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

Well, I should rephrase that: The official content as well as the available mods so far do not meet everyone's desire. I myself am not interested in driving single car cups for example. I tried the Civics, Clios, Meganes, 370Zs and so on and even though they are fun to drive, I don't want to drive them in a league. I can't tell you exactly why, it just doesn't work for me in a competitive environment though. I want variations in the field, at best with multiple classes even. A series with multiple cars to choose from, all with great, but slightly different behaviours and physics. Cars with different characters. And they should be a hell of a lot faster than a Clio.
And I'm certainly not a "jumper" when it comes to league racing. I called the GTs of the Endurance Series my home since 2009 when they were released. And with each year, the competition got stronger, and you had to become faster and faster each year to compete at the top in European-wide international leagues.

In rFactor 1, there were so many gems, I didn't even know what to drive. Enduracers' Endurance Series, DRM's DRM Revival mod, OSRM's V8 Factor Unleashed (yeah, this actually could be considered a cup, but the cars are just too awesome), NLC's VLN 2005 mod, the list is endless. But when looking at what's available so far for rFactor 2, I would lie if I said that it would be hard to pick one because there are so many available already which suit my taste. This just isn't the case yet, but I know things will change in the future. Modding teams are already showing signs of what's to come. We just need to look in the third party cars and tracks section. Amazing stuff on the horizon.

So my own personal state at the moment is that rFactor 2 has spoiled rFactor 1 for me technically. The driving experience is just way better. There's no competition between those two sims in my eyes. I am only racing in one rFactor 1 league now with 3 races remaining. In the past I was racing in 5 different series/leagues at peak times. I told myself that my virtual racing career in rFactor 1 will come to an end after that last series I take part in, and I'll stick to that decision. I just can't go back to rFactor 1 after playing around more intensively with rFactor 2 since late 2013. But since the series I am most interested in isn't available yet or finished for rFactor 2, I'm kinda in a limbo state at the moment.

Maybe some others feel the same as me, having the intent to switch to rFactor 2 asap, but not being able to because "their content" isn't available yet.

 

I don't think so. this issue was apparent well before 494. many builds ago we already saw all of the above happening. 494 just made it worse of course but its just a hiccup in the matrix, only took a few weeks. league wise that's not much.
(but then again, enough to drive casual drivers away for sure)

 

Fair enough Robert, and you're right, we all want something else in simracing, as individuals and as communities.

I must say however that we, and others, succeeded in multi-car events based on single cars. that's one of the beauties of rf2, just combine the bastards, admins might even be knowledgeable enough to tweak performances to balance things out.
Unless you are looking for an exact real life series like AMLemans, then yer screwed yes

However, I don't think its a main reason for the decline in MP activity. I don't think the majority is not active because certain content is not avail.
Moreover: I am often not sure if its an awesome mod I am driving or just the awesome physics/tires/rubber. seriously, I am not always sure.
So in terms of pure racing, nothing is stopping us. why not join a league for fun whilst you wait for the good stuff to come out? (oh wait you're already doing that lol)

Yeah I think so too, we have been spoiled by rf1 and perhaps expectations about rf2 where a tad unrealistic.

And I too cannot return to rf1 either, it was pretty awesome at the time but now its just a silly game lol, don't even feel nutting

 

Think you might have quoted the wrong post.

To the other chap re league directory, it would certainly need a lot of pruning when things die, such is the nature of community organised racing. Here we have to herd cats while iracing just gets it done. It may be that such a directory would also need to be a mod repository too though the hosting bill would be prohibitive I suspect (unless I could sort a decent CDN).

 

I honestly think the situation would be dramatically improved additionally by a healthier public server scene. It's terrible right now. The list should be filterable by track, car, which session they're in, whether I have the mods, etc and should show in the list which session they are in with a time estimate for when the next session starts.

 

Huh? Nono, it's the other way 'round, rF2 has spoiled rF1 for me due to its awesome physics.
And yes I feel the same as you do with that part:

Most leagues I was taking part in had a livestream, and oh boy does rFactor 1 look weird in livestreams now when you got rFactor 2 and its vehicle behaviour in the back of your head. Watching a rFactor 1 livestream now feels like watching some hovercrafts battling it out on a racetrack. Hovercrafts which enter each and every single corner while putting lots of dust in the air (the locking tires I mean, lol).

 

Nope I quoted your first post in this thread. I reacted to the MP bugs and not to the browser issue (which you are right about, its still worse then rf1's browser, i'm baffled as to why)

iracing does not just get it done. people pay for that stuff. try and calculate what an average user spends on content, and then some on those whom get most. its insane. (or ISI are insane, matter of perspective)
Plus its a closed invironment which they can control 100% so its much easier to set stuff up under those conditions. something ISI simply cannot do because they are creating an open source platform.
Having said that, we also have signed our league up in iracing years ago. not much joiners either!
(but that's mainly because iracing don't realy need leagues with such a system already in place)

 

Spoiled in the sense of a million mods, tracks, plugins, features, etc etc. something I think many of us expected to continue in rf2 from day 1 and that just didn't happen.

 

Fully agree. and to my knowledge ISI has never really gave us an insight as to why the server browser aint functioning as it should.

