Are there any servers out there that cater to rookies, as I feel that some of the servers are becoming elitist. Not all of them, there are some players out there who help rookies out, but there are some who ban rookies the second they see them.

DK

Lmao!!! whats wrong with ya? too scared
Come join O2 and we get racing

Sure. And yes, I am scared. I guess it's down to the fact that the other drivers are hitting their marks perfectly.

DK

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We used to run the ukct.net Beginners Server, but to be perfectly honest it was mostly just used for being silly.

On the occasions when we did get some good racing going on, some elitist or experienced type of person or other would spoil it by getting all arsey at people being inexperienced. on a BEGINNERS server, FGS.

Anyway, to cut a long story short...

To go back to my point, do you feel that there is an element of elitism in the community?

DK

One tip: Stay clean.

Respect the yellow and blue flags, don't crash, bumpdraft or do other silly moves and you should be OK on most servers, keyword being most because there's some servers a bit rougher on their enforcement of rules.

Plus, racing with faster people WILL make you faster! It's a fact, so go online! If you don't go online, you're missing so much from the game.

I do follow those rules, and still get some unsavoury messages along the lines of 'N00b. Practice', and suchlke

DK

the only thing I can say is go to an empty server

Quote from DieKolkrabe :

To go back to my point, do you feel that there is an element of elitism in the community?

The title of the thread, and your original post..

Quote from DieKolkrabe :

Are there any servers out there that cater to rookies, as I feel that some of the servers are becoming elitist. Not all of them, there are some players out there who help rookies out, but there are some who ban rookies the second they see them.

.. was a question about rookie servers, not a complaint about elitism.

On the topic of noobs vs. elitism, some interesting reading can be found here and here and here.

Quote from DieKolkrabe :

I do follow those rules, and still get some unsavoury messages along the lines of 'N00b. Practice', and suchlke

DK

Of course that will happen, if you can't control your car and slide out of track in every other corner, or don't pay enough attention to traffic. I mostly race just one single combo per month (stcc), and obviously will become quite fast in that over time. I have absolutely no problems with even dead slow drivers, as long as they pay attention to traffic, and I can trust them to be able to pass them safely, without a fear they won't notice me and do something unexpected, like blocking or loosing control. We've all been beginners and we should respect them as long as they have the right additude.

If you can control your car enough to stay on the track (and racing-line) and safely let the leaders by in a safe place when blue flagged, you can be as slow as you want and no-one should really have a problem with that.

I haven't seen any elitism, except in redline servers where the same people have raced the same 2 combos for like 6 months...Thats an acceptable exception, but I stopped racing there because I started to get complaints about blocking (lol), cos I wasn't as fast as the top, but tried to race for positions (ultra cleanly though).

Quote from DieKolkrabe :

I do follow those rules, and still get some unsavoury messages along the lines of 'N00b. Practice', and suchlke

DK

There is a bit of elitism, but only from people who "think" they're quick.
i find that most of the community is helpful.
I run an Irish Server "Racing For Ireland", mainly for the irish community but everyone's welcome. Feel free to go on their anytime. I try to admin as much as i can.
If i'm around i'll pass any advice i can.

username: nikimere
ingame name: T7R|nikimere

Quote from nikimere :

There is a bit of elitism, but only from people who "think" they're quick.
i find that most of the community is helpful.
I run an Irish Server "Racing For Ireland", mainly for the irish community but everyone's welcome. Feel free to go on their anytime. I try to admin as much as i can.
If i'm around i'll pass any advice i can.

username: nikimere
ingame name: T7R|nikimere

Yeah, but thats a test server for those two cars and it gets pretty boring pretty quick!
Why not try some different combos on the server

As long as you know the basics of how to drive the car then you shouldn't really have a problem on any server. If you've never driven the car/combo before, I would recommend giving it a quick try yourself offline so you can get a feel for the way it handles and look for braking areas or danger spots without the risk of someone yelling at you.

If you join a server with a combo you're inexperienced with, drive slow and let people pass you. Figuring out the track and car is your priority, the speed will come later. And if you try flat out racing when you don't have a clue, you're likely to take someone out and that won't look good.

Brakes = good. Apologies = good. Not ending someone's race @ T1 = better

On the Storm Racing server, we try to help out people as best we can, we have started making training courses (With cones for braking, turn-in and apex points)

Quote from CSU1 :

Yeah, but thats a test server for those two cars and it gets pretty boring pretty quick!
Why not try some different combos on the server

because at the moment there are alot of irish drivers in that league. trying to boost our competitivness within it. it'll only be like that for 5 weeks then its back to normal.
anyway, how can it be boring? it can only get boring if you winning races by a mile.

Quote from CSU1 :

Yeah, but thats a test server for those two cars and it gets pretty boring pretty quick!
Why not try some different combos on the server

a bit off topic but I had to:

It's the combo of the next XFR/UFR league. Wouldn't make sense if people come to the announced test-server and couldn't train the right combo for the next round of the league.

