ACC ACC fun Run Monday's

Would still keep max pings at 250, generally the Azure server seems to have lower pings for all but a few locals over the AWS. With Mondays early on at least we had to kick lots of 250+ pings that entered and in the Singapore server its mostly just South Americans that have too high pings. Europe US and Asia should all be ok to race with.

The drawback with this is amongst locals we are not going to be quite as smoot racing eachother but its probably better allowing a few more to join if our numbers keep dropping off as they are. It could even maybe help reverse the trend but Id really not want anyone that would have raced from US here to not want to race because its a singapore server.

I'm happy to race out of Singapore as long as my ping ends up being ok. If we don't get extras maybe we could go back to the Aussie server?

I'm at about 100ms to 03 Azure now.

Originally I was thinking of using Singapore only for wednesdays, we can do a one off test this week and see how it effects racing between us and if we get any others actually turn up. Wednesday I think we only got a couple extras so after a race tonight it will give us some info for the future at least but ideally Mondays we will keep on local servers and get enough locals to make people want to race.

If we can get everyone who has raced over the last few months on the track at the same time that would have to be a grid of over 20 people. I'm sure we could all find drivers at a similar level to race with to make it enjoyable for all.

Realistically that's not going to happen, even in full league seasons in AC if we had 30+ sign up it was very rare to get 24+ enter any race. Then get the situation we are in here with numbers dropping for whatever reasons people have, then as they drop even more drop due to lower numbers making it a constant decline until your stuck with the core regulars.

All we can do is try and find ways of getting new people in as the others have their own reasons for not wanting to race, if we do nothing then it wont get better on its own. Future updates may boost numbers but in sims everyone wants good numbers of clean hard racers but most don't realize they also need to do something to achieve this.

Running longer races with less then 10 people is far from ideal, so we need to try and see if anything can be done. Look at the Poll I put up there have been 10 people make a vote and no discussion so it seems there is generally very little interest in this atm.

Yeah. I hear what you're saying. Running the Singapore servers is the obvious way to try and increase the audience. Lets hope it works. I just don't understand the general lack of interest. Everyone who joins in really seems to enjoy the racing.

I think there's a few factors at play. The main issues can be attributed to lack of content and incomplete features collectively. There's not a lot of content in the game - which we knew going in. Yes the tracks are all 'blockbuster' tracks, but they're the same blockbuster tracks as every other sim and it's dog has.

This would be fine if the multiplayer backbone was complete but it isn't, core features are still missing. This prevents anything more meaningful than a fun run being raced since early access. Players don't have a database of their results, no rankings, nothing statistical at all really. Efforts evaporate into thin air 5 minutes after they happen. If the game isn't able to retain players ongoing interest with results and achievements then it needs to do it with a larger variety of content - we can't even set custom grids in SP to utilise cars such as Porsche Cup or Trofeo, which is as varied as the content in ACC currently gets. The game still doesn't export decent server results for league admins to create their own stats for league members, not without extensive admin time and work at least. Enforcing things like pit stops currently is a labour intensive manual process.

I've also missed a few enduro Mondays and will probably miss a few more. I stress fractured my braking foot a few months ago (jogging, not sim racing ) and am still getting pain and issues on the load cell brake with it so I've recently starting cutting back on my driving to help it recover properly as I really don't want to re-injure it. It seems to flare up most in the late stages of the enduros.

I agree that the main issue is on Kunos part by releasing what really is still an EA product with incomplete features. I really don't think content is necessarily the big hurdle for most as even if ACC was to be full Blancpain GT world with its current limitations it would only have a short term spike in user base.

The general UI, server limitations and statistic tracking is clearly a big hurdle for most. Simple things like basic stat tracking, allowing actual Blancpain rule sets in MP. Sprint format, stint limits, driver swaps etc and all being fully documented in game are really needed.

Some like me are mostly after a good driving experience and can live with the other limitations but I know I am generally well away from mainstream thinking even if I fully understand the reasons others may have.

It's kick off still at 8pm tonight? Sorry been out of the loop for a bit

Qualy is 8:30 aest, practice will be up at 7:30 and I will stick my car in there to avoid the auto session restart bug/feature built into the server but likely wont be doing laps that early. Main reason to try and get the serve up earlier is to raise awareness of it in the lobby so others may see a longer race will be available at a set time.

Monday race night practice is up. Real time for qualy is 8:30 aest and a 10 minute session prior to a 90 minute race

In game session times are 4x time scale
practice 10am
qualy 6pm
Race 11am next day

Weather conservative but dynamic, it has rained a bit during the prac servers set the same.

