not sure by adding ranking how that will make more people go online ... if i have correctly understood you that is ... if you want good racing , if you want good competition , join a league :create a league etc at the moment , r3e doesnt have a huge player base , and also there are 5 odd other sims out there that race , divide what is in reality a niche gaming group already , by 5 games and then the percentage of users that actually play mp as opposed to sp and its a small group your left with . i left iracing due to the ranking system as it only takes a couple of races with a few nuggets to ruin stuff... i prefer leagues or just using steam to roundup a few friends and have a race tha relying on some code to choose who i can race with ... but thats just my opinion Andi
Unfortunately you are correct R3E has potential but the MP servers are very much empty which makes it very difficult to have any regular activities
Actually, I believe in the Red Bull magazine article they said they are working on some kind of ranking system. I think it has good potential, many people say they don't do online because of the "wreckers" but if there was a clear and easy way to avoid the wreckers I'm sure a lot of those people would give it another chance and get hooked on it. And for those of us who already race online but avoid pub servers because of wreckers, this could get us racing in pub servers which would mean bigger grids in those servers which would attract more people. Currently we have to rely on a league or club to find good online racing and that means we have to adhere to their schedule and only get to race on club/league days. And that's fine. But if I could look at the pub server list and easily find a race that has fairly clean drivers, well I'd be racing almost every night of the week instead of just once or twice a week. So, no, I don't think it would fracture our community, I think it would send more people to R3E because it could become known as THE place to go for finding online races with like-minded people. None of the sims (outside of iracing) offer anything like this so if it worked it could make R3E stand out above the rest. I don't think it should be handled the way iracing does it (their ranking system is far too strict, and confusing) but surely there's some way to make a ranking system work.
As long as it fits the common "Herd Effect" which means running mostly the same (basic-) tracks, cause I fruitlessly tried that several times, which might have something to do what Rui Santos wrote : cause if you don't own certain stuff you can't participate - or the community is extremely conservative and does not like to take risks by trying "unusual combos" of tracks 'n cars...(what I actually don't believe)
Well, what i meant is that i want to see first how the final product is, right now there are some things that need to be implemented, like fuel, proper tire temperature and pressures, saving setups, etçª, but no doubt that once this is implemented/sorted this sim has everything to have success amongst simracing community...
In relation to online racing the problem is general, in ALL simulators out there you need to enter a league to have proper racing with rules and everything. The public servers suck and are allways full of retarded people, it doesn't matter if it's AC, RRE or rF2. So imho it's useless to waste efforts to create ranking system, etçª, not that much people picking up servers to have a wrec... err... a quick online race when most people are racing in organized leagues. If you split people online by ranking/safety/content/etçª you'll have maximum 2 or 3 guys/server at the best...
I disagree on the principle that iRacing exists and has proven that there is a large audience for well organized pubracing play. There is no easy solution to making RaceRoom a good online pubracer though. RaceRoom's lack of players, and consequently tiny multiplayer population, is the result of a great many things. This is I think, part of the reason. I love the free weekends. As chaotic as they might be, when everybody has access to everything there's all sorts of interesting combinations that people will race that I never see online. There's such a huge game of chance that comes with trying to find any server or hosting a server. You never know what combination of content people will own, and I think that seriously fragments the community far more than any ranked system ever would. As for a ranked system, I don't see it as a magic bullet either. Adding in a "safety rating" would be nice, but I think you need to go much further than that if you want to create a good online pubracing environment. It's something you need to commit to and can't be half-assed.
Well, iRacing exists, but it's a service, it works that way, but it's so expensive that i even don't consider it to be a reliable alternative for the common simracer...
What's interesting about RaceRoom is that practically all the relevant infrastructure to copy iRacing already exists and is running right now. We already have an online profile that tracks stats and leaderboards that the servers already use to compare players. RaceRoom already runs a large number of reliable dedicated servers. What's missing is game and portal features to actually leverage and use what's already running. Servers would need to have a feature to have a scheduled start time, clients would need to display that information, and the back end server would need to start using the telemetry that things like the crew chief mod use to create an Elo style ranking amongst players or some kind of safety rating based on collisions. That's it. You now have an iRacing-esque multiplayer pubracing sim. It's always weirded me out how the portal, profiles, stat tracking, and online only aren't really used for anything aside from the competitions and enforcing DRM. RaceRoom may as well be completely offline like Assetto Corsa or Game Stock Car for all the use they get out of that back end. All the infrastructure is there and running right now. Due to its already online based nature, RaceRoom is uniquely in the position of being only a couple steps away from creating a competitor to iRacing. They just need to want to. I'm not saying that S3S should just outright copy iRacing, but they could if they wanted to, and it wouldn't incur new crazy costs or require a subscription service. I hate the myth that what iRacing does is prohibitively expensive or unique. It's really not. Even a small budget game like Rocket League is able to do a ranked matchmaking service with no subscription whatsoever.
All of that + a proper chatroom If you want players to be dedicated at online racing, you need them to be able to communicate properly within the game. A global messaging (within the portal) + chatroom while connected to a server would be a huge improvement to MP in R3E. It's so frustrating to not be able to engage a proper conversation with those you just have a great fight on track !
