How to: raise interest in online racing with GSC

[Bram Hengeveld]

Sunday afternoon, after long hours of watching motorsport I want to race a bit.

What suprises me: there is not a single soul in the online lobby!

Going to fire up a public server now with Interlagos running on it. Feel free to join if you would like some racing as well.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

If I was the director of Reiza, I think I would have made an official announce to present excuses about the bugs at the release date.

Now you are exaggerating lol . Apart from the session bug with the warmup the game is perfectly playable online. As long as you keep the qualification session closed and have all the players in during practice there really is nothing stopping you for having an awesome race.

 

[Patrick Giranthon]

Some guys of my league have said that they will play again only with the game patched.
Last official event for us was in Brasilia. We were 15 at the start. I put "1" in the multiplayer.ini and the game crashed because someone entered in quals.
The .ini doesn't keep the 1. It puts 0 at each next WE... Don't know why...

Don't forget that the templates don't work too. A chance that someone of my community knows PS very well...

 

[Alex Sawczuk]

The ini works fine. If it's not working properly your doing something wrong. Please make sure you have no servers open whilst editing the config files and also if your running multiple server it's advised to have individual profiles for each server.

 

[Patrick Giranthon]

Ok, I will try with server off.
Thanks for the tip.

 

[Patrick Giranthon]

Thank you Alex.
The server has to be off.

Very helpful... So I will no longer bother you with Jerez...:tongue:

 

[Alex Sawczuk]

.

 

[Renato Simioni]

The servers were often very full in the initial weeks following release - it was normal to find 3 and even 4 full servers at any given day during brazilian peak times, and they are still mostly well attended. Main problem is that that peak is outside the window of most international players.

I guess the best question would be how to attract more international players to GSC, and expand from its inherent brazilian-centrism. I expect the patch along with the extra content to help with that, but some backup from our international GSC fans with good word-of-mouth is certainly invaluable to stimulate people to have a closer look at the Game and see the sim-racing value underneath the relatively exotic content.

We also have the DVD release which is just around the corner, and that will certainly be a boost and bring in new brazilian players at least.

 

[Patrick Giranthon]

Personaly, in my community, I was the only person to have tested the game at the beginning (now we are 15 to have the game).
So I made a review. But I had to buy the game for this. Some poeple think that 30 minutes is too short. I think too!
Setting up the wheel, and try to setup a bit the car take 20 minutes...
I think one hour is a benefit, otherwise you can miss the game (and some poeple missed him with 30 minutes).

As I said in PM, I think that a community page on the website would be nice to find poeple who care about the game. Simbin does this and it is really a good thing (example here http://www.raceroom.net/community/the-list/). Perhaps the next section in this forum is here to do that but it is not on the GSC website.

The dvd version is a good news. I hope it will be avalaible in Europe.

It is really important to hear the fan queries. Some are stupid, others are unrealistic, but some others can be usefull...
I have spent many many hours on the game to make translations and tutorials so be sure that I firmly believe in this game and I also try to find solutions to have servers full.

The new layouts are a great great news, with the end of bugs.
Thanks for this.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

(example here http://www.raceroom.net/community/the-list/).

That list is also a great example how fast the average community website dies again after 3 months. Look at the amount of dead links and sites that havent updated their content in ages

Not to mention sites that look okay on the frontend but have no moral standards when it comes to content and piracy on the rest of the pages.

 

[Patrick Giranthon]

It was to show you the use of such a page, not to show the quantity. No interest in this.
French drivers who have reached our website spent many clics to find a french community playing GCS.
It is a fact... Not an opinion...:wink:

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Improving the SEO of your site helps best. We hardly get any visits through such fanpage ladders.

 

[Patrick Giranthon]

Since yesterday, the number of servers has been divided by 2... :eek:
Please, the patch, please...

 

[Sk3ptik0n]

Based on my personal experience and what I have been reading here, it sounds like a lot of folks go and check the servers almost every day, find them empty and leave.

I doubt that any of us stick around for more than 10 minutes, if that.

