The online racing simulator
LFS driving Standards are in the pits
I find it very easy to just ignore a stupid move that caused an accident, goto the pits and restart without getting too annoyed. But recently the standard of driving in lfs is at the lowest i have seen it even since the S1 demo days.

In nearly every race there is always someone ignoring blue flags or purposefully crashing into you.

I tried 4 different servers this morning and in each one, i had a back marker just smash into me without braking for a corner.

Voting doesnt help because if no one sees it they dont vote.

I suppose i just wanted to vent a bit on here about it, becuase it is annoying, but if this continues i will be switching away from LFS for good since it wont be enjoyable for people who want to have good races. What can we do about it?
the devs could introduce a theoretical driving school beside the training lessons ingame and make them both mandatory to drive faster cars
That would help a bit in terms of less silly accidents or spins, but there are people who wait for you to pass them then just drive into you when you brake for the next corner.

it SHOULD NOT happen at all, there should be a reporting system that bans someones account for 60days or so if they get enough reports
#4 - ajp71
Who wants to take driving tests in a sim, this is not GT4. Done most of the training things and learnt nothing, the S1 cars tests are all the same and the S2 cars are full of worthless shit like learning to make a pitstop. I think a server option to ban keyboard players and novice crosses for drivers that have done less the a set number of laps on a car/track combination.
Just to add: ajp71, I totally disagree with everything you just said.
in the last 2 days i have had all of my races ruined (about 15)

i dont mind getting wrecked 1 race or even 5, but that just takes the piss

i really want driving tests, because in real life u need licences to move to higher levels of motorsport, so it is realistic to put licence tests in LFS
Banning keyboard drivers from certain servers isnt the answer, i have had plenty of good races with people using keyboards.

Most novices are actually ok, they will move when blue flagged etc.

The problem lies with complete morons who crash on purpose, normally picking on the lead cars. Its probably to make them feel better for not being able to drive.

This morning i shared my setup with a driver, i was leading on lap 11 and he just drove into the back of me without touching the brakes. the chat went like this

vMax.Metalstar : ??
(other guy) : F**K you!!!!!

That was nice of him after i helped him with a set.

Its these people that need banning, people making mistakes whilst racing is absoloutly fine, this kind of behaviour needs banning though, they bring no value to lfs whatsoever and im sure there are people who have left lfs because of things like this. I will be one of them if it doesnt improve.
#8 - ajp71
I think the whole concept of having to do driving tests puts off experienced racers from getting LFS, I haven't got rFactor yet because

a) I don't have time to unlock all the cars
b) wasn't impressed with the demo

I can understand why banning keyboard players would be a problem, but if they can race safely then there's something wrong big time in the physics engine, maybe in slower cars but not in the FO8/GTR are digital inputs safe.

Also if you should be able to take the driving tests of the more powerful cars straight away, if your not perfectly capable of driving a GTI in a straight line then you should be play GT4/Toca.
I think a liscense system would work well, if you cause an incident players in the server can vote against you after a certain number of votes you recieve a point on your liscense after recieving so many points your LFS account is suspended for a pre determined amount of time.
Quote from Seaweed :I think a liscense system would work well, if you cause an incident players in the server can vote against you after a certain number of votes you recieve a point on your liscense after recieving so many points your LFS account is suspended for a pre determined amount of time.

introduces potential for fowl play. what about that wrecker team? whats to stop some people like that ganging up and ruining people's licenses.
I would suggest looking for the right server at the right time, there's good racers around at some specific times/servers.

I don't race very often, but when I wanted to, I know where to look at, I usually "surf" around servers checking out the drivers, and when I feel that I'm comfortable with most of the drivers in that particular server (especially the ones with tags from popular teams), I'll join in for the race and have a lot of fun while learnt a lot from the pros.

I'm on drift servers a lot, wreckers, crashers or whatever, I've seen most of it and it's something pretty common to me, but I still enjoy the game a lot, from my experience, LFS still has a lot of great drivers, and when you get to meet up with them in one server, it's really worth it and the experience is very good.

There will always be wreckers or noobies in any online game IMO, and LFS is no exception, you just need to be well prepared to encounter these "incidents", and you'd be fine, at least I do.

