Multiplayer- empty servers

Just wondering.. Automobilista and RF2 are my favourite sims and if you read posts on the forums you notice that lots of gamers rate this game very highly too, but when it comes to playing online you quickly realize that the servers are empty and actually very little people play it, I get the impression that actually far more people talk about the game rather than play it. what is the reason of all that (except for removing the game from steam) ?

 

I think that in our community (and the simracing community in overall), there are many who prefer to stay offline and race with AI only. Online simracing generally can be seem as an hardcore gaming event, so some can feel unsure about their skills compared to other players, and some others can feel that online simracing demands a "high level preparation" so they can be competitive, working on setups and practicing on a specific track for many hours.
There are also those who are hardcore simracers and prefer to race on leagues, for a more organized, controlled ambient, also with an increased challenge.

Public servers are often compared to a "lawless" ambient, so simracers who want to have fun, by being competitive or just by being part of a good race will commonly try to avoid it.

Talking by my own experience as a simracer and part of this community, i always preferred to race online with a good organization behind it. For me, taking the virtual race as an serious event is part of the fun and the challenge of being a simracer. Racing against AI would not satisfy my gaming experience, neither would if i'm just being part of a random server without a established challenge.

 

got to reccomend the guys over at race department ...awesome racing nearly every night with a great bunch of guys....just been racing carts with a field of 24

 

Yeah, but take the RD server away and it's a desert where some 5 people lurk.

Most of the cars seem to be too hardcore for the average player and unsuited for pickup public server racing.

Maybe Reiza (or anyone else willing) should try setting up a 24/7 Lancer server or Rental Karts server. Those are the sort of no stress, no hassle vehicles that players of any skill or ambition can learn to drive and be a safe race participant.
Make it quick and simple - short quali, short races, reversed grid may be a fun addition too...Preferably short, simple tracks like Taruma, Guapore, Velopark, etc...street circuits maybe. Short simple kart tracks for karts too.

I don't know, it may be worth a try...

 

It won't help. Reality of today's sim racing world:
if you want online racing at any time: iRacing.
online racing at most time, nealry any time: Assetto or Project CARS.
Don't expect any other sim for now to give you this.
Join leagues if you don't want to play one of the above sims.
Simple. I wish it was different, but it isn't, we gotta deal with it.

 

Yea because nothing say low stress like narrow bumpy worn down pavement with no runoff and big concrete walls on either side.

 

Leagues are highly competitive and require lots of time - and most important: you have to bend your private schedule around the league races.

There are IMO 2 big reasons why people don't race online:
a) Too little participation
b) Reckless driving / T1 pile-up / Slammers

* How to increase the participation?
Give people something to hunt for: Leaderboards, championships, licenses, ratings.
Promote this (on the launch screen, on the main menu), have people subscribe to championships: (1 track per week for 8 weeks) and have them earn points, gain licenses and win championships.

I am pretty sure that the initial participation would be quite high and if everything goes smooth (which of course is a must) i think this would carry on and could eventually become something really big.

* How to remove the wreckers?
isiMotor already records incidents, let's take a look in the results xml file:

<Incident et="604.0">Nicolas Azevedo(1) reported contact (0.13) with another vehicle Marcos Ribeiro(5)</Incident>

Take that, calculate via simple safety rating algorithm and you end up with wreckers being stuck in Rookie class forever, not gaining access to the higher tier races/series where people in general drive clean.


It would be easy as cake to get an iRacing-ish system in AMS up.
simracingsystem.com already proved that.
But it also shows that it takes more than just a working system to draw people in - if of course Reiza would do that and promote their system in game and everywhere and have the word spread it would be a completely different thing.

 

I can't join a league as I just can't work it out with work to make it each race. RD is my best answer for fun competitive racing with some great drivers. And as long as you drive fair and not stupidly it does t matter if you are at the back. I'm steadily improving with every race. But Yeh I would love it if I could just go online and race right now. I have tried Iracing and I just don't like how it feels.... Maybe its them mazda's that you can race for free but to me they felt awful. And that put me off spending money on it

 

iRacing's content is insanely overpriced, no matter how good the service is, i don't pay 100$ upfront just to be able to participate in a series for which i have to pay additional 50$ next season...

But, pointing to my own post: What if that would be possible with AMS?
I think AMS has enough reputation as a good sim to have a broud enough playerbase, now just give people some incentive to racing online and they will. I'm sure of that.

 

I agree that would be great. The sales would skyrocket plus lots of happy drivers.

