Quote from buedi :

That´s so true. If you start with Passworded Servers, we get Off Topic now. Weren´t we talking about the "good old times" with starting LFS, pick some Server and have fun? It won´t work with passworded Servers. Some day you want to join to have fun and the password has changed.

True to a point, but this is how the CRC used to run, and it ran very well. Password doesn't change "that often" and we used to have a secure website where you could obtain the latest password with ease, but as I said, and you agreed, it would create an us and them situation, one I would love to avoid.

We wasn't or are not talking about the "good old times" as times have changed and LFS has moved on. What we are covering is the "lack" of respect and variation and choice that is taken away from the driver him/her self. What made LFS, well IMHO is was the fun pick races. If you wanted seriousness and rules and regs, then you joined a league. If you wanted fun fast frantic pickup action, you just raced normally everyday.

IMHO LFS now with all this Insim has taken away the choices of the driver, the license holder, the payer. If I joined a league I expect to be told what to drive, when and what rules and regs. On a public server, I expect to drive what I like, when I like and with what SETUP I like.

Thats the nuts and bolts of this thread I guess, and I am not surprised on how many people agree here, and as you can see, its the guys that picked up LFS 4-5yrs ago.

Some old folk are not so boring or slow road hogs after all

Quote from Fordman :

IMHO LFS now with all this Insim has taken away the choices of the driver, the license holder, the payer. If I joined a league I expect to be told what to drive, when and what rules and regs. On a public server, I expect to drive what I like, when I like and with what SETUP I like.

This man for president.

EDIT: Okay, chief of national security would be good enough too.

I've been playing with S2 License for 2 weeks now and i still havent found a good public server as im more of a FXR/Other easy driven car fan. So im just usually driving on Absolute-Beginners League Practice servers. I'd love to join this kind of server what you were talking about, even that im so slow.

Cheers, Makikou

and another old one back...

quite some good points in this thread. as most others i havent been playing lfs for about 2 years (is that a coincidence?), sometimes take a look back in here or in-game and nearly never find any good server.
imo it all started not just with ctra but also with the cruise servers before. all the good racers back then got bored of the content we had and still have and went on to other things, at least thats what i thought.
i too would like to be able to get back on and just drive like the "good old days", so much fun back then...

anyway, for me the solution(s) would be _new tracks_, ive never wanted more cars or anything but the "faster" tracks (as, we, ky) got just boring after a while for us oldies, the mostly tbo junkies (if i can say that).
id like to see some tracks for the slower classes again, as much fun as i had with the gtrs too.
the other problem with wreckers etc. we had these problems everytime just more of us "oldtimers" been around so everytime one could watch over us so to speak.

so, probably easiest solution, find all your old buddies and get them together on a server.

btw, im not the one to complain about lfs, i had quite some years of fun with it, more than enough for my money but to get real racers back in we really need more content (for me as i said just tracks would be enough). ive never been very keen on opening up lfs for modders, but maybe at least the track part should be opened.

anyway, my 2 cents, hope i said something constructive too.

Might as well throw in my 2 cents, seeings as I am an old timer..... and all the old timers seem to be coming out.

I dont care much for the insim servers, Horses for courses, I do how ever miss the pickup races.

The arcade element and the desire to be winning points in every race, does not turn me on. I used to spend hours, into the early mornings, whole weekends, doin 5 lap pickup races.

Glad you mentioned the CRC Fordy,, its been a long time gone, and evolved a lot over time. However, the whole point of the CRC was lost, amongst rival teams and hot headed attitiudes. Egos got the better of it, and for one it kept we away from my wheel for a duration.

Regardless, as time moves on and so has LFS, it evolves with time, it grows, changes. THe big unanswered question is, whats next? We only know at some point were gettin the Scirroco, but nothing else else apart from the subtle hint. Anyway back on topic, there is a place for the insims and I am not quite sure Where Becky is going with her latest creation, but it sounds quite...... intersting, but pretty samey... impo.

Either way - good to see you about again..

Nice to see so many LFS drivers from way back still around, and also nice to see your comments. So the question being, what do we do next, as Widow kindly stated.

Do we create our own "little space" although we are not trying to create an us and them attitude"?

We understand that for many newbies, they want the same as us "oldies" as the term keeps coming up, but what they need to understand is that us "oldies" have been here since day dot, and I am going back to like me, September 2002. So maybe we need a space that we call ours, damn the Devs and the beta testers have theres, so why should we not have ours?

