I was really disappointed to read in the latest edition of AutoSimSport an article about wreckers that appears to indicate that CTRA has a problem with wreckers.

I quote
"Wreckers can even be found everywhere, as I said, even on the highly-rated CTRA servers in LFS. Even though they sometimes get reported, most just shrug, call them names (and get kicked off CTRA for it), and move on. Don't get me wrong, it's not CTRA’s fault they have a wrecker problem in some servers, it’s just the nature of things. When left alone and unsupervised, the wreckers crawl out of the woodwork and show their ugly faces."

it goes on to say
"CTRA is not much of a place for the serious racer nowadays. At least not in the tin-tops {haven't tested the open-wheel servers}. Where CTRA has a post-race report system, Race2Play has, at least, one live steward. Where CTRA has a somewhat forgiving first turn policy {or so it seems}, Race2Play has the first lap punt rule, resulting in a drive through. Guess where I do my racing these days? Yep.
And this has nothing to do with the ever-present pissing contest of sims. It's just a matter of where I get the best overall experience. If Race2Play starts to organize LFS races, I'll be a part of them faster than you can say, ‘My sim is better than yours.’.)"

That to me completely exaggerates the situation. How many proper wreckers have we seen in CTRA? Very few to my knowledge, certainly nothing to indicate CTRA has any sort of a wrecker problem
I've been in Race 1 a few times recently and it's been very civilised
Of course you get the occasional crappy driver and very occasional (as far as i can tell) deliberate wrecker, but that article makes it sound like a free for all wreckfest.

Meh... i don't know what my point is other than my sadness in another piece of very sloppy (and untrue) journalism.

Magnus Tellbom, you should be ashamed of yourself.

It's more like LFS in general has the lets call it "casual gamer problem", rather than blaming it on CTRA which is rather good for a server seeing such amounts of traffic.

But seriously, what more needs to be said than ASS.

i canot believe what i am reading, it is utter un researched and uninformed bull tbh

yes it is !!!
ctra rules

i think its down to ass mainly being focused on like rfator etc were thing are mainly more serious were with lfs it ranges from ver serious to just joining a server and having fun, and from this angle i think they are blind to what its like in lfs and that,unlike some rfactor leauges/servers etc, your head isnt bited off for making a mistake, to me they are clasifying people who make mistakes as wreckers WRONG!!!!

Its not so much that CTRA has a "wrecker problem" its LFS in general Can have a "wrecker problem".

The thing is, to outsiders the CTRA is associated with LFS, and so people tend to believe CTRA is part of LFS... its not, its a third-party addon, just like any other insim driven script. Fix the main LFS problem, and all will trickle down to all the additional organisations.

Its not an obvious problem, as people will claim to have never seen an actual wrecker on a S2 server, but the thing is, they do exist, and they are banned from most servers. But there will always be the one or two that get through.

I dont agree that its sloppy journalism, its a viewpoint which the author has had. But I think its.. not equal to compare Race2Play and CTRA to begin with.

I read it a few weeks ago, thought about it for a moment and just figured "ASS".

CTRA doesn't have live admin, but it's not a pay-to-play service. It's also important to remember that they've held a whopping 1,759 races (at time of writing). We've held 122,303. They've clocked up an astounding 28,000 race entries while we've only managed to muster just shy of 900,000. They've raced a stonking 820,000 laps. We've only cranked out, between us, a measly 7 million laps.

I'm afraid I have no idea what their reporting procedures are like. I only know what ours are like. I don't know if theirs is more or less comprehensive than ours, or if it's as transparent. I don't know if they have a downloadable replay of every single reported/upheld incident ever reported on their system, like we have on ours, nor do I know if their appeals system is as functional as ours, or if their determination to uphold real-racing standards compares at all with ours. I just know we got a bit of a knocking by Mr Tellbom in ASS. We didn't skip a beat

Quote from mkinnov8 :

I dont agree that its sloppy journalism, its a viewpoint which the author has had.

Had he actually based his comments on facts rather than a possible bad 30mins on a server then i would agree, but stating "it's not CTRA’s fault they have a wrecker problem in some servers" is sloppy journalism because it's a load of made up tosh.

Still, he's proved he has the perfect qualifications for a job at the Daily Mail.

Right, i'm off to trash a few unsuspecting drivers. I know a good hiding place by the bridge at Blackwood

Quote from The Moose :

Right, i'm off to trash a few unsuspecting drivers. I know a good hiding place by the bridge at Blackwood

Antlers sticking out are a giveaway...keep your eyes out lads.

Magnus has a tendency to write his own opinions as if they were the ultimate truth so I wouldnt take that article too seriously.

tbh, if he doesnt want to race in CTRA its his loss.

i dont know about the skills to write in the mail more like the skills to write in the sun

i think sam's post sums it up, the ctra hold more races has more people pass through its fingers, if you look at the percentage of wreckers to good honest racers it is tiny

Who reads ASS anyway? Shame on you.