@Tim, could you maybe try and found out? it seems an essential feature indeed and a more functioning browser would probably help us all allot.

 

i've joined rF2 some 9 months ago. After being not commited to simracing for years. At first i drove it off line but soon i checked out mp. i somehow got involved into a league and joined there (SR4L) and tbh it's quite a blast to be in there and run in their championship. I looked at different league's, as far as i could find them but till now they just didn't suit me because of the starting times of races or just not the cars i want to race.

My point in this is, for a new simracer it's just a hell of a job to find a league that suits (car or timewise). For me being serious on this (on line every night practising) i just don't have time to look for other cool league's to join also. There where times i just did pick up races at the ISI servers but those are also empty as a lot of other servers. Just when there is a new car (civic for instance) they look alive for a week or 2 but then it just turns quiet in there. And imho there are to many drivers in there who are bashing and dashing and crashing their way around in there. For me it has to be fun to race and not got send out in the green bcause somebody thinks i am to slow and not go out of the way fast enough.......that realy p....s me off.

Not sure if my post even contributes on this thread (and for sure my English isn't that good) but i wanted to say this.

@Denstjiro.....just checking out your league site

 

They just started doing that. Join issues were your result. Good fun, eh?

 

Hi Eddy, I think you can confirm then that the stakes and demands are so much higher when in a league. especially in a official championship things just get serious!
The pressure alone from the competition can be murderess (and the fun that comes with it) but add rf2's physics/tires/rubber and you got something that can easily blow you away.
Which was my original complaint, its just too demanding.
Maybe DurgeDriven was right all along, he campaigned different levels in rf2 and that now sounds like a more practical idea to lure in fresh blood.

But you touch on a different point as well I had not realized yet. rf2 can be so demanding in its realism pickup racing actually might have gotten worse then ever. and that is certainly not good when the sim community is in need of fresh drivers.
I was on a Kart server the other day, 30 minutes of practise, 15 in quali, 10 in race. 80% did not make it the first few laps. it was appalling.


As for not finding leagues, maybe Hariseldon's idea of a database is not so bad at all. if he could find a way that it bumps active leagues and drops inactive leagues....at least people could give it a good go.

 

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Yes that's true but, Im talking about mainstream advertising which by the sound of it companies like Yuassa and Honda will get behind eventually.. Lots of pc game tv shows showing new releases etc on free to air . Lots of news papers globally that have weekly game reviews and of course plenty of motorsport magazines all of the above would create global awerness of this great sim , from that a percentage of buyers/drivers = league members.

Sounds like Tim has it covered and I can also see that ISI are probably doing the right thing buy waiting for the game to be 100% releasable to those new to pc simracing....

Again its time that will tell all and patience is required . In the meantime offline against AI is really getting so much better and a great option , throw that in with the odd server running god mod/track combos to get a online fix.

 

Lol, never realized it was connected to browser updates.
well that's just sad then, double whammy so to speak :/

 

Most TV networks who contacts us use rF1 due to content availability, and most of them don't mention the product by name. I think the current/next revolution of advertising is through youtube channels, which is essentially what ISR were doing years ago, but now it's an accepted medium more than it was back then. Need to work with those gamers, but so few have a decent controller... Which puts you really only on SIM racing channels, and they all know about rF2. But it's increasingly important to work with them.

 

I think this situation may have been similar when other well founded games get a sequel, it takes people a while to leave their comfort zone of their old game and jump into something new.

I would consider myself pretty proficient on a PC so I would say the learning curve for rF2 has been pretty shallow for myself. For others that are used to their workarounds and other ways they did things in rF1 and those more reluctant to change will always be harder to ween them off.

There will always be a reason not to switch games, the reasons are getting less but they have no disappeared. If it is a case of those wishing to play desperately need a computer upgrade (like me) otherwise the sim won't run, then there is not much we can do. When I looked again at how little ISI are charging PER YEAR for this game, it is like a STEAL!

I think people in general just need their confidence in this product massaged a bit. Who knows what the Indy or stock car content will bring, those fan bases are huge!

On a personal note I would love to get stuck in with more driving, but Tim and ISI need to do ONE thing to the sim.

Real road, weather, and everything else has to be in REAL TIME, or the option to either be real time or accelerated. If you can give people this assurance and then build from there... we have a good thing on our hands

 

"Casual drivers with not much experience seem to shy away from the extensive learning curve"

good ! let's hope they shy away for good & not show up to cause recks on the first corners for the rest of us
due to their "casualness" & general lack of practice

rf2 has AI & aids to accommodate this type of user

 

Without them rf2 is dead Adrian.

And if you are looking for serious racing on public servers, you're doing it wrong

 

yes your right I guess because it seems they are in the majority for now,

my expectations ( at the moment ) are correctly low so no problems, the better quality leagues will come though I'm fairly confident

by no means though is rf2 to difficult , it can if need be -just the opposite

 

p.s Tim re.youtube etc, totally agreed, be good if ISI could sponsor ISR in some way to get a few ads on there

(& what ever else) ....in large brackets

I think rf2 is only just becoming to a stage where it's starting to be ready for some exposure