Competition System Blog | Week 2

Discussion in 'News & Notifications' started by Paul Jeffrey, Jan 13, 2021.

  1. Alexandre Martini

    Alexandre Martini Registered

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    Well, we cannot agree. Your argument is to try to defend a situation that has arised from a technical limitation of how the software was implemented. The design decision to make the packaging system like this did not take into account DLCs. That simple fact puts all arguments in favor of this staying the way it is down.
     
  2. MarcG

    MarcG Registered

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    I revert you back to the point that if S397 had of spent that energy creating a new Packaging System would you rather have that than all the features we got otherwise? S397 made their choice, they listened to the Community and it was no secret that the biggest complaint was Graphics, so they prioritised accordingly with that and other areas to further enhance the Sim, again it is the way it is.

    Fragmentation happens all across Sim Racing predominantly with the vast amount of Sims we have, S397 are doing their best in their corner to attract Users to race here within the limitations (Packaging System) they have. They need to charge for DLC not only to earn Income for themselves but to further advance RF2 into the Future. Ergo it's always about money and again it's very little and Yes 1 Track for the Price of a Beer is IMO far far too cheap, pick your favourite track - how many hours have you raced on it? How many Laps have you done? Surely you can see the point that the Price is almost negligible.
    Yes it's not ideal especially for Newcomers, I made that clear in my post, but it can't be changed right now (who knows in 2-3 years maybe just maybe the opportunity will arise to alter the Packaging System.) and again no one is Forced to buy anything remember.

    As for Roadblocks with Pick-Up Racing this is just one side of the coin, the other side is the Free Content Comps which will run parallel, which gives users that Pick-Up Racing they were asking for all these years. They do that and enjoy it, so then maybe they might buy a Bundle to enter another Comp, 2months later they buy another Bundle to enter another Comp and so on and so forth. I wish iRacing didn't have a Sub Service but it does, I wish I could play ACC in VR but I can't, I wish RaceRoom had Weather but it doesn't, I wish RF2s Packaging System was better but it's not - each Sim has it Flaws and this is RF2s, but on the face of it it really isn't that bad, thank your lucky stars there's no Fee on top!
     
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  3. Comante

    Comante Registered

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    The problem of payware cars package is not existant: apart from lust there is no need to own all cars. Apart a very specific kind of racing (GT cars, endurance, and similars) all the other competitions need just a single car, so, if for someone paying for cars is an issue, it can simply skip this kind of racing and orient somewhere else. What seem to me is that people are compulsive buyiers, yet complain to the shop owner to have stuff to sell.
    It is more fun to me the fact that multiclass racing is the most resource intensive (tracks, cars) so in my eyes, people that are seriuously invested in it, have probably nice computers, but are all so picky to want to drive only one car in their whole life (why!?).
     
  4. Alexandre Martini

    Alexandre Martini Registered

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    the ultimate problem is not wether you, me or John will be able to race in a specific series.

    the issue is that by having to own all tracks and all cars in the calendar to do one race, you limit the number of participants in a specific series.

    would you prefer running in a GTE series against 2000 people or against 50?
     
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  5. Christian Wolter

    Christian Wolter Registered

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    We all spend a lot of money on peripherals like steering wheels, simrigs, graphics cards, VR glasses and PCs without thinking much about it. Then I have to buy, say, content for 100€ for a game that cost a maximum of 40€ once! in order to be able to participate in pretty much all upcoming competitions and also have a lot of fun offline for a very, very long time. And that's a big problem? I don't get it and I find the discussion ridiculous in a way, considering the relation.

    That said, thanks for the blog and nice to see the issues are being worked on
     
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  6. Comante

    Comante Registered

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    50 participants are more than enough to fill a race, I honestly care about the 2 drivers ahead of me and the 2 behind, all the other are icing on the cake , but the cake is having humans to battle against.
    League racing can only dream those numbers, so it's still a win win situation.
    I fly DCS : 70 euros for a single aircraft in beta development for 1 year.
    Something less for each scenario, and maybe 50 for an aircraft carrier.
    How much does it cost a endurance bundle?
     