Like I said, I don't want to create this us and them environment, but its hard not to, when us "oldies" all we want to do is pick and have a giggle, nothing serious and all that, but somewhere we can drive "for fun"

Alot of thoughts runing here which is great to see, but shall we try and come to a resolution. Like I said CRC "circumstances" worked well and maybe for the sake of us "pick up racers" its time to re-invent the wheel.

So everybody that has read, interested or posted in this thread, please can you state your HONEST OPINION on how to take this forward. Its obviously on alot of people's minds, otherwise, why would you all have voiced such a strong opinion on what I thought was a simple question, I guess not.

Anyway, would love to hear your comments or suggestions. Please forgive me, as I bugger off to the Baleric Islands 2am Wed Morning, so you might not here from me after tomorrow night.

I would like to thank everybody for there idea's / input and its great to see, so many people wanting the same thing in LFS as they did so many moon's ago.......FUN!!!!!!!

Many thanks and best regards

Fordie

I hate using the cheap way out, and linking to an earlier post I made, but I will do it neverthless... In THIS answer I pretty much tells my opinion about many aspects of LFS, but mainly the community.

I canot provde great discussions, because I usually screws up and misunderstand people and their meanins, and I end up de-railing the whole discussion.
Neverthless, I just want to add something to the reply I did earlier in this topic. I don't want us to create a difference between people, the "us and them" attitute. That is the worst and selfish thing I and other could ever do, and I do not want LFS community to divide into smaller groups that keeps nagging on eachothers.
As someone said, the lisence reg. date tells nothing about a person, that's true, but also in some situations it can be usefull. It's specially fun when people raises idea's, complains, questions, basically anything, and then a newly reg'ed uder tells them to shut it and if they are tire of it move allong. Blargh, there is so much of this attitute lately..

I don't want to think, nor am I, anything above anything, but I like not to be asked to "fu*k off" by a 2009 modell when I do question the development..we'll see if that same user is here in 2013.

But that is not this topic, and sorry for going so off topic. I love discussing LFS when I manage to put up understandable posts. Every idea, thought deserve to be heared, but the community are in trouble, and have been for some time.
Maybe I'll pop into here tomorrow to write more in this reply, but now I am tired and need my sleep

It's good to see your oldtimers back, and I had some absolute stunning races with you on the LR race server, thanks for showing me the good parts of LFS community, even if they are well hidden

Age or date of joining has zero influence for me,racing other drivers who are there to race. that's everything for me and it's why I'm still here.
There is no us and them,only people who join servers to race and other's who don't. the only problem is some fit into both catogories from time to time

The quality of pickup racing on the servers I've watched and raced in is as good as it ever was , maybe even better , the only problem is all the stats..pb's, points, splits, badges, dilute an experience that should be drunk neat.

What I would like to see Is pick up racing that asks a bit more, qually period, no mid race join, longer races.. and more laughs AFTER the race

But who wants this?

Quote from JohnPenn :

What I would like to see Is pick up racing that asks a bit more, qually period, no mid race join, longer races.. and more laughs AFTER the race

But who wants this?

That's what I'd like too, but as you said it is probably "asking too much" for people who just want some quick racing and see nothing else to LFS other than that

I've been owning my license for two years and to be honest I stopped having fun after a year of playing. LFS really took a beat in 2008/2009. A lot of people stopped playing / played less frequently, there's been a big drama about CTRA, some new crappy mods like the S14 and AE86 started to appear everywhere and the quality of the forum posts went down quite a bit.

Combined together, these little things made LFS not as enjoyable as it used to me for me. Now I'm out of it until there's an update that's worth it. Not a crappy FWD car cause there's already of this in LFS. If you are bored or find LFS not as good as it used to be, I suggest you try other race sims. Some purists say that LFS is the best simulator ever and blablabla... but when you look around there's a bunch of other good racing games that are as fun if not more.

As I've been saying since the first day I joined this forum, LFS is way to serious to be enjoyable over the big run. That's my opinion. Not being able to pick a car and a track without having a license or rank being part of this overseriousness...

Quote from JohnPenn :

What I would like to see Is pick up racing that asks a bit more, qually period, no mid race join, longer races.. and more laughs AFTER the race

/Shameless plug

We (or Troy has) have been running organized public racing night every Thursday for a while. Check this for latest infos http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=54399

There is an insim running I must admit, but you can turn it off. And we give out points just for laughs but the racing is good and fair like it used to be in the good old days. Qualy and three races with reversed grids, and maybe some more racing if people stay.

I feel like I should add my part too...

For me LFS was great, then within the space of a day or 2 almost 2 years ago now I lost all interest in it, I went on cruise servers, had a lot of fun on them I must admit, but it was more for wasting spare time than anything.

