Enough is enough

[Joe Hubbard]

Ok guys I think it's time that something is said here. I would like to know why we have practically NO participation in the iRacing group here? Just as yesterday when the league MX-5 race started even after taking the last guy that posted he could not make it there were 28 of us on the grid list. 14 showed up...

Here is the thing that really gets me, if this were one of the few "other" leagues that you have to pay $3-5 per race to be a part of I'm 110% certain you would have NOOooooo problem showing up for that. However here at RD we keep it all free for the members and alot of people don't show or have the common courtesy to say anything at all. If you are not going to show up DON'T sign up! When we started putting the grid list out for signups we had people that we had to turn away because of no room.

We had a large amount of people that were asking for club races and Bram put up a poll which was actually the second time that a poll was used to see what people like. So we started using this infomation and the requests for club races and most races had 3-4 sometimes on a good night 8-10 sign up and race. As you may have noticed there were some races that had zero signups. Some of you may or may not know this however running the club races and leagues does cost real money. This is done for you guys for free even though it does cost RaceDepartment.

I'm gonna leave it there and let the discussion start...

 

[Oscar Sahlin]

maybe work out some kind of "penalty" for no-shows? cbeat:



I admit I haven't been active here lately, grand am & mustang challenge has kept me busy practicing.. but I haven't signed up and didn't show either (except for 1 time I remember, I forgot all about it and missed out).
then I lost the urge for club races when numbers dropped down to 3-4 participants.
but I sure miss it, had some great fun in the club races I made it to..

the deal with mx-5 league seems a bit strange though, that's not cool at all to sign up for a league and not show. low participation in club events is one thing..
:bad:

but with club events, I think with the upcoming oulton park (scheduled maintenance nov 3rd, gmt 14:00-18:00), perhaps can be used to draw some attention to club races atleast. mixed practice or race with mx-5, mustang, solstice would make a great try-out-the-new-track session (hopefully without the mayhem disaster starts we've seen in 13th week races at spa). and of course another session with some open wheelers like star mazda, skip barber would certainly attract alot of drivers.

 

[Eric Estes]

Club races will always be problematic in iRacing due to the structure of iRacing itself. Besides the 'who has what content' issue, there is almost always a race you may be interested in going on, so any club races need to appeal to something that iRacing itself doesn't do so well. Normally this would be the opportunity to run with friends in a non-public server, non-SR environment - but I think it would need to be special above that. Therefore, to be successful, I think that club events have to indeed be something 'special', like the Indianapolis run or the new track runs that we have done.
Daily events obviously won't work (or at least haven't)- in fact, to restart club events, maybe starting with one a week, and heavily promoting it, would work. Timing itself may be a problem, as unlike most sims at RD and in general, iRacing appeals to a more North American crowd due to it's strong oval influence, and of course RD is primarily a European site - so you would want to try and get as much trans-ocean participation (from both sides) as possible. (That is not, of course, to take anything away from some very talented European ovalers we happen to have here).
As for MX-5 - it seems that there are a few on the Roster that did sign out of the entire series early, or asked to be stand-bys only as they new they could only make selected races (my teammate Phil Hopkins comes to mind). A few others have just never shown up. A couple of possible contributing factors:
1) Participation always drops through a season. Many reasons that I won't go into, but well established.
2) It is possible that _not_ having drop races hurts as much as it helps - "I've missed one so I'm out of it". Not justifying that sentiment, just saying that it exists.
3) active inside and outside promotion throughout the season - actually don't know if it has been happening or not, but have we been posting in the iRacing forums that we have open slots etc. (of course, without drop weeks and this late in the season, may be more difficult to get adds).

Penalties are a double edged sword. If we were filling grids every week and turning people away and had no shows, I could see doing it. But as it is, we want to encourage participation as much as possible, even by those who have not shown up (this may not be a shared sentiment, but is my opinion). Maybe a start from pit lane or something, but that would be it.

