The last couple of days we've been looking at options to try and end all the disputes about who takes part, who doesnt, how its not fair and whatnot, so heres our solution.

1 European only qualification round
3 races, 1 night, same start time. March 1st @ 19UTC (this round only!)
2 drivers per country, per race.
20min Qual, 40min (approx) race.

This qualification round will consist of the following combo's:
(LFSWS Rnd 1) UF1 @ Aston Cadet (35 laps)
(LFSWS Rnd 5) FXR @ Aston Historic (20 laps)
(LFSWS Rnd 8) FO8 @ Westhill International (30 laps)


Heres the tricky bit...
Because we've already agreed to allow 11 countries to participate in this series, revoking their admission would be rather harsh, and something we dont wish to do. So, the self-appointed team leaders for each country will be contacted by PM in the next 24hrs, as well as the wannabe managers who are up for vote (majority vote wins, a 50/50 vote = 'yes', no reply to PM = 'no') . They will be asked if they wish to give up their invite, and take part in this qualification round, if they agree, then 1 invite and their name are entered into this qual event. Likewise if they decline, then they dont.
We need at least 4 invites to make this worthwhile, if we get that, then we will nominate countries which we feel have the signups able to compete in the full series, and they will take part in this qualification. If we dont get 4 invites 'donated', then we're going to be mean and throw everyone into the pot, all 11 countries will take part in the qualification round, and remaining 5 places will be taken by countries we nominate to take part.
Its harsh, and hopefully we wont feel the need to do this by force, however this solution gets everything over and done with on 1 night, it gives each country a chance to prove their place.

Standard series points will be awarded to racers, then at the end the points totalled and the available invites to the series will be given out to those with highest points total. The end result would still see 11 European countries taking part, alongside the 5 non-European teams.

The deadline for replies from Team Managers (and TM's to be) to state their preference will be 00UTC Feb 23rd (2hrs short of 7 days time). If managers wish to discuss this amongst teammates, please do so asap to avoid missing the deadline.


LFSWS Team

K if I understood correctly, there will be 1 round of elimination of countries, so the number of 16 reduced to 11?

Quote from chanoman315 :

K if I understood correctly, there will be 1 round of elimination of countries, so the number of 16 reduced to 11?

That's correct, this is only for European nations though. Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, and USA are all guaranteed a place in the season proper. We are counting Russia as a European nation.

Quote from joshdifabio :

That's correct, this is only for European nations though. Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, and USA are all guaranteed a place in the season proper. We are counting Russia as a European nation.

Thank God, i was having a heart attack, so those combos are the official ones for the entire season?
Now we can start practicing?

Those 3 are taken from the official calendar, the full version of which can be found here

I don't think I understand this "invite" thing - care to elaborate, please?

Well... I can tell you how I can understand this...

We have 11 already invited to the WS european nations, right?
If 4 or more will accept to participate in european qual round then it's fine. If less than 4, then all 11 invited nations will have to participate.

I think that this is fair and i think that we would participate at will, but i'm going to ask russians if they want it or not....

I reckon everyone should be thrown in, I hope i'm wrong but from what I understand a team can either accept to race in the qualification round or they can decline.

What if only the stronger teams accept to race in this quali round and the weaker line ups sit back with a gaurantee'd position in the league?

Good to see that something differn't has came up to fix the problem though.

Quote from Bawbag :

I reckon everyone should be thrown in, I hope i'm wrong but from what I understand a team can either accept to race in the qualification round or they can decline.

What if only the stronger teams accept to race in this quali round and the weaker line ups sit back with a gaurantee'd position in the league?

Good to see that something differn't has came up to fix the problem though.

We agreed that it's not fair to force teams to risk losing their place after we had already announced that they'd been accepted.

Hopefully most, if not all of the European nations will do the right thing and decide to take part in the qualification event!

Quote from r4ptor :

I don't think I understand this "invite" thing - care to elaborate, please?

11 European nations have been accepted into the competition so far.

• Czech Republic
  
• Denmark
  
• Estonia
  
• Finland
  
• Germany
  
• Great Britain
  
• Ireland
  
• Netherlands
  
• Poland
  
• Russia
  
• Serbia

Each of these nations is eligible to take part in the qualification event, along with those European nations which were not accepted. It's not required that these 11 nations take part in qualification, and if they refuse to do so, they will automatically qualify for the competition. However, should less than 4 of these nations accept to take part in the qualification event, all 11 will be forced to do so!

For each one of these nations that agrees to take part in the qualifying event, an invite will be put up for grabs. For example; if 6 of those 11 teams agree to take part, the 6 teams which score the most points in the qualification event will be granted entry to LFS WS!

Do I assume correctly, that the races will take part at the same time? This would mean, we have to use 6 different drivers for that qualification?

