Official Reiza rooms for Public Multiplayer racing

Renato Simioni · Jul 20, 2015

Some of you might have noticed we have some servers on the lobby running for a few days now - we´re happy to now officially announce they are open for all to come in and race.

There are no fees, no passwords, no restrictions and no sign-ups required - everyone is invited to join in and race whenever they want. Our goal is to stimulate public multiplayer racing by providing a go-to place for online fun with GSCE / FTruck.

Keep in mind what we have now and for the next few weeks is very much an experiment - what develops from this will be subject to what we learn from the experience, user demand & feedback. The more participation there is, the more we will develop it.

As a place intended for casual fun we´re not looking to establish many ground rules - that does not mean however reckless driving standards and general poor behavior will be condoned: rooms will be supervised regularly by Reiza & RD staff and troublemakers will be kicked (or banned altogether).

There can be no shortage of common sense & respect if this is to be a fun place to race. People from all skill levels are welcome, so long as everyone respects each other they should not have a problem co-existing on the same track. If you do not have experience with the car / track selection being used, stay out of people´s ways while you learn your way around; do not join to learn the car or track when it´s already race time.

If this goes well and we manage to build up enough participation, longer term prospects include setting up leaderboards, organizing regular prize-giving competitions and also prizes for participation & safe driving - for that purpose we highly recommend users get into the habit of using their real names or at least stick to the same profile as results will already be logged on the server.

This is how we have it set up:

Room 1 is the Touring / Tintop room: StockV8, Marcas, SuperV8, Metalmoro, Camaro & Mini;

Room 2 is the Formula room: F-Vee, F-3, F-Reiza & F-Extreme;

Room 3 is the Historic room - Opalas, F-Retro, F-Classic & F-V12 running exclusively on historic tracks;

Room 4 is the Karting room - all karting classes running on kart tracks, plus the Superkart running on normal road courses;

Room 5 is Formula Truck room. (Please note: Room 5 requires the steam version of the game)

Right now we have a fixed, week-long schedule in which rooms 1-4 feature 3 daily shifts of 8 hours each, featuring one car class per shift. Room 5 will run exclusively Formula Truck. All rooms will feature a single track selection for each day of the week.

Sessions will stick to a fixed hour schedule comprising of:
Practice: 15 mins
Qualification: 15 mins
Warmup: 5 mins
Race: 20 mins

Driving aids allowed are ABS low / TC low / autoclutch & auto shifting available.

Voting to reset or advance sessions is disabled - it will follow the pre-established schedule.

You can check the full schedule per server here - save for eventual tweaks or additions of new series & tracks, this is what, when and where racing will take place in the coming weeks. So go ahead and book some time for your favorite combos

Last but not least, we´d like to thank RaceDepartment, in particular Bram & Dave for their brilliant ongoing support supplying the structure and helping us put this together & offer it to the whole community.

Please concentrate your thoughts, suggestions & feedback regarding this topic in this thread.

Warren Schembri · Jul 27, 2015

Took a quick peep and the Marcas room has 23 people in it. Quite impressed!!

Eduard Mallorquí · Jul 27, 2015

Today I drove some races on the official servers and I agree with what has been said, 25 min race seems too long for any combo. Specially the server with the Karts after 10 min or less most of the people already left. I don't think anyone wants to do 25min of kart race, with 10 min its more than enough.

P*Funk · Jul 27, 2015

25 mins too long for any combo? Thats like the minimum run time for anything but the short rookie races on iRacing and most of those are bare minimum 15-20 minutes.

Matt Orr · Jul 27, 2015

Except iRacing isn't a pub server.

xnorb · Jul 27, 2015

Looking at the servers in Assetto Corsa, i would say keeping the same track on 24/7 is not the reason for the servers to be empty

The tracks in GSCE are very special and unless you already sank hundreds of hours in learning all the tracks and cars, then having only 2 practice sessions to learn the track isn't enough and having all the first timers crash left and right ....

Keeping the track on all day isn't a bad decision at all i think.
So far i haven't driven a single track in GSCE that's so boring that i didn't want to keep driving it.

Big Takeover · Jul 27, 2015

Glad to hear Matt's booty call collected a bunch of folks tonight. Sadly I wasn't around, but I'm already throwing my hat in for next weekend if that's the plan.

I popped into the pubs two or three times last week to try and generate a player count with some moderate success. The servers need tweaking, but they also need warm and able bodies, and happy to commit some of my time to that. Low player count isn't going to fix itself after all

and yeah, these servers need to learn to walk (shorties) before they can run (30mins+).

P*Funk · Jul 27, 2015

Matt Orr said:
Except iRacing isn't a pub server.

And I was under the impression everyone wanted something more constructive than just random wank pub servers and that Reiza is trying to do something with their pub servers that goes beyond the scope of what we can expect from our already present and numerous pub server community that will continue to offer those enjoyable 10 minute races.

The point of pointing to race length with iRacing is that a decent race probably can't be much shorter than about 15 minutes or else everyone looks at their prospects of getting ahead as slim to none without going for every gap BR Senna style.

So, what do we want from this? If its more generic pub racing I'm not sure what the point of Reiza's efforts here are.

xnorb · Jul 27, 2015

When racing the AI i usually go for 15 or 20 minutes races.
Going long distance doesn't improve the racing itself, it just
challenges your concentration - and keeps lots of guys out.

At least that's my go at it after having driven hundreds of
100% F1 races in an offline league back in the 90s.

