Thank you to those who participated in the second championship and congrats to Spec Racer Z, MattKowalski, and -randy- for placing in the top 3. To all those who participated and anyone who intends to participate in the future, please do engage in this conversation so this league can host events that will be interesting and inspire participation. At the very least, please try to read the first two paragraphs. How did everyone feel about the championship set up this time around? I thought the Monday due date worked well and that the balancing helped the championship. I'm hoping that maybe with some reworking the part configs or even with some simple mods we can have quicker cars that preform at the same pace in the future. If we keep the Monday due date, I think a fine time to start the third championship would be May 29th. If the championship is four events again, this would put the end of the championship at June 26th. Does anyone have a significant objection to this? Or, do you think we should play with the formatting more (more events, etc.)? I will be messaging everyone in the group (who isn't clearly also in the discord) about a week prior to the championship when the participation poll goes out to let our members know that there will be a championship that they can participate in. I don't want to spam people, but I feel it's only fair that if you joined the group then you'd be interested in participating. This group currently has 60 members, to get even half of all of them participating would make the championships a much more competitive and fun experience, I feel. In the next event I believe I need to work on my clarity for some of the rules. How can I make it more clear that participants are to use the same car for the whole championship? Also at the start of the next championship it is my hope that the cars will already be fully balanced and I will include a file that will provide championship-spec part configs along with the stages. A lot of people seemed like they had a harder time getting on board with this championship because of the files they needed to download. Is there a way to make this easier, or this essentially unavoidable as we gain members? As for the events in the next championship, I have no ideas just yet. We did get several more BeamNG official quickraces with 0.9, so maybe we can use some of those along with some custom or adapted stages. Anyone think they'd be up to designing a stage or two? I feel confident enough that I can string together the checkpoints and barriers to make my own quickraces, but I'm not so sure I can find new and interesting rally courses on my own. Next, what are our thoughts on modded events and other alternate event styles? Are there modded maps that we think would serve well in our main championships, or should we keep our main championships vanilla? My thinking is that if there is enough interest in a modded championship, we could run it independently of the main championships (they could either overlap or we could alternate between main championships and alternate event styles). So is anyone interested in modded stages/modded cars? Modded cars may be trickier to organize due to balancing and a general lack of similarly paced rally style cars available. As for alternate event styles, I believe @sam9 mentioned a night time championship. Anyone think that could be fun? It's sort of limited to people with capable enough computers, but since it's not a main championship it doesn't matter as much. Anyone have other ideas for alternate event styles? Thanks for your ongoing participation!
May 29th should be a good starting point as it allows everyone to sort everything before the Third Championship starts, so that there is time to sort out configs, possible routes or a quickrace pack. About the using the same car, that could easily be clarified in the first post, i never saw anywhere that we were to use the same car so i just found which car was best for the track and used that. I think the file distribution for this championship was a bit messy as stuff was almost still being sorted as the first event had started. If a config pack and possible quickrae pack could be made atleast 2 days before the first event starts it should be fine. I had no problems and i dont really see how some other people would have. Putting a file manually in your mods folder is not hard. I think mod maps would be a good idea as long as they are FPS friendly and able to run on most computer (no tennessee). Modded cars though would be too much of a challenge to set up. I did hear that Spec Racer Z was making a custom legran rally car config so im sure we could easily make more rally spec cars for the championship. With a night championship it should only be run parallel to the main championship as a lot of people are using low end computers or laptops like i do and we will have to either wait for that to finish or not compete at all. Also, can i have the link to the discord please.
I liked the championship a lot. I like the Monday end time and I like the May 29th start time. I love the idea of messaging all in the group. If they don't like it they can leave the group, and this way we might have more competitors. It would be easiest if all of the championship (approved cars and quickraces) was included in a single download file from the get go. Maybe down the line I'd be up to designing a race, but I am unable due to college at this point. I think modded maps would be great. This would be very easy as long as they are included explicitly in the download file. I would love a secondary championship in the dark. My computer is powerful enough for it. I enjoy the championships a lot and hope we can get more and more members.
First of all: thanks to everyone who organized or participated! It was great to race with all of you As I'm lacking time right now, here are my thoughts: - the stages should rather be longer than stages 1, 2 and 4, that comes closer to real rally racing - the opening post for the 3rd championship should include all nessecary files (car configs, quickraces, links to mod-maps) and a short list of rules (choose one car to compete with in the championship) - 29th of May seems a good time away (not too long, not too short) for the next session - I think there should not be a second event while we lack competitors for one event. Let's say, if there are at least 15 starters for the main event, we could think about a second event (whatever that would be) - feel free to message every member of the group, that sounds legit to me Suggestion for the next event: why not have a complete tarmaq stage? A little Rally Germany/Monaco style As mentioned: keep up the great effort!
I wasn't able to participate earlier due to the fact that I am writing final exams this week and I had to study quite a lot. I will definitely take part in this next one.
I do agree with this but there needs to be a cap on the longest possible length. Anymore than like 5 minutes and it starts to become a bit tedious and rage inducing. One to one and a half minutes is definetely too short though. I know those feels, currently have 4 assignments/tasks due within the next 3 days, should be able to finish 2 of them not sure about the other 2. I'm lazy if you didn't already notice.
A cap also keeps the amount of data in an acceptable state. Although my wife already complained alot about the blocked bandwidth while uploading the rather smal stages from the 2nd event :-D
Just saying i haven't been able to participate in most races in this championship due to my mock exams.