Keep trying, LFS is fun.
I always check out whos on the server looking for tags from respected teams etc. and when i find a good server its brilliant.

The problem is, 1 person can join and ruin a race and we can do absoloutly nothing to stop them. 60 day bans etc would make them think twice. Although they are obviously already quite odd for paying £24 to race and then just wrecking people . . . .
#13 - fnac
intentional wreckers usually wreck and wait for being kicked or banned, or leave before it happens and go to another server to do it again.

the ban system is ok, but could be valid on all servers, not only the server where it has been voted.
something like the delay before re-attempting to join after too many clicks.

regarding a lock system, I dont think it will help because wrecking is a behavior issue, not a skill issue.
newbies or slower people should always be welcome to join, ask good setups and learn online from the others, as long as they follow flag and crc rules.
moreover, slower, lapped people is part of the race, and quite interesting to deal with.

even fastest people behavior can be questionable, no need to recall famous names (not talking about mistakes we always do - shit happens, but intentional, very aggressive driving).

the LFS community should work hard, and harder these times, to stay open and friendly, patiently waiting for wreckers to move away.
it will certainly happen since new sims appears every 6 months.
1 year ago, there were few wreckers in LFS S1, but *a lot* in GTR.
S2 is new, and more popular than S1, so morons are coming like flies on a halogen light.
rfactor, GTL and GTR2 will hopefully be their next target.

in the meantime, we should take it easy, public races are not league races or hotlapping or a ladder competition, just a good place to practice racing and have fun.

bty, are there plans to re-activate the ladder system?
I think the CRC is a good idea and would join it or similar if it didn't involve 5 million threads and posts to register for it.
Quote from Takumi_Project.d :introduces potential for fowl play. what about that wrecker team? whats to stop some people like that ganging up and ruining people's licenses.

This wouldn't be a huge problem in my opinion if a team was to do this it wouldnt take long for a demo to get their accounts permanently banned when there's a possibility of foul play actually costing people something IE the £24 they paid for their S2 account I think you'll find there's much less of a problem. VAC showed this when it was originally released for half-life (before it was never updated and easilly beaten).
#16 - Kutt
I would just prefer to put "points" on a license for accidents/bans. The drivers license would follow you from server to server. Server admins could set minimums so that those with many points on their license could not join their server.

Those with points would be forced to work off their points through offline racing\tutorial\racing online cleanly on a no point restriction server.

A few things that come to mind...

Server admins should have the option to turn off point recording. If someone wants to try a little banger racing on one of the servers set up for that they should be able to.

Points could be recorded for contact with another car. This will obviously result in a lot of points being tallied. Therefore server admins should have a "only allow a safe driver setting", but not allow these settings be too stringent. You could have many of the relatively innocent being banned every time their is incidental contact. Points should decay as safe laps are driven.

Another option would be to put in a minimum total mileage driven on a certain track. In order to race online on a track you have to turn 50, 100, or what ever amount of pre determined laps to join a server.

A few of many things that could be done to help promote clean driving.
i'm not sure if this already exists, but a system where trusted people are licenced admins could help: they can instaban anyone who does stupid things in any server they are in.

i also like the idea of minimum number of laps in some servers. obviously it would be unfair to do it in all servers tho, because some servers can be relativly casual and fun
Just my 5 cents worth, the CRC public servers are usually well policed and CRC are bringing in a ban system ( with proof ) for wreckers, if there's noone online just join and you'll find others will join you.
actually the servers i drove on are in S2 aren't any worse than the servers i spent time on in S1 at the beginning of this year.
maybe that's because i don't drive the FO8 or on servers where the FO8 is allowed.
FO8's attract wreckers and FO8 drivers sometimes turn newbies into wreckers, because on an open server, where all cars are allowed and some newbies drive around in the xfg or uf1, most likely one or 2 FO8 guys join and start complaining about or even banning banning the 'slow roadblocks' on the track
sometimes they don't succeed with the voting and these slower players try to get revenge by messing up everyones race..

i've seen this quite a few times and after that i decided not to join FO8 servers anymore

like said numerous times before - a guy who wrecks because he wants to wreck will not stop because of any tests. it'S not that he doesn't know what is right or what is wrong, it's that he wants to do what is wrong for the fun of it

if things would be really that bad, why is the CRC struggeling and calls for help? why aren't all of the complaing guys supporting the CRC?
Quote from DasKlee :if things would be really that bad, why is the CRC struggeling and calls for help? why aren't all of the complaing guys supporting the CRC?

