I take it anyone who plays racing games knows a thing or two about racing so take this situation:

The track is Blackwood GP. I'm about to enter the first chicane when I see a message from the person behind me telling me about a blue flag and to let him through. I see no blue flag warning on screen, but decide to let him through on the straight. He obviously thought I was being an idiot, as I saw the same message several times before pulling over on the straight and letting him through.

I ask you: in that chicane where am I supposed to pull over to? It seems reasonable that someone can wait until the straight to get past, right? This person however thought best to call me a F'ing idiot in the post race pile up for that particular misdimeaner.

Secondly, same track. Second to last corner, I brake to about 100KM/H which is a pretty decent speed for that corner, I get rammed in the back by someone who thought 165Km/H was a good speed for that corner. Clearly though the crash was my fault, because next thing I know F'ing idiot is displayed in the top left of my screen again. Along with a ban vote which the sum total of noone voted for.

Last but not least, same track again. I got rammed on the back right tyre which made me lose control of the car and go into a third person and do a fair bit of damage to both cars. Yet according to the person I smashed into through no fault of my own! this was my fault. And to rub salt into the wounds there was a vote with the person who crashed into me saying that if people pressed 1 there would be a non crashing race (Fat chance). At which point everyone voted 1 and that was the end of me.

See I look at it this way, these are people who are apparent pillars of LFS car driving and yet they can take the blame for crashes caused by them. Common responses to challenges about their behavior is the afore mentioned idiot insult or "And your lap time is?".

This isn't right and at the end of the day could end up driving (no pun intended) players away because of eliteism amongst a select group of other players.

Sorry for the long post but I wanted to say something.

I suppose this happened in the demo?

Ehhh, you are a demo racer, and I feel your pain and frustration. Licensed racing is hardly ever like this, so buy a license!!

There are of course mishaps where a lapped car needing to pull over cannot do it because of the turn/situation they are in, and stuff like this happens. But so what? Don't take it personal, let them be the one frustrated, and just ignore them.

lol, thats because your playing demo..which is also why you kept having to say same track over and over :P

While I agree on the fact that this is bad publicity for LFS, I'm sure you know everyone's answer to your problem. Also, I have heard there are good demo servers, best to write them down on a piece of paper and stick with those instead of joining any random server with 6+ people inside.
Anonymity unleashes horrible minds

It's not elitism, it's just plain asshattery and cluelessness.

Since I happen to enjoy the BLGP/XFG combo, I race on demo servers once in while, and I have yet to see the type of behaviour you describe from any of the really fast guys.
Basically there are two groups of players who will act like this: Mediocre drivers who try make up for their lack of skill with aggressiveness and wreckers who cause these situations on purpose to get other players banned.

Either find a group of good demo racers and race them or spring for a license.

sadly the demo disclaimer is there for reasons

And I like the BL1+XRT combo and also race on demo servers. Just now I played a couple of the best races I ever had.

Usually you can find good players on these two servers:

--== CLEAN TURBO RACING ==--
DFH Racing Server

These two servers usually have polite and fast players. You can be slow and race but don't try to be aggressive if you see others are faster.

Problem is with the finding really good servers and sticking with them is that people change servers all the time. So one night a server may be full of cracking players. The following night it may be full of idiots.

You can't win in other words. As a rule and I think a fair few other people follow this rule as well, if someone is up for a banning and he has done nothing wrong that I've seen, I don't vote. Shame a fair few people decide that because a vote is up pressing the 1 key is the best thing they can do.

It's a rant and I realise people may think I'm complaining for the sake of it, but I'm not happy about it and wanted to make a point.

Buy an s2 lisence then . Or infact, try out the S2 for a £1 League, you can win an s2 lisence for free. Loads of fair players applying for that.

Buy S2.. is it perfect no, is it better than demo...... its night and day.