Heitor Facuri Cicoti · Jul 27, 2015

As a guy who just entered this new universe (finished my first three races online 5 min ago), I think things are ok the way they are now. It felt inviting and fun, despite the emptiness.

Coming from consoles, it is a hard time understanding how things work in the game, and how to drive properly so many different cars on so many unusual tracks. I think that, like me, a lot of people saw the bonanza as the opportunity to join a real sim (Yes, I'm here because of you, Matt

), and unfortunately we need you guys to be a bit patient with us. It is difficult to stay on track by ourselves... Maybe there is a lot of people learning this before going on an adventure through the server.

As the main objective is to get more people on board and provide good/clean races, why don't you guys write that in the rooms? Something to tell people that winning isn't the fun part of simracing. That there's nothing like sharing a corner, wanting to be fast while giving and receiving respect. It is unlikely for beginners to know that, and they won't learn until they are able to share a corner.

Wow, what a touching speech, hm?... It's late. What am I doing here?... Anyways, keep up the good work guys!

Matt Orr · Jul 27, 2015

P*Funk said:
And I was under the impression everyone wanted something more constructive than just random wank pub servers and that Reiza is trying to do something with their pub servers that goes beyond the scope of what we can expect from our already present and numerous pub server community that will continue to offer those enjoyable 10 minute races.

The point of pointing to race length with iRacing is that a decent race probably can't be much shorter than about 15 minutes or else everyone looks at their prospects of getting ahead as slim to none without going for every gap BR Senna style.

So, what do we want from this? If its more generic pub racing I'm not sure what the point of Reiza's efforts here are.

I think basing off of their system they already have mostly set where their aim is. Get the racing scheduled, get them on a good rotation first and foremost. I think that was their largest goal, from here it's mostly fine tuning for the most part I believe. (However, that tuning is invaluable) We need to get what we have to work before there is more.

I think you read too much into what @Eduard Mallorquí said - I gather he's looking for shorter races, but much shorter for the Karts specifically. I don't think that's crazy to do a 10 minute kart race, especially in things like the Rental Kart that's more than reasonable. For a car race, I'd agree that that would be pointless but Karts are a bit different. He can clarify his post though if need be, I'm sure.

It's kind of like a mixed class race - 45 minutes for most racing is "enough", but for that type of racing it's barely even started. It needs a unique approach to make it work.

Renato said in the other thread a change to 20 minute races is in the works with the extra 5 minutes going to more practice, which from the sounds of it I think we're all in agreement that that is a good balance?

P*Funk · Jul 27, 2015

I definitely agree that short Kart races is perfectly reasonable. I however took this specific line to be the primary driver of the character of my response:

...25 min race seems too long for any combo. Specially the server with the Karts after 10 min or less most of the people already left.

So I took that to mean that in the first underlined part that what he meant by any combo was in fact any combo of any car and track, not just karts. I then took the bolded part as confirmation of this where he says "specially" which I took to mean especially. So to rephrase it I read his comment to mean "25 minute races seem too long for any combo, especially Karts."

So he can clarify but I don't think I misread it, though I don't pretend to speak for others.

I can of course get onboard with a balanced approach that should see 15-20 minute races for most things and I'd be content with 10 minute races for Karts. I actually wrote as much originally but decided not to post a wall of text lest I look like a jackass. Hopefully I still avoided that.

PS. I hope I can get you on board with supporting a change whereby historic cars are not the only ones to see historic tracks and also will not be limited to historic tracks since I feel that limiting the Formula V12 to Interlagos Historic never to see Interlagos GP is a bit batty.

MTL ka8 · Jul 27, 2015

Yesterday night Marcas 30 cars oooo good race

Paul Bennett · Jul 27, 2015

Dropped in last Thursday afternoon, just to test out for a V8 stock race only about 5 online but was okay. I'm a slow driver so often get lapped ( i dropped out RD club for that reason) they were clean and got a thanks in reply, so first impressions are good.

Eduard Mallorquí · Jul 27, 2015

P*Funk said:
I can of course get onboard with a balanced approach that should see 15-20 minute races for most things and I'd be content with 10 minute races for Karts.

Sorry if I didn't explain properly, I meant exactly what you said here

P*Funk · Jul 27, 2015

Ah, then we have nothing to argue about.

Now, about historic cars being locked to historic tracks...

Alex Sawczuk · Jul 27, 2015

I often wonder what's the point in even having practice session & qualifying in open servers, just roll qualifying and practice into one longer session with out restrictions... But that's just my personal opinion.

Jan Mikuž · Jul 28, 2015

I notice it says ''Qualifying 3'' instead of ''Race'' on Reiza official servers, when you highlight the server and there's a race in progress.

TeSL9 · Jul 30, 2015

My first experience in these servers were satisfying. Good racing. A few more spins maybe comparing to the club races here.

thanks Reiza for developing this awesome sim forwards!

Kunugaa · Jul 30, 2015

I've been loving Reiza 1. If you join first a decent race will get going most of the time so just do it!

Loads of big grids most of the evening and the driving has been courteous, if a little erm, crashy. But lots of apologising and thanking and all that.

Do we have a permanent V8 server now? If so that's great and I know what I'm doing every night for the foreseeable future.

The V8 and the Marcas seem to attract the biggest grids and have the best racing and are really the core of the sim. Would it be an idea to try alternating between them on a server for a bit of variety? 2 races each on the track of the day. Maybe, maybe not.