I was wondering that myself. If enough folks who are tired of the wreckers would give CRC a try, it would be easier and easier for others that you know as good racers to join when they get tired of it, then as the community builds and folks start to make their servers CRC servers, there won't be many left that the wreckers could join and ruin it for everyone else. Everyone complained a while back that it is too hard to get voted into CRC, but in the S2 demo, it was easy and we had a wrecking team infiltrated into the CRC. It was nice though back in the demo after CRC was reestablished and I knew every night I was driving with CRC members. Fabulous racing and good times back then as I knew those of CRC membership and knew it would be good racing with them even if we were racing on public servers.
Quote from ajp71 :Who wants to take driving tests in a sim, this is not GT4. Done most of the training things and learnt nothing, the S1 cars tests are all the same and the S2 cars are full of worthless shit like learning to make a pitstop. I think a server option to ban keyboard players and novice crosses for drivers that have done less the a set number of laps on a car/track combination.

WTF!!!

How is banning us keyboard drivers the answer???

Grow Up!
Quote from mkinnov8 :WTF!!!
How is banning us keyboard drivers the answer???
Grow Up!

Yes, this is clearly ridiculous! The trouble is, how could any elaborate set of rules and collision sensors detect the difference between a deliberate wrecker and a genuine error - which all of us will continue to make every now and then in the heat of the race. You could get yourself tied up in knots trying to get some system to detect the differences, IMO this approach is just not workable and would lead to a brand new set of complaints about unjustified penalties.
Quote from DasKlee :actually the servers i drove on are in S2 aren't any worse than the servers i spent time on in S1 at the beginning of this year.
maybe that's because i don't drive the FO8 or on servers where the FO8 is allowed.
FO8's attract wreckers and FO8 drivers sometimes turn newbies into wreckers, because on an open server, where all cars are allowed and some newbies drive around in the xfg or uf1, most likely one or 2 FO8 guys join and start complaining about or even banning banning the 'slow roadblocks' on the track
sometimes they don't succeed with the voting and these slower players try to get revenge by messing up everyones race..

i've seen this quite a few times and after that i decided not to join FO8 servers anymore

like said numerous times before - a guy who wrecks because he wants to wreck will not stop because of any tests. it'S not that he doesn't know what is right or what is wrong, it's that he wants to do what is wrong for the fun of it

if things would be really that bad, why is the CRC struggeling and calls for help? why aren't all of the complaing guys supporting the CRC?

I keep hearing these reports of the CRC is struggling and doing badly and needs help...Being Owner and Co-Director this is news to me!

The CRC is a community project setup by and for the community. Without the support of the Community the CRC would not exist, and yes we need help as in we have a very small team running operations at the CRC, the previous CRC had a larger team, but in the time since launch on the 24th of July, we have achieved more that ever, the old CRC never had a website...We do.
Quote from mkinnov8 :I keep hearing these reports of the CRC is struggling and doing badly and needs help...Being Owner and Co-Director this is news to me!

The CRC is a community project setup by and for the community. Without the support of the Community the CRC would not exist, and yes we need help as in we have a very small team running operations at the CRC, the previous CRC had a larger team, but in the time since launch on the 24th of July, we have achieved more that ever, the old CRC never had a website...We do.

well i was mainly refering to the 'the CRC needs help' thread, which title keeps popping up now and then in the leagues menue here and over at RSC, so this wasn't meant as offence towards the CRC or as doubt of the sense of the CRC project.

i think the basic idea is great - and it changes things for the better for all of us, not just the members..

it was more directed towards the tons of 'pro racers' that start complaining about newcomers and want them to stay off their beloved servers. if all these complainers would join the CRC, their problems would be solved at once - no more wreckers
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(thisnameistaken) DELETED by thisnameistaken
was racing today on so classic and never got passed the chicane [about 8 race starts] without being whiped out by some clutz behind me not touching the breaks

FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG