Hey Guys I am looking for a bit of advice, I am looking to start a league but I am unsure what cars most people are looking to race, I am part of an admin team at TCSR.club and racing-leagues.net (the social media site). I would like your suggestions of what cars to run, do you like the option of having certain aids available or them all being turned off, from what I have seen league racing seems to be on a decline, I am not sure why that is but I would appreciate your input as to what you look for in a league, what type of cars you like racing and what would turn you off entering in to a league so that I can try create something that makes people want to race in leagues. Your input is much appreciated. Brett
Not sure about that, the last 2 leagues I entered were completely over subscribed, with waiting lists and reserve drivers. Its really hard to say what cars would be more popular, as every club has a different set of members, Some might be geared to historic racing, a lot are open wheeler / F1 and there are a lot of Gt leagues, I know of a few who run the same car set and tracks year on year ! My advice to anyone looking for a league or starting one is try and find a Niche, something different to the Norm, Also I joined a league not so long ago that was full of Aliens, I didn't find it much fun qualifying at the back and constantly being lapped, again another factor is what skill level would you push your league to, Some run no aids, forced driving view,forced clutch, no escape to pits and 100% damage ( hardcore ) Most I have been in are lax on the clutch as not all have one and maybe only ban helicopter view / chase cam. Personally I won't enter a league that allows any form of TC or ABS etc unless it carries a penalty or Ballast etc, Its easy enough to check who is using aids with the likes of Simresults.net
It's difficult indeed. finding the mod/tracks that attract people is like searching for a needle in a haystack. We've tried about everything since rf2 arrived, some championships, some mini series, allot of single events open to all, and success has been going up and down, with no clue as to why. We lucky atm, with the mod we are using it seems to have picked up allot but who knows what the future will bring? Steve's advise is good, find something no1 else uses. But you could also go the opposite way, find something very popular. Some leagues/communities switch mods as soon as something cool gets released, or they add it to their current agenda. For starting out that may be a good routine, new released content always draws in more joiners. especially if its from ISI (we had months of fun with the Karts after release for example, everyone joined in, now, not so much(?) But, this also means you get a certain type of driver. running the newest mod will see allot of opportunist drivers whom generally have little experience, or those testing the mod on your server. can get quite messy. But its a good magnet from which you can advertise the more serious stuff. As for settings, that is as varied as people's personal content-favourites and depends if you want to draw in seasoned drivers (no aids, no damage, forced cockpit, etc) or new people and less insane drivers (more aids, less damage, etc) Clutch is ON in most communities btw. Imo mini series (4/5 official races) with results etc. could be a good option. it does not take too much time (people might join in sooner if it aint a full season) and its not much admin work either. And its serious enough for the more serious drivers to get interested, not hardcore enough for new drivers to be scared away (allot of people shy away from leagues because they think its super-serious and they need to be aliens) From an admin pov single events require loads of organising on your part, it never stops. a mini series or full season is much more relaxed, you plan/test it, release and go. no worries for the entire time after all is organised. You might getlucky and tick all the boxes, congrats in advance! but my advise is be prepared to be disappointed. it totally sux when you put in the hours and energy only to see low turnouts and little dedication, but that's part of the game these days, especially in the beginning. so expect the worse, hope for the best
thanks for the advice so far guys keep it coming! we have a core group of drivers that come join us on a wednesday night, 5-6 but let's be honest anything under 12 cars and the field is spread out and a bit dull, at TCSR we have directed it towards the aussie/kiwi market and run v8 supercars around mostly the tracks that they use in the series, they run on a saturday night aussie time and they are starting to get good numbers. I like the idea of mini's, might have a look in to that and see where it takes us!
Start with Aussie-friendly or weekend times where multiple continents can participate. Also, I expect that V8s are a good call at least for local participation unless there are competing leagues already. I no longer race online because pickup races don't have combos I am interested in and I am unable to commit to a formal online championship league and even if I could I am not interested in enough of the combos to be sufficiently motivated to put in the required preparation. When I was an admin, I chose the best combos for sim racing purposes and never chose an IRL combo over a better fantasy combo. I had decent participation but twice in a row, larger formal championship leagues began hosting the same vehicle so I backed off and joined them but was then disappointed in the locations they chose and lost interest. There are plenty of sim racers out there who want the best sim racing experience possible and thus prefer shorter, more technical tracks where a sufficient dose of lateral Gs can be had.
so I'm based in UK but the tcsr event is an Aussie/NZ based site, what we are aiming to do is create a euro league but when we tried to create a euro race night with TCSR what we found from tracking the website data is people would log on to the site and then go off within a few seconds, our guess was that euro guys would see all the aussie content and move off.
As you might remember I fought to leave my league sessions totally open, internal pressures led me to password them though. I was the only one with my viewpoint. I can honestly say it's not made the slightest bit of difference to participation levels, much to my surprise. As for a decline, Brett, my experience is quite the opposite. My communities rFactor 2 leagues are far more populated than our iRacing one.... it is what it is. There is no difference in how we market them. In fact, the iRacing league get's more marketing. I kind of agree with Steve about a niche. We've recently been running two series. A Clio and a BTCC series. I think we hit the nail on the head with the Clio in terms of timing and format. It seems to have "Clicked" with quite a few people. Our BTCC came at a time where right around the time we announced, a few other BTCC series popped up. In these situations, I would like to see much more inter-league collaboration. For example, Our BTCC series is almost over. I would be very open to working with another league/community to combine our memberbase towards a mutual league. Anyone interested should PM me. But for sure I would look to what's out there. Do something a little different, get a nice format in place, use quality circuits so as to keep people engaged. They're basically the only things I do. Sometimes you have a hit on your hands, sometimes it all goes wrong. There is no magic formula.
a m8 knows a euro league with 3 groups of 40 drivers racing v8s 1ce a week. so i dont think its the aussie content at all.
We are in the same boat Bret, seems that there isn't big numbers using RF2 in Australasia yet , well at least not enough to populate OZ severs with numbers like in RF1 heyday. Hoping things will change. We are running a full series with GTO's and a mini series with Clios to break it up a bit , 10/14 drivers generally . https://www.facebook.com/simracingaustraliaRFactor2?ref=bookmarks may be an inter league event at some time through out the year may be a good idea, we did it with about 5 leagues in RF1 about 5 years ago and it went down quite well.
Same for us, in fact, same back in the days when was very busy in rf1. I think its mainly iracing's own system, drivers don't really need leagues to set out championships, its all there already, join a ladder and go.
Multi-class with free content does well but whatever you choose, make sure to have a pool of quality cars and tracks to pick from. By quality I mean fully functional for the league racing (meaning lack of quick AI is fine), with visuals that don't tune people off and above all, having tracks that suit the cars. Meeting all these requirements may make it sound like the list will be quite short but you'd be surprised. I've created a very detailed list (PRC Steve can give feedback) with very selective and nitpicked content for a site I try to race with but unfortunately the list always gets overlooked. You can run a quality field (limited options, yes, but still quality) of open wheelers of four different levels, or GT cars, LMPs, or even roadcars with tracks to suit each selection. If you're interested just PM me.
My 10c? Start with ISI cars and tracks. Best bet are historics F1 and F2 as they are great cars but almost totally missed from the servers, start with F2 and move to F1. No aids, only autoclutch for people that dont have one. Best day for scheduled races are Sunday evenings as people are not tired and its unlikely they go out before a working day. Problem is that Sunday evening is not the same for different continents :S Keep your server open weekdays, password it for scheduled races. 3/4 hour for practice, 1/2 hour for quali, 15 to 20 min race at weekdays, much longer everything at scheduled race. Keep weather out.
