On and off I have played a little, I used to be seriously into LFS, and thought I would give it another bash, as live allows it...but I have a problem

A. Not allowed to join, as time is not set or not in the allowed time?
B. Not allowed to join as again, time not set in car
C. Not allowed to join as time not set within limit on LFSWorld
D. Not allowed to join as I haven't raced for 3 yrs
E. Not allowed to join, as my my face don't fit.
F: Not allowed to join as well just because

OK last two r made up, but, WTF is going on here. We had an online game that would introduce anybody and everybody to online racing, clean and fair, and now we have more rules that Bernie Elc could imagine up...WTF is going on.

All I wanted was a fun clean time, and all I got told was to PDAPO and earn your time.....feck me, I have been there and done that by now, spend almost 6 yrs on lfs FFS.

OH PDAPO is Put Down And Piss Off by the way???

And just goes to think, if I was a potential new customer what would they think...

Your frustration is understandable, but these limits are due to third party add-ons and the rules of specific server admins (i.e. they're not LFS's 'fault'). Some server admins want to try to ensure that only people who are at least a little experienced on the current car/track combo are allowed to drive, so they apply these limits. Whether this is a good policy or not is debatable, but you shouldn't blame LFS for them.

Unfortunately, the current state of public racing in LFS means there isn't often a lot of choice, so you can get stuck with the same handful (or perhaps even 1 at certain times) of popular servers to choose from. The 'blame' for this is also debatable.

In short, if you want to enjoy public racing in LFS at the moment you'll probably have to put up with these limits. The good news is that for most people the limits aren't really that difficult to achieve. Just find another server with the same car & track (or find an empty server where you can change the car & track to match) and do a few laps to hit the target laptime.

It'd be kinda spiffy if there was some kind of unified licensing system, amirite?

I don't see the necessity for having hundreds of servers and tons of isolated InSim apps. Why are there so many proprietary InSim apps? Why are there so many empty servers?

Quote from Mountaindewzilla :

Why are there so many empty servers?

Waiting for new content to drive, perhaps? I doubt many have done every combo, but rule out the unpopular combos (90+%?) and the need for something fresh online is pretty strong.

Also, as I look on it, the statement "you have not driven all combos" is not a valid one. Sure, cars handle different, sure, there are different track paths in the different enviroments, here is the BUT:

1: Driven like 10-15 of the cars on one combo makes you get the feel of the track pretty good. Nothing magically is going to happend if you try some of the other cars, other than some different handling.

2: With all the configs there sure are some amount of track, yes, but it's still the same enviroment. Aston has different corners, but it's the same enviroment and you get pretty tired fast at it, no matter what car or layout you chose.

Again, in small portions every now and then this game is a blast, but to survive the toll of time something completely new is going to be brough on table, to be more presicly - a track.

Now back topic sorry!
I wholeheartly agree that some servers have too many rules. However sadly internet has shown us that beliving the best in people just not going to help getting clean racing, therfor extreme measurements must be taken.

But every now and then there are servers that runs good-old-days setup, no insim or fancy stuff, just pure racing
For example I stumpeled across Msport's server today, great fun in XRT and no special rules.

So maybe best advice is to find one server which has a good combination, then spread the word and get your friends / people you know to join the same server for some good racing