A bit late to the party, and I'm sure the discussion went much further on Discord. Howevere here are my two cents: - I think 4 events is a good number, it's enough to have some variety but not too long so that we don't lose too many people through the championship. - Instead of an alternative night-time championship, why not have a night run among the 4? Or have a 5th event at night, but still counting the best three results. This way people with lower specced PC can avoid the night stage and still get the option to sit out one of the other 4 stages - As for the cars, I liked the specs for this championship. I wouldn't go for a single car championship, it's interesting to have similar cars with different strenghts. Maybe a little more power next time? I'm also working on rally configs for most default cars, trying to focus on suspension behaviour mostly. If I come up with something worth sharing I will. - Some events were a bit short for a rally stage, however that makes for a closer competition and long stages might prove too challenging and deter some people. - I am not against integrating mod maps into the championship, as long as the files are put clearly on the first post and if it doesn't deter people with slower internet connection. - And I think some sensible "spamming" to remind every member of the group that there's a new championship starting or the beginning of a new event is a good idea to keep people interested.
Going over everyone's posts and adding my feedback: · I would definitely echo that all of the car selection and tracks should be in the opening post well before the first stage starts, and changes should only happen when necessary in response to developer updates to keep things simpler. I'd be willing to keep testing to balance the configs and help pack them, but I'd really appreciate help with attempting to convert street cars to rally as I'm mostly hopeless at tuning suspension outside of very basic stuff. Wish you luck Matt. · For clearer car rules, I would simplify it and change the wording. List all of the eligible vehicles firmly and state that you must stick with 1 vehicle for each championship right towards the beginning. Try to use more definite terms, avoid "may" or "should" when describing exact rules of eligibility. I can help with the verbiage if needed. · I enjoy short stages and long stages equally, but I do think 2+ minute stages are more authentic for rally, although the big Utah Downhill Rally events might be a bit on the time consuming side to have regularly. If you want longer events without more time consuming practice (good for the student participants), circuits are a good compromise. Stage 3 for example, it was around a 3 minute completion time, but you only have to learn one lap of unique track knowledge. I also think the 4 events and 1 drop race was a good amount. As for immediate course choices, would need to think it over a bit more, but we can do much more on Jungle Rock (both official or converted scenarios) now that the exaggerated bushes have been fixed, Small Island has some good choices for both dirt and asphalt, Utah is also well suited to custom quickplay, or an asphalt rally. Elevation heavy courses can also be run in reverse and still have a very different feel. I do think vanilla maps are good, as they save on bandwidth and there's plenty we haven't gotten around to in the stock maps still. · Parallel one-off events could be cool, like hill climb or baja events, or an endurance/mod focused rally. I'm not personally into night rallying with the checkpoint system though. The red pillars don't go clear until you're right on them and it unnaturally reduces visibility beyond the night conditions, especially since they don't become any easier to see past with the rally light bars. Just my opinion beyond the PC performance concern. · I agree with regular messages alerting the group to group activities, or at the very least a message to everyone as soon as all of the cars and tracks are settled. I think that's most of everything brought up so far. Thanks for participating everyone, and thank you for continually improving each championship and taking on feedback SouthernPotato.
One file with all the cars and tracks is definitely the way to go. If I can, I'd like to have it all ready by the 27th this time. You're probably right about not having side events while we don't have a whole ton of participating members, but I did want to start a discussion about secondary events to see what people thought of them. It seems like there's some interest so I'm hopeful for the future. Maybe Utah or East Coast would be good for this? There maybe a Utah quickrace that we could use for this championship that's all asphalt. If one of the events is a night event and only certain people can play it, then I feel like it becomes a balancing problem because this race will be most people's dropped race and those with high specs will place well on this stage. Is that a valid concern? That's why I figured specific conditions would do well as a side championship. I think I'm going to aim for 2 - 4 minute events this time, maybe with one 1~:30 event at the beginning. More than 2 events under 2 minutes seems to be too little (which we had this last time), but more than 2 events of 4+ minutes may deter people, so I'll try to stay within those bounds. Do we think we're going to use mostly the same car configs this time? There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of time for balancing, and I don't feel I would be of much help in that area. With the expressed preference for longer events, would you say lapped events should still not go above 3 laps, even if this means they have shorter total times? Also the 4 events with 1 dropped was comfortable, I think it'll be good for the next championship. I agree here, I was thinking of modded stages mainly to bring in new courses but there is certainly more to do with what we have especially with Jungle Rock being more forgiving now. This is a fair point, maybe in the future we can find some way around this. It sounds like we have at least one more championship before establishing side events. I haven't actually looked at stages yet, but given the feedback so far this is what I'm thinking of for the next championship: A 1:30 to 2 minute stage to start out A lapped stage, probably 3 laps, probably not more than 3 minutes to complete A ~3 minute asphalt course (I'll see if Utah Rally fits this material) A ~3 minute dirt/mostly off-road course I believe this reflects the feedback, and hopefully the shorter stages will get more people participating at the beginning. Do the lengths sound good? Concerns about only having one lapped event? Thanks for the feedback everyone, sorry I took a while to respond to it. Edit: Also, next Monday I intend to message everyone who is in the group and whose name doesn't seem to be in the discord. I'll be posting another one of those participation threads.
I totally agree! About the choice of cars: why not give the established cars/configs another spin? I can't edit any cars/configs so I won't yell for a new lineup of cars
