What about this: Should someone download the full sized S2 (since all track/car data is there), allow him to connect to every server. Then when the person is connected to that server, then according to his license status allow/disallow them to connect to the race.

This way everybody with S1 license could watch the racing in S2 full, see .mpr replays from leagues etc.

Allow the users according to the "level of unlocking" enter the tracks/cars.

Leave the demo as it is now. "Merge" S1 and S2 only...

Example> A user has the S1 license. He connects to a server with SouthCity Classic, where the people race the FZ50, but with S1 license LX6 is available, so he can join. He could race against the FZ50, but would not be allowed to drive it, not until he buys his S2 license.
Should this user connect to a server with Aston, then he could only spectate.

I think this way the community would only benefit from it, yesterday I saw some S2 servers running Fernbay tracks with GTi/GT... But for users with S1 license only its not possible to join that server. Although they could.

Your ideas?

People connecting to servers to watch the server would suck bandwidth off from the host. That sucks. And the demo racers arent even paying for it.

Being able to watch replay files from S1 or S2 by anyone is another story and shouldnt be that hard. But what is 24 Pounds to be able to see and drive all?

(Funny fact: while trying to type the POUND sign, I launched LFS because I pressed ALT + L; my LFS shortcut! I forgot about it! Oh happy days!)

exactly, you get what you pay for. purchase S1 + s2 and get S1 and S2 content

Ok, let the demo users out, but with the S1 license only, there are not many servers and why don't let them see S2? Or join a S1 track and see S2 cars flying by? There are some S2 servers with S1 track (BW,FE,SC..) and with GTi/GT, why shoud the person with S1 license not be able to join?

And it would be a good marketing move, cause people say £24 is too much. Buy S1 license for £12, see what it is like in S2 and very likely he will buy S2 too...

LFS devs will not do this for security reasons. It will be a lot more easy to crack LFS if whole content is already decrypted illepall

Quote from Phlos :

LFS devs will not do this for security reasons. It will be a lot more easy to crack LFS if whole content is already decrypted illepall

he? why shoud it be decryped? illepall

Quote from Chaos :

Ok, let the demo users out, but with the S1 license only, there are not many servers and why don't let them see S2? Or join a S1 track and see S2 cars flying by? There are some S2 servers with S1 track (BW,FE,SC..) and with GTi/GT, why shoud the person with S1 license not be able to join?

And it would be a good marketing move, cause people say £24 is too much. Buy S1 license for £12, see what it is like in S2 and very likely he will buy S2 too...

that would be nice if lfs was like that

Quote from Chaos :

he? why shoud it be decryped? illepall

How you think the game will show S2 cars (or tracks ?) if the content is not decrypted ?

Quote from Phlos :

How you think the game will show S2 cars (or tracks ?) if the content is not decrypted ?

well I don't know how it's done... if the S2 code is encrypted or if there is some oher kind of lock... do you?

and if you red further posts, i suggested to leave the demo out... only merge S1 and S2 this way... cause if you have unlocked S1, a part of the code is unlocked/decrypted...

Let's not forget the main reason of Chaos' suggestion - demo or S1 players will see how cool it is to have S2 cars, and that will change their "I would buy licence but have no money" to the "damn I MUST get those 24 pounds no matter what!!".
Another thing I would like to see is the skin autodownload feature working at demo servers too - many demo players wondered how and IF does it work. Now they will see a licenced racer with custom skin passing by and have another good reason to buy the licence.

The original post is a VERY good suggestion IMHO. I think It'll contribute so much the spread of LFS, since everyone will be able to appreciate the full potential of this great game (ehmm, sim )

To summarize: everyone download a single latest version (S2 full alpha P2 ATM) with full content, Everyone can replay/watch/connect to all servers. Everyone has skin download, etc. Limitation apply only to driving specific cars on specific tracks (ATM different for demo/S1/S2 players)

My only concern is indeed the bandwidth consumed by spectators. The spectator/drivers ratio might even turn positive or even very positive (i.e. much more spectators than racers). To that, the solution might be that if a driver cannot race on a specific server (i.e. not any combination of his allowed tracks/cars), He'll be automatically redirected to an "LFS viewing server", such server will hold a single "spectator" connection to each working racing server and therefore will not consume bandwidth/driving-seats for the race servers.

