What do we want with online racing

Good points,I'm not saying copy iracing as such,just that I'd like the official series to have strict standards to adhere too,iracing admins only have to send out a request for what the community in the series want as next seasons tracklist,every 10weeks,I have never seen or I have been ignorant to anything else been done per series.

 

Nothing wrong with pick up racing if you are held to a high standard while doing so.
It's definitely a balancing act and one the almighty iracing haven't achieved as of yet,if you believe their marketing.
I'm just worried that a low standard of driving through low prerequisites would help the attitude that brings poor driving standard to fester.

It would be years for rf2 to gain the numbers iracing have,so they need to be different,and I truly think setting the bar for driving standards higher than what iracing does,would help to retain a lot of members.

Nothing worse than practicing all week to get that one race in,only to be taken out in the first laps by sheer incompetence,nothing wrong with racing incidents or contacts,but incompetence,has no excuse,like using hotlap brake markers in race with full fuel.

 

Equating pickup racing with low standards is a false premise as there are many standards. Does lapped traffic need to pull offline or should they hold their line? Does the overtaking car need to pull fully alongside to claim track position or is a nose reaching mid-way enough? Is bump drafting allowed? If I brake a car length early and get rear-ended, is it really the following driver's fault? Is the race no contact or is leaning on the other car allowed? How much leaning has to happen before it's considered too much?

 

Read my post again,all you have described there is racing,I said incompetence,where people join the race not having even completed one lap,or have only hotlaped and have no clue how to race,incompetence is different to normal racing incidents.

Oh a backmarkers can be as slow as hell,it doesn't matter as long as they have special awareness and use common sense,iracing is the world leader at pick up racing,yet it's a widely held opinion that the overall driving standards over there in official series is piss poor,because there's nothing forcing them to hold a certain standard of competence.

Again racing incidents are fine,and vastly different to incompetent drivers racing who have no business being out of a practice session.

And by the way if you brake early and I hit you,it's my fault,I'm the following driver.

 

What I'd personally like to see is a Central place with Officially run Events & Leagues, something that caters for everyone like those that can stick to a strict 1 race a week league, or 1 race a fortnight. Alongside something for those less fortunate who can perhaps only race when they get some spare time, that's where iRacing leads the way in that area currently.

As for better automation that's always gonna be hard as there has to be some sort of human element put into it, Cut Detection certainly can be improved on tracks and dealt with by the game itself but Racing Incidents are a whole different area and something I think would be too hard for anyone to program...humans (Race Stewards) get it wrong a lot of the time in this regard even when they have the rule book right in front of them,iRacing has struggled in this area I think and it was still "poor"last time I raced there (albeit a year ago so it may of got better since). So there has to be a balance and I don't think a company of S397s size can maintain many leagues running simultaneously, so some give will be required, perhaps different leagues with more basic rules compared to the top leagues with more strict rules perhaps.

I'm sure whatever S397 have up their sleeves it will be thoroughly through, they are after all sim racers themselves and they know what goes into running and maintaining a successful league. What we shouldn't do is get on their backs about all the "features" straight from the first release, the old saying "Rome wasn't built in a day" not only goes for their continued development of RF2 but for any new big feature such as this, you can't and should not expect it to be perfect and 100% complete right out of the box, as has been said it took iRacing long enough to get it right but at least that's a model to follow and learn from.

 

I left iRacing about three or four years ago. It's true that certain series had bad drivers, I remember in the GT series and oval races there could be even be incidents on the formation lap, one major Nascar event went on for at least two hours under constant caution and I was forced to quit as I had to work the next morning. But I raced once or twice in the 79 and I know those guys were extremely rigid, the racing, at least when I was there on both the 49 and the 79 series was safe and extremely courteous. If it's gradually declined then one contributer could be its move to Stream. When I was there they were discussing the move and latter it did move, although no one was obliged to move to Steam if they didn't to. Those against the move said it would attract the 'wrong kind' of sim racer, perhaps that's what's happened? Maybe the decline in standards is caused by the fact new members have only driven relatively relaxed simcades and therefore are inexperienced in races where it only takes a single bump to destroy two or more peoples' race?

A decline in online driving standards is a direct result of an increased user base. Simcades like AC act as bridge from arcade to sim, and iRacing is the natural next step for AC drivers who want a better online experience. These users shouldn't be forced away, but rather forced to practice a lot before they can race and be more aware of other cars. I'm sure everyone here knows the importance of practice; practice is the necessary requisite for safe racing. I remember seeing the Aussie's practicing in the morning when I woke up, then again in the evening when I was about to sleep. It's true that there were only two or three official races during the week in the 49 an 79, but that was fine for most who are over thirty and don't have as much free time. And those who are seriously into sim racing enjoy practicing; fine tuning the car and beating your personal best, not to mention the interaction between drivers on the open servers, sharing setups, etc.

