Sure, I can do that right now. I spend 90% of my simracing time playing in MP lobbies across any not-iRacing sims that support it, so MP player counts is a topic very dear to me. Keep in mind these are off hours (i.e. American time) so the numbers are smaller across the board than they would be while Europeans are awake. Regardless of time though, the ratios stay roughly the same. Assetto Corsa: 79 or ~11x more than R3E Project CARS: >34 or ~5x more than R3E (PCars does not show races in progress like AC and R3E do.) RaceRoom: 7 To clarify on my statement, because there's a lot I'm not saying in order to keep my posts short, I see S3S as having two options. One, they can use the assets to create a spinoff multiplayer only game (a hypothetical GTR3 focusing on only a couple of series at most) that could easily rival iRacing with a totally new and genuinely F2P pricing model rather than what they claim to have now. They can run it concurrently with a more or less unchanged R3E for those that want the singleplayer experience and variety. S3S already has a large volume of cars/tracks to draw from, and most importantly they have the infrastructure to do such a thing. They have the servers, they have the account backend with stats tracking, and so on. This is my "whole new direction" that requires a radical re-thinking and will probably never happen, but I can dream. Two, on the more realistic and conservative side, they can make some very key changes to RaceRoom without fundamentally overhauling the pay structure. @Skybird already detailed some very good ideas in the post I quoted that address many of the problems (pay model, player fragmentation, etc.) I have with RaceRoom's current situation in one swoop. Good enough that they almost warrant a new thread because regardless of what happens, I think R3E is in need of a relaunch of sorts and the ideas he had for one would be fantastic for the longevity of R3E, its players, and S3S.
This I think is why some us are having some friction. The product is version 0.3 and the multiplayer is supposedly Alpha. I take the fact that this is the build of the game to mean Sector3 know it still needs work to be considered a release version, and is probably why they have been quoted as saying it was launched too early due to various factors. V0.3 is not fully featured - that should be a given. Previously dedi servers were the easy fix for MP - there will always be something - car X, track Y, feature Z. I am all for suggestions but all against people who just like nut-punching Sector3. I don't think they are blind to the fact that there are missing features and the MP needs work and the new user experience needs work and there is some marketing/branding work to do, thats probably why they see it as such an early version. And before certain people jump in, I wish it was done tomorrow too, but it won't be. I have have a lot of money invested too, which I am enjoying even in V0.3.
I don't think most of us are trying to nut-punch S3S at all, we're just trying to give them feedback on things we think may need some attention. Just because it happens to be about something we see as a negative doesn't mean we're bashing on them or calling their product crap. Every product or service has some negative aspect to it, that doesn't mean it's good or bad or that we hate it, it just means that in some areas it's not the best it can be. Seeing as this is a forum created by S3S to gather this type of feedback, it's perfectly acceptable to discuss the positives and negatives in a civilized, adult fashion so that they can maybe improve their already great product. Yes, some people tend to resort to name calling and bashing and pointing fingers, but from what I've seen around here those people are the minority and most of us just trying to help and be constructive. We wouldn't give this feedback or participate in these discussions if we didn't love R3E or want S3S to succeed, and I think most of us do want R3E and S3S to be wildly successful and the kings of the sim racing hill.
It is how many people are playing the game at the given time. PCars, is misleading more than AC because a lot more people are playing on PS4 and XBox. http://steamcharts.com/cmp/234630,244210,211500#7d
And this is where individual bias comes into it. I'd happily see a GTR3, but I'd rather it would be closer in spirit to the previous GTRs; one focused on offline gaming (like AC, PCARS, GTR2, Race07 etc) with online lobbies too; but an all-in-one package that works without a connection. Keep R3E as the online version with these online profiles and leaderboards etc. But that's also probably unrealistic. @Ty Duff post above is superb. Realistic. Everyone, including the Devs (especially the devs) know changes are needed, hence them having lots of plans. They're not blind, but things take time and, for the audience's part, patience. There's certainly no single 'fix', much as that's been suggested a bunch of times before.
