Why only a few are interested in nKpro racing club races?

[Stefan Mizzi]

I am really missing nKpro as I feel it's a great sim. Races can be really fun, heaps of tracks and the cars feel great.

As you all know, online community to just jump on a server and race is always almost nil.

And I have noticed that even in RD club races, the interest is very low!

So, I must ask...why such a low interest in nKpro? I am curious to know why only a few take part?

Cheers

 

[Alex Ball]

I love nkp - it's my favourite sim, but I rarely play online as I have no idea where to get all of the tracks that people are playing on. Same thing for rFactor really - it's so bloody hard to just go online and join a race with other people without missing content.

Imho the first sim to become part of the Steam Workshop will win big. Easy modding and installation.

I think that's one of the big pluses of iRacing. Simple to pick up and play.

 

[Jorge Alves]

In the event details you just have to look for the "Track:" to download it ... then you unzip or unrar and move the folder into the "C:\nkpro13\tracks" folder. If for any reason you cant do one of this steps you just have to ask and im sure people will help you. And there are many sites and forums where you can download every tracks and car mods for nKP if you want to have them ... you just have to for it

 

[Alex Ball]

I know that, but if you have other things to do (like work, family, etc) then it becomes a real chore, and you can't just plop yourself down on your sim-rig, boot up a game and play. it takes hours of cocking about on forums.. not much fun.

 

[Jorge Alves]

For the people like you who dont have much time (or patiente) available i think nKP will not work very well ... you need to practice a lot to be abble to keep most of the cars (with 2 or 3 exceptions) on track for more then one lap . The Vintage took me several days of hard training to manage it

Of course its easier if everything is donne and you just have to plug & play yourself to the wheel and enjoy but ... If you payme just one quarter of what you payed in iRacing i will go at your place and will install every nKP mods availabe in 1 hour so you dont have to worry about it anymore (im joking here ... i think will install it in 30m but i will not go at your place )

I dont think the mods are so hard to get it ... especialy for the RD events where the download links are just there on the event details ... you just need 5 minutes (or less) to download and install it ...

 

[Redvaliant]

It's Wednesday for me that is the hurdle. A weekend or Friday would be better.
I'll drive anything but the Abarth as it is always swapping ends under braking, and I hate it.
I jump on public servers most days and charge around with 3 or 4 others. The only prob with that is Prato and Aosta seem to be the only tracks ppl will race on... and there are some amazing tracks available out there. However, if there is a good car/track combo I'll make an effort to race here - even if only 3 ppl turn up.

 

[Senad Subasic]

Just got a PM from an American, I assume. He'd like to race, but our events at 8 PM GMT are at 2:30 PM for him. No clue if there are any US time friendly netKar races out there?

What if we moved it to a Saturday, maybe more people could join?

 

[Jorge Alves]

Times will allways be better for ones and worst for others ... some saturday nights i will not be able to make it (girl friend will kill me) ... but as almost nobody is racing on wednesdays i think saturdays could be a good choice to increase the numbers ... even if sometimes i cant participate i will have a on my face seeing more people joining the club.

 

[Daniel Hansson]

So few are racing because so few are racing. We have to get out of that. The race on wednesday was a great idea and it seems to have attracted a lot of people. Unfortuneately I had my last exam ever during the afternoon and then went out with my class mates for food and beer.

I haven't had much time or energy to go racing lately, and learning a new track and drive a car I don't drive that often makes it kind of a hassle to get ready for an event.

My suggestion is to keep it simple regarding choise of car and track. Choose something that is easy to get into just to get people racing. F3 on Prato perhaps.
I would also suggest to repeat cars and tracks, like Abart with Magione again next week? The first step is to get people in the races, and it is easier to just jump in if you are already comfortable with the car and track. To add veriety to the choise of car and track is something that could be done later, when the people racing want to test something new.

Another point is the setups. It would be good to have more openness when it comes to that. I myself am rubbish at setups and don't touch much for a club event. Only things like gearing, brake balance and ride height if necessary. If I have done something extra I could just post it in the event thread to make the field more even, and almost more important: to inform everyone. But even if I don't change anything I should just say so casually in the thread in order to inform the newcomers that they are on the same level. This has worked very well in the Presto GP league here at RD. It is important to just inform to get people more comfortable, because it can be rather hard to keep up the motivation if you even suspect that everyone else have got magic setups they don't share.


Summary:
1. Choose easy cars and tracks and repeat them to start with.
2. Encourage openness with the setups.

 

[Justin White]

Being in the States keeps me from the Wednesday races due to work. If things were moved to Saturday, I'd certainly try to do some.

 

[Neil Gault]

couple of reasons for me
1) 15 grid slots is a joke, not so bad if 15 turn out to race but when you get a few no shows then you are down to under 10 drivers which is a bit sad when you are used to grids of 17 to 20 + with other sim's.
2) i prefer mixed grid races with cars of different qualities where it gets a lot more interesting, but with all the cars the same and small grids then for me it gets boring very quickly.

