Quote from Jatimc :

I think what he meant by "well organised" was the servers which have a lot of users and which are popular as. example AA and cargame servers.

too much talk is useless, sometimes it suffices to show...

i hate to admit it due to my love of the game and i dont mean no disrespect in anyway to victor or any of the lfs devs but cargame has hit the nail on the head,hes spot on with the real problem, also remember that for most people they are demo racers for a while before deciding on buying a license so it would be limiting potential buyers if demo was restricted in any form

Quote from MrSam :

We are lovers of this simulator and we realize that it is dying slowly.
also feel upset that Victor say the 2 teams that works are more attractive because it is better organized.
I think this is a mistake from Victor to advertise for some teams.

Many people make a lot and spend a lot of time and spent a lot of money for the LFS to stay alive and say that there are two good teams, there's plenty to be upset for other teams.

Criticize teams ok but the Devs can be criticized also

You're right. I didn't realise that my post would insult people. That certainly was not my intention and I apologise.
I was just writing about something I noticed the other day. Something that struct out at me. But I should have thought it through more thoroughly and in hindsight, I could have gathered some stats to see what's actually happening.
I've done that now. A simple count of who races where at the time of writing. How many licensed racers actually race on licensed hosts or demo hosts?
It turns out not that many licensed racers are on demo hosts.

Demo hosts : 87
Licensed hosts : 46
(hosts with racers in them)

Demo on demo : 325
Licensed on demo : 37
Licensed on licensed : 244

Demo on demo (cruise) : 104
Licensed on demo (cruise) : 6
Licensed on licensed (cruise) : 135

(this list does not include the demo users on the 0.5X hosts)

So I think (and looking at the list of hosts) there are just many licensed people racing on hosts with a few others. Maybe those are hosts with friends. People who joined the host for a specific reason, and not to find a random race host. That would at least explain why these hosts do not show up high on a list of hosts sorted by occupation (answering my own question here, which I should have done from the start).
Of course this is involves a bit of speculation.

hmm, well I hope I didn't upset anyone this time I really don't meant to. I was trying to find an aswer to a question i had.

Also I didn't mean to derail this thread. So let's say something about the topic : I don't think limiting the demo is a good thing. One of the biggest reasons is indeed that demo accounts are easily created.

Quote from Victor :

You're right. I didn't realise that my post would insult people. That certainly was not my intention and I apologise.

Thank you

(answering the original post)

As an 7 year demo player I can tell you only one thing on this...

Oh, there are some forum rules? Ok, I can't tell you anything...

The situation is really bad in lfs nowadays. If I want to race, cargame is only option. There are few racers training on empty hosts but majority is drifting or cruising.
If I want something different to race I can choose only demo. But demo is now more about hotlapping than racing. It isnt even sprint what is called a race at demo these days. 3-4 laps on reversed order.
This is just losing point of racing for me.

I think this isnt about hosts. It is about lack of specific racing people.

I prefer league (I race in the beginners one) racing. I find the task of learning a specific combo for a race much better for learning the sim. Also go on the server and practice with other people in the league and I can watch them and learn from them which is useful. I raced in a 50 minute long GT2 race which had a 31 car starting grid. It was great fun and I find it way way better than 5 minutes round blackwood which I've done to death and that in itself is the demo limiting (although I bought S2 pretty soon anyway after i found the game)

There are quite a few leagues and some really interesting events that happen but they are not pushed at the forefront of the game which I think is a wasted opportunity as it doesn't really do what's happening in the game justice when someone logs on to a cluttered looking server list of mostly empty hosts and sees sometimes only a handful of people. League news is posted on an obscure bit of lfsworld/stats rather than on the main site. Plus why isn't there a bit on the LFS site linking into the video footage of live races and when none are on, showing replays of recent races? Or some of the videos posted in the movies section.

First 2 posts on this page show the situation.

Quote :

If I want to race, cargame is only option.

meanwhile...

