As the title says, I've just about had it. For some reason people think that you can only:

- race the GTR at either BL GP or AS NAT
- race the BF1 on either the oval or BL GP
- you can only drift with the LFR cars
- FOX can only be used at SO Classic.


Practically any time I go to an empty server to choose a different combo (let's say F08 @ Fe black, or AS Historic) I end up racing alone for 30 minutes waiting for someone to join.

Lately I found myself racing at the demo servers, because that's the only place where I can race the GTT with people (race, not drift). I'm HUGELY fed up with this.... sorry, but why are people so boring? Or afraid of new combos?


Come to think of it I'd rather play minesweeper than have another lap at as nat with the gtrs.

A lot of online games are like this. Take a look at Counter-Strike, for example. In general, people play the same maps because they know them very well, such as de_dust, de_dust2, and de_aztec.

Leagues seem to determine what 'non-mainstreem' combo's are popular. For instance you can always get a Fox race on SOC, but there's often a populated server running Fox's at the next OWRL track. A few weeks ago I had great fun getting beaten in TBO cars around FE Green, but now the league which was running that combo has past the even I doubt anyones on that combo any more.

In short, even if you are not in any leagues, check out the league combos for non-mainstream action.

Quote :

Lately I found myself racing at the demo servers, because that's the only place where I can race the GTT with people (race, not drift).

I have also found myself on Demo servers just of late. Not due to the combo problems though, just through people online driving attitude. Funny thing is, its cleaner on the demo servers

@Becky - That was the T7R Internal Championship that was running that combo so we was practicing for it. Lots of others joined, and many faces I haven't seen for a very long time. But yes your right, we have moved onto our next combo which is something and rallyx LOL

One piece of advice - get a team and join a league.

Instead of adding new configs in the latest patch, devs should have deleted all the crappy configs.

Quote from axus :

One piece of advice - get a team and join a league.

I am in a team, I participate in leagues. But that's the problem. I DON'T WANT TO spend a whole week racing only one combo to prepare for a league race. What I'd like is to be able to take advantage of the variety that LFS offers. And spending a week on a given combo and then switching it isn't my idea of doing that.

Sometimes I wonder:
Now we have roughly 1000 people online in the evenings. Let's say that 70% of that is racing on the "mainstream" configs. If we had 10 000 people racing, then.... 7000 people would be racing GTR @ As Nat? Rough figures, but I think you get the point: would having more LFS players actually help this situation, or would it in a way make it worse. I wonder...

I think we need more tracks if anything, for the leagues. The tracks which work best in LFS are the sub 90 second laps which makes the track a bit busier with less competitors.

There's perhaps some merit though to having limits on when certain combinations can be run - so a server running Fox+SOC on a Monday would find itself running TBO+SOC on Tuesday and so on... This could move the busy combos about a bit

I've had good races in the past few weeks with XFR at KY2, AS2, FE2 and BL1; TBO at FE2 and XRG at SO3

Quote from Becky Rose :

a server running Fox+SOC on a Monday would find itself running TBO+SOC on Tuesday and so on... This could move the busy combos about a bit

That's a good idea, but it doesn't really guarantee that people won't go to a different server to find Fox+SOC elsewhere.

I think what could be a good idea, is to kind of.. advertise servers. I mean, if a given server would be famous for a great place to find good servers, then maybe people would be more enthusiastic in joining it regardless of the combo it was running?

Here I'm moving into the issue of "branding" I guess

Anyone remember the demo times? Back then I KNEW I could count on great racing when I joined the "Nettika" server. Wow, after all these years I even still remember the name That's what I mean about branding. But with the huge amount of servers nowadays, it could be hard for one to stand out like that.

Indeed you don't always get the combo you want.
But therefor I have several combos I like. If I don't want to practice for the leagues I participate in (which's servers are usually populated) I still have several combos I enjoy. As North in FZR and XRT on Fe Gold are just my most favorite combos aside from the usual FOX, XFR and FZ5 combos I do for leagues.
In a nutshell: Going online to find *one* combo can often end up boring. Going online to select one of several combos you like will give better results.

Vain

My server is always running an unusual combo, but there's usually only me in it. I feel your pain szyszek. People just don't experiment enough. Also I find if I've only a short time for a quick race instead of a whole LFS evening, I'll join a server that's already got 10+ people in for "guaranteed" fun, which is typically one of the popular few.

I could go into every empty server and change them all to something different (from a tracks point of view anyway) but that wouldn't make people join.

Quote :

That's a good idea, but it doesn't really guarantee that people won't go to a different server to find Fox+SOC elsewhere.

But if the master server limited what cars could run on what track based on the weekday (at the weekend allow all) then that would work, and a realism point too.

EDIT:
South City Monday TBO
South City Tuesday S-S
Westhill Monday S-S
Westhill Tuesday TBO
etc. etc.

