Hi

I recently raised a thread on the quality of LFS. I was shocked and stunned at getting 95 replies within a day. Most having a go at me, but
when the responses are (mostly) written in a sensible, integillent, and even at times - emotional, it's hard to defend what I said. I'm almost certainly missing something with LFS, and I'm going to batter that Lotus 7 looking type car for a few hundred miles to see what.

However, the majority of comments refer to the on-line experience, and I believe that's what I'm missing - but here is why.

1. I go online.
2. I qualify, after about thirty minutes.
3. The race starts.
4. First corner, there is a crash, those that crash - disconnect.
5. The 8-person race is down to five.
6. Person No5 was also in the crash, but his damage was not as bad, he decides to go on, but only a lap to get to the start / finish line, or the nastiest bend on the circuit.
7. Person No5 then starts to practise his do-nuts, mid race.
8. The other 'sensible' racer's continue, until they hit do-nut man; head on. Its' bad (they were doing 120mph..!!), another two are out, taking do-nut man out too.
9. There are two people left. One of them has been using LFS for 3 years and is therefore, faster than a really fast thing.
10. After two laps, the dude with 3 years behind him is 4 laps ahead, or he may as well be, Tony is left racing around on his own.
11. The race is over - the cycle repeats.

As can be seen, it's little wonder I have only really used the off-;ine AI based mode to LFS, little wonder I'm a little 'negative' about it's capabilities.

With the above in mind, any clues as to how I find half a dozen real people to race with every now and again.

Thanks in advance people, and thanks for the time taken with my previous thread, it's been an eye opener.


Tony

As I said in the previous thread you started (which was hijacked by troll) organized events! http://www.lfsforum.net/forumdisplay.php?f=22

I've been playing for years and never had incidents THAT bad. There's an occasional wrecker, and T1 crash-restart-T1 crash-restarts, but I've had far more good races than bad ones. If this is happening to you constantly, then I don't know what to say...bad luck or something. Find a a better server or something.

Thanks Tony, and welcome to the forums again

Not sure why that seems to happen to you so much, I don't run into that being here in Canada. Mind you I belong to a team and there isn't a lot of action in primetime here except on weekends when you guys are all up late drinking, thus I have a chance of winning hehehe...

I don't have the same servers to choose from, most people that race with me take it seriously enough to have fun. I've had some really good battles lately.

Joining a team is a good idea for you, they can also help you "get up to speed" (enough for it to be fun and have good racing anyways - I'm not lightening myself!)

you should join well admined servers ... eg on the dsrc servers there is an admin present most of the time specing the race and doing what he (or rather she most of the time) can to keep it clean

Happens sometimes for me, but not that much.

Seems like you only want to see negative sides. If that's the case, sucks to be you. When you go online, it's certain you are going to run into other people who might have a bad day - that's online gaming. But come on, LFS has given the vast majority of its players helluva good time online for the past years.

EDIT: Bläh I censored myself.

Spankmeyer, that was uncalled for. Re-read the tone of his post, there's no need to hassle the guy He just has some questions which he's presenting in a genuine and civil fashion.

Again, my experiences online are very different, I've rarely had a race that bad, or if I have I've just left and gone to another server.

If a server is running quali on a public pick-up race, just go somewhere else, its a total waste of time qualifying for 30 minutes for a 5-10 lap race on a public server, unless you just fancy the practice.

As far as finding races with more serious racers in, look for less popular combos with 5-8 racers, and lots of team tags in the player list (you can view players in a server by clicking the ? next to the ping in the server list).
Not that team tags are exactly a guarantee of driver quality, but it can indicate more sensible racers.

Also, if you manage to find a decent bunch of racers, add them to your buddy list in LFSworld. They dont get notified, so there is no need to feel shy, and if you go to LFSworld you'll get live alert notifications telling you which servers they are racing on. That way you can follow the good racers around a bit

It can take a little bit of effort to get the online experience to click, it certainly helps if you're quick enough to run mid-pack and avoid the spinners and newbies hacking it round at the back sometimes.

Its definitely worth it though. LFS is without a doubt the best value for money game I've ever purchased in 20 years of gaming. 3+ years solid of it being my main game and hundreds of hours of gaming for £24 is not at all bad.

But if it doesnt click for you, then fair enough. Each to his own, I always say.

I should have made myslef more clearer, as I suppose I'm lumping all my on-line experience together.

I believe it's down to the easy option I take, for each game or sim I use on online, I simply click multiplayer then select a race, battle, flight and so on.

That way I'm fair game to the nutters who don't have passwords, or dedicated server ip addresses etc. I would expect the majority are mainly kids having a laugh with their friends, why not - I suppose you have all come across them, here are a few examples:

On line shooters.
They hang around the spawn points, as soon as you spawn, they off-load a magazine into your virtual stomach, or forehead, it's up to them.

The opposite, a group of four nutters working as a team, these people are convinced they are snipers, so much so, they sit perched in a mountain a mile from the spawn point, all listening to each others breathing thru' their recently purchased internet ready earpiece and janet jackson style microphones, just waiting for a newby like me to spawn before seeing who the first is to decapitate you from a mile away.

On-line jet / plane fighter sims
Circle the runway, you spend 10 minutes taxiing, only for a 12year old Russian kid to strafe the runway, cutting off your wings in the process.

FS2004
There are two choices, fly alone on the standard server routes, as nobody else is online, or the full blown VATSIm thing where you have to be a fully trained pilots - as those lot do it properly. People prepared to spend 12 hours (in a row) acting as air traffic controllers, whilst hundreds of others fly in real time, follwoing their instructions to a tee, using all that funky "roger, doger diddly out" language the real pilots use.

