Right. Just a few words before I start presenting my arguments:

• I'm starting this thread not for the fun of moaning, but to help everyone to realise what obvious mistakes have been done with LFS' developpement and promotion. I'm doing so just because I do love LFS and the community and sincerly wish to see the developpers to realise that they've gone the wrong way at some point in LFS' history, and that LFS is never going to be the equal of iRacing or any respectable sim if they carry on that way.
  
• I would ask everyone who sincerly enjoy LFS to post their own opinion on the matter.
  
• If this thread comes to be closed by a moderator at some point, I would sincerly ask him a) Why is he doing so? b) What are his views on how LFS is developped and on LFS' future? c) What are his motivations in moderating this forum?
  
• Last thing, if any troll is going to act in this thread, I would sincerly ask him to realise that he would not have the balls to do so if he was in front of real people, instead of his computer screen.
  

____________

Right, so here we go. In my opinion, here are, the reasons why so much worthy people are loosing any faith in LFS and why they are going to other sims after being disgusted with the way LFS is managed:


1) The developpers are ignoring those who really put a lot of involvement in the community, and do not support them. They also are not aware that LFS needs get some prestige and keep it to keep the interrest. From my own experience, almost every single person who have been really active in the LFS community, such as league organisators, top drivers, and such. I'm not saying that the developpers should be on the forums 24/7 and always available for everyone willing to set up any interresting LFS related project, but I really have the feeling that they are not aware that they are not the only persons who made what LFS is right now. I have the feeling that anyone is treated as random players out there, no matters what they've done in the community, or what they want to do.

LFS.net could be a showcase of what's going on in the community, telling people what sort quality stuff they should follow, instead of being a dead place where everyone can read what updates we should have received 1 year ago in an ideal world.

Also, real life racers are also totally ignored, while they should be a pride and a force for LFS. I'm not even sure that 10% of the licensed players are aware that the Williams F1 test driver used to play LFS and used to drive in leagues that you and me can join. Here again, LFS.net is the answer. How much time would this have taken to make a short article when Williams announced Vallteri Bottas, with a few sentences about his real life carreer and what he has done in LFS? 20 minutes at maximum.


Why does this represent a lack for the community?: Because if LFS maintain a decent prestige, more and more worthy people will get interrested on what's going on and will want to get actively involved. Also, people will actually be proud of LFS and what they are doing inside of LFS and will promote LFS by themselves, to their friends their family, at their workplace, etc.
I remember how I got involved in the league side of LFS, 2 years ago. I found somewhere on this forum a streamed version of a league race of the LFS Beginners' Cup, ran by NDR(it has stopped since then), made by Jonathan Palmer(dekojester). It looked like a TV coverage, and I was so much impressed that stuff that I decided that I HAD to be part of this kind of show one day. It was absolutely magnificent, but attracted very few people because dekojester had no other way to promote his work than putting it on LFS Forum in the middle of some other various pointless threads made by other people. I am sure that if this broadcast(and any other MoE/IGTC coverage by the way) was promoted by the developpers, put on LFS.net and presented in any decent gaming show where LFS is present, it would attract a lot more people.

This looks a bit schematic but basically, the league organisors, broadcast commentators, top IGTC/MoE drivers are treated by the devs like random public racers noobs, while they are producing top notch work that would be able to be an incredible force for the community, but unfortunately remain very confidencial due to the lack of promoting(simply because they do not have the legitimity to do that by themselves). If they continue to feel ignored like this, you can be sure that they will get bored at some point and will decide to leave LFS like burglars and see if there isn't any sims actually interrested in their talent.




What can be done about it:

• A properly maintained official website, promoting the work of the community such as streams, leagues or skinpacks. Also, it should be a place where you could find interviews about the top drivers, etc. Seriously, it doesn't require so much time to make one article once in a while(or ask any serious person to do so as a volonteer), about the upcoming MoE/IGTC race for example, Lynce's new pack, or some article explaining Airio's features, I don't know.
  
• A better presence on the forums from the devs, and not only in the Progress report thread. IMO, the devs should go in the forums more often and see what kind of activity is going on, and also comment, make suggestions about the more worthy projects. A "good luck" or a "nice job!" doesn't take much time to be posted, but coming from Scawen, Eric and Victor it is an awersome motivation for anyone, and would give the feeling to anyone interrested.
  

2) The official forum is not properly moderated and became an heterogeneous melt of trolls, perverts and kids thinking that LFS will help them to sort their childish problems, mixing with legitimate LFS lovers willing to share their passion with other people. No need to give much explanation on that one. I'm sure that any active forum user has realised at least once that the moderators, for some reason, are not able to do their job properly, and that it is possible to insult any other members publicly or spamming without receiving any warning.