CTRA doesn't have any worse driving standards than any other servers. They're not any better either, unfortunately, which brings into question whether the whole system is really worth the amount of effort required to run it, but given that I don't run it I'm not all that fazed by it.

on the lower servers driving standards are not nessiserily much better than other servers, the differance is that people have a means of reporting wrong doings of other drivers when an admin isnt around or even if one is, cos on other servers even if there is an admin on at the time the chances of him seeing stuff going wrong is small and thats when problems arise and people start banning people etc without actually seeing replays etc, were the ctra system really shines is on the license requirement servers, on those servers it makes a huge differance imo cos for a driver to get to that stage they must not be out to intentially wreck or annoy others

Maybe my view is somewhat distorted by the amount of drivers, but imo the driving standards are better in the higher tier servers than the entry-level ones. That would indicate that the system is actually working. Of course the driving on CTRA1 is going to be of the same quality as other public servers simply because there are no restrictions.

edit: beaten by the Brit /sulk

I didn't really find anything disputable in the article. He has his personal preference and he wrote it out in an editorial.

I enjoy CTRA, but it is pretty tolerant on poor driving (though a far sight less so than normal un-adminned pickup servers) and can be a very frustrating experience at times.

lol

edit: i see were your coming from dwb but my thing is everyone has to start somewere and so the higher up you go the more strongly the rules are enforced

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

I didn't really find anything disputable in the article.

Sorry, but indicating CTRA has a wrecker problem and saying it's not a place for serious racing are two highly disputable statements.

I usually race on high-licensed server, and I don't know any wreckers there. This article is a complete rubbish. How could anyone know about any drivers, without the license to watch them. Some "journalist" thinks he/she knows everything about everything.:dnfnoob::mad:

Well Magnus is Gold-licenced, so he ought to know his stuff. I think it's just very unfortunate that he's chosen the public pickup racing format of CTRA to compare with Tim McArthur's R2P league racing hub. That's like comparing apples with bananas, frankly. It's not a comparison that can reasonably be drawn. Magnus is entitled to his opinion, and if he doesn't like CTRA then that's entirely his right.

I find Magnus's rather funky attempts at drawing direct comparisons between R2P and CTRA somewhat disappointing because of the unnatural twist that's required in order to make the comparison stick. The fact that the result of that twisting appears to reflect negatively on CTRA, for anyone who knows no better when reading his article, is doubly disappointing. On that level I have to say the attempt at balanced journalism fails dismally. But comparing these two systems is a fail in itself. As I said, you can't do it without perverting the premise and/or twisting the criteria.

In preparation for this article, my PM box has always been open. The fact that no approach was made, no questions about our methods or the reasons for them asked, and thus clearly no balanced research performed nor background provided.. well, that's just more of the same, and without intending to sound too disparaging, merely a classic piece of ASS.

Quote from The Moose :

Sorry, but indicating CTRA has a wrecker problem and saying it's not a place for serious racing are two highly disputable statements.

All public LFS servers have wrecker problems. As he says, it's the nature of the game.

Not a place for serious racing is more disputable, but it's an opinion in an editorial piece. You can be mad that he has a different opinion than you, but it's his opinion nonetheless.

edit: and yeah, comparing CTRA to R2P is pretty silly.

Btw, Sam, I might be interested in writing a piece for A.S.S. re: X2 when it comes out (or around that time).

Quote from SamH :

Well Magnus is Gold-licenced.

Sam you should invite him to drive again but with a Platinum/Int. A; having access to high level servers he'll have the whole picture, not a tiny exposure about the learning servers.
If a fast driver is forced to drive a while on Race 1, he/she will find it frustrating trying to survive T1, race after race.
He's wrong not doing the previous research before writing the editorial, but you Sam being the CTRA head should help him fix his short-vision.

dwb in my eyes it doesnt matter if it is an editorial the facts need to be there still and still has to be balanced and not be utter opinion(and even worse misplaced opinion)

Personally we are lax in our processing and enforcement. But then it's supposed to be a learning environment where drivers teach drivers to race in a pick-up and play format. It's still WIP and there is still stuff missing to help with this learning, but it's up to you guys to teach the community how to race, we only give you all the tools.

I don't know if it's a compliment or not to be directly compared to R2P which is a service you pay, what $12.95 for a standard membership and 17.97 for a premium? On top of that R2P is a LEAGUE organizer, we don't do that....YET You cannot get pick-up races on this.

sounds like he's on the payroll to me. As a newcomer in the past couple of weeks I have never experienced a deliberate take-out and I have had some of the best races since starting online racing early 2000 in various formats. There are always going to be incidents as there are in real life, but I think the CTRA servers are a pretty friendly arena for those of us who are never going to be world record holders to ply our trade. ASS, well quite.

Flyinsi