Perhaps if more was spoken about the positives than the negatives any wandering sim racer may be inclined to give it a go but with nearly every thread resorting to what's lacking and how much better this or that could be done and is done by other sims. All the regular RRE users know the short falls and I believe the majority understand the alpha/beta monikas and take it for what it is. The only people that will take in the negatives are new people to this forum. Maybe what's needed is a new permanent thread titled something like bugs me where when people need to vent their frustration about this/that or tother there's a wall to spray on but the only people that can read it are the Devs! Positivity is self perpetuating, update this week! TT Cup! Open Wheelers! Nordschleife! DTM15! ADAC Masters15! WTCC15! Audi R18! and soooo much more can't keep going as my cheeks hurt! One things for sure Devs will be able to feed their families for a while from my bank account alone!
Good shout @GooseCreature - I think it shows the importance of having a significant update and development stream soon though, there's generally an upswing in positivity after each. In the meantime:
Like I said, I don't see that suggestion as realistic, just my dream. RaceRoom is already just a few gameplay options short of a singleplayer GTR3. Despite having things like forced always online, profiles, and stat tracking, R3E doesn't really use all that back end for anything. It's the identity crisis that I always mention the game has. They have the support and infrastructure for a very robust and capable online game, but the most it uses all this for is just some online leaderboard. That's why I think it would be much easier for the spinoff game (titled GTR3 for interest), to be multiplayer focused from the ground up, taking advantage of all that infrastructure, than it would be to hack RaceRoom's enormous content base and SP focused feature set into some multiplayer title. I really don't want to talk too much about this though, because it's largely irrelevant to the conversation. As said before, this is my pie in the sky idea that is too radical to ever be implemented and because it's what I want to play and would gladly throw money at. My realistic suggestions are closer to what Skybird has said before. In short, the new player experience, i.e., the free player content, needs to see a big shuffling around to both hook new players, and keep them around long enough to consider buying new content. At least some of this is getting addressed in the very near future with updates to the free car physics. I think. This is my problem. I don't know what the devs know. I don't know what plans they have beyond adding more cars and tracks. The best info I've seen given out was in the interview with the online sim racing magazine and even there they don't elaborate on anything and speak with such vague terms ("It's going to be epic" doesn't tell me anything) that I have no idea what their intent is. I know they plan on bringing out more content, but content it not something RaceRoom is short on. New content is just more of the same. For all I know they are planning on completely revising the new player experience. For all I know they have no plans whatsoever aside from continuing to pump out yearly releases of DTM, ADAC, and whatever other licenses they can get their hands on. I don't know if S3S has any intention on changing anything. They don't ever talk about it. They are completely silent on threads like these, and that's what worries me. If I'm dramatically misunderstanding something or missing some key piece of information, please tell me. The best I have to go on is the upcoming features/content thread, but the huge majority of it is just more cars/tracks, which while nice, is unlikely to bring in any new customers. RaceRoom is doing a decent job of servicing its already existing customer base by expanding the content base, but very little to bring in new ones. Is that okay with S3S? Is that acceptable to them? Are they perfectly happy just maintaining the small niche community they've carved out for themselves and not expanding it? Those questions are what I feel are core to this thread and the OP.
Practically nobody is doing that as far as I can see. 99% of criticism is intended to be constructive and because we care.