  7. Alexandre Martini

    Alexandre Martini Registered

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    it's not 50 people or 2000 people in a single race, dude.

    it's not about money, it's about participation... you got to make it easier for people to want to join a race.

    many, many people will look at those series and think "oh, i have to buy 4 tracks to race my porsche in lime rock this week... screw it"

    and that's one less person that could be driving that whole week.
     
  8. Lazza

    Lazza Registered

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    That's true, but we're still in beta with only 2 series. If there were 3 series you could take part in and 3 you can't (or you have the option to buy some content, and be able to join 1, 2, or even 3 of them) it's not the end of the world.

    I should say I'm not a fan of the system, but I'm talking in terms of week 2 of the CS blog - there seems little to be gained by arguing about how the system could work in every thread related to it, when we know it's not changing anytime soon. And I don't want someone new to read "it should work this way" posts and think that might happen in a month.
     
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  9. TheGame316

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    Pickup racing may have increased, but overall daily numbers really haven't since the intake at the beginning of COVID lockdowns etc, they have pretty much tapered back to slightly higher than before. And why? Because leagues and unofficial content will be there to keep the game ticking.
    The short-sighted mess will come when another GT3/E car is released outside of a pack, because you cannot plan licences(or if you do, you hold up content that could be released because you don't have enough content for a pack). Much like the Ferrari 's now, when will you see a discount on them like you do packs.
    So what are the advantages to the packaging system that you don't want to miss.

    Yeah they listened to the community on some things, others not so much. I try to stay away from the subject of money in this argument, as another short sighted decision makes content that is affordable in one country, extremely unaffordable in another.(I'm lucky, I'm in one of the affordable countries). Yet the restriction that supposedly forced this decision was long gone by the time they had released their 1st item of paid content.
    Some of the improvements you mentioned previously, really had nothing to do with listening to the community. Online improvements and bug fixes that had been around for a long time were only dealt with when put in front of the largest public spectacle this genre has ever seen. There are many other bugs that get virtually ignored, just look through the forums and discord. From the first screenshots of the UI, the community voiced opinions and suggestions(or outright criticism) yet very little if any of those suggestions made it to what we have now.
    My own personal favourite subject is developer/modder information. I have asked for updated vehicle modders(or any) information for the best part of 3-4 years. Only recently(mostly likey due to Alex) have we seen track information expand, when the new track was put into devmode. I argued that it made sense to update a vehicle, yet that did not happen.
    I could keep going but it will get off-topic.

    In regards to the multiple tracks being set up on servers. Leagues learnt not to set up a season of tracks, purely because by the time you got to a specifc round, the track may have been updated once, twice or more. WRT the Competition System, adding paid tracks into that mix, does add a roadblock if a track you are not racing on at this time is stopping you from entering a competition.
     
  10. Alexandre Martini

    Alexandre Martini Registered

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    totally agree with you, but if we do not discuss these topics now, we will be stuck with this packaging systems issues for how many more years to come.

    i have no problem because i proudly support s397 by purchasing their stuff as soon as they release it, but we have to discuss the longevity of this... a competition system where not many people can race GTEs they want at the tracks they own (or want) will not last for too long, you know.

    but yeah, i'm done with my arguments here. :p
     
  11. Lazza

    Lazza Registered

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    I admire the sentiment, but the discussions a few years ago still led us here :D
     
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  12. hitm4k3r

    hitm4k3r Registered

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    One very big advantage of the packaging system is that it makes mod managment for the enduser alot easier. The mods that I don't want to keep are easily uninstalled and on top of it, I never had any mismatches while joining multiplayer sessions. For any other moddable game I have to search through folders and files to check what I can detele and what not and it becomes a giant mess, especialy while playing mods online. For rF2 this is pretty much nonexistent based on my personal experience with the sim and it doesn't matter if I get a mod from the workshop or from another source - it simply works for me. So much about that topic. I know you will come up with something like "But your experience can't be right", but anyway.

