Is rf2 too difficult? [lack of online players / leagues struggling]

I can only really speak for my own league although I do hear the same sentiments now and then from other leagues, communities and induviduals.

We are struggling to get new drivers. I mean really struggling. there seems to be a full stop on drivers whom are interested in online racing, let alone dedicate themselves to leagues.

Our league is over 20 years old and we have had our fair share of ups and downs but nothing to this extend, we might as well pack our bags and be gone with.
For the last 8 months or so we have tried just about everything, single events, mini series, single races, multi races, the whole range of available mods and tracks, open servers, passworded, public password. weekly advertising, the lot.

For us the decrease in attendance overall started when rf2 beta was released. by this time our members where kinda fed up with rf1 which we had used since its release (together with iracing) and a new hope was on the horizon.
But time passed on and rf2 took quite a while to become solid enough to embrace as a league. By this time we had seen interest in just about all sims decreased with our rather large user base going for porn or whatever they went for. but not racing.


Trying to get back on our feet however seems more difficult then ever. there are simply not enough drivers around to take notice or care to dedicate themselves.


Which takes me to my point, and I hope other league admins or anyone could join in, it seems rf2 has become too realistic, too difficult for casual drivers to commit to.
Its the pool of casual drivers that keep things going, they are the ones joining in and learning along the way, being picked up by leagues later on when they decided pickup racing is just not worth it.

And that seems to be missing in rf2. Casual drivers with not much experience seem to shy away from the extensive learning curve, the harsh way rf2 punishes driver errors, the complicated nature of the sim on and off track. its just too much I suspect and the instant fun we have seen in rf1 for example is just gone.


All I see on our servers or other servers is either experienced drivers being really fast or drivers spinning around everywhere and leaving after 3 minutes. coming back, leaving again. all the time.


Don't get me wrong, its actually a compliment on what ISI has done, its truly epic and one of a kind. But it seems to have its downfall as well. there are just not enough drivers to go around.
There are some leagues whom do well and I suspect they will also get the majority of serious new drivers as their grids are reasonable so that's more attractive. The rest of them, meh. presumably too many leagues going for the same small portion of available drivers.


I'm on the verge of giving up onnit tbh, its just not worth the effort in organising stuff every week and going round in circles on what to do next.

So I was wondering if my observations are remotely accurate and what could be done about it in general.

Sorry for the long post


ps: yes yes, all kinds of stuff wrong with rf2, doesn't help either for peeps just starting, but we got enough threads about that so maybe just one time lets not bash ISI too much and keep it constructive so we might actually get something out of it for once.

 

Hello there, firstly I feel what you are saying in your post! Also I suppose I am the sort of person that you are actually trying to get involved in league racing...
Myself and a few of my friends have thought about this for quite sometime, an to be honest I can only speak of myself on this... I just don't have the time to commit so just have not pursued the league route any further as I just would not like to let anybody down!!
I suppose this is one of the things I like about, here I go, iracing, as you can always just join in without the need of a league to enter.
Would there be anyway to begin implementing any sort of version to this? I know this has been spoken of before, but myself being a casual racer finds the sort of system very appealing as you can be as committed as you like and you are also rewarded for better driving .
To be honest I'm not sure what I have wrote is either helpful or relevant, so sorry for that! I could just feel you in your post and wanted to say something...


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One of the biggest reason I find, in my work at least, is that people think rF2 has a monthly fee. They're usually very surprised when they hear it doesn't even have to have a yearly one.

 

Very True, Ive notice the same at our league , although Im not admin its purely the numbers and forum interest that has collapsed,, For us as well with the end of one season (rf1),a summer and much
deserved break for the admins and then starting 2014 with rf2 and
all its quirks and bad build releases that deterred many from joing in at the start of the year, Im hoping that over time with more stable releases and of course word of mouth/forum that we will see numbers back to RF1 heyday numbers..


I think people will also take on the challenge of a more realistic sim soon enough, and with better marketing from ISI. numbers should increase.. On the marketing I have never seen 1 single add or plug for RF2 ... After ISI get the game as they need maybe a proper marketing campaign should start.