 

[Bjorn de Haas]

Well that we have low league attendence i dont get it because the track and car selection is perfect imo. So its should be at least 20 drivers on the grid. But like in other leagues it always drops when you are halfway the season. Experiencing the same now in a touringcar league were we had 30 sign ups.
The clubracing is starting to late for most european people with for example starting times with qualy at 20:40 GMT.
It means that for the non english you wont be in bed before 22:00 GMT which is late.
Furthermore when i was a staffmember here i used to run the ARCA club on mondays and i think most of us know that game and brought lots of enjoyment. Why not make monday or another day a oval race day with nascar/irl cars?? starting at a normal times that everybody can make the race.

I would also like to say that the iracing staffmembers are doing a great job, knowing how hard it is to run something

 

[Glenn Petersen]

ok, my opinion..
I think there are a lot of factors coming together here.
IRacing's service offers alot for it's members in the amount of server availability for practicing, time trialing, racing, etc. You can pretty much get on any time of the day, at your convenience, and find people practicing on any number of cars and tracks. There are plenty of official races where points are kept and the possibility of national recognition for the successful driver. That's pretty cool. Witness the shoutout to Oscar for his success in the series he ran. If I was to try to pursue the same official success, I wouldn't have the time to race in club races. That's me, though.
So, what about drivers that don't pursue the official events? You can still jump into any of those official races and race even though your not racing for points or care about the 12 week season. Heck, you don't even have to qualify. Just jump in and race. If you get wrecked, you leave the server and look for another race out there. (I don't do this, btw).
I think the shear availability and convenience for drivers creates a non-commital mindset. If you don't like the way your season (or a race) is going, there is something else going on. I've done a lot of club races and we'll get 20 to 30 drivers coming on to practice, but most drop off and don't return. Probably because they didn't like the car combo, they were waiting for something official and wanted something to do until then, or just wanted to cause trouble. I've witnessed all those.
With iRacings model it makes websites like RD (and others) less important to 'iracing' drivers because iracing has its own community. I don't intend on that as a shot to RD, it's just the nature of that sim. The Rfactor, Race07, etc. drivers still need a place to gather and race and that is where this website (and others) are founded. For me personally, I prefer the community atmosphere that revolves around RD (and others), and prefer to focus on what is offered here.

As far as league racing goes. Maybe no shows with no warning can't race the rest of the season and are taken off the roster and are then reviewed for any following season/leagues.
Because of (what I call) non-commital nature of iracing, leagues need to be special. Timing, content and end results are important. That's very hard to pinpoint, but if there is nothing special about it, I think drivers will drift back to the 'official' stuff (that non-commital nature of iracing, again).

Just my nickles worth.

Generally, RD does a good job. I think there are some issues, but I won't do any ranting in this post. I think we're all trying to find what works with the iracing 'model' because it is different from the other sims we're used to here. We'll get it right. We'll just have to keep trying different things to see what works.

 

[Dazmaniac]

It was a shame to see the grid down to only 14 drivers last night, whatever the no-show reasons may have been. 4th race of the 6 race series and already it appears that folks have lost interest. Are the seasons too short?

Would a longer league season work, with a few drop events?

In the Club England forums, they run MX-5 seasons, but it runs for 12 weeks with 2 drop races. Turnout is always good and the races are fast and furious due to the numbers on the grid. I appreciate having us all in the same time-zone is probably a factor, but I have seen RD races where we have had well in excess of 20 members turn out.

Another thing that baffles me is that we have car/track content spreadsheet where 94 RD iRacing members have filled it in. Where are they all? The idea behind the spreadsheet was for active RD members to fill it in so the Admins can see what content folks have to help them set up league seasons. It appears some folks have just decided to fill it in because they are RD members who also run iRacing.

 

[Larry Stovall]

There's also the ever-deadly 'RL'. I'm not signed up for the MX-5s, but through the week, especially, my schedule is very unpredictable and some of the spare time has to be spent in 'snuggle mode', if you take my meaning.

I get the impression that most of the folks on here are a bit older than the average online gamer, which means this is probably a large factor in attendance.