Best £24 you could spend if you have any interest in online racing simulation , In s2 you can't change your name so mud sticks so "most" drivers want to stay clean


John

Sadly you have to get used to pervasive idiocy of a lot of demo players: the newbie who hasn't decided to benefit from spectating and thinks it's nice and fair to do EVERYTHING he wish (I couldn't tell how many times I've read the infamous sentence "Go play CounterStrike"), the pro wrecker, the selfish moron who thinks he's the track owner, the fast noob who cluelessly flags people blue, and scattered among them also a wealth of fair players, and some fast and fair ones. But not everything is bad about the demo scene, although in my opinion huge steps should and could be taken to have a better demo. And, in all truth, you can find some randomly poor servers, some occasionally excellent servers and some overall good or excellent servers too. It takes some time and you get angry really, really too often.
But anyway, as a general advice, I'd say: get used to the poor civilisation expressed by demo servers, and try to act in a sensible and intelligent way, or you'll risk a nervous breakdown. Although this advice of mine could sound harsh, I also have to say I pleasantly witnessed unexpected levels of fairness in some demo racers, so it's just a matter of knowing the right people, and nothing else. There are some races worth remembering in demo servers too, and for me those races are well worth some nuisance.

I thank the demo wreckers for all their work in the demo servers for years, else the demoracers that play the demo lfs for almost 4 years nonstop wouldnt have as much direct reasons to upgrade by buying the game as they have throughout this situation.

PCCD Hi :I have just spent about 2 hours Racing on S2 servers (mainly KY3 with FZR(160+mph))and hardly any incidents and when there was an incident there was allways a "sorry" followed by a "no probs" and we just got on with it.
S2 Rocks its only £24 and you can buy a licence and race the same day the quality of the Racers is 100% better than in demoland and we are all spoiled for choice with cars and tracks .

Get a paper round (or Haggis round )or somthing, and get a licence as soon as you can.
You sound like a decent racer.

SD.

I was thinking about coughing up for the license after playing single player for a while. But then I got online and suddenly I met unemployed village idiots everywhere and this made me wonder if there was any point if this is how possibly a fair few people behave in the full game. From what I've read here that appears to be not the case however, shows what I know I guess...

So I may spring for one if anything for a go in one of the openwheelers...

I really feel for your situation. I'm a licensed driver, but mainly race the BL1/XFG combo, since I know I could really improve myself before moving on to another car and/or combo. The biggest problem with demo-servers aren't the wreckers and/or the newbies. The biggest problem is the absence of admins on those servers. Many people start a server and that's it. I think the devs of LFS should make it impossible to run a server without an admin present. Okay, that system could be fould (as any system) but at least it should prevent many situations as the one you described.

I'm trying to digest some basic rules of racing atm. Here's what the AAL (Australasian Leage) says about blue flag situation at the chicanes...

Quote :

Chicanes: Applies when the faster car catches the back marker during or just before a chicane. There is to be NO passing during the chicane, due to the fact that the turns are in succession and in different directions. Therefore, the back marker has the right to hold his line and the faster car must not make any attempt to pass. Passing should only be done on the exit to the chicane, where the back marker must keep to the very inside of the turn to allow the faster car to continue on the racing line.

http://www.australasianleague.com/rules.html

I'm not sure if this is a universal racing rule (are there any universal racing rules? I'm seriously asking) but hopefully it can help your case a bit.

Anyway- try to have fun

As has been said before, fork out the money and you won't regret it. Many of the large S2 servers are now also part of the Wrecker Barricade - anyone who wrecks and gets reported (by racers), is reported to the server admins of all of the servers. This results in cleaner racing, and a lot of banned wreckers

your wrong there i would say 99% of the people in S2 are very fair
and nice racers but as everywhere in sport full of adrenaline you
have discussions and points of view but i never regret buyin it
its tons of fun and im still not bored from it (normally i play a game lets
say like 2months and then i trash it) probably the best 30 euro i ever invested ^^

so dont let your fun be spoiled by demo stuff remember its free
every idiot can use it but nobody (well almost) wants to risk his S2
licence for wreckin other people or behave stupid, im racin since
a bit more then a year on S2 and i never had the feeling that
its a bad atmosphere full of wreckers here its the opposite
im happy that i can have so much close and fun races

Make everyone on the demo servers read this tutorial.

http://www2.arnes.si/~mocko/lfstutorial

Some have a bad association with it since this is usually the last line alot of people see before they get banned.