    About the topic of DLC structuring and prices. You seem to have made up your mind about it and I am allmost 100 % sure that I won't change your mind about the topic. If you even think that S397 is responsible of every national economy in the world then so be it and I am not sure what else I should explain. They are running a business and have to earn money. I am not saying that they did everything right btw, but there is only so much I can complain about for the whole day. And it seems that the whining about 1st world problems as severly increased throughout the last year while some people seemingly had too much spare time to think about stuff. Again, we are talking "limitations" in the range of 7,50 for 4 race tracks. The track expansion bundle was on sale for 18 Euro wich gives you four excelent quality laser scanned tracks allmost for the price of one in iRacing. How does it come that people don't see this as an obstacle in iRacing that they have to spend 15 bugs for any god damn car or track, simply to rent it and put a tenner on top of it every month to be even able to drive it? Isn't this a bit of a contradicting argument?

    As long as the service is good enough - and S397 are working on that aspect - it makes zero sense to keep banging the dead horse. Why are we even discussing DLC prices one week after the last big sale has ended? What else should they do besides selling content that get's discounted by selling it in packs with even more discount? Discountception? Who is forcing all those poor souls to spend their hard earned money on tracks that they don't want to race? Right now Kunos sells AC Ultimate Edition for allmost 40 Euro to force their Maserati SUVs, that I don't want to drive down my throat. Bastards ... :D
     
    Last edited: Jan 15, 2021
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  13. TheGame316

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    First, I agree with you on the end-user ease but this was an inherited feature from ISI; and the onus goes onto the modders who managed to do this with largely outdated information. As I said at the announcement of paid DLC and the competition system, the packaging system has flaws that are outlined with the way they have their CS server with paid DLC set up.

    The rest of your post is exactly why I don't like to use money as an argument but to answer: When paid DLC was announced as being set up in the item store instead of the normal Steam DLC system, we were told the restriction was allocation of "slots" for content. By the time we actually saw a piece of content(around 3 years ago) there were other games with DLC slots in the hundreds. We still only have 60 items(including the bundled packs).
    I don't see that price is being discussed as much as the packaging system. It's that any discussion of the packaging system is met with jeers regarding price(like any criticism, constructive or otherwise). As I stated earlier; there may be more pickup racing, but the numbers haven't increased dramatically in relation.
    You know with the Toyota Hypercar announcement this morning that there will be calls for this to be in game as soon as possible. Do they wait until they have enough cars for a pack, or release it standalone? If the single items were on sale at the same time as packs(after a period of time for new content, of course) then you would not have the case now where you may double up on content that you cannot pass onto someone without.
    But then I know you will come up with something like "But your experience can't be right", but anyway. (See it can be used both ways o_O)
     
  14. hitm4k3r

    hitm4k3r Registered

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    Please don't think that I don't know about the shortcommings of the packaging system. Everyone who has tried to set up a server at one point or did some modding sknows that it isn't ideal for the people doing that. There are pros and cons to any system. For me personaly the packaging is the lesser of two evil. Ofcourse it would be better to have the usual way of getting the DLCs to better see what you have and what you don't have. But the current system is at it is and for some wierd reason people have managed to overcome the problems.

    That's not a point for discussion. What matters is how the studio can disctribute their manpower to fix stuff like the packaging system. It's been said that it is too much effort and a huge technical change for something that offers not enough gain. My simple solution for this would be, as others allready pointed out, to simply use one track at a time for a competition or offer enough variety of competitions with a good mix of free and paid content. And that's exactly what they are trying to do. And even if you think that the pricing doesn't matter in this discussion, it's one hell of an argument. Why do you think that player numbers have increased for AC in such dramatic fashion the last couple of years even if it has the same issue of fragmentation? It's pretty simple: the product broke even pretty early on and got sold as the Ultimate Edition with 95 % discount or something like that. It's allmost a steal. As allready pointed out, the packaging is also another way for S397 to generate more cashflow, wich is simply an economic aspect. Is it great for you or me? Propably not, I wish I had the content for free and every issue would be fixed in a matter of minutes. But it doesn't work like that unfortunately.

    I think what S397 needs to work on is to make it easier for people to identify wich content people have or don't have, at best by marking the content in the UI. The competition system does something like that allready, so I think it should be possible to get the best out of the system that is allready in place without having to rewrite big parts of the engine again just open a new can of worms.
     
