Hello everyone, new player here. I've played the game for 2 weeks now, and I really like the feel of the cars, it got me hooked like LFS did some 10 years ago. The thing is, LFS is dead now. In search of a good multiplayer racing sim, I got into iRacing, but despite having the best online platform, I don't like the game much, and it's UBER expensive. Then I downloaded R3E, and I instantly liked the feel of the cars, I went hotlapping like mad and had a lot of fun doing so. But what I look for is online battles against other players, and looking at the server browser, the multiplayer side of things seems to be mostly empty. I mean, some 4 or 5 servers with some people, and 95% of them completely empty. Reading the forums, it seems a lot of the community is focused on single player against AI. Is this so? The game is missing a LOT of essential stuff right now, and if the online scene is this dead, I won't invest any money on it, even because it is also very expensive.
Well, i'm new here, despite i agree with some of your points i think it's very close for this game to climb the ladder. As soon as some features/bugs are implemented/sorted this will be a serious contender to the simracing community. Agree that some content should be cheaper, but i'm with you, let's see first where this is going because i don't want to be fooled again like in Assetto Corsa, i don't buy anything more from them until they solve major bugs and features...
Unfortunately R3E has very low MP player counts in terms of pubracing. Your best chances to find a race are in peak European times on the weekends. There's leagues running, and you can check the league forum for that if you're interested. However, if you're looking for a game with a large and active pubracing scene, you're not going to find it here. Which is too bad because the game feels great and has fantastic netcode.
Unfortunately as far as good online racing goes, options are extremely limited. I use iRacing for online racing (there is no better option for online racing imo), RRE and other games for hotlapping and racing against AI.
In my opinion iRacing is only good for pickup racing... for league racing i prefer anything else, because iRacing is very expensive, physics are worse and there are better offers outthere, Raceroom is one of them...
The best online pubracers out there (which is 90% of what I do when I play racing sims) are Assetto Corsa and Project CARS. Assetto Corsa has the problem of needing to buy all the DLC to have the most options, and the netcode is pretty shoddy. The driving itself is pretty great though, and I love how configurable the UI is. Some servers also run Minorating, which is a community run iRacing-esque safety rating that bans bad drivers. Project CARS has a problem with working, but on the rare occasion that it actually works it can be fun, but its physics will always be a bit strange. Project CARS drivers also tend to be worse than Assetto Corsa's. Both of those games are the best you're going to get in terms of pubracing outside of iRacing.
Raceroom is my next hope for online sim racing and while I want to dive in start doing more then hotlapping here and there, i'm waiting for proper triple screen support. AC has proper triple screen support but the online is lacking. I DID however purchase the DLC for AC just because it does seem like they are keen to support the sim community... really hope the online racing gets better though. I bought into the pCars hype and believed them when they said they would add triple screen after release and it's still not even on the table. Glad I didn't buy any of their DLC atleast. Raceroom feels better then AC and pCars to me, but it's a tossup with iRacing. RRE is definitely cheaper though and I'd love to get serious about it.
Well, my number one sim is rFactor2 without any doubt. For me nothing can beat it right now, except on graphics department. But some of you know that it's not important for those true racing fans. AC comes second but the ridiculous MP code aswell as other "fails" is keeping me from enjoying it as it should... pCars... well... i don't even consider that a "sim", but that's me... And finally got this great surprise that was Raceroom, i'm sure it has the potential to become my sim of election together with rF2...
Raceroom is fantastic. I tend to do my online racing in it at the weekends or every other weekend, because I have to put the rig together to be able to play
You can usually find one or two servers with 5+ people running either ADAC GTs, WTCC '14 or DTM 1992, but yeah, it's not nearly as many players as there were in GTR2 or RACE's heyday in public servers.
As I'm living in europe I have not so much to complain about the Numbers of people in MP. Especially since the last patch and DTM2015 release I notice an increase of online playing users. Maybe it helps a bit to start a session even nobodys is in there. I often notice that others join a session after someone did the first step... and for sure - spread the word and/or organize MP-Events might help to rise numbers in MP.
Yeah, just checked the stats and the active player numbers on R3E has improved considerably over the past couple of weeks: http://steamcharts.com/app/211500#1m I haven't done much online racing these past few months but checked out the multiplayer servers over the weekend and was quite surprised at the number of active servers. Numbers are still low in the grand scheme of things but better than they have been. Certainly not the ghost town found in rF2 and SCE where you have a page of passworded servers and nobody racing. R3E is a much better option for pick-up races by comparison. Dedicated servers have perhaps fractured what was already a small community but I don't think their introduction has been that detrimental to public racing. It's nothing like the rF2/SCE scenario. Something I would like to see is the separate 'Experience' servers scrapped and multiplayer unified as a whole, eliminating the need to jump between game modes to see who's racing on the DTM servers or ADAC. As far as I'm aware this is on Sector3's 'to-do' list.
There will always be more players in SP than MP, the low numbers in R3E servers are because of the low player base in general compared to other titles.. Hopefully this will change over time! But just checked, and there are about 85 players on the servers with two of them running almost full grids. Not that bad at this time on a tuesday.
*sigh* ...and I've just reminded myself why I should never take part in a 'free content' race. Rampant track limit abuse, general idiocy and a backmarker trying to race me and spinning me out when I was in the lead. Never again.
Jep, and just imagine how wonderful it would be if all those people demanding even more free content got their way... ^^
I also find that if you join an empty lobby, others mysteriously join at race time. So pick one and see what happens. First in, best dressed.
Yeah that's really sad that only a few people are online in RRE. If you found a filled servers its always great. Most times you find very good and respectful racers in RRE. I am also looking for a 1992 DTM or Group 5 race. I made here a suggestion how to improve the number of players online (add iracing like service to RRE): https://forum.sector3studios.com/in...pdate-after-update-but.3158/page-2#post-36349 I guess this idea nothing new, but ignored by S3. I still have the hope that sometimes we have get a competitor for iRacing. I don't like to drive the cars in iRacing, but I love the MP concept.