Why does this represent a lack for the community?: Unlike most of the other sims, LFS has one central forum where any worthy international project is presented here. This should be a force, not a drawback. The problem is that, due to the several problems LFS Forum has been facing, it has a disastrous reputation and I cannot count the amount of people thinking that LFS Forum is the shame of LFS, and do not post here anymore. Due to the fact that LFS Forum is the heart of the community, it should get and maintain a perfect reputation and should be a place where everyone can share his passion about LFS and can express his own opinion without having the fear to be flammed.




What can be done about it:

• Be harsher with offenders. If someone do not have enough maturity to hang out there, warning, and then, ban.
  
• Hire new moderators, as the current ones seem to be running out of motivation.
  
• Remove problematic and offensive posts/threads.
  

What can be done about it:

• A developpement blog, or a sub-section on LFS Forum reserved to official statements about LFS' developpement. The devs shouldn't be affraid of people moaning and trolling: they could easily get rid of those people with good and active forums moderators.
  

• The bad shape where LFS is stuck is mainly caused due to the poor politic of public relations made by the developpers since the expansion of the sim(I would say, S2 Alpha release)
  
• The heart of the community will never be able to maintain LFS in a good enough shape on their own as long as they are not decently supported by the developpers
  
• The bad politic of public relation does not directly affect the daily number of players playing the sim as most of the players are casual drivers that are not aware of the LFS community and the way LFS is developped due to the fact that LFS' related websites are badly advertised. On the contrary, it will affect the amount of active players in the community, as they do not feel understood by the developpers
  
• There is no way LFS can match iRacing or any other decent sim as long as no big changes are made in the way LFS is maintained, promoted and developped.
  

I hope I'm not a heterogeneous melt of troll

Very well written for a young guy whose first language isn't English [although I'm pretty sure Scavier are developers ]

I agree with most of the points raised, apart from perhaps the "LFS will never be as good as iRacing unless...". Personally [coming from someone who has never played iRacing, so I'm almost guessing here] I'd say the current raft of updates will bring LFS much close to it (or I very much hope it does). However, by the time we get them, iRacing will probably have had another huge raft of updates which will just increase the gap again

I did write some long post a while back about this but I can't find it now

EDIT: Didn't someone post before me here? :S

tl;dr

Yes, sorry for the mistakes. English isn't my native language indeed, and sometimes it is not that easy to express my opinions in international boards because of that But I just tried to explain what I was feeling right now, and what, in my opinion, should be done to keep LFS in a good enough shape.

Quote from J@tko :

EDIT: Didn't someone post before me here? :S

Yes me but i was trolling so i deleted it!

While i agree with most of your post, however, im sure 3) wont happen.

Why?

1. Scawen - has said himself that he hasnt got motivation to do stuff like that, developing this sim isnt his primary job as it used to be.
2. Eric - wait, who? Is this guy still around?
3. Victor - May be only one of the devs to actually start a section like that, Scawen told that Victor is still doing something, we havent seen anything so this might be the job for him.

4. There might not be anything to report due to work not being done and its a huge shame which will eventually make some people quit this simulation as you have stated it in excellent way. However, this is their Sim, they made it and they can do anything they want with it. As it was stated in EULA, updates werent promised to us, so basically they owe us nothing. However we can still complain about that.

Also, mods havent been doing anything lately, how about recruiting some moderators for this forum Scavier? Im sure trashtalking would end and everyone would get along, unlike sometimes nowadays.

So to provisional conclusion to this post all i can say is that Devs need to wake up, hire more people, (someone like Lynce who has passion and alot of motivation to join along) *cough* take Eric's spot *cough*
and harden the **** up to keep things going around, or a total rupture of community will come at some point.

I think the devs are being really honest, Scawan has stated his lack of passion about the project recently and I believe for a 3 man project, really not much will be done unless you trap them in an office working 13 hours a day. They have their own projects and their own life, so I don't believe they are hiding anything. They have no reason to hide because they don't have shareholders and investors to answer to, and in all the time I've known about the devs, they are pretty comfortable with working to their own pace.

And about this part:
"The devs shouldn't be affraid of people moaning and trolling: they could easily get rid of those people with good and active forums moderators."

Why should moaners be removed?

A over moderated forum is a boring forum, you know what is the worst reputation about the LFS forum? Is that you can't say anything negative about LFS.....yeah, stricter moderation will just make it worse.

LFS shouldn't aim to compete with Iracing, it really should re-discover what made it great in the first place, no matter what you try LFS isn't going to have the same production quality of big budget releases. I agree LFS should use the talented user base to their advantage, the community spirit and the casual atmosphere of it especially, it will take someone close to the devs to think over. LFS cannot compete in budget and development speed, not ever, but there are things that doesn't cost much but makes a lot of difference.