After ten minutes the stress is unbearable, your convinced you have 250 passengers on-board, and your on the PA telling them to sit at the fback of the plane, as they'll get a longer ride and planes don't reverse into mountains.

As for car sim's, maybe I'm a magnet for do-nut man.

Quote from Tony01Ball01 :

People prepared to spend 12 hours (in a row) acting as air traffic controllers, whilst hundreds of others fly in real time, follwoing their instructions to a tee, using all that funky "roger, doger diddly out" language the real pilots use.

lol i cant stop thinking about that.

Quote from Dan Hot :

lol i cant stop thinking about that.

The thing about crashing into mountains backwards got me...

The thing that keeps me racing LFS is 99% of the time I have a clean hack free race. I'm so turned off by the other games that seem to be so easily altered.

Come try out Land Of the Free server. US based and clean. Sometimes private to allow for event practicing but clean none the less.

Your return will serve you well Tony

Tick

I would have to suggest goin to NOOBS Pro Chat for some Blackwood FOX racing or if you see it CHOPS HQ Canada for a little Rac-FZ-6 racing, and also one of the Mercury servers for all car types. These are the three servers that I have raced on most since the new patch and I have to say that they have been the best races Ive ever had in LFS(well I can accually drive the cars now) Yes there are and always will be crashes and mopes on the track even on these serves Ive mentioned but for the most part out of about 15 ppl starting the race atleast 10 finish(with me stuck around 7) I never know what the racing up front is like on these servers(usually 2-4 secs between 1st-3rd) cause Im always mid-pack, but Ive had some hard fought battles for 5th and 6th....and 7th... hardly ever get completly left behind racing alone. Im sure there are alot of other servers like this(DSRC come to mind, always good races), these are just the 3 Ive been on most in the past few days.

thanks for the advise people, I will start putting in the effort to source the don't nutters from the do-nutters.

I've also been putting in some more time since the new patch, teasing a drift from one of the rear wheel drive types - brings me right back to my day's of the MkII RS Exscort, an absolute joy to drive down the road sideways.

In a sim - I've never been able to hold a drift like I seem to be able to in LFS since the patch. Although I've also hit the barrier several times whilst trying too.

Even lift off overteer from the FWD's is a lot more straight forward.

I'd like to throw in another server here: Try OcUK.racing if you care for some RAC/FZ5/LX6 racing, as that's obviously what they're mostly running these days. As I don't have too much time for online races, I can't really say if it's always all clean and nice in there but I think there's usually an admin and from my experience, I would be seriously surprised if it wasn't.

A week back we had quite a few races with around 15 ppl on different levels on bl1. Sure there were a few accidents in T1 but usually not serious and certainly not because auf stupid behaviour, just mishaps. Later we decided to switch to As7. Since the server was obviously set to 20 min qualifying and nobody complained, we actually ran the full session and had a five lap race afterwards, lol. A little later the whole lot moved to Hawaii (fe black) and I needed some sleep, but I think the rest had some more great fun there.

I've had a lot of fun and some good, clean racing on the clownpaint and dSRC servers.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

I'd back up STRAHD in that I've spent a lot of time on the [noobs] servers and the team themselves are actually very cool. There are a couple of downsides, IMHO, though:

1) Usually they're racing the UF1 around AS Club or something equally inert, so I have to go looking somewhere else for something interesting to do.

LOL Now what is wrong with that combo? I like it a lot. Its good to learn on if nothing else, check it out some time Tony

Quote from thisnameistaken :

2) They're perhaps a bit over-friendly at times, and when one of their servers gets full it can get really messy because they don't want to kick the scruffy drivers. Now, honestly, I think this is a good thing, because it means new people can get some meaningful practice in on a busy server and learn those all-important racing in traffic skills, but I must admit it gets a bit old when you get rear-ended for the fifth time in a row at T1.

When our servers get like that I cant take it either. I usually just spectate and watch for abusers so I can practice my seldom used kick/ban procedure

I don't understand.
The n00b/wrecking behavior you've described accounts for maybe 0.1% of the total racing that happens in S2, yet you are saying that this is the majority of your experience.

That's pretty much impossible. Are you sure you're not on the demo servers?

Quote from Tony01Ball01 :

faster than a really fast thing.

LOL!

Unfortunately, I've had a lot of experiences like that too, but they certainly do not outweigh the good. The biggest problem I have is not being able to keep up! However, I've got a lot of podiums just by staying consistent, clean and out of trouble.

Alas, the worst part is restarting with all those fast (and most of the time, impatient) racers behind me. I just try to stay out of the way, but they end up taking themselves, and sometimes me, out in turn one.

In response to the original post.

I think your exagerating. I understand what you mean but usually ( as long as your in a busy server) there are enough people in the race to make it intersting. Although yes, occassionally you do get the situation where people are either to fast or to slow to really "race" agaisnt.

You could try some dSRC servers as there are usually one or more admins online, donut people get kicked or forced to spectate.

Yeah, I'd recommend a server run by one of the well known teams - [noobs], dSRC, T7R etc. Usually attracts a better class of person, and the bad drivers are usually afraid of nice people.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Yeah, I'd recommend a server run by one of the well known teams - [noobs], dSRC, T7R etc. Usually attracts a better class of person, and the bad drivers are usually afraid of nice people.

yes, we are sooo upper class


unlike the rest of you peasants! :bullwhip: