Official Reiza rooms for Public Multiplayer racing

[Renato Simioni]

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.

 

[Andy_J]

Im not a fast racer but I'd love some racing with real people and if i realise I'm too slow, I'll be out of the way quickly. I think it's all about good manners and living the community. But we'll always find undesirable people that just wanna ruin everyone's fun. Let's be optimistic

Then join here and be a premium member for great RRE club racing with rules and friendly chaps.

 

[xnorb]

Sure this can present problems sometimes (you being penalized by exiting the track after being hit by someone), but over time you'll be where you belong.

Don't penaltize going off-track or spinning.
That's not needed for clean racing anyways.

Just give a negative ranking for contact - although that needs some balancing of course. Absolutely no tolerance in open wheelers, but Touring cars, V8 and alike, i want some action going on But of course the T1 slammers need to be sorted out.

 

[Guilherme Faustini]

Its not working the way the servers are set.

You join the server, and there is no time to the server populates, because in 20 min there is a race beginning. Nobody is well trained, so nobody finishes the race, and the server stays locked for 25min (too long race for a public server that is changing cars and track every 8 hours). Everyone leaves the server.. And thats it. There is no demand of people yet, to work like you guys are trying to do.

Im my opinion we need something like Fernando said. And we need to set this servers right, I think people needs to get used to a car to feel comfortably for changing tracks. Changing both at the same time is to abrupt. You guys should make like for example in Formula server, get the slowest formula car like Formula Vee, and just keep changing tracks. Keep the car for like 1 week, and after that people might move to a faster formula, or keep the last one, if people are enjoying a lot. There is no way to drive a Formula Vee and some minutes later, you are driving a Formula 1. People needs training, the kind of pilots that enjoy this fast changing of cars and tracks are only the keyboarders... LOL..

And please make the practice time a lot longer, like 1 and a half hour. You guys needs to give merit to who wants to train serious, not the ones that are just getting in the server to go directly to race and divebomb everyone.

Thank you

 

[xnorb]

Multiclass server would be totally awesome and increase the potential drivers.
Stock Car 2013, Stock Car 2014 and Marcas on the same track.
Don't know if any other class would also fit well in there.

 

[Rob Swindells]

http://brosgamingonline.liveracers.info/Results

Why is this server always so popular? Back when rFactor was in it's heyday there were two BROS Megane servers, normally both full (35 drivers in each server!). Are 2006 Renault Meganes the most popular form of motorsport? Is the server popular because so many people want to race Meganes on the default rFactor tracks?

Is the Megane mod (from 2006!) for rFactor really a better option than ALL the content in StockCar Extreme?!

Or is there something else that makes/made them so popular?

 

[asotelles]

Thats a fantastic iniciative. A lot of drivers in gsc are on a limbo, just waiting for a server full of people to play. But they cant found.

sugestions:
1-change the car 1 time for week, the track you can change every 48 hours. You cant do a good job with out training.

2-raise the pratice times. 1 hour at minimum. lower times cant let the server populates.

3-lower the race distance. Maybe 15 minutes. At least on begining. People crash on the first lap(becose they cant train on 15 minutes) and when they see that the race will end in 25 minutes ther go out of the server, and the fun ends.

4- Think about the tracks. Today I raced formula vee on austrian gp(redbull ring) and the lap time was around 2 minutes. Why not use the short version of the track? or the short version of suzuka for exemple.

5- make a hot lap schedule and give something like irating(on iracing) to stimulete people to race on official servers, and finish the races.

6-Put a server auto message(very comum on legue servers) saying something like that:
Hello, this is the reiza official server. Please dont leave the race if you crash, it only take some minutes to restart. And remember, your good results are recording and you can check the players rank on www.reizaschedule.com , the best of the week will recive a password to participate on the MAIN EVENT of the week, with several bonus and gifts. HAVE FUN"

 

[Big Takeover]

The default sets don't have enough fuel to make it to the end which is always problematic.

 

[Diego Balzarini]

Then join here and be a premium member for great RRE club racing with rules and friendly chaps.

My main problem is race time (im in australia)and because im a shift worker. Its hard to have set days. I cant really join leagues, just random races.I'll have a deeper look though, thanks

 

[Andy_J]

My main problem is race time (im in australia)and because im a shift worker. Its hard to have set days. I cant really join leagues, just random races.I'll have a deeper look though, thanks

I understand. But the race club is casual racing, not league. But I do understand your time difference problem.

 

[xnorb]

Joined the V8 server today, shortly after we were 4 guys.

In the end we're here to race, right?
Not for hourlong hotlapping practice.

Sure, i don't know the track that's running right now (but it's such a beautiful track to race on) and racing with so little experience can be dangerous if unexperienced guys don't give way for those who know the track, but overall i think the non-racing sessions should be pretty short.

 

[Jan Mikuž]

Something is wrong with the Kart server. If i join i either get a ''join timed out'' or it gives me wrong Karts to choose from. It's GXRace time now, but it gives me Direct Karts.

 

[Dave Stephenson]

Something is wrong with the Kart server. If i join i either get a ''join timed out'' or it gives me wrong Karts to choose from. It's GXRace time now, but it gives me Direct Karts.

