Where is it?, why do people flock to the same ol, same ol boring combinations while things like the LRF club, odd combo club etc etc are empty most of the time?.

Why is this?, why do people continue to flock to the same old combos?

When I am looking for a pick-up and play race, I am normally faced with either GTR's at Aston National, FOX at Club or someother boring combo.

Tracks like Aston Historic and Fern Bay Black are criminally underused in "pickup and play racing" and cars like the LRF series too.

I normally end up being a billy-no-mates in a server on my own because I can't stick ANOTHER 10 laps on Aston national............

It's because the standard of drivers in racing simulators isn't actually that high, so people stick to combinations they know and are practiced at. I tend to find it's only the better drivers that use 'non standard' combinations, because they have the low level skill to be quick and clean in most cars at most tracks. If you have to do 300 laps to get within 3 seconds of a WR then you're not going to fancy having a few races in a combo you don't know because you'd be off the pace.

Occ! Occ! Occ! Occ!! :d :d

Yeah, if you're looking for full servers running "odd" combos you're gonna be looking for a long time. Though I reckon finding ~5 people on another server is quite feasible.

Ahhh.....I get ya, so it's like an ego massaging thing?, people stick to what they are good at, rather than be not so good at something else?, interesting.

BTW Tristan, was that a roundabout way of you saying I am a good driver? LMAO

Hasn't this been well discussed before?

Naturally most people will migrate to be other people. As a species we hate to be alone. The same behaviour is exerted in the choice of LFS server. If there is a choice between a server with a significant number of people, and a server with only a few, most people who are looking for a pick up race will goto the server with more inhabitants with the mentality that there will be more people and thus more of a chance that there is someone of a similar calibre and thus "interesting" racing.

Naturally we're a lazy species as well, so Tristan's point also holds water.

Here endeth the lesson.

Quote from danowat :

BTW Tristan, was that a roundabout way of you saying I am a good driver? LMAO

Without wishing to sound elitist or big headed, you don't get into a team like T7R without having a certain amount of talent - yes, I think are a good driver. Maybe not an alien, but quite frankly how many of us are!

gee-wee,

be you the blackwood guru, karl?

Quote from the_angry_angel :

Hasn't this been well discussed before?

It probably has, but it's a friday afternoon, and I am bored to tears.......

That and the fact that my new BB connection has gone live early, and have a couple of free hours this afternoon for racing prompted it

Quote from felplacerad :

gee-wee,

be you the blackwood guru, karl?

lol I wish

Quote from danowat :

It probably has, but it's a friday afternoon, and I am bored to tears.......

That and the fact that my new BB connection has gone live early, and have a couple of free hours this afternoon for racing prompted it

You are forgiven :P Now go and race you crazy foo'!

Quote from danowat :

Ahhh.....I get ya, so it's like an ego massaging thing?, people stick to what they are good at, rather than be not so good at something else?, interesting.

That's exactly it. It's quite disappointing.

I've been avoiding going online the last few days because I don't want to run GTRs at AS National or FOX at AS Club (or BF1 at KY Oval, but we don't mention that ).

More selection = good. At the risk of getting flamed I'm going to say I like the auto-changing on the STCC servers. I think the game needs rotation as a feature. Maybe that would encourage more people to try different combos.

instead of just talking about it ...

lets have a race then, shall we?

FLP is running a S1 server, that'd make for some less used combos

edit: er, no we dont. another project im involved with is. doesn't matter though we could use any server.

If im not looking for a server to practice for a league i also look for the more odd combo's. Racing a combo you have never done can only make you a better driver.

Prefer odd combo's actually to racing the most common ones because you get the more enjoyment and not the "You suck! Your a NOOB! ZOMG you screwed my lap!" speedster attitudes.

But yup these odd servers are not the most popular, sadly

Quote from Dajmin :

More selection = good. At the risk of getting flamed I'm going to say I like the auto-changing on the STCC servers. I think the game needs rotation as a feature. Maybe that would encourage more people to try different combos.