 

From my own observations it's not the increased realism which is holding people off rFactor 2, I believe it's the system requirements. This, and the current lack of finished, high quality mods simulating a real series. I can get my buddies to drive a few laps with me in rFactor 2 from time to time, and everytime they do agree that the driving itself is sensational, RealRoad a true must have and the dynamic weather a big plus. But they struggle to keep their framerates up, even at medium settings. And that's when "rFactor 2 looks worse than rFactor 1 to me" returns. Heck, I even know some leagues where drivers are having a hard time to keep their framerate above 30 fps in rFactor 1! My old graphics card was pumping out more than 200 fps in a full pack in rFactor 1, my new one will probably even go beyond 400 fps (haven't tried it yet, always limiting to 120 fps to keep it quiet and cold).

I mean, do people still expect that rFactor 2 should run with the same performance than rFactor 1 on their, dunno, 8 years old machines? I think that's the biggest reason why people won't make the switch from rFactor 1 to rFactor 2. They can barely run rFactor 1 at playable framerates. Trust me, there are LOTS of people with such old hardware.

The other thing is the mods. In rFactor 1, we have tons of super awesome mods which took years to develop. Of course we don't have all the content to please everybody's needs in rFactor 2 yet, especially considering the increased effort it takes to create such high quality mods which suit rFactor 2's visuals/sounds/physics etc. It will take time.

That being said, I do believe that it will still take some time for rFactor 2 to really be the #1 used sim for leagues. rFactor 2 did great so far in 2014, lots of good updates, content, and community mods slowly coming together. Give it another year, I think things will have changed by then.

 

Very helpful thx

And just to be sure, I was not in any way being negative towards any kind of drivers, just trying to figure out what's what. Even the most experienced aliens started out as complete noobs so we all in the same boat.

What you mentioned is exactly why we have not started with full blown championships despite our diminished grid sizes. I fear an organised championship will only shy people away more as it would imply more dedication then from single fun events.

So fun events it is, perfectly suited for you and your friends, and I know many leagues use this format as well, no signups, don't have to become a member, just show up prepared or somewhat unprepared and have fun.
We even throw in 2 public club events each week for practise before the serious racing commences on racenight.

But even that is not helpful. we get the odd joiners here and there (mostly spinners and those just trying out wtf rf2 is about) but hardly drivers whom think it would be fun to do a semi-serious race.
A few builds ago we had a period of loads of joiners, 25 drivers etc. went on for a few weeks and made us password the server again as there where too many silly accidents. but then it stopped.
Build 494 with the join issues we saw an increase again with our servers (somehow) not affected. but now with 590 its back to emptiness again.

 

Well there's one reason then, get advertising ISI

Seriously, this should be a goal by now?

 

There's another thread where I've just made a comment that explains why a lot of marketing efforts got held up. I think we were developing to develop, not developing to make sales. I am hoping a recent change will start to be noticed soon, and we'll all feel more comfortable showing the product off. I'm frankly very disappointed that the Civic, which I have had both Pirtek and Yuasa waiting to push in the demo, still isn't in the demo. I can setup marketing efforts, but usually something has gotten in my way. As I said, hoping things are different now, I find myself getting my own way a little bit on some stuff.

 

I'm actually not too worried about rf2 quirks and difficulties getting the sim to work. That's what the admin team is for, why I am so active on these forums, learning all about rf2 and then coaching members to get things running.
We have done the same in rf1, giving members tech help on all things complicated and its one of the tools with which you can make a league strong and its members dedicated to the community.

But this problem does arrive much earlier when speaking about casual drivers and they are on their own.

 

I've checked out some leagues here and there aren't any leagues that race what I want to race. The toughest thing is finding like minded sim racers.

 

Firstly I believe too many people with old pc's and either cant afford or are unwilling to spend the money .I know many .

Secondly not enough complete mods to run a season or atleast good ones .

Thirdly the issue of rF2 not quite working correctly as far as some features and the uncertainty of what the next build will bring .

