Multiplayer Rant

[Falk Massmann]

So I am not always looking for a hardcore racing experience or club races. Sometimes I just want to hop online and have some casual racing in a friendly and respectable manner.
What really dissapoints me in AMS is the online community regarding content and accessability of the servers.
I understand that if you are running a league you will set a password so you don´t get interrupted by the usual Dorks, no problem with that.
But the amount of different (special) tracks and content (cars) really turns me down personally.
In most every case I´m looking for some casual racing in AMS it is that the populated servers are either password limited or running some weird content, mods with descriptions like reiza51 or some other weird naming or tracks I never heard of because they are a bad translation from some ancient rf1 track .
So just to vent off some frustration about the current situation.... if everyone features some kind of different mod we will never have a working online community in AMS.
Which brings me to the point that I have started to look in other sims for online races since I have a way better chance to get what I want.

So my bidding is that if you are in the position of running a server in AMS online, please consider that the behaviour I explained above will ruin the online community in AMS. In the end will drive people away from AMS.
Sometimes it´s better to stick to standard content since everyone has it on his computer for racing fun.
Actually it doesn´t matter to me that much what track I´m racing on and what car but more importantly that I can race against other people and have a fun challenge.
I really would like to see more standard content servers in AMS ... keep racing

All the best and see you online

 

[Chris]

Unfortunately that problem is not AMS specific and it happens with almost every racing game that supports dedicated servers.

The default content in AMS is utterly fantastic, and as a result you'll find that very few of our events actually use modded content since the game already contains pretty much all you could possibly need. Having said that, we will look into putting up a public 24/7 server with short sessions and lots of tracks. Because you're right, it is good fun when you can just hop on with minimal entry barriers and have a fun little race.

But the best place to get into an organised race will still always be the clubs and leagues, so hopefully you can also join us for some of those too

 

[F_B]

Other than the organized RD races there’s no need to look for public MP races in Automobilista. It’s restricted or empty. That’s a real shame because the sim itself is fantastic.

 

[Dann Murillo]

My servers are the OnlineSimRacing.net ones. We usually have 8 to 10 (never-passworded) servers up and most of them have default content or Patricks mods. I agree 100% that the modded content is dividing us. I have always wished we could implement an auto downloader in the RF1 based sims. My league has weekly races that usually see 15 cars on average per race. I think keeping the servers open is the key because otherwise its usually quite a bit of work to get into a new league.

I am not really trying to promote my league, I am suggesting we remove some of those server passwords to help grow the online racing options for new drivers.

 

[WPxNJ]

Sums up AMS's biggest problem-online seems dead.
8PM East Coast time (US) and there's 4 to 6 people online?
Tracks I don't have; mods I don't want, empty rooms galore.
AMS is a terrific sim; but the lack of online action is Not Good.
And no, I'm not about to lap by myself hoping people join in.
I'm not into being first on the dance floor alone. That's for Billy Idol.

 

[P*Funk]

The problem is that people are annoyingly partisan in their tastes. Everyone seems to only want to drive the thing they personally have affection for, and that usually means the same list of FIA Grade 1 tracks and homologated crap that you see in a WEC ad.

In the end there is no cure for the sickness in sim racing that is only want to ever drive around Spa and Silverstone in some car that they'll forget they ever cared about in 2 years when the new model launches.

I hate GT3. People would rather drive a crappy version of a GT3 car than a great version of a car they've never heard of. People and branding make me sick.

 

[John-Eric Saxén]

The problem is (mostly) not in AMS, the real issue is that there are almost a dozen of sims out there and only a limited crowd who plays these sims, so the competition for online players is extremely high. When looking at Steam charts it's basically 3 sims that have all the online players: Assetto, pCars and iRacing. Remaining sims are peaking at around 300 players playing the game (most of who play offline). That simply leaves too few players left for random online racing, the only chance to get together with a bigger group is league racing.

 

[Terry Rock]

I feel the OP's frustration since most of the modern sims seem to suffer this fate.
At a time in simracing history when we have the most immersive software, multiplayer is the absolute worst for the casual racer.
Quite frankly...casual MP for all are off limits... unless you have a dedicated group you race with or join a league.
RF2 requires a 'mountain' of tracks and cars, just to race which ever one is running on the hosted server. It's the most irritating of the bunch...multiplayer-wise. Have not tried it for months due to this.
AC has a draconian penalty system which kills racing if you go off for any reason...faulted or not.
Most guys hit the escape key after they watch the entire field of cars fly by during the penalty.
AMS servers are almost non-existent and requires you to go looking with magnifiers just to find them.
I don't even bother anymore...mostly hot-lapping these days.
It's futile.

 

[Dann Murillo]

TBH even places like here where you have to pay to race is not helping. I'm not a premium member because I've had my own league for several years now and we usually have plenty of drivers on race day. Having raced rfactor for the last 10 years though, the weeknights were never really hopping. John-Eric is right, multiplayer is all about league racing.