Quote :

I raced in a 50 minute long GT2 race which had a 31 car starting grid.

me too

The thing is, you do not find these races if you start LFS.exe and click Multiplayer.
Doing that is like going to a soccer field and expecting there will always be 21 other players waiting to have a match with you. That can not work.
There might be a few people to drink beer but probally not a serious match.So you get bored and go home. Two hours later the local soccer team arrives and has their league game.
Same situation in LFS.

Maybe people think the "big leagues" with online streaming etc are the only organized events? If you look around a bit you notice that is not true.
People are not aware of it because:
-it is a bit hidden even if you go to forum
-most players probally never do anything else than "show serverlist"
Changing that and putting interesst more towards organized events is the future. How to do so, I am not sure; englishlord posted some ideas.
Maybe also clickable forum link in LFS?
Or sticky thread in Beginners forum?

Quote from MrSam :

Supposedly this is the best simulator in the world, if it was really the best why it is not popular.

it is the most popular... for people who want realistic car feel as their #1 priority.

disagree with the suggestion that limiting demo accounts would have a positive effect on lfs. maybe I missed the argument.. what the service costs are too much?

if the subject is getting more servers full, then we must look at what priorities made people switch to other pickup race systems. my guess is the people who went to iracing did it because the racing is more serious there. in lfs you get rammed at full speed by someone who thinks you cut them off (i.e. a few days ago this happened on cargame sheesh)

possibly many people went to iracing because of more / better content. I dare to say this would be a reason to try but not a reason to stay. without paying big bucks and therefore the majority of iracing is done on a few cars and tracks.

frunze is no bad guy or anything.. anyone thinking how lfs can be better is cool in my book Just don't understand the stick. like carrot better. even better carrot with 4 wheels YEAHHH

Isn't demo limited enough? It's just one track (many's least favourite BTW) with 2 configurations and carpark,not even reversed,2 slow cars and 1 weak formula. And with just 12 cars on track.

Quote from CarlLefrancois :

my guess is the people who went to iracing did it because the racing is more serious there. in lfs you get rammed at full speed by someone who thinks you cut them off (i.e. a few days ago this happened on cargame sheesh)

Your guess? You think people are different on another platform?

CG S1+S2 services about 4 to 5 races an hour, this makes roughly 100 races a day. It's not a small problem to ask somebody what he is doing is it? Next race it will get better and if not it's also not a very big step to ask authority to take a look at the behavior when such a person is available.

There is nobody being paid here on LFS, in fact, it costs money. So if you want a correct functioning community you have to start with yourself.

What I do know though is that Iracing has build in voice chat. Thats a -hugh- difference. Communication is everything nowadays. It's much easier to say to somebody to f#ck off, apologize or 'get closer together' by using voice instead of text.

Unfortunately we have to deal @LFS with third party apps which 99% of the online community don't use or are afraid to use.

Limit the demo online time? Yeah and then having x10 people flooding the free voucher thread like "omfg my demo time ended plzzz no money for buy S2 plz give i buy u beer ".

What I mean is, although fair idea (it's already too generous giving the demo users what they are given), people who "cannot afford" £24 for buying the full game after some days in demo (like it is now), would never do it anyway, it's all about the attitude actually.

Instead of focusing on limiting Demo, we should try to make S2 more worthy. Demo users arent going to buy S2 by limiting the demo, they will keep making new accounts. I stopped playing LFS because:

At the moment theres only one or two S2 racing servers, and last time I went there it was multiclass and I ended racing alone in a XFG or whatever it was, thats pure bollocks. I want to jump in and race with the same class like I can do in RACE07 or any other simulator.

There should be a system or servers (oficial?) that switches to a random track and car after every race, or at least the next track or car should be voted after current race has ended.

I'm S2 since 2007 and I've never raced a race with everyone LX4/LX4, or Raceabout, or RB4 or FZ.... except when Demolition Derby server was alive, damn that was great fun because most of time people used same car and we played on different and interesting tracks.


