I can't believe I'm gonna say this. But, BlueFlame finally has poped up a good idea, for once in his life.

Quote from BlueFlame :

Make a wiki for your respective leagues. It just looks nice and makes competition reports, and points more visible and mirrors real life in some respects.

Nothing makes a win more special than a yellow box with a 1 in it on a wiki page! Let me assure you!

That's very true I firmly believe the spdo database motivated a large number of drivers.

Quote from Jatimc :

Main reason why i dont race much league racing is this signing in stuff.
Example kyoto500. First you have to sign in at lfsforum, then sign in at NDR forum, then pick a car number, then make a skin for a car... Way too much nonsense.

Yeah,that's really a full time job...

About sign-up to attendance ratio - that's really the problem,why do you sign-up if you don't even bother to take part in race? It's about expectations - league admins seeing 60 sign-ups have to do extra work,like setting up (even renting if needed) extra server,sending a ton of PMs with info,setting up points system for full grid and then they end up with useless 2nd server and drivers earning big points just for driving in last place,as only 1/4 joins the race. Similar to endurance/team events,where you're going for pre-qualification (setting/renting server,PMing etc),but then have to cancel it because at the end there are barely half of grid if lucky.

With easy words - if you want to sign-up for something,check info,it's always there (unless it's "the stig's" RLGP),consider if you are even able to make the races,then just bother. Of course other thing - if there are low sign-ups count,some people have attitude "if there isn't full grid,I'm not joining" and don't join too,allthough they will quit after few for their taste too low attended races anyway.

well for a game that haven't changed in the last 8 years, we're not doing too bad.

Quote from vipex123 :

How about AB refer their higher tier drivers to the bigger leagues then?

Our better drivers already race in other leagues.
AB will also take part in the 16H race which is in august.

Quote from BlueFlame :

Make a wiki for your respective leagues. It just looks nice and makes competition reports, and points more visible and mirrors real life in some respects.

Nothing makes a win more special than a yellow box with a 1 in it on a wiki page! Let me assure you!

Good idea. And as James said, spdodb motivated many of us. So I think something like this would be useful.

Quote from IsaacPrice :

Putting blame on people is pointless. You cant blame people for not showing up after signing up. People are allowed to sign up and only drive 1 race, thats the reason the confirmation thread is there. .

+1 I agree with this.

@Krasi - it would be great to have another spdodb type thing. Currently the closest to it is the !cewolves one but it does not track events.

I personally think that there is few reasons why leagues slowly dying... One of things is as many people said that drivers come to 1-2 races and go (Which is for example me, but reason is i cant complete any race and i rage So yea its my, and only my fault)... Other, no streaming... Like this WE1R race between Krasi, Isaac and someone i dont remember... I havent watched it, i only heard about it... And well, i dont give a damn downloading replays just to watch a race. I really WISH to saw that with commentators "OMG KRASI TOOK THE LEAD" and so on because i enjoyed this sooo much! Another thing? Setup stealing... Im not going to be nice about it... WHAT THE ****!? This thing can ruin a race because well... Top teams, ineX, 3id, CoRe, GenR, Vires works sometimes really bloody hard to do setup and others in few seconds got it without any work just few laps of practise... Thats pissing off like hell... Next reason is well we all reached peak of setups and what is possible with it. Maybe some small .0x faster. Next? As someone said... Drivers. For example the KY2 race i did (which of course i havent complete) was ONLY and i do mean ONLY, because Isaac Price done it... Thats it, i didnt care about other stuff... So i wish to race like MoE 24h or others... Isaac, Matti, Bawbag, Dennis, Otto, Maddee and other aliens aswell. Thats my few words about it

Quote from IsaacPrice :

A couple of ideas I had were like having an amateur guest team in the established series(GTWS, GT1C?) where people can apply, and you give the space to them, in the team league races that would give people who arent in teams and want a chance to race the ability to race. But it would have to be managed properly, because obviously it would be taking away a spot from another genuine team which might be more worthy.

If the lack of being able to win is the issue, then leagues where you have 2 or 3 races in an evening, with reversed grids would surely help give everyone their moment in the sun as it were.

Just my ideas.