 

[Chris]

TBH even places like here where you have to pay to race is not helping.

Access to our servers is simply a perk of the Premium membership. The money from Premium goes entirely to server costs, thus keeping the site up and running.

 

[Dann Murillo]

Fair enough Chris, call it whatever - it's all good. No disrespect at all. I've run my servers off my home connection for 5 years now. If only I could get paid for the hours of work I've put into these games in that time. We've had servers for RF1, SCE, RF2, AC, and now only AMS. 

Either way, just saying every little thing hurts our small community. If only we could unite better for online racing. But then we have time zones, work, personal lives so the races become more challenging to schedule to suit everyone.

 

[Falk Massmann]

Thanks for all your input and replies, I see I am not the only one .
@Chris Stacey yes I try to race as often as possible in our club events but unfortunately most times I see myself unable to do so due to my working schedules, I should reduce my work probably .
I tried R3E the last two days with the DTM 2015 package and GT3 and it was a pretty good experience. Actually a good crowd is racing there online. Just stay away from the free content races, lots of the usual crashers are in these servers because they don´t have to invest any money to ruin someones online experience.
Sometimes just because me being inconsistent and going off leads to interesting races dropping down a couple positions (for the case of last 2 days in R3E).
In AMS I don´t even get the chance to have a couple of people to race against, most times when I join a server they are already gone and it´s me alone on the server .
It is what it is, it might change some day but for now AMS and online racing is a problem.
Even though I like it the most compared to the other racing sims.

Cheers

 

[Will Mazeo]

We keep a public server running with the GT3 mod 24/7 (well, almost that, we close it when league is running to avoid connection issues). First we used Patrick tracks, then we had to start using our own version of his tracks to remove some stuff that is not really necessary (we use these tracks for our leagues and we had to save space in the server so had to remove his versions of the tracks) but people got lost so now public server is only using Reiza original tracks


That said main reason is the amount of active players per day and week, just compare it with other sims, it's too low, unfortunately

 

[JoelGL]

We keep a public server running with the GT3 mod 24/7 (well, almost that, we close it when league is running to avoid connection issues). First we used Patrick tracks, then we had to start using our own version of his tracks to remove some stuff that is not really necessary (we use these tracks for our leagues and we had to save space in the server so had to remove his versions of the tracks) but people got lost so now public server is only using Reiza original tracks


That said main reason is the amount of active players per day and week, just compare it with other sims, it's too low, unfortunately

What's the server name? Asking because that's also one issue I found with AMS servers, as they don't show the cars (only see the track name) in the server list (or is it?).

 

[Will Mazeo]

EEC Public GT3 server

Yep, to see the car being used you have to go to Reiza Virtual Xperience http://virtualxperience.net/lobby (this is why this thing should be in an AMS launcher like rFactor 2 has, not a website). Live racers will give you a better view on the mod being used

 

[Alex Townsend]

I must admit that I've not tried AMS online as it was just plain impossible to hop on the game and launch into online. I'm still not entirely sure how it's done...

But for me with the MR ABC system on AC servers it's quick and easy to jump on find a race and be quite happy racing with half decent racing drivers who are racing cleanly to protect their rating. It's actually a good system and they only race official content so you never have issues joining a server.

I'm a Premium member, but due to my unsociable work hours and location, it's incredibly difficult to make the races that we have here. Sorry, should add that I'm a husband and father too which means the weekends are strictly family time as I don't see them during the week meaning I can never make the league or club races...

 

[Emery]

RF2 requires a 'mountain' of tracks and cars, just to race which ever one is running on the hosted server. It's the most irritating of the bunch...multiplayer-wise.

Eh? When an RF2 server is properly set up, it will autodownload the required content. No need to go hunting for mods/tracks. Where you run into problems is server admins that don't understand how to configure their hosted content and thus the autodownload doesn't work.

Now if you're saying that about RF1, then, yeah, it's accurate. When/if AMS mods get to the quantity of RF1 mods, then you'd have the same problem because there's no autodownload from AMS servers.

 

[Alexandre Costa]

What I can't understand is why most of the players like to race with GT3 in AC, AMS, rF2 and R3E. Can't we just enjoy the great cars already in AMS? Do we have to make all sims the same?
Btw, it would be awsome to have an open server from RD. Maybe an article in the main page to promote it?

 

[Will Mazeo]

Because they are all different sims (people may even have a different opinion about if one in your list is a sim) and people want their favourite cars in their favourite sims.

 

[Alex Townsend]

What I can't understand is why most of the players like to race with GT3 in AC, AMS, rF2 and R3E. Can't we just enjoy the great cars already in AMS? Do we have to make all sims the same?
Btw, it would be awsome to have an open server from RD. Maybe an article in the main page to promote it?

This gets said all the time. Can't it just be that some of us actually like GT3 as a series in RL and also like to race them online?