And I dont want to go in any leage, because I just want to hop in and race.

Quote from kimd41 :

...

saturday; xfg+xrg from ~14h CET.
sunday; gt2 all day or fbm when f1 is on tv
monday; tbo+lx4

You need to check whats going on more often if you still are interested instead of keeping a pillow over your head screaming i dont like it i dont like it. Pff...

(Yes... And now its tuesday )

.

I'd go for the trial.

The purpose of a demo is totally spoiled here. It's supposed to introduce the game contents before you buy it. Instead, they just keep playing.

Now, making it a trial version doesn't mean there are going to be a ton of new accounts. You can't register multiple accounts on one email address. There are not much people out there who would keep making accounts just to play the game.

A 4 hour trial seems perfect to me. The right time to test everything out and get the feeling of what it is and how it works. Making the time longer (weeks, months) increases the new account making procent a lot.

I have no idea how and why devs have made it work this way. Making it trial will definately increase the finance of development.

Quote from cargame.nl :

saturday; xfg+xrg from ~14h CET.
sunday; gt2 all day or fbm when f1 is on tv
monday; tbo+lx4

You need to check whats going on more often if you still are interested instead of keeping a pillow over your head screaming i dont like it i dont like it. Pff...

(Yes... And now its tuesday )

.

the idea is to make S2 more attractive, not to speak of events, which is another thing.
We're talking about having servers S2 full all the time, not just for one hour...

Whats the point of having server full all the time, then nobody could join and it will be empty

Quote from hazaky :

A 4 hour trial seems perfect to me.

If you mean 4 hours for online, it sounds ok, but generally a 4 hour demo is a bit too much. Generally a time limiting demo is too much, someone would like to have some time before deciding, even with 1 car and 1 track.

Personally I really thought that the 1-hour limit for the rfactor demo was too much, so that out of frustration I through the idea of buying it out of the window. It made me feel some kind of stress to make the best possible test within the time limit, that eventually it turned me away of the game.

Quote from MrSam :

the idea is to make S2 more attractive

The actual idea is the bring in more money for the developers, motivating them and bringing updates to us a lot sooner. Use your logic man. LFS isn't their full time job. It's a hobby for them.

Quote from DANIEL-CRO :

Whats the point of having server full all the time, then nobody could join and it will be empty

I think the idea of ​​this topic is to limit the demos for more people who bought the license and have more popular S2 servers. The event is something else..

Quote from hazaky :

The actual idea is the bring in more money for the developers, motivating them and bringing updates to us a lot sooner. Use your logic man. LFS isn't their full time job. It's a hobby for them.

i agree

Truly, I'm all for it. Maybe 2 week demo to hook the users, and then they need to pay for S1 or S2 . It would liven up the game a little more. There's always a ton of demo users

when i started playing lfs online, my first choice was mrc, it was well organized, even tho in the beggining everything was so chaotic.... Then i was glued to AA servers. And all that was without any advertisement. For their name i knew those servers are good. When i see znj servers names, i dont even enter. The best thing to attract drivers is to have simple name. Like aa and mrc have.

another thing is that, when a noob comes to server, nobody gives him a chance to drive normally, always experienced drivers scream when noob is on server. That makes a lot of demo racers angry, so they come to crash and deliberately ruin other peoples races. We all should help them in process of learning, so they will come in bigger number and without genocide thouhts on track.

Quote from hazaky :

The actual idea is the bring in more money for the developers, motivating them and bringing updates to us a lot sooner. Use your logic man. LFS isn't their full time job. It's a hobby for them.

U're so wrong man

Quote from scawen :

For those who were wondering, yes, this is our full time job, LFS sales make enough money to keep us going while we work on the improvements. From a "pure capitalist" point of view there are certainly ways to make money more quickly, but our aim is a little different - to make the best simulator we can in a sustainable way, and we're doing that the only way we know how - to study, experiment and implement, however long it takes. We don't mind if some people become angry, the important thing for us is to get the improvements done and release them.