A recent article/post on PRC.net discussed this topic and it's something that's very disappointing for me. There is a huge lack of good public servers for every new sim on the market, and it's something that is a problem with R3E as well. Now I can understand some of the problems with the other sims concerning this. AC's modding could mean that, like rFactor, you'd need to have every player have the exact same version of mods/tracks. PCars's online gameplay (from what I've read) seems to be buggy and problematic. I don't know much about rF2 so maybe someone can further on that. But R3E, right now, seems like the perfect platform for public racing. Everyone has the same version of the sim, the tracks included are legendary tracks that just about every motorsport fan and simracer knows and classes such as GT3 and WTCC 13/14 are enjoyable for good hard racing and relatively easy to keep on track and drive. Basically, any simracer, provided he has at least drove the car/track once or twice can jump in and have a fun time without much hassle. The default setups are decent enough for that. And to be honest, I have had fun racing on public servers. Apart from 2/3 people, most drivers are online to have a good time and not punt each other, even though the skill gaps can be drastic. But after the dedicated server update, almost every time I launch R3E and go to the server browser, all I see is 3/4 locked off league servers and a couple of public servers if I'm lucky, and one of them is with the abysmal free content. In addition, there is a huge problem now with laggy drivers, something that was never a problem before the update. My first sim was GTR2 and for the first 2/3 years it had a few good communities that had their own public server with admins taking care of the trash(anyone remember GC NGT/G2?). Nothing too serious, just jump in, lap around, tweak something small on the car and off you go for a quick sprint race. RACE 07 had the same thing. WTCC servers, everyone knows the cars and tracks, just jump in and have a clean, good hard race. Where is this today? Is every simracer that "hardcore" (for a lack of a better term) that only wants to race on a strict schedule every 2/3 weeks, spending more time making setups than actually racing? Or people just do not want to waste their time with randoms on the Internet that may just want to ruin other people's fun hobby and race with the AI instead? Thoughts? Opinions? I'd love to see this being discussed, maybe even S3 members can chime in. Am I in the minority who just wants to launch the sim, find a server and drive a race or two without much hassle?
Same here dude, I'll pop on and find locked servers, and a handful of people racing silhouette at the Raceway on Novice (not a reflection on the users, just not for me) Myself and @Ronin_GTDave will be running a weekly Open event on Sundays soon, which will be a mixture of classes each week and maybe single make too. A thread will be created, look out for SFS (sucker free sunday)
Yeah,somewhat I feel the same.After the update that incorporated the dedicated servers the overall online quality has dipped a little bit.Maybe its only me but I find the driving ethics and overall feel of the public server section lowered.Probably people now prefer to lock away themselves in a controlled environment.If I find some time I will create a small beginner's guide to help new users understand what to buy to beef up the numbers.Hope it works...
Me personally was a bit exhausted with RRE so a summer break came just right, Dirt Rally crossed my path (always been a huge Rallysim Fan since ol' CMR and RBR later) and the more advanced I am with RRE the more I avoid public races on open servers - except for detecting a bunch of friends there to be sure of a decent, fair grid or directly participating at announced sessions (closed & open) with befriended groups/communities (ESR,FRA-GTR3, VR a.o.). Would like to install a (GearEx) Server myself but that will take some time to be done (limited resources).... Surely would like to join SFS, of course
I'm in the position where I am online regularly and the multiplayer side though fantastic if lucky enough to find a good bunch of like minded chaps is generally disappointing and again although I have joined a couple leagues (which I've not had chance to try properly) trying to find more than a lone soul driving a group and track you may fancy (who vanishes the minute you appear) there is nothing. I rarely utilize the single player side as my actual driving time is limited through health reasons, so would prefer to be competing in a league type scenario, something to aim for and people to learn from. I have 2 Windows 10 servers sat doing nothing with a pretty swift fibre connection so if anyone wants 24/7 racing and have groups/track combo's they wish to see I am open to suggestions..... Lets just hope that the next update draws yet more people to our ever growing community and multiplayer moves from alpha to at least x-ray sooooon! Until then I will keep on driving my lonely self around honing my skills to try my soddin' best to trim the 5-6 seconds them there alien types keep beating me by [fat chance)
Ive noticed the same "issues" as you have RavenousBeast. Since the dedicated servers release the online player pool has been fragmented, resulting in (from my point of view) less people around to compete with/against. Its not that its actually less people around, its probably more, just fragmented into leagues and private servers. And as you say the only continually populated public server is the F2P Content wich is borderline frightening due to the lack of racing manners, its basically destruction derby. The lagging you mention has also been apparent since the relase of Dedicated Servers, Timewarping, 0 ping to other cars, p2p range not working properly, invisible cars etc. Cant remember this lag problems ever happening before the patch. Also I fear that many many of us do the same thing, we go online and check the MP servers to find them unpopulated. Since they are unpopulated no one joins. Now imagine if we are 10-15 drivers (easily plausable during peak hours) who simultaneously are watching these unpopulated servers, we dont know about eachother!!! We could be racing together but none of us knows that 14 other people also wants to race right now and is looking for a server and people to do so with. This is a "problem" that further pushes the gaps of player fragmentation, we cant properly and easily communicate!! Sure I could go hunt steam profiles and message everyone asking if they want to race but thats a very ineffecient way to go about it, so is starting a thread on the forum "who wants to race right NOW?" Something like a simple global chat UI in the MP lobby would in my mind only add to the game and improve the MP experience, whilst hopefully not being extremely difficult to implement.
