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