For real. I hosted servers for many years when I ran VirtualHillClimb. I'm not new to this. I've spent, no shit, around 30-40 hours this week trying to get a dedicated server up and running. Friggin CMD prompts? Are you kidding me? It "runs" I suppose. But some can join. Most can't. And WHY is this? I honestly haven't the faintest idea. Documentation is outdated and convoluted. Any useful information I find makes assumptions that I know computer shit that I clearly don't. Forums are overrun EVERYWHERE. Impossible to find any useful information. Which honestly, we shouldn't have to research just to host a server so we can race with our friends. The upcoming "race against content you don't own update" is one of the most anticipated features which corrects an objection which has kept many people from playing rF2. It's the news of the year in sim racing world. BUT. If no one is able to set up a server without a master's degree in computer science from MIT, what's the point? People will experience this time wasting frustration first hand, and it will drive them away from rF2 for life. This morning I thought I had a server set up PERFECTLY, after the week of hard work I put in to make sure everything functioned properly. My discord started filling up with friends, and we all tried to jump on my server. NO LUCK. I attempted to resolve issues for hours while everyone waited and chatted. Never made a joinable server happen. 3 people swore off rF2 for life after this infuriating experience. Imagine this issue compounded by 100s when people start trying to race after the next update. There will be no players left. Including me. I've always been an rF2 fanboy, and I want the game to succeed but if this hosting issue isn't fixed SOON, the sim racing community will abandon you forever.
While I agree the whole process, and information, like much of rF2 is difficult to access at least initially, if you've got a server running and people can't join it's likely related to ports, firewall, NAT routing, etc. All stuff that won't be made easier by any nicer interface or wealth of concise and accurate information. I guess ports are an exception, because there are preferred port ranges and if you can't find those things can be difficult to work out, but if you can't work out your firewall then the only thing that'll make the process nicer is for rF2 to have rentable server space - and I can't see that happening any time soon. The installation of the server and content, and creating an event (rfmod) to run, that's certainly all ripe for being made much more friendly, which is partly interface and partly the mechanics of how the game works (eg it's always seemed like a server should make a temp .rfmod just from selected content and rules you choose, rather than force you to package the .rfmod yourself purely for the same purpose, using the MAS tool which itself has a trick that isn't obvious (ie don't include the content in the .rfmod, by unticking the correct boxes...)). But, yes - basically everyone has the same experience when they go to run a server the first time.
I often call that an "entry fee". You need to invest time and learn it to fullfill its purpose. rF2 is a die'n'retry game
One of the most problematic thing with server connection is the mod version conflict. Especially when a track mod has no base upgrades version (most of none DLC tracks are like that), yet if you create upgrades version as update to the track, then there is high chance that multiple upgrades version (for example this can happen if server admin had to make several upgrades version to solve a few problem) conflict to each other and result a giant dependency mess, which the game can't resolve this dependency mess by itself, and crashing player while joining server or simply fail to install. And the only way to solve is to ask player to manually uninstall or delete mods that have dependency issues (which is difficult to do if the player is not an IT expert). The game really need some way to solve mod dependency conflict by itself, then multiplayer experience will be improved greatly. In our league, we even created something like One_Click_Server_MOD_Quick_Removal.bat script to aid none experienced players.
I used to host rf1, rf2, Race07, AMS1, etc servers for many years. I'm no slouch when it comes to setting up my network to host games. My rF2 servers show up online in the Steam Server Viewer thing. I find the rfmod creation to be quite easy and almost soothing The problem is all the missing rfcmp errors for clients. I'm not messing with file paths or doing anything different than I did when I hosted leagues a few years back. I only use the current awesome S397 content. I made sure to take the convoluted step of creating the DLC content key or whatever it's called. What in god's name changed and made it such a cluster?! My whole point is that people just straight up don't want to spend days troubleshooting when they'd rather be online racing with their friends. It's a big deal for the survival of this game.