Quote from PCCD :

I was thinking about coughing up for the license after playing single player for a while. But then I got online and suddenly I met unemployed village idiots everywhere and this made me wonder if there was any point if this is how possibly a fair few people behave in the full game. From what I've read here that appears to be not the case however, shows what I know I guess...

So I may spring for one if anything for a go in one of the openwheelers...

Unemployed idiots is Demo as they don't have money to buy LFS, but on S2 you have people like Tristan who have enough money to buy other peoples account, but me, I merely got lucky with a ebay company and made about 40 quid outta them when buying a wheel so I bought S2.

Quote from Electrik Kar :

I'm trying to digest some basic rules of racing atm. Here's what the AAL (Australasian Leage) says about blue flag situation at the chicanes...




http://www.australasianleague.com/rules.html

I'm not sure if this is a universal racing rule (are there any universal racing rules? I'm seriously asking) but hopefully it can help your case a bit.

Anyway- try to have fun

I really wish it was. I've ended up in situations where I've been a back marker coming into a chicane and finding that people will ram you as if it was some kind of punishment for not letting them past. As a result since you're turning at the same time you spin out and end up in a wall or in the case of BW sometimes into the barriers on the small island in the middle. And with the raised corner sections on that chicane you will end up with a rolled car and quite often getting the blame for any accidents that happen while you're not in control of the car.


Good story this. Blackwood again, going along the long straight near the start slipstreamed the guy in front of me, overtook leaving plenty of room between me and him when I pulled out and plenty of room when I pulled back in again.

Idiot voted to ban PCCD.

I challenged him on why he was voting to ban me, his response?

"You overtook me, Noob"

Bear in mind I wasn't a backmarker and this was for the lead, pretty crap eh?

Well several people agreed that this was some kind of crime against humanity and voted that I should go.



You just can't win sometimes!

Some kind of moderation would be great. OK granted people with the full S2 game obviously know that this kind of idiocy doesn't go on in the full game, people with just the demo don't know that.

Man, buy a lisence. If you enjoy single player or demo play in the cars offered, you will absolutly LOVE having the full version. The cars are better, the tracks are better, the competition is better, the sky is more blue.

Not saying you'll never run into similar situations, but 90 % of the time, you'll be at the extreme other end of the spectrum, with people who don't want to crash, don't want to crash you, and will even help you out with the slightest provocation.

The demo servers really let LFS down in my opinion. You can have some really good fun on there, but its rare. Because your anonymous you have no comebacks, no licence to loose or name to tarnish. Incidents like what you describe are rare on S2 servers. You get the odd guy who thinks his got more right to the road than you, but generally its really good fun. There are a few S2 servers which tend to have an admin in peak times of the day - normally team servers, these are the best ones to go on for clean and fair racing. The standard of racing is miles above the average demo servers, even though you can have an excellent race in either.

The full licence is well worth it, I've had S2 since the day you could purchase it, and I'm still not bored of it. Yet

Quote from kurent :

And I like the BL1+XRT combo and also race on demo servers. Just now I played a couple of the best races I ever had.

Usually you can find good players on these two servers:

--== CLEAN TURBO RACING ==--
DFH Racing Server

These two servers usually have polite and fast players. You can be slow and race but don't try to be aggressive if you see others are faster.

I agree with what you said, those two servers are pretty good at keeping the "wreckers" and etc. out of there (but it is sad that I have the slowest average time on both of them though).