rFactor Racing Club Feedback

[Adam Eggbeer]

As you may of read HERE, we are trying a new format to the racing club. We hope you will like the changes but if you have any issues or ideas, please post them in this thread and we will take all of the posts into consideration.

 

[Adam Eggbeer]

Just keep checking that top post. :wink:

Both Lee and I have had a busy week lately but the list will be updated soon

 

[Nikola Ilivanov]

Hmm, is it possible that the new system put off a lot of people from joining the Club Races ?
I mean we've just had an amazing combination like the ORSM V8 2010 and the fantastic Suzuka track and only 3 people raced in the AUS time zone and just 13 were present at the EU time zone race. No clue about the US event.
Last week, before this system was in place, we had reserves in the waiting to fill up the grid and we've ended up something like 25-28 on the actual race. And last week wasn't holiday, which should've boosted the numbers today, instead of lowering them.
I got no clue really, why this poor outcome. V8s always attracted gazillion of people and the combination of V8s and Suzuka is simply BRILLIANT ! We should've ran 2 fully packed servers instead of one half empty.
I'm not bashing the new system. I think it might work ... with a few tweaks. Like bringing back the sign-up post, coz all that copy and paste mess is just ... a mess. The rest - I get. Pretty much. Think so.

 

[Ivo Simons]

Just let it run for a while Nikola. Way to early to jump to conclusions.

 

[Steve O'Malley]

Just let it run for a while Nikola. Way to early to jump to conclusions.

Oh and always best to check that senior staff members can follow the sign up procedures and not pick drivers who have already been picked. He’s a popular chap that Senna!:tongue:

 

[Ivo Simons]

Cant remember anything

 

[Nikola Ilivanov]

Oh and always best to check that senior staff members can follow the sign up procedures and not pick drivers who have already been picked. He’s a popular chap that Senna!:tongue:

Completely irrelevant reply Steve ... There's sign ups only for F1 92 mate The rest are run with a bit of a messy tread where everybody copy, pastes and then add his name to the list. Pure forum spamage if you ask me. With little to no order at the procedure. Makes the whole thing unreadable.
Would love to "Let it run for a while" Ivo, but if V8s + Suzuka lead to such poor numbers, I'm a bit afraid about WTM + Silverstone. Last WTM we were only 15 or something and it wasn't pretty. What should be the two most attractive Club races this week have turned into shadow runs.
No clue how to fix this.

 

[Ivo Simons]

WTM was already before the change low in numbers.
But there is no need to "fix" it. We are just trying it out and see what happens. And people need to get used to it also.
No point in changing something and week later going back to the old one. You need to let it run for a while to see the true result of it.
Also if you noticed with some new threads (Porsche and F1) there are seperate threads now for EU and AUS/US
So its less crowded with post. Thats what i ment with giving it a try and fine tune it abit along the way to see to true result of it.

 

[Steve O'Malley]

Completely irrelevant reply Steve ... There's sign ups only for F1 92 mate.

It was a small joke Nikola, don't worry, Ivo got it.

 

[Lee Palmer]

Nikola,

It was never going to be perfect week one. Changes will and are being made to get the system working better. Of course no matter what system the staff put in place the members also have to be aware and know what they need to do which will also take time.

I'm with Ivo here, give it a run see how it goes, we'll keep trying to improve the system and if it doesn't work then for sure we'll reverse the changes.

 

[Wayne Reed]

Nikola there is some thing you don't see is at this time of year most people go out in the nice sun shine. And with it being Easter and you saying that would bring more in it wont it goes the other way. You need to think about things before leaping into the big blue

The staff know what they are doing they are watching all the time and reading feedback let them do there job they wont let you down

 

[Sk3ptik0n]

I have been a member here at RD for a while, even though I don;t participate as much as many other guys.

One of the features RD has that attracted me to it is the "racing clubs". I have done a copuple oof leagues and while I like the league environment, the racing club idea is better and more flexible.
The problem is that lately all the racing clubs (at least the ones I am interested in which are rFactor, GSC, NKpro, Race 07) rarely have a race with any meaningful number of participants. That's really a shame. I also live in the US west coast, so my choices are even worse since any races in the middle of the working day are out for me. I have been thinking of ways to maintain the Racing club spirit and improve participation.

1. One way would be to have some sort of average and a classification, so that one could track progress. This should be low key, but still meaningful for those interested in it.
2. More weekend races would also help. In order for that to work my next point is very important
3. A overall racing calendar - this would be not only a tool for racers, but also for the coordinators. Basically we don;t want to poach racers from different sims. Sometimes delaying a club race an hour allows someone to race in two separate events. If they happen at the same time we lose one participant
4. A Newsletter. Once the calendar is working, it should go via email to all that register for it. We are all busy and sometimes we simply don;t think to check out the coming races. But if we got the newsletter in the mail it may increase participation.
   Text messaging would be great too, but I realize at the moment it's not an easy thing to organize.
5. Make at least one weekly race more "Meaningful". This goes with point 1 above. Maybe we make that race part of the "low key" championship and the other races practice.
6. An easier time zone translator. Sure it's not difficult to do the match, but when looking at a block of races over several weeks, having them parsed by time zone would be a great advantage that once again could help increase participants. Without a lot of programming, there are Greasemonkey scripts that could be coded or ported from other applications that could automatically transpose the time to the one the viewer is using. The only requirement would be to write down the time in a way that is easily identifiable.

The bottom line is that if RD had 1 or more races a day I could participate in, I would race at least 5 days a week. The reason I don't is because either racetime is wrong for me or I only see a single participant signed up the day of the race. For a while I signed up anyway, only to be one of two racers on track. That's simply no fun. Anything below 8 racers is not really something worth planning around. Not when 8 racers makes an exceptionally busy racing event.

For a while I did the 1992 F1 mod here at the rFactor racing club. it was a lot of fun. Then we switched to F2 cars and a lot of people dropped out. The same guys that made the 1992 F1 mod have just released the 1994 mod. It's even better than the 1992 and it would be great to see some races going.

Thank you for reading.