Every now and then I fire it up just to see what's about, join a server, and I tend to do 1 race before getting bored and leaving. It just doesn't feel the same, the community spirit has gone from LFS, on most servers it feels like racing with either little kids or drones who are always first to blame you when they crash into you, not the full-of-laughs close and clean racing that it used to be.

Quote from danowat :

LFS is stale, LFS is stagnant, its still as good as it was all those years ago, but the nuts and bolts of LFS are still the same as they were years ago, we need REVOLUTION in LFS, not EVOLUTION

Exactly my view, but I'd like to expand on that a little. LFS hasn't moved on much at all with time, hardware in particular has lept forwards over the last 5 years and LFS has been left behind with very little support for newer technologies and barely bothering any existing hardware. There is a lot of potential in LFS with current hardware (and I'm not talking about the newest hardware that 90% can't afford, I'm talking about borderline old in 'technology years' that's quite inexpensive today).

Quote from dodo.ger :

ive never been very keen on opening up lfs for modders, but maybe at least the track part should be opened.

This too is a very valid point. There's nothing drastically wrong with the cars in LFS (although a Touring Car would be nice ), but the tracks are old, boring and very lifeless.

Though i'm a newcomer considering how some of you have lfs since 2003, i can imagine how you would feel bored of the tracks after all those years playing on them.

In my opinion, it's more important to have a wide variety of tracks than cars, because when racing the track is what we see, lap after lap. I find it much easier to get bored of a track than a car. Sometimes i just pick a car i can handle well and race it in different tracks. And for me, it feels a lot of fun to handle a car really well and do good times no matter the track.

In this community it's certain that there are talented people, and opening a kind of competition for 5 high quality tracks that would be part for LFS, would be a loaf of fresh air for LFS right now. I'd put physics updates ranked as high as one or two new tracks.

Quote from Fordman :

What the hell has happened to LFS in 2yrs.

After an almost 2yr break, I decided to download ( yes I know ) LFS and just have a bash, see whats new etc etc. I must admit, as General_UK said to me tonight, its like riding a bike, and yes he was right, after a couple of laps, started to get the feel, and way hay, off we go again, it was great fun, but.......what the hell has happened???

The pick up and go has fecked off and gone ( sorry to be to the point )

Disconnected for bad Setup, not enough wanking points, WTF. No explaination, nada. I only wanted to have a race, with old friends and a laugh, yet I end up being told I am to old, don't race enough and my care plan deserves to be in an old people's home and that my car is tax exempt

Just to clarify, I have no right what so ever, leaving LFS for two years, then on day one turning up like an unwanted tornado, bitching and moaning, but have I missed the boat or something here. I thought one major selling point was the ease of pick up and have fun, not being told, sorry your crap, go and play ************* ( you fill in the gaps LOL )

I must add though, I have found one server ( not online now though HA HA ) Ready 2 Roll, something like that....awesome server, friendly guys, great racing, but one server out of HOW MANY!!!!????

LFS has been turning sour with a while now. I dont mean the game itself (Even though the development has slowed considerably over the past year and a half) but the guys that are good at the game tend to have a god complex and tell you where to go if your not trailing right behind them. I have been put off of LFS a bit because of this attitude and very rarely play LFS anymore. LFS is an unfriendly place to be a lot of the time lately.

I almost never go on race servers anymore, I prefer to hang out in cruise now and then and just relax. Put on some music and drive around...

Quote from Cannabist :

I almost never go on race servers anymore, I prefer to hang out in cruise now and then and just relax. Put on some music and drive around...

If there was ever a piece of information that this thread really needed, the thread about getting back to the roots of LFS, trying to recapture some of the many great race combos that could be found any night of the week when you were guaranteed to get a good, clean and close race then that.......wasn't even close to being it

Quote from Cannabist :

I almost never go on race servers anymore, I prefer to hang out in cruise now and then and just relax. Put on some music and drive around...

Looking at your post count - you do not bother with posting in this forum this forum much either - and I thought I did not post a lot.

Is that because you just prefer to chill and do not like the competitive element of racing?

What would you need/LFS need to get you racing again?

I've owned LFS since '04, and I haven't played online since '06, when my DFP failed during a race.

I recently picked up a G25, and I really wanted to get back into "the game" so to speak. So I came to the forum to read about what's going on currently with the community, the state of affairs. It seems I missed a fair bit, as I have no clue what the hell CTRA is.