Wot he said A little chat window available while looking at the servers list would go a long way to improving the empty servers issue. Many times I've sat looking at the servers list waiting for a server running a series & track I like to get some drivers, and many times I've given up and raced the AI instead. I bet there are many many folks doing exactly the same thing
"Could mean"? Right now, it actually means right that. Plus you must have all mod cars the sever has set up as well, even if you do not drive them yourself. If you do not participate in the chase for mod content and its constant updates, you're done on servers using such content. The way R3E handles skins not owned by the player, is the more elegant way here.
Well said! I think a feature like this would boost the MP quite a bit! While on the matter. Why not also add a number of how many people it is in the lobby just looking, who haven't joined a server yet. And an extra request would be to also have small numbers under every car on the car selection page. Showing how many who have chosen which cars, and then numbers of people with the different liveries on the livery selection page. This might make the races more varied when it comes to cars and liveries.
Im not waiting for others to drive. When i want to drive. I'm looking for a server who match my fav setting and I join them. Most of the time others follow me on the server and after 5-10 mins there are 10-15 ppl on the server.
I set up my answer that way because I do not own AC. What I know is from forums, articles etc. so I wasn't sure. I don't know if this is on the devs' radar but honestly it ruined the MP experience for me and apparently a good number of other players. It would be nice of them to give some sort of reply to this. I believe this was in GTR2, although I rarely used it, because I frequented a few servers I knew were good. You're definitely right though: it would help a lot in that regard. Anyway, some great points made by everyone, but the idea behind the thread was the lack of moderated public servers. I don't even know if this is possible right now in R3E's dedicated servers (changing sessions, restarting races, banning, kicking etc). Just somewhere where the completely inept drivers, wreckers, high pingers and such are not welcome but everyone else is, no schedules and such. I have done that, and there were times where people joined up. However most of the time it just isn't the case and I end up exiting back to the browser to look again.
I am one of those who drive just online and never on public servers. Before dedicated servers were available for RRRE, I started just WTCC 2013 race at Monza and do I have to say what happened in first chicane? Well, I waited then half a year to get dedi servers and now I start fair and fast race almost every evening at RD club server with my friends I know and trust they will not do anything against clean race. I have all racing games available and you are right, it is all the same everywhere, because online racers are sick of people like ... well, two names appear here on this forum, you know what I am talking about. Cheers guys, just my point of view to simracing in this days
Also ai (with much larger variation than single player) in multiplayer servers could encourage people to race with less other real people. the adaptove ai could be very good for this have it look at times in practice and qually as well as previous races to get an idea to the max and min strengths of the people in the lobby
Yup we need this. Something even that goes as far as showing what someone is doing at any given time. And chat popup ? And invites ? Or something that shows your status that you can change to something along the line of: "Looking to race!" "idle" ect... It needs more interaction the game.raceroom.com page right now is pretty useless to me. Take a look at what Dirt Rally did when i finish a stage a can push a button to see how i did versus all my steam friends who played the same levels. Those are little things that add's up huge.
This is fine but with several people in the server plus AI who do the AI use as a gauge, fastest then one or two drivers and a bunch of AI disappear into the distance, slowest and just one or two disappear off into the distance, an average, so congestion in the mid pack and no challenge for the quicker drivers or maybe if there is one person in server all AI match them then as each person joins the AI split down the middle (maybe similar cars, teams etc). Then of course you have all the people that arrive on the grid (randomize?) all sounds like a lot of work for a quick fix, surely what we want is servers full of like minded racers of competitive abilities. So in my opinion the multiplayer side needs a total revamp, we need to be able to see who's hanging out in the lobby and be able to communicate with them, we already have a leaderboard system so why not use it, give each block of a 100 points a different colour (no idea how point system works other than that it's taken from the genuine ADAC scoring system) and let our monika be in that colour so we could highlight a server, see who's in there and what the average class of driving is. I feel until we have something like this our community will stay scattered across multiple sims and in single player races. Tiz a real shame as R3E races (with the right bunch) are far superior in rim banging fun (do not google that ) and as close to the real thing I can get, have never spent as much time in my life trying to shave a tenth off my best times and find myself craving more of it so come on S3 give us the multiplayer experience we all want and everyone else, promote this sim at every opportunity. Oh and S3 please sort the player entry lag, swear it's getting worse but then that's good, means more people are joining!!