Quote from EliteAti :

While i agree with most of your post, however, im sure 3) wont happen.

Why?

1. Scawen - has said himself that he hasnt got motivation to do stuff like that, developing this sim isnt his primary job as it used to be.
2. Eric - wait, who? Is this guy still around?
3. Victor - May be only one of the devs to actually start a section like that, Scawen told that Victor is still doing something, we havent seen anything so this might be the job for him.

4. There might not be anything to report due to work not being done and its a huge shame which will eventually make some people quit this simulation as you have stated it in excellent way. However, this is their Sim, they made it and they can do anything they want with it. As it was stated in EULA, updates werent promised to us, so basically they owe us nothing. However we can still complain about that.

Also, mods havent been doing anything lately, how about recruiting some moderators for this forum Scavier? Im sure trashtalking would end and everyone would get along, unlike sometimes nowadays.

So to provisional conclusion to this post all i can say is that Devs need to wake up, hire more people, (someone like Lynce who has passion and alot of motivation to join along) *cough* take Eric's spot *cough*
and harden the **** up to keep things going around, or a total rupture of community will come at some point.

I totally agree. Indeed, LFS is the developpers' baby, so they can do whatever they want with it. I do understand they could get bored in the end with their job, but morally, I don't think it is very nice to treat the people who actually helped them to make LFS what is it now.

The devs really need to wake up once for all and hopefully this thread will help them to get real once for all and treat us like the ones who helped them to make the sim what it is now, at the very least like potential customers for S3.

I really don't like to respond to such posts, but I for one have taken the attitude to overlook what LFS lacks simply because of how much I enjoy the people who play it.

But if fewer people play on a daily basis, my arguement becomes moot.

TBH honest, I don't know crap about what it takes to make, maintain or develop a sim. But I can say that if whoever is responsible for doing so is overwhelmed, or just doesn't give two shits, let someone else help.

Everyone has their limits, and there's always someone willling to step up and help out.

Quote from GreyBull [CHA] :

3) There is an obvious lack of honesty and transparence coming from the developpers about the way LFS is developped. I do admire what the developpers have done so far, but I do not like the path they have been following in the last 2 years. It is useless to explain what you are/have been working on if you are trying to hide what is going wrong in the developpement. The fact that 18 months have passed since the last significative update show that obviously something is going wrong behind the scenes. But the developpers have never been explaining this clearly, which leaded into endless rant and speculation going on the official forums. Seriously, I think that most of the people would understand and respect the developpers position if, instead of acting like dead people, they decided to tell everyone why the developpement speed is going slower than it used to be. Even if, for example, they would tell everyone that they lack of motivation(which is probably the case), and therefore, do not work as fast as they used to do...

I can't agree with that, because Scawen just recently told what's going on and never lied. He admitted that its not no1 priority ATM. Reporting publicly whats not working out is pointless. It's self-demotivating and a waste of time, if you know what i mean. Scawen/Devs are the only one who need to know whats going on.

Well this statment that LFS is done by 3 man and its very good for 3 mens sounds not logic to me. Why its imposible to take more people to get into devlopment of this game? Just becasue you couldnt say that its done by 3 man? And im sure that you would easily find people who would help to this and development would become faster and ofcouse more people would be interested in. And i agree with all yann stuff

First the Brazilians, now the French
I guess it's that time of the yea... month again.

Quote from EliteAti :

1. Scawen - has said himself that he hasnt got motivation to do stuff like that, developing this sim isnt his primary job as it used to be.

Just in case:

Quote from Scawen :

There is some misreading of my post going on. LFS development is not on the back burner, and I never said I don't like my work.

I said, I am working on the physics and I look forward to releasing it because of the excitement of it and I added that of course also it will be good for earnings!

To be entirely clear... since our "official" progress report we discovered bugs and further analysis showed other flaws in the tyre model. Further development of the tyre model and further analysis showed up more issues as well. This is that model which we think feels very nice to drive in most sutuations. I am not interested in "fudging" or "bodging" the tyre model and it takes time, research and thinking space to come to the right solutions.

Around Christmas and New Year, time spent with family and so on also causes some delays. I don't regret that.

My post was supposed to let you know what's going on, after dozens of people were complaining about a wall of silence, developers hiding under a rock and all that.

I hope you now have a better understanding of what I was saying. Some guys, please don't try to take the worst possible view of everything. Most people did understand!

Now regarding your points... I won't bother. Regardless of their validity, such threads lead nowhere and won't change anything. The devs always did things their way and will continue to do so, whether "we" like it or not. Call me jaded, but I've seen this happen again and again, the worst outcome being one of the devs pissed off, the best having them ignore the thread entirely. If everything goes *really* good then this thread will die from inactivity rather than the mods closing it due to the almost inevitable flamewar.