I believe plenty of people know of rF2 so I don't believe advertising is the answer . You wont find a racing sim forum that doesn't mention rF2

 

@Denstjiro do u have a link for your website? Can't see it because I'm on my mobile. Btw what is the servers name u host? The karts are very popular atm and I think organizing a fun event will attract allot of people including myself. Mostly I look for single fun events but I can't find any in the private/league sub forum.

One thing I really don't understand is why people abandon a newly released mod in just 2 weeks. The civic is very fun to drive but after 2 week nobody was racing it in the public servers. I had some good races with u in the skip barber a while back but even that didn't last for more than 2 weeks.
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You're quite right, I knew there was more then one reason. there usually is!

I'm not so sure about that. Speaking for leagues, it takes one or two mods and 7 to 12 good tracks to organise a championship. we got that already. there's plenty for a league to choose from.
The need for more varied content is mostly for those jumping from one awesome thing to another every week. Most leagues don't do that. (in rf1 with its million mods we ran GP79 for 12 seasons lol, together with mirror championships which used other mods)

That's it, time. we barely made it this year in terms of paying the bills for website, domain and server. its allot of money and in January we are going at it again, crossing our fingers it will be sufficient. just not enough active members to pay the bills anymore and when that's gone, the league is gone.

 

There are enough great cars to run a different combo each race. Lots of leagues think they have to run a full "season" with the same cars. Like I said before though, just too many opinions and that is the biggest hurdle.

 

This is also very valid, as to be honest I generally only drive the urd pay mods!! Which again is my own downfall as people tend to only want to run free mods... So online leagues\racing for fun is not even an option for me really!

Although post your links Denstjiro as I will definitely have a look as I would like to look into something a little more organised... do you do anything on a Wednesday night? That's my sim night

 

The biggest reason for a lack of online players is the terrible quake 2 era server browser and the issues connecting to many servers. A web interface would solve many problems and at least allow server hosts to post links to relevant mods.

 

I'de rather not advertise our league here. that sounds very contradictive because of my beef, but I did not start this thread for that purpose and don't want the discussion to go that way.
if you want to find us check my profile.

If you cant find single events in the league forum you're not doing it right. There are quite a few every week.

Which reminds me Tim.....what about the requests made a while ago to split the league forum into two? a league forum and a single events forum. this might help a bit, get things more focussed on either side. (or give us tags to work with?)


As for Karts Hany, we are going to do that yes. But we are a bit hesitant to go for the 'most popular' thing too much. Going for the hype (the latest released awesome mod) often attracts the wrong kind of drivers. we still want to race serious and a hype-event basically means loads of crashers and people just figuring things out after they joined. not good.
We could easily go for meganes on Mills all year and probably have much more joiners but.....you know. its all in the balance I suppose. Moreover, the majority of those pickup racers will never return anyways so what's the point attracting them?
We've tried to tackle that with public passwords, so instant access but you gotta know about it. advertised here for example where we know the forum users are a bit more serious or knowledgeable about racing.

 

Btw echoing Jamie's comments, also no leagues running what I want to drive, and not at good times for me (one area where iracing wins, even though I'm beginning to conclude that rf2 is a better sim).

 

If anyone is interested, I could build a league/event directory which would allow admins to enter tines/dates/mod info and have it convert by time zone, give people filtering by dates, cars, tracks etc. if ISI are interested I'd love to work with them on it.

 

Well if you can't find a league running your content or timezone, then that's it. Nothing you can do about it, even if things are perfect in every sense.
(you could just start a thread in Leagues about it though, state your wishes and hopefully leagues reply to you)


We have had league database before, I don't think they work well. either they get abandoned over time by its creators or leagues don't update so allot of dead links innit which pisses people off. we've got a memberbase of over 400 members and I don't think a single one found us through the league databases we signed up to over the years.

But, at this point I would accept any initiative! I would certainly sign up for it Hariseldon
Maybe at this point in time its exactly what rf2 needs?

I would not count too much on ISI's collaboration though (no offense ISI) it usually don't work that way I understand.