 

[RaceNut]

I have tried to run a few sessions with Netkar over the years but, finding races at the right time has been really hard. It is my favorite sim in terms of driving feel and hopefully, AC will pickup where NetKar left off. The addition of AI drivers would really help with making practice more fun and flexible.

I have run a few races in iRacing but, I'm not that fast or consistent and I don't like to ruin other player's races so I tend to avoid running race sessions. I have a lot to learn about setups and when I don't have a good one, it's no fun losing ground to the field lap after lap. Having enough time to practice can be an issue for me also and short stints with AI could help keep me interested.

 

[Kjell Eilertsen]

Reason I don't participate in them are because there's too long between races with cars I know and like (KS2 and Osello, the others are really boring to me), so I tend to forget to check the nkpro club forums ><
Also being a nub I need a lot of practice on those monsters of cars before I can race people so if the track is new to me I often find myself not having enough time to practice prior.
What I would like to see (general suggestion for RD coming up) is a google calendar for each club so that I can subscribe to it and have my phone/tablet/desktop pc keep me informed about all upcoming club races in the clubs I wish to sub to.

 

[Kjell Eilertsen]

I have run a few races in iRacing but, I'm not that fast or consistent and I don't like to ruin other player's races so I tend to avoid running race sessions. I have a lot to learn about setups and when I don't have a good one, it's no fun losing ground to the field lap after lap. Having enough time to practice can be an issue for me also and short stints with AI could help keep me interested.

Very off topic but are you aware of the ghost racing feature in iRacing that let's you join a ongoing race as a ghost car (invisible to the real racers)? It won't teach you how not to crash into others but at least it lets you try some racing without being a hazard to others.

 

[Sebastian Wolff]

I always search for online races that I can join, and usually am successful, but most of the time really late at night . Anyway, I love this sim, especially when racing against each other it really shows its full potential. No matter what cars..
Plus I happen to love the competition, it really makes me faster and drive better. Here`s hoping to some more organized racing events...

 

[Ron Kruck]

Interesting discussion! I am new to netkar (used to drive gpl) and simply love the physics and feel of it, but like the rest of you, I wonder why there are so few filled online races? Perhaps your thoughts are right "nobody goes online, if there is nobody online to race against", "slow and quick drivers don't mix well", "netkar(s) are more difficult to drive" etc., but I also find it extremely difficult for newcomers to find a community offering organized league and online racing? Is there any such netkar community still ticking out there?

 

[OverTake.gg]

We gave up after so many attempts to get a healthy following in our club. Seems that everybody wants to race online but nobody is willing to step up and organize it for others on regular basis.

After time this discussion gets revived, a few say "what a shame that there is no online racing going on" and then it fades away again just as fast as it came up.

We still have NKP installed with the latest version on our servers but nobody to push the buttons and run regular events a few times a week to create a healthy racing club environment.

Lets hope things will improve with Assetto Corsa.

 

[Kjell Eilertsen]

If I had the time I would gladly commit to running a weekly club race in nk, but as it is right now I'm not even sure I could attend a weekly race, let alone arrange them. ><

 

[Daniel Hansson]

Perhaps a more casual approach would give some more life into the online racing? In another community we had som "public server safari" where we one evening just joined some of the public servers and raced casualy.

The point in this case would be to create one evening every week when there is a little more people on the servers. I find myself often looking at the servers, don't see many people there, and go and do something else instead. I believe more people do exactly that. If we could get more people into the servers, more people will join. It is important to take the first step and get people out there in order to get the self sustaining effect.

 

[Ron Kruck]

This sounds good, because it seems that quite a few of us are hungry for online racing but are chaotically stumbling around in the dark, but if we can somehow get organized and concentrate the crowd a little, maybe there's hope that a snowball effect will take over and support the community growth.

The RaceDepartment helpfully points out:

After time this discussion gets revived, a few say "what a shame that there is no online racing going on" and then it fades away again just as fast as it came up.​

How can we prevent this from happening? We obviously need to commit ourselves more, invest some time, show up online in a racing mood at least a few times a week, and hopefully spread the fever to get Daniel's "self sustaining effect" going.

I'm a newbie in netkar racing, which makes it difficult for me to step forward and organize things from scratch, but I'm willing to help and contribute. Hell, I'm even willing to show up online and get lapped and giggled at by you freaking flying aliens ... no matter how humiliating it may get.

Gents ... let's get busy!

 

[Daniel Hansson]

How about deciding a day of the week to meet up online and just do some casual racing? The only organizing needed is a thead and a post on the front page here at RD (and why not at more places?) to advertise it.

Let's launch "netKar Night"

How about starting with tuesday next week?