If we expand the idea even further, the "LFS viewing server" might propagate chat messages from the viewers to the actual race server, and will allow virtually limitless number of active spectators on any race server.

This is not something that can be implemented in a week though. But IMHO, it would be VERY much worth it.

my $0.02
avih

Quote from RAYfighter :

Let's not forget the main reason of Chaos' suggestion - demo or S1 players will see how cool it is to have S2 cars, and that will change their "I would buy licence but have no money" to the "damn I MUST get those 24 pounds no matter what!!".

That's what the teaser vids are for. They can find more reasons to buy in the movie section of the forum.

Quote from RAYfigher :

Another thing I would like to see is the skin autodownload feature working at demo servers too - many demo players wondered how and IF does it work. Now they will see a licenced racer with custom skin passing by and have another good reason to buy the licence.

If you buy cable the company doesn't give you all the channels without a premium. You have loads to watch already with the basic channels but if you want the 'bells and whistles' you pay. It all comes down to if you think it's worth the investment and to me buying an S2 license is.

~*~*~*~tiny~*~*~*~

Yes it's worth the investment (of course )

Imo Choas has spotted a very important point here, because it's simply true that S1 racers cant race as almost everyone has either S2 or the demo, thus the S1 servers are quite empty, if they exist at all.

My ideas how to "fix" this would be:

1. allow S2 racers to drive on S1 hosts without losing the additional S2 features, and without seperating the server list. Just "licensed" or "not licensed".

2. make a spectator function IN LFS, with the engine itself, that allows everyone to watch ALL races. This would be especially nice for the "pro" drivers, who drive in leagues (i.e. ESL pro series), and will want to build a fan community like in other popular games such as Warcraft3 or Couter-Strike.

Yes, I think a feature that would make spectator-servers possible, which use their own bandwidth instead of the raceserver's bandwidth would be great!

It jsut wouldn't work. The majority of demo users are wreckers and NFSU players and ruin racers. If you allowed them to connect to S2 servers and only use S1 cars then S2 would have no good races.


Demo also uses a totally different system and has no damage and so it wouldn't be compatable.

End of story

If you want S2 content, by S2. It's 12 pounds.

Phlos is right.. if s1 or demo users had access to all track and cars (even if they couldn't drive them!) that will make lfs much more vulnerable to cracks...

but merging the serverlists from s1/s2 into one is a good idea... users could still only see and join servers with the content of their unlock level... so for instance s1 users would only see servers with s1 tracks and cars, but s2 users will see all available servers in one list

.. i think that would be a mess seeing every sever on the list; not only would it take forever to get the whole server list (anyone remember the early months of S1, when we had to wait minutes to get hte list of servers.. and by then they changed however much ... not good times)

the ability to have options, and filters such as choice between Demo/S1/S2.. is good, cause then you know what the server is running, rather than thinking your joining an F/R race, only to find out someone bumped you and then complained and banned you isntantly.... not to wise imo

server list is fine the way it is; now all it needs is the ability to filter tracks

Quote from XCNuse :

.. i think that would be a mess seeing every sever on the list; not only would it take forever to get the whole server list (anyone remember the early months of S1, when we had to wait minutes to get hte list of servers.. and by then they changed however much ... not good times)

the ability to have options, and filters such as choice between Demo/S1/S2.. is good, cause then you know what the server is running, rather than thinking your joining an F/R race, only to find out someone bumped you and then complained and banned you isntantly.... not to wise imo

server list is fine the way it is; now all it needs is the ability to filter tracks

i think you missed the point... Allow users with S1 license to join S2 servers, but only if the track is compatible with S1 allow them to join and race with S1 car only (although there may be some S2 racers on the server using a S2 car). Otherwise spectate only...

I agree with tempting S1 users to spend more money.

The demo is fine how it is, althought the GTT should still be swapped for something else IMO.