Maybe we can find a way to improve the chances that thee "roaming drivers" can at least meet at different intervals during the day and especially during the various time zones peak times.

For instance, an idea would be to advertise in the GSC club one specific time, on the hour for each time zone.

For instance:

GMT: 18:00 gmt
EST+PST: 1:00 gmt

and so forth for all the main simracingtime zones.

In addition, the club could advertise that drivers are to meet every hour on the hour to have a better chance to find other drivers to race or practice with.

In other words, if I know that drivers meet on the hour every hour, I will go check the servers around that time. Plus if I know that every day my time zone (or anotehr country's time zone) meets at a certain time I will go and check it out. If other drivers do the same thing there is a much better chance that they will meet.

What I think is good about this is that it only takes a few forum posts and a notice in the race club forum. Plus, we could also periodically remind folks in other simracing forums where they have added GSC and instead of creating a negative feedback we can change it into a positive feedback. The more drivers meet, the more drivers meet....

This, incidentally, could be used for every game we carry here. Especially games like Netkar pro and Race 07 which could use a bit more participation.

 

[Patrick Giranthon]

I do my best to make "advertising" around the game.
I posted this morning on jeuxvideo.com, a videogame website reference in France.
I proposed them to make a review, because there is no french review. It could boost sales seriously...

 

[Ramon Alonso]

I've noticed that on Europe time is harder to find people playing. I'm at GMT -4, where as Brasil is GMT -3, I log on at night and I find plenty. A shame the other day I was gonna be in a race with 11 other drivers and the game froze on me before the start, I almost had a heart attack.

 

[Kenneth Jurmann]

Maybe rd can advert the new patch abd give anither info on the club events.

Did you change the days? like it was polled in the other thread?

cheers and can't wait for the patch!
kenny

 

[Fernando AS]

Uma opiniao,

Um servidor com apenas 10 min de qualifying e race de 10 voltas,ficaria mais atrativo ,pois só tenho visto corridas em servidores de ligas.
[h=3][/h]

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Please open a portuguese thread as not everybody speaks the language

 

[Sk3ptik0n]

Cost too much is bollocks. Typical response of some tight ass rFactor users that are not willing to pay for anything.

Name me one game for 20 euros that has 10 scratch build new tracks, a new serie of cars that havent been done before and free add-on packs on the way.

I often wonder if some people have that same cheap ass mentality in real life as well:

At the bakery: "Sorry but this bread is so arcade and expensive i am not going to buy it"
At the quality butcher: "OMFG this meat is sooooo expensive compared to the supermarket"
At the media store: "I am not going to pay for this DVD, Ill download it from piratebay for free you idiot"

It's time people realize that commercial games are a result of a development process by professionals and that costs money. People that have worked full time on a game have mouths to feed as well. Just like everybody else of us with a day job.

When Reiza released the Formula Armaroli everybody was cheering and shouting it was the best mod ever made. Now the same quality is made available in a commercial game and the same people that acted like total fanboys before are crying that they have to pay for it. Beats me but I think something is really wrong in the sim racing community when it comes to paying for licensed material.

I can't understand that people have an expensive high-end gaming pc, triple screen monitors, ridiculously overpriced steeringwheels and gameseats but can't be arsed to pay for a decent game that equals the costs of drinking four beers with your friends in a bar

Amen brother. Sometimes I am appalled at the tight ass'ness' of some people in the community. It's not that I want to waste money left and right, but I want to pay those that work hard for my entertainment.

Think what a Movie ticket costs. Here in the US is about $`10 + the $1 "fee".

For that I get to watch it with a bunch of strangers, buy popcorn at almost the price of the ticket and watch a bunch of lame commercials. Not to mention having to drive there, wait, etc.

Then a couple of hours later I am back home and all I got is memories. Some (most) not too good either.

Compare that with a driving game. Go check how many hours you have played even the lousiest game you have. It's a bargain.

 

[Jason Lancett]

any 1 up for some racing?? lol.. the servers are dead again.. release the formula reiza, we might see a bit more intrest.. any news when we will see the dlc??