Hello,

at firtst I must say, that your physics model makes this game better than anything else out there and I am comming back to this game for many years now, but I keep leaving the game too. It is because its online system - you are heavily missing few things, mainly iRacing like races (one race is started like 100 times per week, you can join whichever you want and how many you want and at the end of the week, your 2 best races are averaged) and matchmaking.

In real world, I would start by racing gocarts (which are "slow" but they have small track too, and they are raced by other amateurs), in LFS i have to start with hatchback, which is boring as hell and I still manage to be one of slowest guys on server, because many "pros" keep racing it and one lap takes almost 2 minutes, but has like 10 corners (Blackwood).

If you were to track "avg of last 10 laps with car a on track b" and averaged it and that time per person used as "skill" and then, if you were to provide some stable races, which will start several times a week, but will be "one race" (iRacing), and if you were to matchmake players primarily from same group (or you can just order 30 people signed for race by their skill and then have 3 different starts, 10 worst players, 10 medium players and 10 top players of that group), it will be a gamechanger.

Basically every online racer is missing good matchmaking system, but in this genre, it is absolutelly crucial - if you are 3s slower per lap, you are not racing, you are driving "hot lap" while others are racing. (However, if you are lame FPS player, you still get lots of fun playing against "pros" in Quake, because even if you loose by score, you will manage to get some kill)

Now this is based on population of server, so I sugest that you implement those mechanisms and start just one league, which can be track a week style, and have 3 different car types mixed race, will be launched on like 5 servers which will be filled by "skill" order and in time you will see, how much popular it becomes and you can add more leagues then or cancel even that one...

I don't know, how you like that idea, but frankly, your actual system is not really useable for casual gamer, which just likes good car physics and that is heavy underseller of the game. I don't want to play iRacing, I hate their snap-slide braking, their little oversteer=360° slide because we cannot simulate drift etc. and this is basically problem with every other race game, except LFS.

What made me hate iRacing was this matchmaking system. It provides some boring races, when the game thinks you are worse than what you can really do.

Quote from Kristi :

What made me hate iRacing was this matchmaking system. It provides some boring races, when the game thinks you are worse than what you can really do.

If you are in boring race, then you have to win few times (twice?) and you are switching league... but if you have laptime 1:14 and there are people with laptimes from 1:00 to 1:30 (one driver per second ) you don't want to race with drivers from 1:20-1:30 (they will left you in the dust and you will play solo) or with drivers from 1:00-1:10 (you will left them in the dust and you will play solo) you want to race with equals fom 1:10-1:20 (so noone will be left anywhere, you will be racing as pack) now amount of distribution is given via amount of players, but with this system, you can take 200 players signed to event, order them and then take first 10 players for one race, second 10 players for other race etc.

I really don't believe, that you will enjoy racing with 3s faster/slower racers, which will left you on first 3 corners far behind (or you them).

PS: times were just to show concept...

Well... from my personal standpoint propper organised league racing plus propper public racing beats the matchmaking idea. When you always race with similar skilled racers, improving gets more difficult. I rather like a public server where I race 3/4 races and experience that I slowly improve compared the "pros", see my gaps decreasing and my laptimes improving. It gives a much better feedback then iR's matchmaking as the benchmark differs each race. Moreover, the racing experience shall not be the pure numbers but also the way how you behave on track. if you are much slower you simply have to learn that certain attitude. Also, I don't think the way iR works is the best for casual racers, as you just have 1 race the hour. On public servers you can do up to 4 propper races the hour. The time I have to wait between sessions in iR I can use on a public server to chat to people, to ask for help and so on... In addition propper admined league racing can round up the experience.

Some general problems would be that there is not enough capacity in the current LFS system. The only way to introduce matchmaking in the current state would be by a private initiative. But both ways to include matchmaking need money. That is currently the crutial factor.

Quote from Kristi :

What made me hate iRacing was this matchmaking system. It provides some boring races, when the game thinks you are worse than what you can really do.

Are you talking from experience, because as far as I can see you were into the top split after about a dozen races, and stayed there ever since?

I don't really get what you mean by top split. But I played the game for about a month, then left it for lack of money and boring races which are ruined by both SR ratng and this system.

Quote from Kristi :

I don't really get what you mean by top split. But I played the game for about a month, then left it for lack of money and boring races which are ruined by both SR ratng and this system.

You're not going to be much use to this discussion if you don't understand the system iRacing uses. When there's more drivers signed up than the maximum field size, the drivers are split into the different fields based on iRating, and given you had a high iRating, you were always racing against the best drivers who had signed up to the race. So in regards to your first post, the system could not have done anything more to put you into the races with the most similar skilled drivers.