But the fact that it not only exists but probably has more active online racers than all the other major sims means that the system works, and would probably work even better if it wasn't so expensive. I have some experience with iracing, when I did use it I had no problem finding races with at least 10-12 drivers (or more) on the grid and for the most part they were as clean as any club or league race but without having to commit to a schedule. And I could find several of those races every night of the week, and that was just with the free content. If the driving in iracing felt better and the users weren't so uppity, it would be the only sim I use just because I know I could always find a good, clean(ish) online race whenever I have a couple hours to kill. Also, someone created an app for AC that mimics iracing's system and it seems to be popular, which means that people want some kind of system like this. Implementing a similar system in R3E with its current low number of players clearly wouldn't work well, but simply having some kind of system could do a lot to attract more people. And if the system worked well and was easy to understand the popularity could spread and in a few months there could be twice as many people racing online with continued growth after that. You have to start somewhere, even if it creates a bit of a fracture in the early days. I have 4 of the major sims that I float between, but if one of them had some kind of system that allowed me to find at least a couple servers with fairly clean drivers every night of the week, well that would be my go-to sim and the others would quickly start collecting dust. I'm quite sure I'm not the only one out there who feels that way. And I don't even care about the skill ranking, as long as I know most of the people on the grid are capable of keeping it on track, not plowing into the back of me, and nobody will be driving the wrong way, I'd be racing there every night. Wouldn't you? Leagues are fine for people who have the time to dedicate to them and don't mind putting up with the rules and procedures (and whinging), but they're not a good option for everybody. The current dichotomy of League's or Pubserver Crashfests doesn't work very well, if one of the devs takes a chance and creates some kind of ranking system that works, it could vault them toward the top of the pile. Clearly this is just a matter of opinion, and I'm not saying mine is the right one or better than anyone else's, but I think we can all agree that the current situation with online racing (outside of a league) generally sucks and it's not going to get any better if nobody tries something different. I think S3S has the best chance of making it happen and I'd love to see them take a stab at it. I can't think of any other single thing that has the potential to bring a whole slew of new players to this wonderful but under-used sim that the guys work so hard on.
A counter argument could be that iracing player actually play iracing because it is expansive. You can't have the same engagement for something you get for free and something you have to pay and is not cheap. When you pay for a netflix, Spotify, etc there's more chance that you'll use them against any other similar free service. People get hooked in iracing and when they are.. what other solution than using it ? Worst than that : you pay for the service, but you pay for additional content .. and all this content is lost if you stop your subscription ! I can get why people go on iracing now, it's the same reason that people are on facebook : because "everybody is on it" I can get that iracing has a great service, and I really don't juge the quality of the title. But think about this: would people be so engage into it if the financial part was not so high ? It might stop people getting into it at the first shoot, but for those that already are in it help keeping them playing it
Exactly, that's one of the things rFactor1 or 2 done very well and is lacking in AC and RRE... a proper RACE LOBBY!
Well, i have no doubt iRacing is losing customers, that's for sure, it worked very well when there weren't so many alternatives, but now i understand is becoming a bit hard for them. Right now people are just not renewing their subscription. Lots of people from my simracing team that were members for years are quitting and i'm sure that with time they will have to lower their prices if they want to keep their service alive. Also iRacing imho don't offer you the best simulations out there, they offer you a good pack, but in terms of driving it's definitely not the best out there. rF2, AC or RRE are better in that department imho of course.
Valid points. R3E isn't exactly cheap though. There's no monthly service fee, if that's what you're getting at. But people already tend to complain a bit about how much they've paid for R3E, if they had an option to get quality online racing to go along with what they've already invested, I'd guess that would give them plenty of incentive to continue using what they've paid for, as well as incentive to buy more.
People may think also that with one year iRacing subscription they can buy all content from RRE... for life
Yep, R3E is a steal compared to iracing. Even more reason for people to jump ship over to R3E for some clean online racing.
No, iRacing is much more expensive than R3E. A car in iRacing is $10+, where a car in R3E is usually under $4 (and sometimes less than $1). A track in iRacing is around $15, in R3E they're usually under $6. When you figure in bulk discounts and Experiences or Packs it's even cheaper. And that's not even including the monthly iRacing fee, which just adds to the cost of it. You could probably buy all of the content in R3E for the price of 5 cars and 5 tracks and a one year subscription in iRacing, and you wouldn't have to pay a monthly fee to use it. Unless you're referring to only using the free content in iRacing + membership fee. But even then, I'm sure you could probably get the same number of cars and tracks in R3E for what it costs to pay iRacing for the privilege of racing their free cars/tracks for one year. So, no, I don't really see how iRacing is a steal compared to R3E. Quite the opposite in fact.
Perhaps Santos was mixed up in his lingo, meaning "iRacing robs you". For U.S. players, early afternoon and daylight hours on the weekend the servers are pretty busy. Seems like midday on a saturday there's tons of players online. The free weekends were awesome - if R3E multiplayer was like that all the time that would be fantastic (full servers i mean, not free)