Quote from oldnavy :

Well this statment that LFS is done by 3 man and its very good for 3 mens sounds not logic to me. Why its imposible to take more people to get into devlopment of this game? Just becasue you couldnt say that its done by 3 man? And im sure that you would easily find people who would help to this and development would become faster and ofcouse more people would be interested in. And i agree with all yann stuff

This has been discussed many, many, many times before. The reason that the devs don't hire more people is because they don't want to. It's as simple as that. They chose to make the game like this, it's how they prefer to work.

Quote from oldnavy :

Well this statment that LFS is done by 3 man and its very good for 3 mens sounds not logic to me. Why its imposible to take more people to get into devlopment of this game? Just becasue you couldnt say that its done by 3 man? And im sure that you would easily find people who would help to this and development would become faster and ofcouse more people would be interested in. And i agree with all yann stuff

I don't think there's an enough customer base to support a larger team with full paid (if you are expecting them to do full time jobs), to go bigger you will need more initial investments, which brings in investors which will demand a sound financial return, which will end up making LFS coporate.

And I would imagine Scavier having less interest working on it even more when that happens.

greybull u are seriously ill

ergh

The way in which LFS is currently being developed doesn't bother me one bit.

Next thread.

As one of those league admins mentioned in part 1, I think it has some validity, but at the same time I truly believe that the devs don't owe us (admins) anything, as nice as it would be to get some official promotion + admin tools built into the sim.

Maybe the devs should let Eric be the one who is the one that looks at forum activity, and give replies on what people think. If he is an artist, then surely he can't be doing much, apart from modelling that S3 car. Nothing much to work on especially as the Scirocco and Rockingham are pretty much complete models. I just hope he won't get as angry as he was on his 3rd post.

Silly IMO. Beware, what you are about to read is MY opinion.

First of all, let me just say this; iRacing.com can easily be called a company. There is a reason why they have huge headquarters and are working with top level motorsport and are getting all the promotion. Thats also the reason they are able to produce quality content on such short time.
They are making money everyday. Like I said in the other thread, I wouldnt be surprised if the devs are simply not motivated enough because they know they are not getting enough out of it in terms of money.
Scavier is a 3 man team, therefore I dare calling them "indie" developers. They do not have the resources, nor the financial back up to produce at the same pace as iRacing does.
It is quite simply stupid IMO to compare them in any way when it comes to the developers themselves.
I am not saying that Scawen, or Eric or Victor aren't as good as the guys at iRacing. I am however, saying that you dont need to know rocket science to figure out that more people will produce faster.

So there you go. Ofcourse LFS will not be as good as iRacing. iR came in and took over because they saw this as a proper investment that would bring a lot of money. LFS on the other hand, was simply a hobby. There is a bloody huge difference.

The whole idea of the devs being isolated from the community also sounds somewhat stupid. Reporting MoE/IGTC/NDR events at LFS.net? Why should they? What will this bring to THEM? Am I missing something here?
There is the news section in LFS World where you can add all your events and whatnot. They are displayed at the main page of the forums for everyone to see. How is that not enough?

Also, devs do not have to promote the work of the community. No one asked them to develop addons and all that. Sure its a great thing to have and it really improved LFS and how we play it, but they were not forced to do it. And thats another thing, it is made BY the community, FOR the community.

Its like you would start expecting ISI to promote the mods to rFactor. Plain silly. Thats the players job. (Simraceway/rFactor Central/Inside Sim Racing etc)

On the same note, do you actually know any game company that is promoting the stuff fans make?

I will somewhat agree with the moderation part tho. The mods are very unpredictable. One time they will ban you for something minor, and the other ignore when it really needs to be acted on.
I dont blame them tho. This place is a mess. There is no lying about that. But then again, which forum isn't? Thats how internet works. The mods can do very little about it.

There you go. Please feel free to disagree with me. Thats simply how I see things right now.

Quote from Furiously-Fast :

Maybe the devs should let Eric be the one who is the one that looks at forum activity, and give replies on what people think. If he is an artist, then surely he can't be doing much, apart from modelling that S3 car. Nothing much to work on especially as the Scirocco and Rockingham are pretty much complete models. I just hope he won't get as angry as he was on his 3rd post.

Asking an art guy to do PR? He'll rather chop his dick off.

IMO this is just another thread trying to make out the LFS Devs should do more, very well worded for a non native english speaker tho

Also people thinking that "do it this way" or "do it that way" will change anything the devs do is just silly, they do what they will, when they want! and theres nothing wrong with that.

"mistakes in LFS development" and "lfs will never match iracing" are just very silly statements also.

If your very rich then go to iracing you might be able to afford all the content but don't come here and try to fix lfs with one post.

SD.

IMO LFS 4 Ever!


Think about that folks!