Private leagues is another option which has already been mentioned, which could be rented from rFactor. They would require a sign-up fee, which in itself would act as a deterrent to wreckless drivers . Then the replays are reviewed by the members, and any one seen as clearly not having practiced or showing lack of patience when passing could easily be banned without getting a refund. It should be easy to differentiate between wreckless drivers and those who are generally interested in racing, do their best to avoid collisions, who maybe slow but are courteous and willing to improve. The latter of course, should not be banned, since few, if any of us, have never made an occasional mistake.

Although I still stand by my time trial idea, which in has multiple benefits not least being any able to see the drivers who can drive for two hours, with full damage, without making a mistake. It wouldn't even need any kind of cut-lap penalty system if on an historic circuit.

 

I like your time trial idea very much,ive only been on iracing 2years this October,many long standing members have said the standards have declined frenetically over the past few years,and even though iracin have said they wouldn't change anything about the licence system sr or ir,folks still shout out loud for something to be done,like irating per car,which would help with both standards and participation.
I will add a poll here later to see what folks would like,just a pickup and play causal affair or a serious structured champion ship,and by that I mean a low tolerance to incompetence.

Just going by the attitude on this forum,I'd say the later

 

Agreed and the key here is to learn from iracings flaws,ive worded this thread very poorly as I struggle to put thoughts to paper,I have full confidence in s397s ability to give us a quality product,I just think it'd be good for them to ask the community how strict/harsh they want the rules and penalties for incompetence to be.
Let's face it,those who are here now have to be on the more serious side of the sim racing community,there's plenty of games out to just pretend your senna with all the glitter and sparkles of glamorous graphics etc,I think the genre could do with a serious online racing championship,which o hope rf2 will deliver.
I think o got the wrong end of the stick with iracing,nonwhere do they say they are a serious online sim,the iracing fanboys do that,the title even says world leading online racing game lol,so I may have gone in expecting more than what they were offering,which was free for all pick up and play.

Can't wait to here more info on this subject from the devs,but as you say,things take time

 

Bump to hopefully get more people to voted in the poll

 

Instead of your fourth option, I would have suggested the ability to switch from B or C. Along with some sort of notice in the lobby.
i.e. US2k, relaxed cutting rules or severe cutting rules , Snotteringhambone(obviously track name), no AI or yes AI, fuel use/tire ratios and real road track status.

 

I think there is value in having both of these available.

1. casual pick up and play with sensible but firm penalties
2. serious everything

Perhaps a comment regarding the server intent, be it 1. or 2. , in UI would be helpful?

 

To be honest I dont get the difference between casual and serious, most times when I see people defending casual meant they want to do shit on track "for fun" and that's not racing

 

Casual vs scheduled would probably suit better. I would love to see live penalties further integrated ingame. For both cutting and hitting other vehicles. Challenging for developers.

 

EVERYTHING seems to be challenging for developers!
They aren´t even able to offer some open servers (like in the past before WFG) on a regular, stable basis for us.
People are beating a dead (or unborn) horse here.....

 

I rushed the poll due to work constraints and being lazy,this was probably a fail because I didn't explain enough of the options.
At least I got 1 vote for being a tool,yay.

I will edit the op to add a little more info for the choices.

 

I started my simracing 'career' using F1C, and then moved to rFactor 1. I was lucky enough to manage to find a league (admin) who found us a group called 'VirtualMotorsport' who provided a hosted server. VMS was interesting in how it was run; an owner and a group of admins, who clubbed together to pay for the servers, and also developed a lot of tools for use such as anticheat, creation of championships and points scoring, upload of race results, a forum, and a ranking system for each driver across the various championships that ran on their servers. Basically, we would have a league admin who would decide to run a league, say, IndyCar or F1 79 and use their resources. Obviously it had to be scheduled to minimize clashes across leagues (e.g. not race the at the same time each Sunday). We had a bunch of Scandanavians who ran an F1 championship, we did IndyCar and other open wheel, but the main leagues were all sportscar stuff. What this did was it took a lot of the time/effort of managing the championship away from the league admin. Typically we would have regular weekly or sometimes fortnightly races, single time slot, and we'd open up the servers when other leagues didn't want them for practice and also 'tweaking' of the mods we'd use in our races. The anticheat effectively downloaded the mod files so they couldn't be hacked. The entire community had maybe 150 active racers. Our league had about 15-20 active racers, but in any given week maybe 30% couldn't make the race. So we always needed to recruit for each championship, and the vast majority would show up for one race, realize they weren't competitive or wanted to be wreckers, and we'd never see them again. So we had a lot of the tools in place including a 'reputation' or ranking system (and we also could add weight penalties to individual drivers if the league wanted that, so level playing field). But we never had a 'license' or minimum level to qualify to race in any league/championship.

iRacing began in 2009 and we pretty much wrapped up our leagues. iRacing didn't have hosted then, but we've never had to recreate the leagues we had given we had public option, more frequent races, championships and divisions etc. But frankly, the method of points scoring for weekly events often doesn't work unless you can race in the 'high strength of field' race (SOF race); and the likelihood of poor driving standards especially where you can't get enough participation to split and have the matchmaking work, many of the 'better' drivers did in fact form leagues and withdrew from the open competition.

