Just as a clarification, I'm not against maximum ratings on ranked servers as such. I would in fact love to see them enforced on the bronze/silver/gold servers. But...... As mentioned, there has to be a selection of free-for-all servers, otherwise we run into the situation I mentioned earlier. And splitting the servers also runs the risk of having very small grids, which in turn makes people leave. Let's face it, this isn't iRacing with thousands of daily users, or at least not yet. So while I occasionally grumble over 1700+ rated players on the bronze-servers, I can see the logic behind it.
Another advantage of "rookie" servers is that they are up all the time. You don't have to wait for the combination you want, you just jump in and drive. Worst case is waiting like 5-10 minutes, but that's it. It's too early to have all the variety of servers for every level of skill, there aren't that many people in multiplayer. But I believe it's slowly getting better.
I enjoy the rookie server as it's fixed set up and generally more about driving than being able to set up a car. Which I just cannot do!!
I think in an ideal world and with more traffic in the daily ranked races it would be good to see a couple of extra servers that run with a rating cap, and as things stand I've already seen the dailys get busier over the last 3 months since I started playing so theirs hope for the future.
If you think that you need a better car setup to be faster you can be pretty sure that you first need better skill. The "car setup" thing is a well known excuse from simracer... but it's only relevant if you're already fighting in the front against the bests drivers. Otherwise there's more time to gain by improving your skill than by just get a car setup.
To the OP, how about trying league racing? Attempts to create servers for lower skilled drivers or exclude quicker drivers would likely be open to abuse. Many posts above have made good suggestions on how to go faster but if you don't want the pressure of trying to find the tenths to put you in the mix, doing some research on a suitable league to join could be a better way. There are leagues out there ranging from the sim racing aliens to the more gentleman racers.
I disagree. While it can indeed be used as an excuse, it doesn't mean that a slower driver can't be faster with a better setup. Fixed setups make speed gaps closer than with open setups, and that means even a slower driver gets more chances in case their opponents make a mistake.
He's right though. If you're 3 seconds off the pace, it ain't the set-up. I've raced against plenty of people who could take a default set-up and beat me regularly, vigorously and with every sign of keen enjoyment. Besides, fixed set-up races aren't necessarily more 'fair' or 'equal' than open set-ups. There's no such thing as a 'fast' set-up that'll work for everyone and magically shave off 2 seconds off your lap-time. There are only set-ups tailored to your specific driving-style and confidence-level. So a fixed set-up race doesn't level the playing ground, it just favors people who prefer under-steering cars. I do like the fixed set-up races, but for no other reason than they're jump-in-and-go. Set-ups gains you tenths, driving gains you seconds. (Speaking as someone who's routinely 2-3 seconds off the pace)
I can't find the Driver61's video where he talks about that. Or was it someone else? Anyway, there are two goals for a setup: one is changing your car's behaviour to suit your needs (making the driving comfortable and consistent), two is helping your car be faster on that circuit. The higher your skill the more you can shift focus from former to latter because you can better adapt your driving style to what the car wants instead of the other way around. My points are: 1) While there's indeed a lot of personal preferences and nuances in setting up a car, that doesn't mean that "a lot" turns into "everything". 2) While bad skills can indeed cost you seconds per lap, that doesn't mean you must be top-guys-level fast to start seeing setup's effect on lap times. 3) You can't just reach in your pocket for more "skill". Speed takes time, and the closer you are to your skill ceiling the more time you need for each tenth. Some people don't have that extra time so they have to deal with what they have. Setups aren't everything, but they are still something. By removing this "something" you make racing a bit closer. Some see it as a positive effect and prefer that. I see nothing wrong when they express that. By the way, I have an impression that at least on some tracks the default setups are more than some tenth slower than what you can squeeze out of your car with a proper setup, and it's more like 1+ second. Which is not something to shrug off easily.
This is my impression as well, which is why I'm reluctant to give up any advantage I may have thanks to my real-world experience with setting up cars by running fixed setups.
"Setups don't make you faster unless you're an alien" is one of those fallacies promulgated by people who have no clue about setups and want to justify their own limitations. Diagnosing a car and improving the setup to make the car easier to drive consistently/faster is a skill a driver can have. It pays off in lap times, just like other driving skills will.
Setups will help confidence in the car for 99% of drivers, top 1% can eek out that 1000th to top the Leaderboards. Now with the rookie server debate I believe the way to get faster (after you are confident & competent with car/track combo) is drive against faster drivers, they will show you how to do it, perfect lines, braking, corner exit speed, car positioning, everything you need to race is in front of your eyes. If you feel you cannot concentrate on another and drive a race, you are not ready to race. The most important thing about racing is being aware of everything that is going on around you, what you are doing should be easy because you are so well drilled in it, you shouldn't have to think about braking or anything, you should have done so many laps you could do it blindfolded and that's the problem, a certain percentage could and the rest have rarely completed a quality lap. The top 1% race in the real world (plus the odd millionaire), every Tom, Dick and Harry (and Britney) turns up in the races I compete in (some still wearing blindfolds, I swear) so if one wishes for clean, fast racing, then best off joining a club/league. As things stand there are not enough competitors to split the levels even more but eventually it will have to be done and I'm sure will be. Until then it will be a case of it being a bit of a lottery. I'm not even going to mention people's state of mind, we all have good day's and bad ones. perhaps considering if one is in the right frame of mind for competitive racing would be a good place to start. Maybe some slower cars in the higher ranked events, with the same rolling system as the rookies, would solve the faster drivers entering the rookie servers, I certainly drive in the rookies and not because I'm a masochist but because I enjoy the slower cars just as much as the quick ones.
