Online Live For Speed racing is gaining momentum, the LFS community has several well organised events and leagues to choose from. So let's see what racers think about competing online.
Choose the option that best describes your online competition status. Feel free to discuss your thoughts.
I've tried competing the OLFSL but due to lag from my side to their servers I never manage to finish. Had better luck with helping out hosting one race so far. However, it's great fun on any side.
The only downside with organized events is that they require some sort of commitment and "training" which can't always fit in someone's schedule.
Vixen currently, and the disbanded UKLFS league before that. After Vixen I imagine I will look for another league, probably in another car, to take part in.
Im competing in OLFSL, its my first cup thingy. Before that I have raced about 1h long single LFS Suomi (Finland) races. Organized longer private races are the most fun, I dont play much on public servers anymore
I assume that most of you guys are competing close to home (geographically speaking). I imagine that for some people events may be scarce due to their location and to the popularity of LFS in their country or region.
It is the time the leagues choose to race, and the experience the league sometimes requires.
Early/Midday races in Europe don't workout for Pacific timezones. And vice versa.
And since North America doesn't actively have a wide assortment of leagues, you could picture the LFS Online Players graph history circling around the globe really. The peak would be in Europe, and the bottom down in North America... if you get what I mean. It really is too bad, not many leagues have been successful in our area because nobody shows full interest. In the early S1 days, a few startup leagues were made, but never finished. Usually North Americans have to suffice to playing in leagues that support International players and times.
Also, there are not many fast North American Drivers (maybe 10 tops), and the interest from them is dwindling since there is nobody else to race at night. It is not fun winning or having amateur racers lose all the time. That said, you could break it down why there are hardly any leagues here:
-Fast drivers -- Would win most of the leagues in our area, but also have hardly any competition, which isn't fun
-Slow drivers -- Would constantly be losing from the fast drivers in our area, and they lose hope way too fast, also not fun for them.
There ought to be more leagues for slower drivers. They need the professionally organized league to help their driving, also allowing to give them more racing experience in competitive races and pressure. I even wish that some Australian leagues could join up with North American players to make a league, their timezones are better suited for most of us, and they are usually playing LFS when we are playing our last two or three hours of racing in the evening. And their league structures always seem to work out well whenever I read about it.
But I wouldn't like to latch onto some other continent's leagues just to get some gameplay. We really DO need a well thought out league for our locale, but none have seemed successful enough in our region when comparing them to the successfullness of Europe's or Australia's leagues, at least to me.
Been in a few leagues, but ALL have been either cancelled, abandoned, or I left on my own behalf.
S1:
-LX League (cancelled when the MRT came out) (This was fun Josh!)
-Auto-X league (abandoned really)
-A few other small ones that weren't 'big'
S2:
-LFSnal (too big, not active enough, left)
-MoE (still in it, and so far the only league that can fit into my time)
-Other leagues I request to join, but later find myself leaving before season starts
I have been running in (and administrating) leagues at SCORE for almost three years now. And since the start on January 1:st 2003, more than 50% of the racers come from North America. To be exact, more than 47% of the hits on the site is from USA and little more than 12% is from Canada. The rest is mostly from Europe and Australia.
SCORE races has always started at 20:00 and 22:00 CET, witch is 2pm and 4pm EST. Since we race on Sundays, North Americans have no trouble at all joining at those times.
This year, we have had no less then 12 vehicles on the grid for any given race. Many of the wins are made by American as well as many of the track records. So calling North Americans slow is not fair at all
My only problem right now is to convince all those Americans and Canadians that a switch to LFS is a good idea. Not an easy task at all, and I can't really tell why.
I've been racing in the AAL since it first began as an offshoot of the Endurance League, can't remember now but that'd be 1-1.5 years ago.
I like it but sometimes wonder if you lose part of the fun when racing competitively. When I first played S1 I'd race online most nights for an hour or two, nowadays rather than regularly racing online I'll be practicing offline and only racing online in league races.
Hearing about how hard it is to get things going in the States I think we're pretty lucky here in Oz. Great community and high participation with 60 or more racers per event ranging from WR holders to those who just want a bit of fun.
Anyway I'd recommend league racing to anyone, no doubt it's where all the best racing takes place within LFS.
Hmmm very true I think. A lot of the legendary drivers of LFS are hardly online anymore, a real drag I think a lot of them are practicing for leagues like you mention here... and hardly going online :worried: S1 was fun, I always saw regulars and new faces online and it was great, but has the online play really grown old for some veterans???
Maybe it is because the faster drivers don't find the competition they deserve, and winning all the time is actually not all that rewarding when playing online against average drivers.... so they resort to playing in Leagues... hmmm. Oh well
I think, the competition in leagues got really tough, and therefor leagueracers like to practice for their upcoming races. That inherits clean racing on the track/car combo coming up. And that you mostly do not find on public servers cause the difference in skill is sometimes just too high, and instead of some cool clean training races you get a wrecking szenario... :/ Only solution then: Go to priv. servers or practice offline...
I for myself try to practice on public servers, but I see that it often gets boring to new guys, cause they simply cant keep up that fast without practicing (except next league race is on Aston National :P ). It's a difficult situation actually
I really don't see all the terrible wrecking, just accidents people make, it can happen. But it doesn't fit a league racer's preference to crash all the time probably... but online racing can still be fun.
Kind of defeats the purpose of racing online if all the CLEAN racers go race offline or in leagues... you know? It is just leaving LFS' reputation of an online racing sim to private races rather than its very sweet public Get-up-and-Go Sprint races it was known for (S1).... Leaves all the dirty and inexperienced racers online, which is terrible in my opinion. Most average drivers need to learn from the fast drivers, but S2 (because LFS now has damage) leaves the two main driving skill levels VERY much divided because fast drivers want to have a 'perfect' undamaged car and always win with fast times, sucks. Throw a bit of fun once in a while, online racing is still great fun out there..... it just hasn't been put to good use from fast drivers, the interest is very low for pub-ing.
I just joined the OFLS League, I joined because I was told it catered for faster people and slower people, I wouldn't have joined say an elite league or something like that, but in my 1st race I got 14th best hotlap which put me in pool 1 for todays race. Didn't think i'd get that especcially when i've just joined S2 a couple of weeks.
I can't wait till the big 30 lap race, all will be trying not to crash, no one joining mid race and ignoring blue flags etc etc, it should be good fun is my tyres don't explode!
I never practise for a car/track combination in leagues. No time for it.
I race in Nations Cup, ESCC, Thursday Night Race, DPRT Sunday Cup (for danish racers only). Normally its fun...
For my league races (see above), I do a lot of practice in the proceeding week. This tends to take the form of 5 lap sprint races on public servers, so my league racing actually INCREASES the amount of public racing I do. Quid Pro Quo.