Well, speaking from my personal experience, having some sort of amateur guest team would be nice. I've wanted to participate in more leagues, so GTWS is the next logical choice for me. Now unfortunately, I don't have any team mates in LFS anymore (or any games, but I digress). So entering a league that insists on a team is a bit of a hard time, never mind where pace is important. I've had it happen in the past where I've teamed up as a "ringer" with another team and ruined their race because I'm so utterly slow.

There's things that can be done to cater to the slow people. Yes it's kinda retarded to cater to the slow people in something that's all about going fast, but the reality is that people are slower than others. Me being 2s of WR on a given track is "omg, I'm fast" and some people (not much lately) are breaking the WR in a given event. There's a magnitude of difference between the slow/average drivers and the fast guys.

That said, I think there are other factors more important for any driver, slow or fast, that must be possessed to be a safe and fair driver. If you can keep the car on the track, not be a dick when you (inevitably) get lapped... all is well.

I'm the first to point fingers at people singing up for a league in full knowledge of the calendar and their own schedule, if you know you wont be there after round 1 or 2 then don't sign up. But it's too easy just blaming that, we had that happen in LFS' heyday already and still managed to get the league finished with 25+ racers.

I do think you see that the big healthy core of mediumish fast league racers is missing, those are the people that will make a league a success, yes you need the aliens for competition sake and to attract other aliens but those are not the guys making a league strive, it's the lot that is driving around in 10th to 20th position still having a blast even though they're not racing for the win but just because it's fun having good racing in a controlled environment, those are the people that will come back no matter the position they end up in.

And here is where you probably need to put some of the blame to organizers too, all I see these days is prequalifying for high attendance leagues with a 32 slot maximum. That is forcing the issue we got to an extend, if you got 50 sign ups and 30 of them are "medium to fast aliens" why should the midfielder even try to PQ, he is fully aware that he will be missing at least 2 or 3 rounds when attendance is still high and then is welcome to pick up the scraps after the initial hype drops.

Maybe it's worth looking at leagues that still work after countless of years. Take the cityliga for example, the German community is in a limbo state since years but still they manage to get 60+ sign ups every year on a 3 server grid, because they try to cater to fast, medium and "slow" people, everybody is welcome to have some fun and take part in the complete season no matter where they end up qualifying. If attendance drops the grid gets filled with people from the second and third server. Even though not everything is perfect there, it is a system that still works up to today.

edit: Some good points from PMD too, although I would've liked to see them in a proper sentence. With the ddos problems we had and sites taken for granted dying a painful death, a drop of commitment (from racers and organizers) is sadly to be expected.

Too many leagues
Too long of seasons
Lack of single events
Too much of the same
Too many team events
Lack of full races due to DDOS
Lack of Remote due to DDOS
Lack of interest to run streams
Lack of people to run streams
Lack of caring for a simulator that's too far behind with features
Lack of content
Lack of spdo database
Lack of creativity
Teams are too large

I agree with you Troy, that's precisely why I think we should spend more time rebuilding that mid field and amateur champs are key to maintain that. And believe me we had never expected that much sign ups in our leagues and we're going to look for solutions in future leagues and series.

Quote from PMD9409 :

Too many leagues
Too long of seasons
Lack of single events
Too much of the same
Too many team events
Lack of full races due to DDOS
Lack of Remote due to DDOS
Lack of interest to run streams
Lack of people to run streams
Lack of caring for a simulator that's too far behind with features
Lack of content
Lack of spdo database
Lack of creativity
Teams are too large

Lack of a good schedule/time of racing.

I can't race in any league that is not from America, since LOTA died I've been racing with LatinAmerican drivers and it has been good, we don't have full servers but it's entertaining.

Quote from chanoman315 :

Lack of a good schedule/time of racing.

I can't race in any league that is not from America, since LOTA died I've been racing with LatinAmerican drivers and it has been good, we don't have full servers but it's entertaining.

Tell me about it, any league with pre-qualifying I can't compete in as the race occurs during my work day. Or any events on week days. I'm restricted to a very select set of events.

Yes it is sad that north and south American based organisations do not do more for that continent and there must be enough racers to do something interesting...sadly the other way around, it is not possible for European based organizers to manage races in those times.