You're right in a way. But for this, it means you already able to drive properly the car, and understand it... so you need at least some driving skills to be able to understand what you're doing when you change a setup and why your doing it. If it's only a matter of tweaking values randomly hoping for a better lap time it's a pure waste of time. You NEED driving skills BEFORE you start to tweak a setup to your liking You NEED at least to be CONSTANT in your driving, otherwise there's no point because you're not constant enough to compare a setup to another. BTW: It's not a "alien VS other drivers" but I do think that until you are not able to compet in the front and be at least less than 2s slower than the faster drivers, there's more to gain by improving your skill before looking for better setups [not talking about getting a setup made by a faster driving and going with not knowing at all why it's faster, or "cheated setup" like you can have sometimes in simracing game]
The time gained by custom setups always depends on the car/track combination. When you're running a WTCR car on a normal circuit, a custom setup will yield you maybe 3 tenths, but not more. Things might be different with cars like the FR X-17, because some circuits require a lot more or a lot less downforce than what the default setup provides.
True to a degree, but that wasn't the point I was trying to make. The argument that fixed set-ups somehow make for fairer or closer racing only applies if the set-up in question sacrifices speed for stability. If, for example, the set-up was created by one of the aliens and everybody was forced to use that, it would still be a fixed set-up race. And it would undoubtedly make the alien a lot faster. Whereas most casual racers (myself included) would probably be slower since the fast set-ups tend to be extremely twitchy and very much on the edge. So unless you have the skill to handle something like that you'll either spin off constantly or drive it so gingerly that your lap-times plummet. So the fixed set-up races doesn't give you a more level playing field, it merely switches the advantage to those of us who prefer more sedate set-ups. And there's nothing wrong with that as such, I just think it's a mistake to think of fixed set-ups as inherently fairer.
Do racing drivers know the details of car setups? I always thought it was more like Milestone`s approach: you tell your engineer what you want and they set the car up that way.
Regarding how much a setup can gain you ive just come across what probably is an extreme example but exists nevertheless. Took a p2 around road america for a handful of laps with a custom setup to set a benchmark and then went back to the default setup, drove 8 laps and on all 8 of those laps was 2-2.5s slower than my benchmark time. Then went back to my custom setup to rule out that i just happened to get a miracle lap the first time around but within 3 laps i was back within 0.01s of the benchmark time. So a setup created by me (who i dont consider to be particularly good at creating setups) could make the difference between comfortably winning or being buried somewhere in the midfield or even worse. A risk that im not really willing to take on ranked servers and since i really dont enjoy working on setups joining fixed setup races is a lot more attractive to me most of the time
Yup, I totally agree. But I don't think you have to be on that level to start seeing any difference: If you're inconsistent, it'll be very hard or impossible to see improvement in terms of lap times, but that doesn't mean you also won't see any difference in handling. A handling that suits your driving style will result in a better overall racing pace and who knows, maybe it'll also result in a couple of positions higher. For example, I drove the P4/5 around Suzuka yesterday and noticed that I can't take some turns flat out compared to M6. I went to a setup page, read the descriptions, softened the front a bit and right away the issue was almost gone. You don't need any driving skills for that.
Yeah, I see where you're coming from. It was only a few days ago when I found out that "fixed vs. open setups" is apparently a hot topic in some racing games, with a lot of people calling fixed setup races more fair (which is totally incorrect, in my opinion). But the thing is - no one said or even implied it in this thread. What was said is this: And there's absolutely nothing wrong here. The guy admits that "X" is his weak point and picks his races accordingly, nothing more. It's essentially the same as saying something like "I'm bad at driving fast cars so I prefer slower classes" or "I'm bad with FWD so I prefer RWD cars". Now, the "fairer" point is out, we're left with "closer racing" point: I understand your example and agree that it might very well end up with a bigger difference in speed, but this is such an extreme case and practically never happens, at least in this game. Majuh coined a much better term for what I meant, "custom setup". I said "fast setup", that probably created some misunderstanding. I didn't mean "a setup copied from a fast guy", I meant "a setup properly made for you". It might not always be significantly faster, or maybe not really faster at all, but it will never be slower overall (because why would you use it then?). Taking away this possible improvement and taking in account that Raceroom default setups are pretty neutral and tamed, I think it's pretty safe to say that fixed setup races will result in a closer spread between drivers. (Whether it's a good thing or bad thing, is another topic...)