It just came to my mind that you could help each other. Why don't you put up subforum in the events section and hold trackdays on specific days and use all interesting combinations you elsewise would seldomly get drivers for?
I'm not talking about a league. Just organized track/car-experimenting.

Vain

I must say, if I join a rare combo, and meet some "freaks" of this combo and get beaten with 7 - 12 secs pr lap, then i`ll find myself another server - It could be Gtr`s on AsNat where I only get beaten with a second or two - Sometimes I migth even get on the podium there !

Life is easy, you do what you do best, and I can assure you . You`ll never meet me on a server with the fz50 on a reversed SO track - NEVER !!!

I need to agree with szyszek..i rarly race on full servers coz there is always the same combos everywhere..that's why i often race alone on my own private server...hope that will change soon.....



gimme more mrt servers

You know what I really miss the most? The fun of S1 combos. Tight tracks, slower cars, door to door racing. Yesterday I had some fun running XRG @ AS GP, but really, the looooooooooooooooooooooooong straights between the few corners are just way too boring. The other combo I raced (for literally a few minutes) was FOX @ AS Historic. Again, lots of kilometers of medal-to-the-metal boring stuff, just to focus (and ofcourse fail badly) on two tricky turns once every two minutes? I'm not that patient, sorry.

I'm yet another one, who's visiting demo servers for some fun, close racing, but driving BL1 all the time isn't exactly THAT much fun either.

I'm all for a thread with "advertisements" of rare-combo servers.

I haven't run into the problem yet, because i still haven't driven even half of the combo's...

One thing i've found is there is far too many servers. When i have empty servers unchecked i get a result of about 30 servers. When i have it checked, over 450 servers come up..... illepall

At the moment there's like 10 servers of each combo possible and 2 people in each of the 10 servers. Why not 2 servers of each combo possible and 10 people in each... is what i'm trying to get at.

I don't know if that's because while im asleep that 400 of those servers start being used by people on the other side of the world... but i highly doubt it.

Anyway, if there's something that i want to try out then i just start my own server and if people join then good, if not then i do what i wanna do. If i get bored then i either leave or find the most populated server to join.

I don't think the problem will be a long lasting one. You have to see it as though you are at the front of the pack for people who have done everything and are looking for something new. Eventually the people behind you will catch up and there will be a lot more people like yourself who want new combos, thus giving you want you want. It's just going to take a while.

At the moment I kinda got tired of LFS, I had a lotta fun on that FE Green - TBO combo too, it kinda make me like LFS a little more again. But you know what I do now? Because I can't find anything to my liking, I just cruise around offline, that way I also not get in the way of people and I race the combo I like for the moment.

Doing the hotlap ranks is a good way to try different combos and there's always plenty of other hotlaps to try and beat. I never get much within a second of a WR.

Quote from szyszek :

As the title says, I've just about had it. For some reason people think that you can only:

- race the GTR at either BL GP or AS NAT
- race the BF1 on either the oval or BL GP
- you can only drift with the LFR cars
- FOX can only be used at SO Classic.


Practically any time I go to an empty server to choose a different combo (let's say F08 @ Fe black, or AS Historic) I end up racing alone for 30 minutes waiting for someone to join.

Lately I found myself racing at the demo servers, because that's the only place where I can race the GTT with people (race, not drift). I'm HUGELY fed up with this.... sorry, but why are people so boring? Or afraid of new combos?


Come to think of it I'd rather play minesweeper than have another lap at as nat with the gtrs.

so true that it hurts

Quote from szyszek :

Anyone remember the demo times? Back then I KNEW I could count on great racing when I joined the "Nettika" server. Wow, after all these years I even still remember the name

I guess you mean "Netikka" oh those millions fun races around BL2R.. never got bored of that

you want something different szchyyyszcchek? check this out: http://eirc.free.fr/

Here Here,

Please try something other than racing BL with the F1 car! I don't understand why people race the same thing over and over and over again when there are so many good tracks out there to race on...

I am starting to think that some people are only fast because they've practiced the same thing over and over again. That is something completely different to being a good driver and I bet in real life they can't drive for peanuts.

Whilst i agree with what your saying, i really enjoy GTR class at BL GP, it makes for some good races.

A server i try to play on when others are one use the standard cars, GT Turbo, FXO, UF1 etc on the fern bay tracks and its a really enjoyable race, but its not a combo i see alot.

Whilst BL GP is raced a lot, it is one of my favourite tracks, so i dont mind too much, but some variation would be a welcome change. However, there are combos i do nto enjoy, i done the FOX on aston histric last night and it was a long and boring race, each car was 5-10 seconds apart and it felt like watching the F1.

If I remember correctly, theres the facility for server admins to rotate around a list of tracks. Its just not done. I'd really love to see this happen more often, rather than just staying on one track until an admin logs on and changes it manually. Not only would it solve this issue, but it may bring back some of that community spirit of sharing set's that I think we're missing...