Following the debate from the last week or so... It's no secret that there is a lack of participation in the public server environment. Regardless of if you are a league racer or a guy looking for a random pub, low participation effects everyone. Leagues, those pub racers today in their first race are your league admins of tomorrow. You never know. No matter your stance, it doesn't help. There is no upside to having a more or less dead public racing experience. And yes, it is more or less dead outside peak time on the weekend. The goal : create a consistent participation on at least a specific day of the week. It will not be ideal for all, but with a more focused effort (as in if we actually try) we could pull this off I feel. We already kind of survive on the weekends even with the amount of leagues running, so I'd suggest steering from a weekend slot to avoid clashing. But that is why it is a poll. If we are to do this, we can make the sim more approachable for those who need it while having fun. For example, if a 730 PM time slot happens to be very active (and truly so, not 6 guys in one race "active"), it's much easier to direct people to try and race in and around that time. Not in a "you can get a race maybe" but "try and show up on xxxxday, we pack the grid and crash the servers with so many people" manner. The biggest problem IMO is that online is low populated, which means many drivers don't even bother trying. They give up before ever even trying - self fulfilling prophecy. I'm that guy to a decent degree admittedly. Here's me trying. The approach : consolidate drivers into a server, spread the word and assist the newbies. Come as you are, low stress, we'll make a decent driver of the guy who can't survive a lap. Warning : there will be wrecks - and often you can do a lot yourself to prevent them. It's for fun and hopefully the betterment of the community. It's pub racing, the goal is to have fun. It's not difficult to do. Providing it's an overall positive experience, people will be more willing to come back, get more racing happening, in the long run filtering more people into leagues as they see fit if they would like. The how : Let's pick a day of the week (poll above) and race. Be friendly, spread the word - you love this sim, right? Ideally, the concept would be to conflict with as few league guys only, to get them into these races as well and create participation, hence the poll for what day of the week. The important (I feel) details : Joining a server should be as easy as possible - to do so, I strongly suggest we stick to the ISI Official servers if at all possible. Yes, there are other servers that work as well, however by keeping it on ISI's servers things are more "official" looking and you know what you are getting. They already have a subforum section for their servers as well, which makes things for newer drivers to report back - rather than looking for whatever group's website to report an issue with the server for example, they can end up here - hopefully to get things resolved quickly, maybe learn a thing or two they didn't otherwise know while poking around and enhance their enjoyment of this sim. I personally think it is crucial that we attempt to fill up those servers if at all possible. Perhaps if this concept does gain some traction, we could maybe even work with Tim in getting the content switched out for each week as we see fit - with a couple of guys who know what we will race next week in the server, we can inform the newbies what they can be practicing on so they are more prepared for the next event. It's just more streamlined, the last thing this sim needs is for people to have deal with the bad sides of the online system if at all possible. Sticking with the ISI servers would help. Maybe we could get ISI to throw out some participation prizes or something. (or we could chip in and throw out some hats or whatever) This is where many of us come in to play with this idea. It's up to us to promote the concept, it's up to us to make it work. If the league guys aren't willing to come play pickup, it's more or less useless. If we don't help spread the word, it's useless. If we whine every 2 seconds to "restart race!", it's useless. Yes, it may not be what we want to race, but if we can bring participation everyone can benefit. So what do you say?
I say thanks for your positive effort here Empty it may help if people get behind it. The biggest problem at the moment with the ISI server (the Civic one) is the collisions are a bit bad, I've had some good races on there the last couple of days but some bizarre race ending accidents from seemingly minor touches, it may be pings and this needs to be addressed somehow. Pretty sure it is pings as I had the most amazing three way battle for several laps rubbing and tapping the whole way round. It was incredible so I'm pretty sure it's pings. So until people know their ping with the server is high before they join I can see this being an issue. Not an insurmountable one. Newbie server thread on here, welcome message that tells you your ping or how to get it with /ping, and what is considered too high and will cause wrecks, and the most vile language in the chatbox. Making the ISI servers a fun place to race and the number one place online for people new to rF2 could be possible, but I doubt it could be so civilized that prizes could come into the equation! You would need admins, marshals, and a full on appeals process. Which I guess wouldn't be that hard if it's a certain time of the week. I'm happy to help if anything comes of it anyway.
I think you can set a limit on ping? I can't remember off the top of my head. I would reckon anyone with 200 ping, I'd steer clear of them
I think this is a good idea, but with a few caveats. Firstly, mixed US and european racers doesn't tend to work because of time zones and pings, and I agree with Murtaya that the ISI servers are no good to me in the UK because the ping to server is 100+. Secondly, I think it would be more fun to have some sort of structured event rather than the standard public racing we get every night of the week. In the past I have stumbled across ISR fun events that had structures such as 30min main event and after a short break 20min reverse top 10, I have had more fun in those arrive and drive fun events than any league race.
I think this is an awesome initiative, Matt. Really really good stuff. I hope the public ISI servers will be more crowded, because when they are... boy, what fun! Btw hope to see you do some new rF2 videos soon. I really enjoyed the ones you did a while back. They also help spread the word about rF2 to a lot of newcomers, which is super positive.
Would be great, and we had something like this http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/19381-Scheduling-a-server, even better. I race in a league and I have no problems to enjoy fun battles with skilled people who practiced two weeks for a race, I'm admin too, but sometimes I miss the possibility to open server list, and join a public race to spend some time with no need to practice hard for one race.
You don't need any prizes, good, fun sim racing is enough for most simracers to stop by for a race or three if they have the time.
