Yeah, This is the other reason. Didn't state it because it the more obvious. But if it's as you say and only this it's a newer attitude from leagues. I get the thinking behind it but it is also working against you as a league. People aren't going to sign up to all the leagues just to trial them. As a visitor to a league server it's not only the content that attracts you join that league, It's also a good test toward the attitude of the current members. I have been in leagues before even if not now. I get it to lock the server when your league is running it's series races or events but open them up when there open for practice. Set it up for a short race at the end of the practice time out. Would help to attract more people to rF2.
VRC servers are set exactly this way. For our series races we lock the server. But outside of that time the server is set for 5 lap races after 60 min practice and 10 min qual. No password. While we are not seeing a TON of traffic this type of weekly open room seems to have attracted a fair number of drivers to our league.
I give a lot of credit for so far, doing what you say you will do. That alone is a great improvement. I'm extremely happy the subscription is being ditched, because it was a poorly executed show stopper for many people. (and I have the lifetime subscription) I like the new interface, and it is good to see the Stock car guys got an update. Things Im NOT happy about: NOLA and another Vette. Seriously? I think I am not alone in saying I would MUCH rather have seen a Nissan GT500 or just about any other car get into the game first. The Vette should have been included in a DLC pack or something. NOLA is just an awful and boring track. Would have preferred Laguna or a good version of Circuit of the Americas. Im willing to give Studio 397 the benefit of the doubt, but when I see questionable things like that, I start to sharpen my pitchfork. I have NO ISSUE with buying dlc because if Studio 397 give good content, you can have all my money. The skeleton of this game has the best potential of any sim. By a large margin.
For the record, NOLA was already in production when development transitioned to Studio 397, so our choice was simple: ditch a lot of work or finish it. We chose the latter.
It's true I wouldn't probably enter an empty server. But I sometimes do some practice on our league (VRC) server even if I'm alone (I got odd times to practice ) because we use liveracers so there is some sense in that. Every now and then someone drops in when I'm there which is nice. That's how you meet new people and maybe get new members. If I would know that server which has interesting content but is empty belongs to a league which uses liveracers, I might drop in just to see how my laptimes match against them.
I am still wondering what people have against using leagues? There are so many leagues around and they all run different formats. Wouldn't you want to meet new people that are interested in simracing to? Some people run their leagues with a very relaxed atmosphere and hold club races with no commitment. It's better to race against friends than randoms isn't it? Racing against those you trust rather than unknown racers is better right? Plus, in some leagues... you can have input to when, what and how races are run. Just takes time to find some friends in a league you like. What have you got to lose? I still think that it could be an idea to have a list of running leagues in the launcher or somehow in steam.
I think the problem are people themselves, I mean.... no matter the league I race I always see every race as a single one, I'm always there to have fun without taking it serious. But some guys talk like they don't want to join a league because it must be taken seriously, I don't really understand it. I actually dislike when people take leagues too serious because if they have a problem in a single race they leave the whole thing (the aliens love to do it) and it sucks to organize something to see people doing this, unfortunately it happens way too much
I don't have the time, nor the will, nor the discipline to stick to league racing at the moment. It is the best there is, but it only works when you are committed. I'm casual. I want to race in the evening when I have some time left or on a Sunday morning when it fits in. So, I don't have anything against league racing as you see. It is great. I was on the official S397 GT server yesterday for over 1,5 hours and only one person (accidentally) joined. When I said "Hi" after my stint, I found out that he already had disconnected....haha. It really is dead. *g*
Then you need an official Nordschleife and streetcars it seems. Hehe. Because in AC it is 90% Nordschleife with a huge amount of players on 3 to 5 servers. And then there are 2 or 3 extra servers where you usually find 10 to 25 guys racing. So,...yeah. Even in AC there isn't that much choice. I found myself believing that AC public racing would be even better without the addition of the Nordschleife. haha.
I remember the old times when rF2 was first released. ISR servers hosting meganes and clios were usually full. IMO several of the officially released cars are too hard to drive for average casual users. Shellby Cobra, howston, caterham stock cars, ... It is clear IMO that people prefer easier to drive cars for casual races. If the combos being used in official rF2 servers are not popular they should ve changed immediately trying to better understand what is the people demanding. Sometimes trial and error is the only way to get somewhere. It is useless trying to understand things without making tests to prove theories right or wrong. Another example is the mentioned new C7R. We already had a lot of Corvettes. For many people it is just like that and they would wish the effort had been put somewhere else. Only Corvette enthusiasts might see this like a good resource investment.
I think people have a bit of a strange impression of the AC public MP. As Flaux allready mentioned, it is really limited due to different reasons. DLCs are one thing and the general interest is on GT3 or Nordschleife tourist servers. And the servers that are full, are crash fests in 90 percent of the time so I don't even try it anymore. I prefer rF2 in that regard, even if I don't have full servers 24/7. What could help rF2 are a few official servers with standard content, strictly scheduled races without the possiblity to vote for session skipping, and some form of ranking for the servers. All this could be done when the new UI is integrated. I was on the official server two days ago and it was quite annoying when people allways voted to skip sessions and it became an obvious troll attempt. What iRacing seperates is that the races follow a strict schedule, the servers by ISI didn't have this. SimRaceway had strict time tables aswell and guess what? Their servers were much more populated aswell.They had a lobby in the UI where players and devs could talk to each other. You can think of SRW what you want, but that part was nailed pretty damn good. And guess what? They had a ranking aswell. You don't need a huge infrastructure, you just need a few servers, a database plus player ranking and a timetable with races so that players know when it makes sense to join.
I disagree with this. I would want to have atleast one good, modern, slideable supercar with good amount of power.