It becomes hard though. For instance, I love to drive, so to organize an event and drive is impossible.

No,it's not,unless you want to create a super top league with full marshal squad. I'm organizing and driving,so did OWRL and I bet there are other examples.

Quote from troy :

I'm the first to point fingers at people singing up for a league in full knowledge of the calendar and their own schedule, if you know you wont be there after round 1 or 2 then don't sign up. But it's too easy just blaming that, we had that happen in LFS' heyday already and still managed to get the league finished with 25+ racers.

I do think you see that the big healthy core of mediumish fast league racers is missing, those are the people that will make a league a success, yes you need the aliens for competition sake and to attract other aliens but those are not the guys making a league strive, it's the lot that is driving around in 10th to 20th position still having a blast even though they're not racing for the win but just because it's fun having good racing in a controlled environment, those are the people that will come back no matter the position they end up in.

And here is where you probably need to put some of the blame to organizers too, all I see these days is prequalifying for high attendance leagues with a 32 slot maximum. That is forcing the issue we got to an extend, if you got 50 sign ups and 30 of them are "medium to fast aliens" why should the midfielder even try to PQ, he is fully aware that he will be missing at least 2 or 3 rounds when attendance is still high and then is welcome to pick up the scraps after the initial hype drops.

Maybe it's worth looking at leagues that still work after countless of years. Take the cityliga for example, the German community is in a limbo state since years but still they manage to get 60+ sign ups every year on a 3 server grid, because they try to cater to fast, medium and "slow" people, everybody is welcome to have some fun and take part in the complete season no matter where they end up qualifying. If attendance drops the grid gets filled with people from the second and third server. Even though not everything is perfect there, it is a system that still works up to today.

edit: Some good points from PMD too, although I would've liked to see them in a proper sentence. With the ddos problems we had and sites taken for granted dying a painful death, a drop of commitment (from racers and organizers) is sadly to be expected.

so why dont these 60+ germans come league racing with us?

Because they're Germans!

Quote from troy :

Because they're Germans!

+1 and also why would they go some place else if they have a winning formula? I know I wouldn't.

I wish I could drive in Cityliga as well. Sure they're all krauts, but at least there's cars to crash into

WARNING!!!! Without reading every post going, so don't shoot me down here.

I used to love racing in leagues, and running them to be honest. You will always get a couple of now shows, but it happens in every sport in real life.

I looked at some leagues, and there seems to be only GTR's, Endurance, or single seaters. What happened to the class of GTI's, like the very very successful OLFSL. When Andre and co (me) used to run this, we used to divise the grid by hotlaps. Example, you had 1 week, to send in your hotlap, in your own time, when you can and before the shut off date, to determain what grid u was one. So 1 week, you could be on grid A, but then on Grid B. This put the drivers that was closest in laptimes on the same grid It worked

TIME.....to run a league properly you need time, effort, website skills, friends to help admin the league, good servers, and obviously drivers. Without any of the above, it will not work. Andre had all of these and more.

The "real" problem, sorry hate the C word for personal reasons is all the Blackwood servers out there. Lets get some variety going on. If you log on just to take a look, and you see 15 BL servers, and 1-2 poss different I think, who whats the point, and log off. And stop all this Multi-Multi class servers. I mean GTR/LX/Single seaters and GTI/UF1....come one...seriously, what is the point??

But LFS isn't dead, its a bit like a vintage bottle of wine. Your saving the best till last, as you know the longer you leave it, the better the taste will be LOL...problem is though, with all fine wines, there is a best before date

Fordie

I miss STCC for that reason too. TBO racing around tracks that fit for it. SO1, SO3, SO2, FE1, FE RallyX. Nice tracks for the class, and it was excellent.

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

i miss stcc for that reason too. Tbo racing around tracks that fit for it. So1, so3, so2, fe1, fe rallyx. Nice tracks for the class, and it was excellent.

+100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 :d

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

It becomes hard though. For instance, I love to drive, so to organize an event and drive is impossible.

Yep found that problem with my "random" servers. I love to drive, but to watch for the "idiots causing havok" is a nightmare...and this is just your drive and race servers, this is not a league server either

Fordie