 

Depends on the league. See EEC, we keep it simple, fair and fun. If you have common sense and watch real life racing you won't even need to read the rules except for the into about race format in the league threads. Incidents are reviewed by whoever wants to give their opinions once reported by the guys involved and our races are on Sunday nights (green flag @ 9pm CET) with max race time 120 minutes (but we aren't doing full 120min league anymore, max lately is 90 minutes) which give time to a lot of people to participate.
"Highly competitive"... sorry but this makes no sense. It all depends on yourself. I drive for fun if I finish first or last I'm on track. From time to time we receive people that think driving online is like the AI that they can reduce their speed to win so they give up. If you just want to have fun you can just drive you'll find people on your skill level on track.
Lately I practice 30~40 minutes during the week for the sunday race, only to do small setup adjustments, except if I don't know the track than I practice for a bit longer.
It's all about yourself. Do you drive to keep yourself safe? You do not get stressed if an accident happens? You can deal with accidents in a mature way and report them after the race without causing a forum war? If you can do all this you'll have fun.

 

Do you guys at eec have races not in the league that racers like me can drop into.... I can't commit to any league!

 

You don't need to commit, you can pick a car and appear whenever you want or pick a guest car when you can race, we always have extra cars for these situations.
I had an idea to keep a open server (when our leagues aren't running) with the GT3 mod and small 10 minutes races with standing starts in the most mainstream tracks available on Race Department, didn't happen in SCE, maybe now in AMS we can make it happen. If this happen you can easily find our members doing pick up races during the week. I hope we can do this, but only after AMS is released and the GT3 physics are updated

 

About our rules you can see a summarized version here EEC News - About Joining EEC Online Races

 

normal multiplayer without Ratingsystem makes no sense for me and i see it on the server even on assetto corsa or other sims there getting less ppl on public server. I think racing can t work without a safty and award rating like iracing has it. If iracing would have a better physics in terms of there understeer balance i would say its not overpriced at all because u would get laser scanned licens tracks and cars with a carrer multiplayer. I mean even if it is overpaid a bodnar wheel is overpaid too but i still would not miss it :>

 

If i'd be available sunday's at 21:00 CET then i'd join RD's club races
But that's already what i'm talking about: Leagues have fixed times, that's not suitable for people who have either no fixed schedule or are already blocked up a lot.

I have already been in that "No matter what happens, monday at 20:00 i need to be at the PC" zone and i'm very happy that i managed to bring an end to that

Don't know, people commiting to a rigid schedule usually tend to take their hobby quite serious and therefore the speed is usually higher as they already practice throughout the week or are already at such a high level that they don't need lots of practice as they know car and track in and out.
And i've attended races in which i have lost seconds on the 2nd last - that's not what i call enjoyment no matter how competitive you are, there's no point in hotlapping lost in last place.

Fighting for 20th place, 7 seconds slower than the leader? I'm all in for that.
But hotlapping 15 seconds behind 2nd last ... i'm better off doing that offline without having to fear screwing up the race of the guys lapping me.

If your league members use those servers for practice and the server doesn't turn into one of the many 0/32 servers that are already available i could absolutely see that as a place to go

It's always the same no matter the genre.
You need players on the server to attract other players, but once this is going and you can keep at least 5 players on the server the whole time during peak hours that plants the seed for a well populated server for hours.

That's why i'm pretty sure that official Reiza servers would always be filled if they would promote them in the main menu and there's some ranking to keep driving clean.

 

i would like to see some official servers with scheduled short races. because i thimk many pople need to train. every track would be online for a week with 8min races and 30min on weekend. we will know what track will be follow next week so we could get use to with ai to be prepared.

 

@xnorb please read what I posted again till you understand it becuase right now you didn't get any point from it, and read the full thing because you kept some key points outside
Again: I practice 30 minutes during the whole week for a race (and sometimes that's all I drive in a week, I'm not a hardcore racer, I get bored if I drive too much, especially in moments like now having to test new GT3 physics), if I can't be there I just won't be there, tho it's sunday afternoon where I live so I got nothing to do at this time lol, I drive for fun not to win every race and feel better about myself so first or last I'm there. As I said this competitive thing is all about you.
One important thing: racing is also about cumulative experience, focus on being consistent and do less mistakes and speed will come with time. Talking like this you seem to be the kind of driver that will hit Esc after the first spin in a online race

 

Btw we in EEC are trying to make a few teams and join the VLMS (SimRacing.Club) our only goals are: stay out of trouble, finish the races.

*so let's hope it won't rain*

 

I stick to it until the end, no matter what *g*
It's just pretty pointless to join a race if there's no racing going on for you but instead you are only hotlapping all the time. This not only applies to the guys far back but also for the guys far ahead.

But this all is taking this completely off-topic i just realize
In the end: No matter what, i hope Reiza manages to make online racing more interesting, because that's where simracing really shines and would attract more people.