It's shifter karts at the moment Jan, The times listed on the schedule are GMT.

 

[Jan Mikuž]

It wasn't at that time. It clearly said Reiza official server GX390Race Karts. I could choose the direct kart, but when i got to the track i got a vehicle mismatch. Perhaps just some hiccup or it was just in the middle of switching to direct karts. Don't know...

 

[Fernando Zart]

Sure, i don't know the track that's running right now (but it's such a beautiful track to race on) and racing with so little experience can be dangerous if unexperienced guys don't give way for those who know the track, but overall i think the non-racing sessions should be pretty short.

I haven't raced on the Reiza servers yet, so I don't know if voting is activated, but if it's not, activating it could be a way to please everyone (those who want shorter and those who want longer times to practice). Easier to test the results: set it on in one server, announce in the name (something like "voting allowed") and see if this particular server takes the preference among the rest.

 

[Jan Mikuž]

I have problems again. Trying to join Reiza OPALA86 server, but i can only choose the older Opala. There is no 86 to choose from. I then get booted, when the track loads - ''configured class does not pass vehicle filter..''

I had no problem joining the V8 server last night.

 

[Jan Mikuž]

For all those who use non-steam version 1.35 and have problems with joining Reiza servers :

Update the game by running Gsync. There are ca. 12MB of files that need to be downloaded.

 

[Matt Orr]

So earlier today I sent out a tweet to get a "party bus" going. It was fairly successful, it actually surprised me that we were able to get a server full - that's a good sign. Had a lot of very good racing to boot! I just checked, about 4 hours after originally sending out a tweet and joining a totally empty server there is still the same Reiza server full the max!

A few things became clear - the server setup in general could be improved. The overall format is pretty good, but just needs a tweak or four IMO.

- 25 minute race is a little too long for pub servers I feel, 20 minutes would be about right. That 5 minutes could be better spent for practice time. As @Big Takeover mentions above, default sets also should have enough fuel to go the distance I feel, for the newbies' sake.

- Could use some more time between a race session going live and the end of the gridding phase. 35 seconds doesn't really leave a lot of time at all.

- Server rotation is a biggie and the thing that struck me as instantly needing a overhaul. The general feel from those who spoke up in the server seemed to agree that two races per track would be ideal. Eventually a few of us went to another server with the Opalas, but we ran into separate issues which killed it for us. I know I would have stayed had we switched tracks and I think a few others would as well. IMO, track should switch after two races on each on, car could be what is changed on a daily or whatever it is schedule.

And please do NOT enable voting. Just fix up the rotation a bit.

- Reiza 3 (at the time Opala 86 at Historic Rio) crashed or something on us, a few of us went there after getting more than enough Marcas action on Server 1 - we had 12 cars or so practiced and qualified, but only 3 or 4 gridded. That was pretty much the end of our fun.

Overall, I think this can do good. I think it's up to all of us to try and populate these servers and get things up and running. The common "complaint" is not enough online drivers, only we can fix that either way.

I think a few of the people in here are forgetting this is a public server though. This isn't supposed to be your league replacement, but it should be a good place to get some informal yet quality racing going on - and judging from what I saw earlier, I think that is achievable.

 

[Renato Simioni]

Thanks Matt & everyone else for the feedback. Some adjustments had already been decided on (such as increasing practice time to 20min and reducing race time from 25 to 20min) and will be live by tomorrow, and some more will certainly come as we progress.

Regarding rotation, the idea of running the same track all day is both preserve a reliable schedule (ie let you know when you can race what, and where so you can plan for it), and promote consistency by not forcing the more casual players to learn a new track every 2 hours. Those that want a change of scenery have 3 other rooms they can go to at any given time.

We fully expect people to have their own ideas as to how things should be run, and we welcome you to share it - keep in mind though the idea is offer something for all tastes & all levels, rather than everything for a specific crowd. It is also to stimulate public multiplayer participation, rather than become the be-all of, end-all of SCE online racing. Those that would prefer to run something else or run things differently are more than welcome to set up their own rooms for those that have the same preferences

 

[Matt Orr]

There is certainly merit to the decision Renato, but I also would quickly point out that you end up running off players who still want to play - but not play the same thing (yet) again. At that point, to get something going would require populating a whole new server - which as we've seen over the last several years isn't exactly the easiest thing in the world.

Yes it's good for the drivers who are more casual, but at the same time if you run off the drivers who aren't... well... the more casual drivers have no one to race with!

Maybe down the road if this works it could be tested?

 

[Renato Simioni]

You dont have to play the same thing though, you can do as you did and switch to another room, to get a fresh car & track The rationale is that people who are up to racing more than 2 hours on the same day likely add up to a small minority, and for those they´re as likely to be sick of the car (which is on for 8h shifts), as the track which is the same for the whole day. If you then start rotating everything to appease to that need for diversity it would completely defeat the purpose of having a fixed schedule to begin with.

We´ll know more when we have a larger sampling pool to study the logs, and we also need to give the rooms time to pick up momentum - I´d venture say most people who enjoy SCE and race it with any regularity arent even aware of this initiative yet, given everything else that´s going on. This will change in 2-3 weeks.