Seriously, I'd hate to see people connecting to my 512k server (wich can only handle 8 people lagfree) and they just watch. I hate being watched. Especially when it sucks my bandwidth and less people can join. illepall

One thing bothers me, seems that S2 players think they are above everyone because they paid, and don't care about the experience of those who still plays S1 and the demo, thinking that their racing will be "ruined" because of these players, but isn't the LFS community also formed by these players?

If you are going to grow, going to get popular, then you have to in the end open up and trust these people, you can't just close yourself up in this little world and fear about people you never raced will come destroying your world, can you?

I mean....this idea is very good because it brings racers of different level together, and that's the point of making a multiplayer sim isn't it? you have private host options, you have car choice option, you have dedicated host functions, if the host are properly moderated then things can be just as fine - just face it wreckless racers are also in S2, paying 24 pounds doesn't nesscarily make someone a good driver.

The core of these issues isn't about how much you paid, it's the same problem which exists in every multiplayer game, and you can't solve it just by isolating yourself form the "outlaws", if you believe that your live for speed experience makes you a better driver, than you should also trust that it will work for the others too, if you have absolutely no trust in others, then just run your private game.

Quote from (SaM) :

Seriously, I'd hate to see people connecting to my 512k server (wich can only handle 8 people lagfree) and they just watch. I hate being watched. Especially when it sucks my bandwidth and less people can join. illepall

well then where is the problem? limit your server to 8 conns only... Even now anyone with S2 license can drop by your server and watch...

Quote from JJ72 :

One thing bothers me, seems that S2 players think they are above everyone because they paid, and don't care about the experience of those who still plays S1 and the demo, thinking that their racing will be "ruined" because of these players, but isn't the LFS community also formed by these players?

If you are going to grow, going to get popular, then you have to in the end open up and trust these people, you can't just close yourself up in this little world and fear about people you never raced will come destroying your world, can you?

I mean....this idea is very good because it brings racers of different level together, and that's the point of making a multiplayer sim isn't it? you have private host options, you have car choice option, you have dedicated host functions, if the host are properly moderated then things can be just as fine - just face it wreckless racers are also in S2, paying 24 pounds doesn't nesscarily make someone a good driver.

The core of these issues isn't about how much you paid, it's the same problem which exists in every multiplayer game, and you can't solve it just by isolating yourself form the "outlaws", if you believe that your live for speed experience makes you a better driver, than you should also trust that it will work for the others too, if you have absolutely no trust in others, then just run your private game.

No that's where you are wrong. Not paying members should not be able to view / drive in S2 servers as this would be a disadvantage to the drivers that are paying.

Who is more important to the Devs do you think? paying or non-paying members?

Tehre is nothing wrong with the system at the moment. It works exactly the same as any other game. You don't see NFSU servers when you are playing their demo and you can't join their races so I don't see the value of this.

It would be great for demo users but then it wouldn't really be a demo would it? the idea of a demo is to give people a tempory view and an idea of what the full version is like so that they buy it, not to give them full access to view and race in s2 servers. Then all you are doing is paying for better cars and not access to a better quality and better community of racers.

The idea is completely flawed imho

Quote from snewham :

It would be great for demo users but then it wouldn't really be a demo would it? the idea of a demo is to give people a tempory view and an idea of what the full version is like so that they buy it, not to give them full access to view and race in s2 servers. Then all you are doing is paying for better cars and not access to a better quality and better community of racers.

The idea is completely flawed imho

?? Obviosly you didn't read the whole post/thread... I said and edited the first post and said, let demo out of this... only merge S1 and S2...
maybe let demo users watch .mpr from S2, but that's it..

EDIT> oops you reacted JJ72'sto post... but still, you don't see that the demo user will not use the whole S2... He could only watch... He could still only drive on Blackwood with F/R/T... so the only thing they would get, is to SEE S2 in its full glory...

Quote from Chaos :

well then where is the problem? limit your server to 8 conns only... Even now anyone with S2 license can drop by your server and watch...

problem is, that s1 users who come just to watch, block space for s2 users who want to play...

anyway,, i think the complications this feature would bring will outweight the gain from it...