  15. Stefan Wirth

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  16. lagg

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  17. Binny

    Binny Guest


    1 main big difference now from iracing to rf2 is the offline option & all DLC can be used, IMHO without offline in iracing you are actually buying/paying for a DLC you cannot use without a paid subscription.
     
  18. burgesjl

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    Though I suspect for philosophical reasons S397 don't want to have subscriptions, its become clear to me that the limitations imposed by the Steam packaging system and having to own all content, means you are now forced to substitute buying content over paying a subscription each year. A subscription brings with it the need for many other 'access control' systems, which much like different packaging tech, takes time to code and for not much immediate benefit. But, the packaging tech is clearly a significant problem that no other competitive sim has.

    As regards the Comp System testing, its clear an awful lot needs to be done to display results, and frankly, this should have been already in place. First, I suspect the Qualification tab shows the relative position in all weeks except the current week, and then the qually time for the current week, with the list of competitors sorted based on participation in the current week/times for current week. There isn't a way to see qually times for previous weeks or to otherwise sort the competitor list or find yourself/other driver. For race results on the Race Points tab, I guess we are seeing race points for each week (and given there could be several races in a week, we again don't have a way to show individual race results) and with competitor list sorted by overall points. I think this has all begun from a wrong place.

    First, there needs to be a screen to show individual race/session results (and possibly like iRacing do it, with the qual and race results in one screen where combined qual/race sessions which is displayed as two grids on one page). In other words, for a given week, you select the session that occurred (so, 2 criteria). This means having a selection box with criteria or 'click through' options to get to detail from the summary. This should be the base reporting visual structure that exists. Detail first, then summary. And different levels of summary.

    Next, you need the competition summary reporting (which is what S397 started with). This currently tries to show a summary of the entire competition, and again you need a summary of weekly results first. Thus for a given driver, show the number of sessions they were in, number of top 5s, number of wins etc. and then the number of points gained in that week, however this is calculated (sum of sessions, best of sessions, average of best 4 sessions, etc.).

    The current competition summaries are a cross-tab of the weekly results, and worse, with mixed info in the grid. Each column heading displayed shows the race week (using the name of the track). The name of the track wraps badly, looks awful: may I suggest using 4 or 5 characters and preferably in caps such as SILV, SEBR rather than the full name. At least then you stand a chance of that not wrapping, but with enough weeks, you are still likely to need to horizontal scroll at some point.

    Therefore, it seems to be you need a base visual structure of a grid, with headings, and able to scroll horizontal and vertical, and possibly this needs to including paging results (e.g. 30 per page). This is a very common construct in web apps that you don't seem to have. Without it, you aren't going to be able to consistently build all the view variants: session detail, week summary (and by session type, maybe), overall competition race/points summary (so at least 3 layers/levels of summary). Where is the design for this? It feels like you don't have one, and just hacked a quick screen to show something, which a dev would likely do if he's mainly interested in the functions and data 'under the covers' i.e. actually getting the sessions themselves to run.
     
    Last edited: Jan 16, 2021
  19. Adrian Blasco

    Adrian Blasco Registered

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    I only see races in the morning or at night, in the afternoon nothing that is when people can best I think, it would not be bad to put some in at 18:00 or 19:00 or 20:00 20210118_011428.jpg 20210118_011430.jpg 20210118_011435.jpg 20210118_011433.jpg
     
  20. Bill Worrel

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    When I saw the first competitions were every 5 hours, it made wonder why every 5 instead of every 2 or 3 hours like others mentioned.

    Unlike 2, 3, 4 or 6, every 5 hours would mean that there would be 5 races per day and the starting time would shift one hour later each day. And if each round covered 5 days, every hour of the day would be covered. But then I saw that there was one gap that was only 4 hours - so 4 races 5 hours apart and then one with a 4 hour gap which covers the 24 hours of the day and the start times are the same every day.

    So if you can't race during one of those times, but might if the race were one hour earlier or later, you're out of luck.
     
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