rF1 is regularly more crowded than rF2 online. AC isn't very league or online-ready at moment, so it seems to me the main competition for rF2 is still rF1 for leagues and random online sites as Race2Play. Daily peak counts have been a little above 100 from late 2013 onwards as far as I can remember. There was some development around a year ago, then slight dip, and now again last months slightly more activity with some new mods released. I agree. My league made the move to rF2 last year and it took a big commitment from me and some other admins to get the content and everything ready. It was something I would not do again with hindsight, but once done rF2 has been fairly good for us. The problem is the interest (less interest = less mods, less participation, less competitive), unless your league has very good resources and is very well established, it's hard for me to recommend rF2 over rF1.
The league I run in (see my signature) recently moved from rFactor2 to Assetto Corsa. Assetto Corsa doesn't hold a candle to rFactor2 in any league related respect other than it has racers. The admin of our league simply didn't want to continue using rF2 with 4 and 5 car grids. The move to AC has certainly upped our online grids. I don't see online numbers getting better for rFactor 2 until there is a compelling reason to go online outside of league play.
Really sucks. The ISI Official servers used to be packed, and I had a lot of fun on the historic server with the Brabhams and Howstons. Now they're always empty. Breaks my heart. Maybe it's because it's always something stupid like EVE F3 at Loch Drummond or some other horrible combination. Bring back Spa and Brianza and the Brabhams. AC online sucks in my opinion, haven't tried pCARS yet.
Well I have to agree with the above comments We just held an open server race with the what some say is one of the best cars in the game - the Brabham BT20 at Silverstone 75 which is an epic track. I thought this would appeal to a lot of people and could kick start our league racing again, but only 7 or 8 people turned up. It's almost embarrassing. Others at our site have tried pCARS and AC and the grids seem to be filled for both of those games. Personally, I find the lack of features in AC an issue, and pCARS handling and FFB is just so poor, that I am left with rF2 with a handful of racers. I really wish I could go back 5 years when everyone was bunched together on rF1. Unfortunately those 'good old days' seem to be long gone.
That statement would apply to literally ANYTHING to do with motorsports. Especially real life motorsport. Our favorite sport is slowly going to hell.
ISI servers could do with some more admining, but nobody is probably that bothered doing it while they are empty. There has been some nice modded content to rF2 last months, and there is soon more coming with EnduRacers. I think many people decided the online feature of rF2 is simply not worth paying for and to get those people back will be tricky. Something like scheduled events, a clear server browser interface (website or integrated to launcher), easier-to-set-up GetMod with only downloading the active track in rotation, etc. is at minimum needed imo. The online part should deserve some more attention, now that the main game is more or less finished.
First stop selling online access (nonsense), that would help (a bit). Whoever (casual gamer) bought this game earlier doesn't buy online access per year because there is no online activity outside of leagues. Then make a no-nonsense online server browser in the game (not much of a science, AC could do it, in fact every other game could do it). Then make a proper mod-downloader system so players actually can join the servers without downloading 12 tracks and 23 cars or a failure message. After all of these fixes start publicize the game so players can actually know about rF2. These would be a good start. IMO.
Can't agree with most that mate. lol Every sim has the cost of online built into it but only rF2 you have freedom of choice. ? Tell me, where is my 1/2 price version of AC and pCars for offline ? ( which btw is 90% of peeps I am told ) You argue selling online access to a minority is nonsense. Then what do you call AC and pCars selling online access to the majority that don't even use it !!! Think about it. lol
.......in fact everyone of those has also been hacked. lol Yeah I don't see advantage to in room browser, say you do not have a track or mod, what do you do then ? Which leads me to next question what happens in AC if you don't have the content for the next room. ? lol What is more advantage for online ? A. Selecting next race in a room because it saves 30 seconds. OR B. Having ability to make custom packages automatically uploaded and installed. Being able to swap skins and cars while you are in a room. Auto Uploading / downloading custom skins Auto downloading of track conditions I could go on for a hour...........