Quote from TFalke55 :

When you always race with similar skilled racers, improving gets more difficult. I rather like a public server where I race 3/4 races and experience that I slowly improve compared the "pros", see my gaps decreasing and my laptimes improving...

So I should join server, where I will be left behind and then I should still race, step aside when I am lapped and that's better, because I can see, that my time is worse than theirs? I am not talking about "someone is better in that corner, how can I be as good as he is in that corner" but about "someone can go around blackwood in 1:35 while I manage to do only 1:40 so we are basically not racing together"

In my point of view, if you are not in the grid, you are playing solo singleplayer and if you don't fancy going around track like thousand times, you will -sooner or later- leave the game.

PS: you can still be motivated by "there are 6 splits and you are in the last one"

Well already OWRL (http://www.owrl.de) uses a similar system where people log times in the server before race, and people are separated into batches and there will be 2-3 servers where each server has people of similar lap times racing together. Is that what you had in mind?

Quote from GonziHere :

So I should join server, where I will be left behind and then I should still race, step aside when I am lapped and that's better, because I can see, that my time is worse than theirs? I am not talking about "someone is better in that corner, how can I be as good as he is in that corner" but about "someone can go around blackwood in 1:35 while I manage to do only 1:40 so we are basically not racing together"

In my point of view, if you are not in the grid, you are playing solo singleplayer and if you don't fancy going around track like thousand times, you will -sooner or later- leave the game.

PS: you can still be motivated by "there are 6 splits and you are in the last one"

I said that it is my personal standpoint and didn't advice you anything. It was how I got motivated towards Live for Speed.

Quote from rageshgr :

Well already OWRL (http://www.owrl.de) uses a similar system where people log times in the server before race, and people are separated into batches and there will be 2-3 servers where each server has people of similar lap times racing together. Is that what you had in mind?

CityLiga also works that way. Basically every multi-grid league features a system to split the drivers into brakets of similar strengths. Anyways he meant the iRacing style where there is no public racing as everything is part of a league and you score points for every race and racing is on 24/7.

We have nowhere near enough people to make the same system. And doing 1.40.... you would hardly find anybody in your category I reckon.

My cent is, I want CTRA back, it had an epic racing system, and was full of people 24/7. Better than any iRacing kind of...

I fail to see the point here. There's simply not enough people playing lfs in comparison to iR, if more people were online I'm sure you would be more likely to find company on track.

Also if you want an iR style league with matchmaking what's stopping you from organizing one? Unlike in iR, in LFS you can and it's practically free!

What is that CTRA anyway?..

Gonzihere, I get where you are coming from. It is fun to have a close race with someone on a par with your own skill. That said, from what I can see (correct me if I'm wrong) is that you want to handicap people that come on lots and can do well because you're a casual gamer. Which, I think will go down like a cup of cold sick. All those people at one point did times that you do but worked on it.

I'm pretty sure people are still signing up to other long term games like World Of Warcraft etc, despite people already being there for some years and having the advantage of experience, epic level mages or whatever it is they have. You also need to be sure that getting good in the "Boring hatchback" enables you to be better when you get onto other cars.

Personally, I go in the Cargame.nl S1 room at the moment because it is multiclass, uses an experience rating system where you can work your way into having other cars. Also has other tracks apart from Blackwood and also layouts/modifications that aren't on the default single player. (especially with Fern Bay)

im all for matchmaking, preff with the generic stipulations one comes to expect.

I will look in OWRL. THX for the tip

About Warcraft: you are playing the game from lvl 1 with other lvl 1 gamers, there are lvl 1 quest, monsters, dungeons etc, so you don't have to be 60lvl to play the game.

And I really don't want to handicap better players, but I believe that they don't want to race with me either. (What if I try the "first corner hero" technique, or crash them while they will be lapping me?)

About my times: 1:36 with rear-nonturbo demo car and 1:49 with hatchback are my BEST on lfsworld. EDIT: I can manage 1:41 with hatchback and I misinterpreted lfsworld data.

My idea is based mainly on playing with "equals" I will not try to race with others on track, which I don't know, same with the car, but if I give like 100 laps offline (same car/track) and I am not new to racing games, or simulators (not that I excell in them) I want to be able to compete, even if I will be somewhere on the very end of the race, I want to see the others, or maybe pass one normally and one which will crash... Not to go online until I will race 1000 laps (1:45 - lets say 100 seconds... so 27 hours, with 5 hours a week its more than a month alone...) is not an option and maybe I am just not that good. Then again, in real racing world, I will be playing local leagues, because better racers will be in more prestige leagues...

bottom line: don't you guys think, that it's actually very sad, that this game has tops of 2thousand people online? It is a sim (which I love) but it's struggling to be a game and it's very very demanding, before It starts to be rewarding which is problem for MANY gamers (why can iRacing have 25thouslands of them?)