Also, we have currently 6 European nations not on the list, fulfilling the 6+ signed-up drivers. How would this work in case of the 11+5 qualification mode?

kr
Lion

Quote from TheBlackLion :

Do I assume correctly, that the races will take part at the same time? This would mean, we have to use 6 different drivers for that qualification?

Yes, this is partly to ensure that no nations cheat with "account sharing" during the qualification races.

Quote from TheBlackLion :

Also, we have currently 6 European nations not on the list, fulfilling the 6+ signed-up drivers. How would this work in case of the 11+5 qualification mode?

We don't expect to get more than 16 teams wanting to take part in the qualification event. If we do, however, we'll most likely filter the additional nations based on the number of sign-ups and the quality of their signed-up drivers. Those 11 teams which were previously accepted in to the series would be guaranteed a spot in the qualification event should they choose to take part.

This "solution" is what Nations Cup and this Series SHOULD've always been and how I and many people have imagined it. Rounds of local (continental) qualifications or knockouts, and then a series (probably shorter that these 8 events from LFSWS) would be the final round.

So, now you have a chance to make qualification rounds for everybody, why only Europeans. Out of applied sign-ups make 1 Pacific group, 2 Euroasian groups chosen randomly, in each space for 16 nations, and make everybody fight for their places in the series. Top 5 from each go through. That would give a chance to more nations that have applied, and same for everybody, and keep the format of LFSWS with (now) 15 nations.

Quote from joshdifabio :

If we do, however, we'll most likely filter the additional nations based on the number of sign-ups and the quality of their signed-up drivers.

I understand the number of sign-ups part. But how is the quality of signed-up drivers determined?
(Sorry for bugging you, but this time, it would be nice to know the elimination criteria before the elimination is done.)

Quote from Misko :

This "solution" is what Nations Cup and this Series SHOULD've always been and how I and many people have imagined it. Rounds of local (continental) qualifications or knockouts, and then a series (probably shorter that these 8 events from LFSWS) would be the final round.

So, now you have a chance to make qualification rounds for everybody, why only Europeans. Out of applied sign-ups make 1 Pacific group, 2 Euroasian groups chosen randomly, in each space for 16 nations, and make everybody fight for their places in the series. Top 5 from each go through. That would give a chance to more nations that have applied, and same for everybody, and keep the format of LFSWS with (now) 15 nations.

We basically only have European sign-ups, so there wouldn't really be any point in holding a Pacific qualification with just Australia, and maybe New Zealand, who don't have a single sign-up at this point. Take a look at the number of posts in each country-s sub-forum to see what I mean. There simply have not been enough interested nations to warrant qualification events for lots of regions.

Quote from TheBlackLion :

I understand the number of sign-ups part. But how is the quality of signed-up drivers determined?
(Sorry for bugging you, but this time, it would be nice to know the elimination criteria before the elimination is done.)

If, for example, Hungary and one other country, Country X, were vying for the last place in the qualification event, and Hungary had 6 sign-ups to the 7 of Country X, but Hungary's sign-ups included Norbi, Csimpok, revenger, mot3c, csurdongulos etc. we would probably use common sense and decide to include Hungary. However, we don't think it's too likely that we'll have more than 16 European nations wanting to compete in the qualification event.

Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Mexico and USA could easily form one qualifying group yet maintaining reasonable times for events if I'm not hugely mistaken. European countries could form 3 other quali groups. Oh well, this is useless. It's already decided.

Quote from mogster :

Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Mexico and USA could easily form one qualifying group yet maintaining reasonable times for events if I'm not hugely mistaken.

Those non-eu teams are all already qualified, what's the point in them having a qualifying round? We want representitives from all around the world in the competition proper, not only Europe, that is why these nations don't need to qualify.

Quote from mogster :

European countries could form 3 other quali groups. Oh well, this is useless. It's already decided.

Once again, LOOK at the number of sign-ups from European nations. How on Earth do you expect there to be three European qualifying groups from that?! We don't even expect to fill one!

By Pacific I meant Americas + Australia and surroundings, becuase they have reasonably good pings among themselves. Old and New World groups may be better names. And point of that would be to include Canada and few others that have applied.

First Nations Cup is what motivated Serbian people to buy licences and join national team. Something similar might have happened in Venezuela for example if they had a chance to be included. This is a case with small nations without national leagues, these kind of competitions are great for that. On the other hand Hungary, Spain and France have very big national leagues and they are not interested at all in a World Cup type of thing, they are very happy in their own communities (and language barrier is there as well).

Quote from joshdifabio :

If, for example, Hungary and one other country, Country X, were vying for the last place in the qualification event, and Hungary had 6 sign-ups to the 7 of Country X, but Hungary's sign-ups included Norbi, Csimpok, revenger, mot3c, csurdongulos etc. we would probably use common sense and decide to include Hungary.