I had high hopes initially of the license structure (Pro, A, B down to rookie). But it became pretty clear immediately that the goals of a strict qualification criteria to be able to race in a given series, was in conflict with the need iRacing had to sell content. People who buy content expect to be able to use it; they won't pay $15 for an F1 car and then not be told they aren't 'good' enough as a racer to race in the official series. So the license structure got watered down to the point where now it is pointless, it is pretty much meaningless. There's a minimum level of participation and competence to be able to race any official series you want. Lot's of people have tried to get iRacing to create "Pro" style series for the 'better' drivers where you have to qualify out of the typical official series to participate in it; and with only a few exceptions, they've not made that idea work. So they still have not cracked the code on how to create an acceptable level of driving standards for those 'serious' racers in official series, and therefore groups self-balkanize into hosted/leagues. Without huge numbers of participants (thousands), the matchmaking and splitting for races scheduled every couple of hours just doesn't work.

Part of the problem with a league is the sheer number of options. You've got race length/duration, start type, team or individual, weather, circuits, cars to pick. You have people who want to do short races and some long; they like everything about the combination except one factor, so try to start up another one with that one different attribute. At some point, you have to compromise to get sufficient numbers of people. On the flip side, any one league can possibly only have 50 cars or 'slots' and if they become super popular they have to turn people away or figure out how to run multiple instances of a race week and get 'fair' points scoring. Each league ends up with a very narrow band of participation of too little/too much - has to be Goldilocks.

So I think the best you can do, is have a method whereby the 'league/community admin' creates a series/championship, no cost to run, and where they can use the reputation or ranking as a minimum to participate. The no cost factor is a major problem; the organization of that and resources for it can't be charged for, but the actual race server could be individually hosted in a distributed fashion and paid for/run by the league admin. In effect, a P2P distributed version of what is fully centralized at iRacing. You still are going to need to have thousands of people looking to race, given all the likely options. In other words, you have a one-stop shop called rFactor.com where anyone goes who wants to find a league/championship to join; they can research them or set one up, so long as you meet the minimum criteria you can sign up for it. The actual race servers can run on any server or the individual's PC if they have the horsepower/bandwidth. S397 can run some 'standard' or official series as well, but they aren't on the hook for anything other than the website infrastructure.

 

I apologise for soiling this thread, but although there is clearly a lot of familiarity here with iRacing I would suggest that Pcars is a better comparison (purely re their approach to online racing). Their model is more similar to RF2 - you buy the game/sim and then optional DLC at extra cost if you want. The expectations for a monthly subscription model should surely be higher.

Pcars has both private league and public quick races, all easily selectable. The leagues are properly moderated by the groups running them, as you would expect, but Pcars did struggle early on with the public races - which inevitably attract the rammers and spoilers. Having used it since launch, I abandoned Pcars around nine months ago due to its lack of similarity to driving a car, but by then they had put in place a whole raft of automated moderation measures for cut track etc, and ghosting of cars to neuter the clowns who park across the track or drive against the flow. A lot of public races were still first bend pile ups, but if you avoided races with more than 8 or 10 entrants there was still some enjoyable racing to be had if you didn't have a lot of time to spare.

I'd like to see both league racing and public quick races, but from what I saw on Pcars the latter would be a waste of effort unless there is sufficient automated policing in place. What that should constitute was a subject of much argument on the Pcars forum, and might still be for all I know, so perhaps we can all look forward to that thread here!

 

Competition 1st 2nd and 3rd.

If we want serious dedicated sim racers to come over to rf2, then we need to provide a platform where they can win things. Wether that's online leagues or hot laps or official leagues /servers. They are competitive people and they need somewhere to say "I am the best".

Leaving aside iRacings downsides, the one thing they get absolutely right is the online structure.
Official servers with 24/7 racing where you can turn up at a popular series and get a race without fail.
A league system that allows customisable race series.
A proper hosting system that allows full control over the content and settings.

A rating system.
Some like it and some don't. But racing is competitive. Competitive people like to be the best.
There has to be some way of showing progression in your online career so that top drivers can become the best.

Provide all the above and racers will come.

 

What people want more from iRacing is some kind of safety rating. All the PCARS stuff still does not put away the trolls. From my side I'm 100% against any kind of ghost cars except for some kind of updated rejoin feature.
Won't PC2 have a safety rating anyway? It looked like they'd make one

 

Agree completely