Q1) motorsport.com has published an article about the upcoming Virtual Le Mans this winter. The article contained a rough overview of the event and the text "Alongside this, there will be races open to the public, so everyone can enjoy." Is this a big event using the competition system? https://www.motorsport.com/gaming/news/le-mans-virtual-24-hours-game/6634443/ Q2) The schedule for the GT Pro / GT Challenge / BMW SIM M2 CS Racing Cup has been announced. Do you have any plans to update each vehicle accordingly? Q3) When Formula Pro was released, a collaboration with Goodyear was introduced. Can they spread to other vehicle content?
I came back to rFactor2 a few days ago after more than 5 years. In that time I've mainly been playing iRacing. The new rF2 content is pretty good and I enjoy it but the competitive system (I know it is a beta) is not enough to grow the comunity playing on it. I would focus to create a main serie as Mazda MX5 in iRacing or the Megane Trophy years ago in rfactor that everyone is able to play. Also, the scheduled races for BMW M4 CLASS 1 (qualy+race1+race2) is not good because if you miss race1 or race2 you need to wait 2h again to play. Why not create a session every hour with 10 minutes qualy and 20/30 minutes race? (everything in the same session). I´m sure that many people would be happy with this and they could even play 2 or 3 qualy/race in a row. Also, it would be good to add some practice sessions, a place to see how many people have signed up for a race, headlight flash button, new and modern HUD (it is the same as it was 15 years ago in rfactor)... Thank you for your work guys and I hope the game continues to grow and improve.
Q1) Many people including me had major problems joining the opening round of Formula Challenge because of skinpack updating. Why this content check can't be made asynchronously while waiting for session to start? This would give us up to 25 minutes to fix an issue instead of 10. Q2) A followup to the first one. I know Jimmi made an effort to announce widely on Discord that we need to verify files with Steam. But how it happened we got downloaded a corrupted skinpack? Q3) If I remember correctly, during the GT Challenge S3 we ran into problems like wrong grid setup, wrong session times and servers crashing. This made me drop the championship because it was more a frustration than an entertainment. I really wish that Formula Challenge and GT Challenge S4 will run flawlessly. However, like GT Season 3 it seems the competition is still lacking some basic polishing. During the Formula Challenge, on the first day there were at least two failures: servers not booting up and wrong server setup (track rubbering up) plus no formation lap in race and mentioned skinpack corruption. Are there any actions being taken to ensure such things doesn't happen again? Q4) There are new announcements of brand exclusive games like Indycar, WEC. What are the chances that any possible physics engine updates will also be implemented into rFactor2 as well? What role will the Competition System, which was announced as a multi-platform one, play in all this? Q5) Can the Formula Pro be called a semi-fantasy car? Besides the tires, it hasn't been build in real life. Does it mean we can expect more not 100% real content in the future?
Considering the challenge series are quite popular, contrary to the hourly races atm. Is there maybe something in making a few more Challenge series to see how that pans out? Maybe it could start a more consistent playerbase online if there are more people certainly racing at a few moments a week compared to hourly races which you arent sure of will even have a few participants. On the challenge/pro note. What are the possibilities of having a ladder series, definitely with the open wheelers? You have formula 4, 3 and the pro. Since the fPro is a very difficult car to drive and set up, maybe make the formula challenge use F3 cars, and make the now split 1 the road to pro championship with the fPro car. And that was another me pumping out random ideas
I believe that each CS series could be set up in such a way that short races during the week would establish the splits for a longer race on weekends (with more ranking points). Obviously, not everyone will end up participating on the weekend splits, but this would please both crowds: casual/pick up racers and more committed competitors.
Let's look at the facts, at the moment the online races on rf2 are "a failure" there is nobody, at best 7 people... People walk on carrots, that's the way it is, so to start with, we need to set up the rating system and the "permit" system to be able to move up in category, people want to see their evolution as a challenge to overcome! we also need to rethink the system, sorry but it's a mess... 10mn qualifier > 40mn or 20mn race and every hour why not do an online career progression like this: amateur "bronze" driver (starts with 500pts Rating Factor and 1 Skill Factor) which allows him to participate in: Champ Kart> x30 / Tatuus F4 / Mazda cup (or other small GT) silver amateur: (1000 RF and 2 SF) Kart 125 / USF-17 tatuus / Megane cup (others) amateur gold (1500Rf 3SF) F3 / Porche cup / BMW M2 (others) Pro driver bronze / silver etc... it is necessary that the player feels concerned and wants to invest himself and to continue to make races to have a progression in time! Raceroom online was empty before the rating system and is slowly starting to fill up! Now the game Q: when will the setup be standardized? depending on the car, the settings have nothing to do with their name, we are not engineers! Q: When will the gearbox protection be installed on some cars, because dropping the gears faster than a F1 car in GT I have never seen that... Q: Are you going to redo the implementation of the TV cameras on the circuits? to have more real retransmission in TV camera it is necessary to entirely revise them, on much of circuit it is not good and to put dynamic camera, to look at the retransmission iracing/ACC and others it is much more flattering! Q: Will the external TV cam sounds be redone? The sounds in TV camera are to be redone irl you can hear a car without even seeing it, on rf2 it's the opposite sometimes you can see the car but you can't hear the sounds...not to mention the reverberations!