This attitude of "I don't go into public rooms because all public rooms are bad" is what perpetuates the problem even further. In R3E the majority of the non-free content rooms tend to be good racing there just usually aren't enough people willing to try. Combine that with the people who quit the millisecond anything goes wrong, no matter the race length, and you have races with 2 - 4 people which are rarely exciting. It's infuriating to look at the Steamcharts numbers for most of these racing titles and see only about 10 - 20% of the current playerbase even willing to jump into multiplayer and then a further 40 - 60% of those within multiplayer choosing to lock themselves away. In racing we're already a small subset and in multiplayer we're an even smaller subset (and a demanding one generally at that) and yet most are choosing to lock themselves away behind closed rooms to make it yet again smaller. I just wish I knew some way to start dissuading this notion that all public rooms are bad and the only good racing is in private lobbies because it just isn't true.
I bought my son WRS wheel couple days ago and yesterday he joined Portimao race with hillclimb BMW for the first time. What happened? Guy with latin name (could be nick name, I don´t know), made multiple accidents in first ten minutes of the race, then overtook my son and stopped the car in the middle of second turn, so he hit with full speed into him. Youngster just looked at me, like WTF (I watched the race). My advice to him? Practice, practice, practice (I bought him also RB ring, WTCC and GT3 car), and then I will buy you a year licnence for RD club races an you will join us. He agreed, because he watched our races many times and never saw something like he expirienced in his very first public online race. So, thanks for all the theories about public servers, I will stick with dedicated. His RRRE account, created two days ago, so someone will not say I am talking BS http://game.raceroom.com/users/Mr_Miha/
I've had plenty of good races in pubs in R3E. I would even argue that of all the not-iRacing sims, I have had the most consistently good races in R3E. That good races in public servers doesn't exist is a self-perpetuating myth. The problem is just that, well, I almost never get the chance because the servers are so dead. On topic, it's really difficult to point fingers at somebody/something as to why pubracing is so dead in both R3E and simracing as a whole. It's a complex problem with causes from every angle. From the demographic of your average simracer, to the developers, to the way these games get made. I'd rather not dwell on who's "at fault" for the current state of simracing, and instead think of ways it can be improved. Simracing in general is very out of touch with how modern games are played and sold. Practically all the games in the genre run on practices that were on their way out a decade ago. Veterans will defend the current state as "how it's always been" and have no interest in changing things because they're satisfied with time consuming and scheduled leagues, but this isn't about them. This isn't about maintaining the status quo of super isolated and and prohibitively expensive/time consuming solutions to multiplayer. It's about bringing the genre up to date and building a more accessible experience so that the genre can grow rather than stagnating as it has been for a while now. iRacing was the only racing sim in recent history that tried something different for multiplayer. They're now the biggest name in the genre. I want to believe people interested in pubracing are a silent majority, and that even more players would be attracted to simracing in general if multiplayer wasn't such a hassle, and much easier to get into. However I admittedly have no facts to back that up, it's just what I think. I don't think there is one simple solution to this. I don't think it can even be addressed properly without drastic measures and a specific desire to create a good multiplayer experience. It would practically require a game built specifically around it. You cannot half-ass it if you want things to change. I think Sector 3 Studios, out of all the simracing developers out there, is most capable of creating a great multiplayer simracing game if they wanted to. RaceRoom is an amazing platform, and if they were to make a concerted effort to radically update the multiplayer side of RaceRoom, they could even challenge iRacing. Between this topic and the pay model topic I'm really interested in hearing what the developers think. I really don't know what S3S has in mind for RaceRoom, if they're interested in changing anything, or if they think there is even a problem at all.
I've thought about this topic once again and I noticed I didn't get an answer to a certain point. Is it actually possible to have admins on dedicated servers in R3E with the ability to kick/ban players? I've never seen this but I'm not sure. In my opinion, 2-3 fairly moderated servers with car/track rotations that most of the userbase owns would prove to be very good for us non-league racers. If it actually is, I'd happily volunteer to do this. I think I'd do a better job that a lot of the childish admins I've met in R07. If it isn't....well that's one more feature that Sector3 needs to desperately add.