I think we going round in circles. This is thread number 100 with the same content. The devs will work hard to improve the game and we can`t complain that we don`t receive any feedback. Maybe you can satisfy your need for news in this interview: http://www.redbull.com/en/games/stories/1331734305462/raceroom-racing-experience-sector3-interview
hehe yeah @Frankymoe is right, it's always the same arguments, counter-arguments (but I love to rant, so here is mine again) If one chases posts by s3s members on this forum, or the interviews, it is evident that they are aware of certain issues and would like to see improvement. Yes it's not like there is a public roadmap, but do you really expect this? It's a commercial product after all, would you unroll detailed plans about your future, your business model? There is also the publisher having a say. If the developers were now all too open about their opinions which clash with their publisher, the license partners, the "reality", it spoils the relationship. Everyone has to be on board for changes on that front. You don't discuss this in public, imo that makes perfect sense. There is so much we don't "need" to know, it's not our business no matter how much people would love to come up with the great idea to improve the popularity. Not going too public is also done to protect your team, the team must feel comfortable and "in power" to make decisions... if you open things up to public, it can become tough, as people can be very persuasive on such forums and quickly develop its own dynamic, different opinions... And next to the pressure from people asking for more (no matter how friendly) you then can easily get dragged into justifying your opinions and decisions in public... not nice situation to be in, for a game "you make" and you put your effort in. Some may say, well then pick a different job, but that's also not really fair, and easier to say from the sidelines. Anything non-content is much harder to predict for them, when it's ready/robust enough for release... you risk a lot of false expectations by spreading too much info about this. They have already stated their codebase is not ideal due to the team change and original different focus of the project. So this legacy makes it not optimal when it comes to feature work. If you look at the shared memory topic, here the discussion and early sharing of what is yet to come works totally transparent. Because it is predictable effort. Also the whole drive-train elasticity was also announced quite early, open-wheelers. So it's not always "just content" that is announced but physics and other under the hood stuff, too. I suspect at some point when they feel they are "over the edge" (internal infrastructure, team resources...) that they will be more comfortable about upcoming feature changes. But now the goal is still to positively surprise and make the ground rock solid.
This thread as been written hundreds of time before. And its always the same usual suspect that are either starting it of fueling it and bumping it. All of this has been said before. This is getting old.
These kind of responses are getting old too. Unless the devs say otherwise, this is a forum to discuss both the pros and cons of R3E. If only positive stuff is allowed to be discussed on the forum, we'll end up with this http://forum.projectcarsgame.com/ Look on the bright side, there are so few problems with R3E that we only criticize the same couple of issues.
I don't think he meant anything in the direction of "only positive reporting", just that this very topic ("how to improve r3e popularity") and the same pro/con argumentation what to do comes up in every other thread by similar people, and that seems very true imo (and I count myself in, as I posted something like the above every month )
Possibly. But for those of us trying to provide a constructive discussion about areas we think need improving, the "stop talking bad about R3E, only focus on the good" posts are just as annoying and disruptive to us as our critical posts are to those who think we shouldn't discuss the negatives. Improving the popularity of R3E and increasing the number of players should be an important topic to everyone, I don't understand why discussing it constantly gets flamed by the usual suspects. The discussions are constructive, civilized, and mature, none of us bash S3S or R3E or say anything bad about them, we just point out areas that we think could be improved and try provide solutions on how to accomplish that. If we were just saying "this part sucks, waaaahhh!!!" without providing any ideas on how to make it better (like on other forums), then the complaints would be justified.
Its funny, this thread started because of the club at RD closing and that one single person's comment referred to above was the catalyst for this whole sky if falling, the sim is failing discussion. Another person posted in that thread at RD: Another person on the iRacing forum said this of RD: Yet rather than look at RD's policy of premium accounts and the sheer number of events they run spread over a lot of content the discussion is about how R3E is failing.
RD failed for me when they uploaded and hosted (and continue to host) an old crappy version of my app without asking or informing me, but then deleted my thread asking for testing help and feedback for my PCars app (it was "solicitous" and "inappropriate", apparently), then merrily hosted someone else's Assetto Corsa spotter mod which pinched my voice files, again without asking me or informing me. Don't mind them being petty, but at least be consistently petty
If all of the RD clubs were failing, this argument might have some weight to it. But many RD clubs are doing just fine, so apparently the (very cheap) premium membership isn't turning too many people away. If more people used R3E, I suspect that club would probably be doing fine too. Don't get me wrong, I'm not exactly a fan of RD (not even close) and the way they handle things, and the way they organize races was a contributing factor to the decline of the R3E club, but it wasn't the only factor or even the biggest one. We can't control how RD handles things, but here we have a chance to provide suggestions to S3S on how to improve things and get more players onboard and because we care about the sim we're going to do our best to help it.
If that is how it has been, I express my sympathy and support for you. That is indeed not the proper way to do business . However, I must also say that I have seen them deleting several illegal track mods and converts for AC last year, and early this year, once somebody gave them an alarm signal.