made the move yet.....and apart from the usual tech jibberjabber this remains unanswered. At the moment it is just too hard to get something going without a big userbase in a community whom are ready and willing to embrace rf2. so ISR and the likes are lucky enough to be able to tap into that and succeed, but I suspect most communities are not so lucky and are suffering from a userbase that is just not ready or convinced yet rf2 is up for the serious stuff. And in my experience this has negative effects, simracers will race, no matter what. so if rf2 is not being fully implemented in their community, they will go somewhere else. possibly even change sim to get their weekly fix. and wait it out for rf2. Because in terms of fun and competition in racing it doesn't really matter which sim you use, all online sims can offer us the same excitement in racing real people on a track. Heck, we would drive a wireframe-sim if it was up to the tasks! You can have as much fun in rf1 or iracing as with rf2, the mechanics of competitive fun doesn't change. what does change is whether a sim is ready to go or not. easy(er) to use and quicker to organise with. And more importantly, bring the numbers in. I've been here since day1 of the public beta and have gone back and forth in waves, periods of using rf2 intensely and periods of jut ignoring it for multiple builds. mainly because my league was not ready to embrace rf2 yet so little point for me to keep using it as I am only interested in online fun. And every time I decide to use rf2 again I have to spend 2 or more weeks getting everything sorted out again, either because things changed or because I forgot, or both. my own fault of course, but frustrating nonetheless. and with no real chance of having a good online experience there is little incentive to keep at it. I don't think i'm the only one in this, I suspect there are many more out there just hanging in cyberspace and end up browsing for por...well never mind. Not a flame post btw, just venting a bit
CET I think, check his event-times: http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/15368-rFactor-2-MatchMaker-Statistics-Updated
First of all - It's not their duty to us. Second - why would anyone market a product that is not ready for marketing? When rF2 was released it was stated that it will be "test version for modders". I still see it this way. For example - with real road working at accelreated rate, it's more of a modding / testing platform, than actual racing platform. There are of course many other things that need to bee sorted out before product is ready for marketing and needles to say - rF2 is still evolving pretty intensely ( chassis flex, tire model, engine model, drive line, etc. ). Not to mention many cars and tracks are not yet updated to current version of engine. Some features have changed, some are yet to come. When we get there, ISI will be able to update their content and start marketing their product. That's true but it's because of what I wrote above - it's a "test version for modders". This statement is still there in "before you buy" post: LINK I've read that post. Hell, I read reviews before I go to cinema. "Modders test version" was pretty obvious for me - you buy it if you're a modder, league admin, or you want an early look at rF2 for some other reason. But it's not ready for regular usage (online racing, etc.). Even though it's possible to have some races online, overall online experience is not there yet.
b-but ISI has stated multiple times rf2 is ready as-is and should be regarded as such. Isn't that post a tad outdated though? Imo a perfect example as to why people might be unsure about the whole thing. there's no clarity or we keep going back in time and in circles about it.
Except that they've had a product out over five years. They were still struggling in some series when I left in 2010. Their numbers increased gradually over the YEARS. It is a process of movement that you can't force people to do, especially when moving from rF1 to rF2 may also include a system upgrade for a lot of people (iRacing had a smaller gap versus NR2003 than we have versus rF1 as well). The comparisons between iRacing and rF2 are quite amusing to me, because anyone who actually has a memory, and was around in the first few years of iRacing, will remember all the races that went unofficial because of lack of entrants, and organizing on the forums when to race just so you'd get an official race. I think there's a massive lack of memory and/or appreciation for what people are being asked to do with their money. It takes time. What we could do, is stop selling rF1. rF2 sales would skyrocket, but that's not who we are.