Q: why i need to purchase all cars and tracks to participate in series, even if i plan to race one race on one track? Q2: is there a plans to put results on some page (like last year) so you do not have to open steam, open rF2 go to competition to see laptimes? Q3:do ypu plan hotlap events with fixed setups? Q4: why i need to download everything i allredy have, once more, to participate in competition? my game size increases with every series i sighn up. Why is that?
Not directly related to the CS, but are you planning on redoing the ingame HUD? As the CS may attract new people they might be thrown off by the lack of information and bugs the current system has. Compared to the competition its simply waay too 2005. But seeing the new broadcast overlay I'm confident you could do a better job with the HUD
Q1 and Q2, and possibly Q3, are answered in previous blogs. Q4: you aren't downloading the content (cars, tracks), all you download are small 'event' files that tie the content together for the current series.
Megane Trophy or any ISI old content that is still licensed or can be used would be great to build up more content to the comp system, would also provide content everyone enjoyed racing when they 1st come to rf2. Is all licensed content being used in BETA stage ? If no why not ?
before adding series that will remain empty, s397 should ask themselves how to attract people to their game/server...
And due to decisions made, unfortunately Lazza; Question 1 will continue to come up. Cars I can understand but tracks.... Case in point: I went to try the CS after a league race a week ago. Went to sign up for BMW class 1 at Malaysia. Sorry, but Monza is required. Go and look at the calendar for the event and see that Monza was the 1st round and not used since 30th June. Suffice to say 3 tries at the CS and I have only managed 2 practice and 2 Q sessions...no races in one session; another session the servers were down and this which resulted in me exiting as I am not buying a track to enter a server that has already used that track a month ago. I guess my only question would be in regards to CS; Is there any intention of changing at least this part of the system because player numbers are dropping and I am guessing daily numbers would be roughly half CS, half leagues/pickup racing.
Not a question, but I would want to suggest a Single-brand Cup Serie for the CS consisting of 8 weeks of races in eight different circuits with a specific car. 25 minutes races every hour during a week. The circuits and the car will be chosen by community vote. The options to choose would be the 61 cars and 29 circuits that appear here Cars & Tracks – Studio-397 excluding Electric Cars, the Karts and the circuits that use them. Each of us could vote for 8 circuits and one car in a poll, and the most voted ones would be the chosen ones. Every two months, after the Serie ends, there would be a one week break, in which the tracks and car for the next 8 races of the Series would be voted. As a dream is not bad
I know that these requests depends on the system core, but: We need an actual Relative, not the Standings that we have now. To really know who is ahead and behind you, how far, and if they are lapped cars, other category, etc. And please, we need to update the in game HUD. Give it the same feeling that the Broadcast overlay have, maintain a common theme. The blackbox looks pretty old, and doesn't match with the new colors (yellow text, get rid of it, please). When loading a session, it could be possible to load the cars "behind the scenes"? It is prettly ugly seeing cars overloading at the same spot, and when all the cars are loaded, the camera change to the pitlane. It is not possible to do this during the circuit load, or something? Thank you
Are there any plans to fix the headless server option? Are there any plans to add more server text commands, especially for kicking/banning etc.?
I feel so much like I've been reading the same things for over a year... we're going to do, soon, it's coming, we're thinking about it, it's planned, I like the idea, it's in our plans....
This is a great approach on how the CS could be better for the people already inside rF2, and the newcomers.
I also prefer a quick qualifying before a race session comes up instead of this modus which is currently implemented. Any plans to change this? A real killer in participating in the M4 league have been those rainy conditions to me. At Indy I experienced one of my personal best Online-MP events over all sims, but I stepped out with the next two wet races. It really wasn't a pleasure. Does it not make sense to keep the tracks dry or minimize wet races to 1 in a series in this early status of the CS? I believe that would help to keep more people in.
Why don't you guys give a nominal prize for winners of each competition? Something like 50 euros for the winner and 25 for p2 and p3 seems like a good motivator, but also giving them once a month won't break the bank, bit also gives some incentive to try. Alternatively, you can give DLCs for the winners, because right now, there are bursts of hype and then it goes away after a week or two.
After the USF2000 update Chris EEE set up a server with short practice, qualy and a race so everyone could check it out. Could something like this be implemented into the CS as some sort of a "playground" because some people might only check the CS and if there is no race at this particular moment they might just do something else.