Csimpok tells me something, but I just don't know what...
That worries me a little, because if my knowledge about other drivers worldwide is as good as your knowledge about Austrian drivers, you might probably not recognize any of us. And that wouldn't do justice to the strength of the team, we presented. Well, at least jatino and huHu_ should be known...

Misko (not entirely aimed at you btw),

This isnt the finished, how its going to be every season, format for the series, its the first year format, its what we want from the series in the future made smaller and easier to manage, but whats been infuriating is the fact that we, the organisers, apparently arent allowed to do this, were not allowed to decide how we want to start the series, apparently that has to be debated for weeks after we say how we want to do things, weeks after people have signed up to take part.

In future seasons, once people start seeing the success of the series (hopefully) then they'll be more inclinded to want to take part, and we'll have considerably larger signup and we will start using multiple servers, and *possibly* different approaches, and if that encourages more people to buy LFS licenses, become more involved in their community or decide to take the leap into organised racing, then thats great, its not our primary target i guess, but it'd be fantastic if we somehow inadvertently helped in other ways.
Right now though, we want something managable so we can assess things and make sure they're going to work with maybe 30+ countries involved, however we dont want to have 30+ teams on our backs the very first season if there are any problems which need resolving quickly.

Were mindful that the actions we take, as well as the overall feel of the series will have a big impact on public opinion of it, and for that reason were trying to enforce a few rules to ensure things run fairly so the final results hold up pretty well and making sure the teams have a good number of signups so we dont lose teams midway through. If we had 30+ teams and the balance just wasnt right, its hard convincing the whole community things are fixed, but starting with a smaller group and checking things, then introducing more than double the number of teams is far easier to get right. It might not be appreciated in the LFS community that were actively try to exclude a lot of countries, but they're only done because we feel its in the best interest of the series, were certainly not doing it because we think only theres only 16 teams who should be involved in a worldwide event, or because we like disappointing people when we exclude them, but its done because we feel we need to start off this way. Personally i think its a lot to ask of any new series, to expect it to hit its ultimate goal at the first attempt, and to do it accurately, fairly and faultlessly etc, and we just want the chance to get things rolling and let momentum gather in time, without p*ssing off half the community in the process.

Holding regional qualifying stages, then going to the finals, this would have meant the season stretching much longer than we'd planned, or having shorter finals at the very least. With there being about 5 European countries to each non-European country which has expressed an interest, or is likely to in future, that means we'd have to hold 1 non-EU group, and then at least 3 EU groups, each one having their own races, and the non-EU at a completely different time i'd imagine. Thats 4 races per qualifying round, of which each needs organising and then admin'ing for the race.
But ultimately, it would have involved more countries than we actually want to involve at this stage. It complicates matters far too much at this early stage, and we dont want to screw any chance of getting it off the ground at the first time of asking, because of peer pressure demanding that everyone who wants to drive MUST be allowed to.

We're not ignorant and dismiss general opinion without thought, but with some issues we have to be allowed to run the series how we think is best for it in the short term and the long term, if people take issue with something *and* can offer advice on alternatives, we'll listern, but some stuff we might act on, some stuff we wont or might not be able to at that time, but we'll at least answer to questions and suggestions, rather than ignore them and hopefully explain the reasons for our actions.

We want a successful series from this as much as anyone else, which is why were listerning, but we also have our own opinions, and sometimes these will have to be accepted as being our decision.

i would like to know if drivers from Slovakia should register on forum http://www.lfshosting.net/phpbb3/index.php or should we wait for european qualification and then register there?

Another question: Is the date for the first round (1st of March) still valid, because it is on the same day as the European qualification? Regarding the matter of starting times, it would be possible...

Quote from TheBlackLion :

Another question: Is the date for the first round (1st of March) still valid, because it is on the same day as the European qualification? Regarding the matter of starting times, it would be possible...

The calendar was updated just over a week ago.

Quote from Ondrejko :

i would like to know if drivers from Slovakia should register on forum http://www.lfshosting.net/phpbb3/index.php or should we wait for european qualification and then register there?

I'll get back to you on that.

Quote from Ondrejko :

i would like to know if drivers from Slovakia should register on forum http://www.lfshosting.net/phpbb3/index.php or should we wait for european qualification and then register there?

We have the same question, but we have already qualified...
We don't really want to register there, because we have good forum (liveforspeed.ru) and going to use it anyway...

Quote from joshdifabio :

The calendar was updated just over a week ago.

Thanks and sorry, my mistake. I always read "1 March" as 1st of March, but it actually says "Round one on 22nd of March".