This is clearly the room admins fault not Tim's or ISI. With rF2 you GET MOD, it tells you what you will need and may need. 1. You may not like the content so you won't download it anyways. p 2. Maybe someone likes ALL content to archive so you can go have Dinner and let it all download. ( at least you don't have to sit in sim sites doing it one at a time ) 3. You talking about 1% of rooms would have 23 cars. I have mods with 25 ISI cars and 1 track ..... are you telling me you complain about price then do not download ALL ISI content ? lol Oh you mean 3rd party oh ( hehehe ) Well isn't it the same for most every sim ? GTR GTL rF SCE rF2 AC have 1,000s of tracks ........ endless combo possibilities. If you want to drive them all you simply got to have it all. 4. ISI are fixing this I thought ? ie: you will be able to join any open room without having all content and get booted on track reloaded when you haven't. Don't take that to the bank ...... p
Durgedriver: did you really need 3 messages to reply to me? 1. "Every sim has the cost of online built into it " - hmmm, even so AC and pCARS (which I don't consider as a sim) costs <50 while rF2 cost 85. And you want to tell me a fairy tale where online access costs money in 2015? In iRacing yes, other games sell us DLCs not online access which is considering the fact rF2 has no online activity probably a good idea, at least better... also "Then what do you call AC and pCars selling online access to the majority that don't even use it !!!" The thread is about the small online player pool of rF2. 2. I was talking about a transparent, user friendly server browser. What has this to do with hacking? Also interestingly enough because this is rF2 then lets make it complicated because it's rF2 and hardcore and... "Which leads me to next question what happens in AC if you don't have the content for the next room." I never said AC is perfect. If you want to join a server in AC and you miss one car then you can't join which is also a joke. But don't tell me that rF2 is superior because I have to download tracks/cars I _don't_ want to. 3. "This is clearly the room admins fault not Tim's or ISI. " - no, this is not the admins fault because ISI created rF2 not the admins and the admin has the choice of using the prototype server setting. The prototype setting should be the default or anything better/advanced which is not this what they use now because it's a joke. Simple fact: if I don't have a car or a track installed that probably means I don't want to play with that car/track so I won't connect if I have to download those non-wanted cars/tracks. Even if that's just 2 cars or 2 tracks. If I have 25 minutes to play I don't want to waste 5 minutes on download. And still also there is the possibility when the server says "Failure"... "GTR GTL rF SCE rF2" it's funny you enumerated these sims because NON of them has online activity outside of leagues or club races... that alone shows us how "good" this system is (and of course they're old too).
I don't think it's so much the point of server issues, online registrations, or not having the mod to get on the server. In the rF1 days if you joined the server and got a mismatch you went away, found the correct mod and track and then rejoined. Not that much of a big deal if you have a reasonable Internet speed. Even now if I join a server and I don't have the mod or track installed, I'll go and Google it, and 9 times out of 10 it will download faster from a 3rd party link. I think part of the problem now is rF2 has got so advanced and realistic it's getting too hard for some people. For me, I really enjoy the advanced realism, but I know for a fact that some don't. I've heard the usual complaint about driving on ice, flatspotting tyres too easily, overheating and wearing out tyres too easily etc etc. We are racing a 'simulator' so I think this is the way it should be, but I think I (and anyone else who loves the realism) are becoming a minority. I guess most people now like to race a highly polished turd with amazing graphics, and don't really care if the car behaves and reacts like a real car, because they can't feel it with their playstation/xbox controller.
Obviously the lack of rF2's online activity consists many components, that's why I said "These would be a good start", these are the easiest to fix.
That is ridiculous. Last week when I checked some online numbers of games I had... Players Online RFactor 2 - 12 Assetto Corsa - 635 Project Cars (particular region only, I'm guessing region is all of North America only) - 15 Let me clarify that just in-case someone thinks I may have mis-wrote any of those numbers. Twelve for RF2, six-hundred-and-thirty-five for AC, and fifteen for PCars (specific region).
It depends, yesterday (Sunday evening GMT) there were a lot more people online. Didn't count them maybe 100-200.
These numbers are quite unreal Spinelli. At 9:00 am (+2GMT) which is almost the time when there are fewer people playing any game there playing: rFactor2 - 11 (in servers) Assetto Corsa - 194 (in total) Project Cars - 363 (in total) Last Night at 9:00 PM (+2GMT) rFactor2 - 272 (in servers) Assetto Corsa - 1.450 (in total) Project Cars - 2.681 (in total) Keep in mind that the number of players rF2 only indicates the number of players that is inside a server, the numbers for AC & PCARS indicate the total number of players, online + offline. Number of players specified in the list of servers within AC is completely unreal. A lot of servers indicate that they are full when in fact no one inside because of the booking system. Back to the topic, I do not think that the number of rF2 online players so bad considering the circumstances. From day one, rF2 has been a lot of criticism, some deserved many do not. Several people who do not even own the game are dedicated to criticize systematically rF2 in many places as they can, still going on today, but increasingly less noise and more and more people value rF2 positively, but unfortunately the damage is already done. rF2 support in sim-racing news pages has been really bad. Many official news have been published days late, a lot of news of new mods have not even been released and even articles that have been written to rF2 left in pretty bad place. Other games have received incredible support, we saw news announcing new car which has shown only render (or even less as a single seat), recently started circuits .... I always thought that if either in Kunos a fart throw it in less than 5 seconds so we would have published at any of these sites .... rF1 not think this affects much the number of rF2online players. I do not know a single person who has made the leap to rF2 and has returned to rF1. People are still playing rF1 those without a PC capable of moving RF2 decently and mainly people those playing illegally. In my opinion the main problem is and will be the rF2 business model. 85$ is a very high price for a game and most people who buy the standard version simply has not renewed the quota. Most people who pay 35$ for the game would have paid 50/60$ and today, would see an online with many more casual runners.
I don't think that's correct because I counted all the players in all the servers in-game - nothing to do with Steam or offline players. No, I counted the amount of players in the game's multiplayer server listing so it's got nothing to do with offline players. And yes, my numbers are "real".
And why is AC (as it seems) the online-sim of choice? I thought this mod-content-online-problem is worse there than in rF2!?