"pretty boring pretty quick!"
Don't get me wrong but watching your stats and seeing that you just did there 38 laps with the xfr and 8 laps with the ufr and you are 4 and 1/2 seconds off from a real quick times let me think that If you think the track is boring after driving so few laps then LFS is not the right game for you. Because you only get faster by practice and practice and by practice.

I did there ~550 laps with the xfr and still feel slow sometimes and always find things to improve my laptimes a little bit etc.

Quote from DieKolkrabe :

I do follow those rules, and still get some unsavoury messages along the lines of 'N00b. Practice', and suchlke

DK

I used to get fed up with people not being tolerant of my being rubbish. I'm slowly getting better - at driving and at not caring. One thing that helps is my new rule where if I'm not really really sure I'll get past I don't even try. Just trying to keep up with the fast drivers without crashing helps me.

One thing I notice with complete new drivers in a server is they tend to drive way over their limit. Be it setup or just their newbieness skill, they can't keep a racing line or don't know it at all, spin out, push the front out, brake late and run off the track, etc. By slowing down behind the pack and running a bit easier, they would learn the track and car much easier and quicker.

That being said, I'll say this again as I say often in "newbie" threads. It is up to us, the veterans to stop yelling at the new guys and stop calling them noobs in the servers and educate them. Offer them some help. Send them a good easy setup. It doesn't take much to be nice to the new guys in the servers. The benefit is in the future, you have another opponent to possibly have great races with rather than loosing a future LFS'er because he's put off by the community.\

Last night, I was at WE in the GTR's. I think I sent my setup to 4 people who were all over the place. At least 3 of them continued on to several PB's.

@mrodgers, I agree with all your points, and willl keep an eye out to race you sometime, but how likely is it that the experienced players will help out the new racers?

I help out, even though I'm not very fast. On a different note, I found that having a custom camera view in a roof (for the closed wheel cars)/roll bar view (for the open wheel racers) helps with the placement of the car.

I acknowledge the fact I'm slow, and yes, I'll get better with practice, but if the experienced players don't let me practice, how do I get faster? Like mrodgers said, it's either practice, or leave the LFS community.

DK

Doesn't matter how quick you are, everyone needs practice. Could be to get faster, more consistent, become more aware.... But everyone needs practice as every race is different!

Might be the same cars and track, but it's human opponents, their lines will change so your have to change! You can be the quickest hot lapper in the world, but if you are racing someone else, you have to take different lines, so keep practicing and just try to be mindful of others (Keep aware of where everyone is - look button come in very handy!)

Quote from DieKolkrabe :

@mrodgers, I agree with all your points, and willl keep an eye out to race you sometime, but how likely is it that the experienced players will help out the new racers?

I help out, even though I'm not very fast. On a different note, I found that having a custom camera view in a roof (for the closed wheel cars)/roll bar view (for the open wheel racers) helps with the placement of the car.

I acknowledge the fact I'm slow, and yes, I'll get better with practice, but if the experienced players don't let me practice, how do I get faster? Like mrodgers said, it's either practice, or leave the LFS community.

DK

Just ask (maybe not in the middle of a race), and I'm sure you'll find at least one on each server who is willing to help you out...

Being a noob is scary comign from the demo to S2 because of all the banning and making a bad reputation for yourself and thus being banned from other servers and not being able to join a league or team. There's also the 'l33t' who have MOVE OVER NOOB IM FASTER THAN JOO bound to go off every second someone doesn't let them past, blue flag or not.

I've read that if you can beat the Pro AI then you're ready to go online. The only problem is the pro AI is slow, and even though you can whip them offline, when you go online you get absolutely creamed by the guys that are fast or wrecked by the complete noobs and unclean drivers.

Then there's the whole blue flag thing where some guys make a huge fuss over nothing and other times when the noob doesn't even bother to pull over even though the faster lapping driver is all up in their mirror.

On a lot of server if you ask for a setup from someone fast the request gets either ignored or the set is private or team, which is f/e. But even an earlier revision or an easy set that I'm sure people have would be nice to send across to a noob just to get the gearing right in the first place if anything that can help heaps, not everyone downloads all the sets off inferno and even inferno doesn't have all combos.

In the end the noob ends up not playing online at all and just hotlapping in single player mode against AI.

Maybe it's just me and the servers I go on

i have only ever seen one "team set only", and it was on a drag server no less, i always share my sets (which are usually tweaked inferno's) because i know when i started i didn't have any sets either.

You will get creamed by the people who are faster than you, and that's alright, as long as you get out of the way when they are lapping you it's alright, you will get faster!

Perhaps it's just the servers i go on? (BTW - That tends to be the STCC one, the [MG] one and the Redline's)

Hi all when my server is up and running every 1 is welcome except wreckers! It will be up when i move into my new flat hopefully in the next couple of weeks. PEACE AND GOOD CLEAN RACING