And after reading a few threads over the past couple of days, I have pretty much no desire to return. I think the community as it stands right now seems so harsh and ridiculous, what happened to the friendly attitude everyone had back then?
I haven't even attempted racing on a server, only offline. I feel like if the forum reflects the general attitude, I'm not generally welcome anywhere.

All I want to do, is race for fun, with some decent people who aren't jackasses with nasty attitudes.
I don't want to cruise, I spent forever doing that in Midtown Madness many years ago.
Nor do I want to race in an environment full of top class drivers. I'm just not that good, nor do I even have a desire to be that good.


Seems like it doesn't exist here anymore...

Quote from Fordman :

Do we create our own "little space" although we are not trying to create an us and them attitude"?

We understand that for many newbies, they want the same as us "oldies" as the term keeps coming up, but what they need to understand is that us "oldies" have been here since day dot, and I am going back to like me, September 2002. So maybe we need a space that we call ours, damn the Devs and the beta testers have theres, so why should we not have ours?

Alot of thoughts runing here which is great to see, but shall we try and come to a resolution. Like I said CRC "circumstances" worked well and maybe for the sake of us "pick up racers" its time to re-invent the wheel.

So everybody that has read, interested or posted in this thread, please can you state your HONEST OPINION on how to take this forward. Its obviously on alot of people's minds, otherwise, why would you all have voiced such a strong opinion on what I thought was a simple question, I guess not.

Another oldtimer reporting for duty sir!! (Played LFS from when S1 H was first released)

You've mentioned the CRC in a lot of your final posts on this discussion fordie, maybe theres a reason behind it. Maybe an ORC is due (Oldtimers racing club) Using a similar system for passwords etc. Rather then a before X year cut-off, maybe a select few on invitation only as starters, then those intrested can be voted in (similar to the latter CRC although I wasnt around in S1 demo CRC times to know if it was the same!)

But I would like something with the old racers and the old LFS spririt to get me racing again, havent touched LFS in 6 months now, and dont feel any real want to either.

Hopefully your holiday will inspire you and all us old LFS-ers to get off our backsides and re-stoke the fires.

There is new generation around, they form their own characteristics and I am pretty sure, in the future they will miss these days.
Maybe they will say at 2014 or so "...good old days, I signed up at 2008 mate!".

Circulation continues, only difference is perception points and tastes.

I just got an idea from this thread.
What if there were like 2-3 servers made by the devs, where only people who have owned LFS for at least 3 years would get in. The servers would be called Legends or smthn and then the real oldies would get to meet there with no newbz

Problem with that would be that the new people would cry themself to sleep and spam the forum like the kids they are..

When that is said, as someone pointed out earlier, the join date tells nothing about your behaviour on track But I am beliving the attitute is a lot better than the new kids around these days.

Quote from The Very End :

Problem with that would be that the new people would cry themself to sleep and spam the forum like the kids they are..

When that is said, as someone pointed out earlier, the join date tells nothing about your behaviour on track But I am beliving the attitute is a lot better than the new kids around these days.

Who the hell cares if they do? That shouldn't stop you guys from having fun. Go for it.

Just make it invitational or something, with the oldies having a chance to request the pw via irc, pm, or air mail, etc.
This way you can control who gets in and who doesn't

Wait, why are guys who haven't had lfs for over 5 years automatically stupid no good whiners?

I'm confused.

Not that much of an oldie compared to some of the posters in this thread, but I can relate to what has been said in these pages. While the extent may be worse for those who have been here since 2004 even i can notice it in the 3 years I have been around. I don't play much anymore due to a few reasons but one of them being the racing. I don't enjoy the pick up and play racing that I did when I first started playing. I have mused over this wondering whether it was rose tinted glasses, me being a little bored with lfs in its current state or the quality of racing in pick up and play racing. (All very well saying join a server but I don't have the time to practice enough to race leagues to a decent standard) I have to say though maybe it is a a mix of all 3. The memories that really stick in your memory are those of the good times from that past: the close lap after lap battles, the 1 point victories in leagues etc not the time you got taken out in T1 of a 5 lap race. I have to say though the race craft does seem to be worse then when I joined.

Also Insim has been mentioned in this thread as well. While I see the point and I did enjoy the tier of CTRA when it was running, some of the app that are used are very confusing, even for me after being round a few years nevermind a first timeplayer. While the Insim provides some good things in my opinion it has been used to far, but short of the devs reducing its usefullness or removing it completely (which I can't see happening) I don't see a solution.

The old timer's racing sounds good and would be a server I would be interesting in. Though would also be good if more of the unusual combos were used.