Agreed , I do like the auto-rotation feature of those servers

my usual way of playing lfs these days starts off with me searching for non empty servers with no filters looking for that turquoise colour sam seems to like for some inexplicable reason ... this usually ends with me finding out theres no one on either the occ or lfr server
at this point i usually switch the filter to xrt only to see that the only populated driftservers are running fe gold rev (its the as national of drifting) and that theres no one on these servers i could learn anything from
after this im usually frustrated decide not to even bother pluggin the wheel in and start drifting in sp with my mouse boring myself to death

before she left becky said something about an idea to make sams club servers more popular ... i hope it works out

Quote from tristancliffe :

It's because the standard of drivers in racing simulators isn't actually that high, so people stick to combinations they know and are practiced at. I tend to find it's only the better drivers that use 'non standard' combinations, because they have the low level skill to be quick and clean in most cars at most tracks. If you have to do 300 laps to get within 3 seconds of a WR then you're not going to fancy having a few races in a combo you don't know because you'd be off the pace.

I think this is the reason why. People stick with what they know because they don't want their ego's bruised.

I always forget about the OCC when looking for a server. I don't mind joining an empty server if it encourages others to join as well. Maybe I'll do that in future

i try as much as i can to go in and out of servers with odd variations to get different races. If i have a 2hour session i usually try to spend 1hour with normal FOX cars and then the other hour with diff variations. The sad thing is although FOX races are close the diff variations usually give the better races in my opinion.

After 7 years or so of Counter-Strike there are still lots of servers that run 24/7 de_dust - same principle I think.

I'll be in the LRF server in few mins. If you think I'm in need of some serious pwning, please join

Well, when I find the time to race, I always race at STCC1b or STCC1a atm, because I like the fact that the tracks are rotating (and the extra motivation of the license system). However, the occ servers are not really the way to go for me, as I found out some time ago, because they're just a little too much for me. I can handle racing on tracks I don't know in cars I know well, but I'm afraid I'm not good enough for racing on tracks I don't know in cars I don't know. And I think that's true for many people of the community.

To rephrase danowat's earlier assumption:

It's not really an ego massaging thing. It's more like: People stick to what they are reasonably good at (or can get reasonably good at in a reasonable amount of time), rather than spending a whole lot of time just to be not total crap at something else. Interesting? Not really. Quite understandable if you look at it from the perspective of a person that doesn't have time to play LFS 24/7, I'd say.

I don't even race anymore. I'm playing around on the CLC servers. This thread topic is exactly why. Though, we in the US are under a slightly different situation with the lack of people playing rather than only lack of people playing anywhere but Aston GTR/FOX. We do have that problem too though.

With the lack of players, there simply isn't any racing going on anywhere else. You can't say that the server with 5-6 people on it is better racing anyways because there isn't any servers with a few people. Other than the Aston combos, all other servers have 1 or 2 hotlapping if there are connections.

If CLC hadn't created their servers, I would have left for a while and gone to flight simming again. I have to do that now and then anyways as I get burnt out on racing every night for months.

The other thing is, like Tristan said, there aren't really many good simmers out there. A good simmer would be able to join any server and any combo and be reasonably competetive, if not for a podium, at least for some good midpack racing. All the good racers are league racing and I don't have the time to dedicate for that.

I patiently wait for the next big patch when our 2 servers with races becomes 50 servers with full connections on most again here in US times.

PS, by good simmers, I only mean those who can go out on the track, any track, and not shift-s the first lap EVERY race like you see now. I concider myself good, not fast. There's a difference, hehe.

When I go on my server , as the only person, and I want company - I just choose SO Classic Rev and lx4, rac or fz5 - Then people quickly starts to pop in

It's been discussed before but it's still a problem. People who are keen and post on the forums want variety. People who play more casually probably don't have the time to learn a whole new combo and get good at it - even for pros it can take most of an evening to really get on the pace.

Also people often don't like the challenge, hence the "easier" circuits are popular, like SO Sprint 1 / Classic (S1 days anyway), Aston Club & National, Blackwood (to a certain extend, it is a great track regardless) and the Oval. Most of those corners are very light on corners, and due to the cars chosen (i.e. FOX... yawn) most corners are flat... where's the fun in that?

It's a problem that we will face until there are ten times as many people playing at once, at which point (assuming the proportion of odd combo wanting people is the same) there'll always been an odd combo server about with action in it.

Maybe more people need to learn the marvels of Aston Cadet or FE Green with FOX or GTRs - or BL Rallycross with XFG (only seen on the demo but still cracking (If you'll excuse the pun) fun).

Someone mentioned the oval - at risk of being flamed, either XRR, FXR or FO8 could be fun on the oval with the right people (I.E. Not the usual lower life forms that populate BF1 Oval servers looking for something so piss easy you don't have to lift off the throttle once and short races with no pitstops. With the FO8, you can at least spin the thing at the start if you aren't careful).