Thanks for the race tonight gents! Great turnout as well, even if there were some questionable moments (Marty got punted I think it was).

Never really got going myself after taking some heavy damage early on - I tried to drive on with it as I had a full tank but had lost 2 seconds a lap on my normal pace (already slow enough) so fell all the way back and got lonely. Then had a weird glitch as Rayton came round to lap me. I saw him miles back in my mirror and next think I knew I heard a crunch saw a flicker of a red car in my mirror and my car was catapulted across the track into the wall...when I checked the replay you can see the other car warp into mine from quite a distance back and then after I get hit, it goes straight back to its own line as if nothing happened. Very strange and I assume lag - did that contact actually happen for Rayton???

Anyway car was totalled so I went to garage and came back out for a bit but wasn't feeling it so decided...time for a gin! Everyone's a winner.

Thanks all for racing, was some good racing overall. I managed to encounter the main Noob in the server who after ruining my race he called it a noob server when someone else likely did even less to him then he did to me.

Results with 20 Starters so not bad for the Singapore Monday test.
Practice

Qual

Race

Hey @marty - apologies but might need to use the old portable parser or basic parser at the site as I am wiping the db quite frequently while I work out the file upload things - sorry about that!!!

Sorry about the lap 2 contact Steve. I saw the madness unfolding in front of me (Mat got yeeted off stage left and there was a bunch more pinballing going on) and picked the brakes up a bit harder to try and avoid it. Had a bit too much rear brake wound on for the full tank/ cold tyres and ended up with an impromptu Scandy flick directly into your path . Wound the fuel map to mega lean and managed to do the rest of the race without needing up stop again. Meant the last 20 mins or so with wrecked slicks on a wet track was interesting, but i stand by my decision as the track wasn't really wet enough to justify stopping.
Had a similar issue when Rayton was trying to lap me. I knew he was there, was watching my mirrors and thought I'd have the space to give him room on the next straight only to find myself facing the wrong way at the apex of the corner and red flash across my windscreen! Sorry Rayton if that damaged you.

Very enjoyable race - lots of action. I had some stupid almost-spins early on when my diffuser scraped on the kerb - that happened a few times in practice and I probably should have raised the ride height, although I don't know if that buggers up the aero. I had some really good close, side by side racing with C. Dominiak, until we touched coming out of one corner and spun, which was probably my corner looking at the replay, but no harm done. Late in the race on cold slicks, I had a lazy spin which let Marty past after I was watching the gap back to him for many laps, but he probably would have caught me anyway. Mat Nipperess came out of a late pit stop just in front of me in the dying stages of the race, and I tapped him lightly braking into one corner but backed off a bit so as not to gain an advantage, but then immediately spun it again in one of the tight left handers, which was a pity, because I was looking forward to what would have been a good battle. Mat very kindly ran out of fuel a couple of tenths away from the finish line and gifted me a spot to finish 6th.

No bother mate, all good!

A quick video of the auto highlights, which got some action but missed most of it and only works for the first 30 minutes and then gets the leader to the line. May be good after some updates but seeing the normal replay only gets the last 30 minutes it kind of works in a 90 min race with a massive workaround.

And here is the guy that called it a noob server, hes the one behind me actually. But I didnt have a full replay of this its only in the auto highlights which is awkward to use for anything more then just letting it play as it made it.

Have to agree with Wally on that race. It was incredible fun and I am glad to have come back. As Chris mentioned, I got absolutely hammered off the track by some peanut who thought the race was only a 2 lap race, which ruined my great start. It was particularly annoying for me because I saw him dive bomb me and I gave him plenty of room. The next half hour was me and my old sparring partner, Lattanzio, trading faster laps with each other, completely forgetting that Frosty was closing the gap rapidly, so, I almost had a heart attack when I glanced up at my mirror and saw an orange Audi getting set for a move into Turn 1, lol. Frosty didn't spend too long behind me and I wasn't too keen fighting him so early in the race, but, in a very generous action, both Frost and Lattanzio both decided to do some grass cutting through Maggotts, elevating me to the top 10. From there it was a pretty quiet race, while also trying to calculate whether the rain was coming or not and whether or not I had the fuel to go the whole race without a stop, before biting the bullet and pitting with about 10 minutes to go. Still didn't have enough fuel to make it home as I came out of the final corner with 0.1 fuel left and too much track to cover, so, that gifted a brilliant 6th place to Wally. Lesson learnt, always fuel save and always give yourself a little more than you think you need. At least I didn't go a lap down, this time