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Bram

Founder & Administrator
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Server name: RACEDEPARTMENT.COM CLUB
Track: Curitiba
Practice: 19:00 GMT (30 minutes)
Qualification: 19:30 GMT (10 minutes)
Warm-up: No Warm up
Race: 19:40 (2x25 minutes)
Password: click here

Signup List
To signup simply press the button below and chat away in the thread below :)
[signuplist]262[/signuplist]
 
@Mid-pack Jack
Come and join in the fun!! :)

I was having fun. I looked forward to GSCE and now FT club races. Hell I even purchased FT to do club races here. But I can't race without a little stability or TC. I just can't. I don't enjoy it at all. I have a hand injury from a motorcycle crash that makes it painful to continually do gear changes and I like to use auto shift but they have stopped that too so right now I am so disappointed with RD's decision to stop allowing low driving aids that I am considering packing it all in and selling my new TS500RS and going back to my Logitech Momo and just do offline stuff.
I cannot understand why they wont allow low aids. After all the race clubs were for experience and fun. Why not allow all levels of sim racer to enjoy some online racing without the chaos of public servers?

I am so pissed off. :(
 
I must say I find that decision a bit strange, even though I personally tend to try to use aids in a realistic way (only if the real car has ABS/TC), with a few exceptions (I usually turn TC on for the f-reiza, f-extreme, etc., or when I don't have much time to practice for a race). I'd understand it for league racing, since that's the "hardcore" side of RD. But for club racing? I find that a bit too restrictive.

Plus, most driving aids do have a built-in drawback - you'll be slower with them. You'll definitely be slower with auto-shifting, you usually are slower with TC (I noticed that very clearly in the last F3 race I did here - I turned TC off between the first and second race and I was *instantly* 1 second faster). I suppose ABS might be the only aid that could give you an advantage (since you could put brake pressure at 100% and have lower braking distance without worrying much about lock-ups). But that would still be fine for club racing, I believe. After all, they're not supposed to be fiercely competitive - all the sign-up threads say that :)
 
Phew, Brink set the bar very high indeed. Will definitely do more laps to see how close I can get. :)
Very technical track this one and theres so much time to be lost if you miss the radius or braking. Shows I'm still a newb here. What I find the hardest atm is understanding how hard and when I can brake in a straight line or trail brake before I lock up. Sometimes it seems you can go hard and nothing happens, then all of a sudden a lock up occurs out of nowhere. Tricky thing, probably also need some setup tweaks to suit my driving.
 
Aids will be available when they use them in real life, so the Mini will have ABS available for example.

That's good to know, but it doesn't address the rest of my post. Again, I'm not arguing this because it bothers me personally, but because I think it will be detrimental for club racing in the medium/long term, so my reasons are mostly pragmatic.

Other than what I said above about driving aids having a built-in drawback, I think that keeping people away because they can't use the aids they need to feel comfortable in the track will eventually lead to fewer sign-ups. Given that we already don't often get full grids, I fear the overall effect it will have for club racing.

The second issue is a bit stickier... but now that RD is effectively charging people money to get a license here (something I'm perfectly fine with), changing the rules like that with little warning is a bit, how can I put it, not very polite for people who might have bought a premium membership mostly for access to club racing and now feel they're being kept away from it by the new rules. If the rules are kept, there should be at least a very clear warning in the premium purchase page.

The third argument is less pragmatic, and a bit more idealistic, but, again, for me the club racing is the inclusive part of RD's racing. For leagues, sure, rules should and must be strict. But club racing? I was perfectly fine with the main requirement being simply "don't drive like an idiot, or you'll be banned from racing". I honestly don't think idiots will stop driving like idiots because they can no longer use driving aids. Again, club racing is supposed to be inclusive and fun, a space for people to compete but also to learn. And I fear these changes will close the door for people who mostly want to learn.

There is more but this is getting too long already :)
 
Sign me up please

I'd like to emphasize :

Race Start
The race will begin with a standing start. Do not be a moron on the first lap and cause avoidable crashes by being overly aggressive. People will no doubt put time in to practice for this event and don't need their fun ruined by stuff you'd see on a public server. It is a long race, you won't win it in the first corner. You've been warned.

Additionally, I recommend doing a little practice with a grid of AI cars for a few laps; it is very different from hot lapping and the experience of running in packs of cars will help keep the event clean and fun for everyone. The track tends to produce close side by side racing.

The second paragraph is the routine for me.
I can seriously count on one hand the amount of times I had a clean start (and not because of my bad driving).
Check your mirrors at the start and know where everybody is around you. Jerking to one direction to pass a slow starter without checking your mirror is a recipe for a pileup. It's a good rule of thumb to stick to your lane for the first few corners, until you have no one beside you. If you're not sure if there's a car in your blindspot, then don't turn into that direction.
Use the warmup to practice your race starts, to avoid premature donuts at the start of the race.

In conclusion I think it's a thing that Andrew says all the time and people might not pay as much attention as they should. This is not something that he says because he has to. It's important. I've had long and lonesome races because of these race start shenanigans.


@Yuri Kasdorp @Jason
 
Thanks for the feedback, I am always open to hearing it. We are way off topic from the FTrucks race now, but here's my final word on the assists. If you want to talk more about it, Andy created a thread in the paddock club.

Now, I have been on both sides of this discussion. I have passionately argued that assists should be available. But long term, I changed my mind. Here's why:

The large grids of the racing club were not down to assists but rather having a dedicated club staff member (Rupe, then me) put a lot of work in making good events and whatnot. We started seeing large grids before I introduced assists. If you take a results file from our races, you'll see most racers here don't use assists anyway.

Secondly, in the majority of cases, Game Stock Car and FTrucks is not the traditional sim racers entry point; rather people find it because they already are sim racers (I'd not heard of it before I came to RD). Granted, now it is on Steam there may be some change to that, but time will tell.

Club racing is all about gaining experience and having fun, yes. If a driver needs to be at the front to have fun, well frankly that's their problem. Some of my best races have been battles right at the back, or the sense of accomplishment at seeing an aspect of my driving improve. The drivers who want to learn can do so, properly, without assists. You don't need assists to have fun; all skill levels are welcome, just race to the speed you can. I've finished on the podium just once since I started at RD, and when I joined I was brand new to sim racing, and there were no assists in the R07 club. I have never won a proper race.

I knew some people would like the decision, and some people wouldn't. It is impossible to please everyone. But ultimately I made the decision based on experience and discussion and experiment. And that's that. I've also spent time explaining the decision when I don't feel I need to justify myself. The only reason we are having this discussion in the first place is because some time ago I decided to introduce assists and trial them out. If I hadn't done that, this wouldn't be something we'd be talking about, whether we should keep assists or not. Ultimately I spend a lot of time trying to do what is best for the club, and this decision fits in that same vein. We tried no assists. We tried assists. And no assists seems to be best (while there are pros and cons to each side).

While it is true that some people may be put off from racing without assists, it should be remembered that we are a sim racing community. To be completely blunt, if people want to play arcade, they can go play Grid. If they want to just drop in to a race without practice or taking time to learn a car, they can find a public server. There are plenty of options.

I think that addresses everything. See you at the next race :thumbsup:
 
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