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After 150 hours...
- Thread starter Mateusz90
- 79 comments
- 5,566 views
- 13,729
- Adelaide
- Neomone
I think people overblow the costs to get started in iRacing. It's not a car collecting game. The basic membership is all you're going to need for the first few months, you're going to be making your way out of Rookies and building up a safety rating. $5 for three months is the normal deal I think, and that's both long enough to see if you like it and cheap enough as to be basically trivial.
iRacing is not terribly technically demanding, if you have any computer that's capable of running games then it probably runs on it. If it doesn't, it will after you buy a $200 graphics card. A wheel is almost a necessity, but if you're serious about competitive sim racing you probably already have one or you can pick up a cheap G27 or something. You can play with a controller if you really want, it's not super easy but it's not as much of a twitchy nightmare as you might expect, at least in slower cars.
Compare this to getting started competitively in GT7 - the console is expensive, the wheels are very expensive, and the game is $70. The upfront costs of getting into GT7 are also high, it's just that it doesn't have the ongoing subscription aspect. But if this is a hobby that you're seriously committed to, ~$100-200 a year for subs and fresh content is not exactly a deal breaker for most people. And if you run it for a few months and decide it's not for you, you're really not out very much at all.
PC racing is not a whole other ballgame - don't believe silly memes about PC Master Race and so on. It's ********. The reality is that you have far more control over how much you want to spend, because you're not locked into a proprietary ecosystem. You don't need a sim rig or fancy gaming PC, that's just your need to keep up with the Joneses talking.
- 1,173
- Australia
I know that you could technically race one class on one track forever, even forgive the tyre physics every minute you get frustrated by it thinking other classes will be better etc, look for discounts and only pay in the double digits for a year. That's possible, but who does that? Who buys a simulator and decides "yup I'm never going to buy any more dlc, just this one car, and this one track is enough for the entire year". It's really too big a stretch of most people's imagination for them to actually follow through for over a year and never pay another dime for another class/track. That's my strawman point if you will.
Most people I feel who get into the whole iracing economy, especially people who want a proper first start these days, are most likely to overspend there too. Spending a lot more than just buying Project cars 2 on console or AC ultimate on sale for pennies and having a blast, the catch there being the low playercounts and struggle to find consistently clean racing. With iracing you bloody well pay for the privilege of clean racing across multiple tracks/classes. They take the mickey out of ya but in return you get shoddy tyre physics over the limit and yes, the best racing online.
- 13,729
- Adelaide
- Neomone
I didn't say that you should limit yourself forever, I said that it doesn't cost much to get started. You were talking about all the things you had to buy "just to be on the same starting level". That's PC elitist rubbish. The way that the game and the "progression"/licensing system is designed is such that the base content is absolutely substantial enough for the first month or few, and you're restricted from jumping straight into the marquee stuff anyway.
I don't currently play and I haven't played iRacing in a while, but I doubt it's changed much since I did. Here's the schedule for Season 2 this year. Let's say you're only interested in racing road content, no ovals or dirt stuff.
If you're super awesome and clean, you'll be out of a road rookie licence in a couple of weeks. At this point you could start buying content if you really wanted, but the sensible thing would probably be to just race the rest of the season in MX5s and Formula Vees and build your license up. If you want to race a proper mixed GT3 race, for example, that's a B licence and that will take a fair amount of clean racing under your belt. Probably more than one season. B licence minimum is a good goal anyway, people who reach that level will be fairly consistently clean.
At that point you'll have been racing a couple of months and have a decent idea of whether it's worth spending the extra money to get into higher series. It is from then on reasonably expensive, from memory expect to spend something along the lines of a full price game to buy the tracks and car you'll need to run a season in a particular category. But you didn't need to throw a whole lot of money at it to start with and try the game out, because buying all that content does nothing for you when you're still gated behind a Rookie or D-Class licence anyway.
The "proper first start" is not to go nuts and buy everything, it's to get a $5 intro voucher and see if you like it enough to start investing. Race some MX5s and Formula Vees and see if the experience is worth enough to you to spend more than $5. Stop spouting nonsense about how it's expensive to get into, because that's just a lie. It costs you about the same to try it for three months as it does to go buy AC Ultimate or PC2 next time they're on sale. Google iRacing Promo Codes.
And yes, there are all sorts of problems with the game and the physics and the netcode and the players and the track geometry and the tyres and the penalties and the stewarding and why won't Dave Kaemmer put on some god damn pants. But that's really beside the point. The game is easy to get into if you actually want to try it rather than just use it as a whipping boy to moan about PC elitists, which it sounds like is kinda where you're at.
- 1,173
- Australia
I'll concede in that my post was not worded as lengthy as it needed to be in order to convince you of what I meant to say, rather than what I said. So in that specific instance, which I left, you're right in only this, that iracing software itself is EASY AND CHEAP to get into. That's where I'll end my apology because beyond that if that's what you're claiming, is hilarious. Maybe you can re-read over what I said and find out the other possible meaning I had in mind, or not. Doesn't bother me I suppose.
My whole point is, I beleive iracing is predatory by default. And I firmly believe something else will come along soon enough and provide what you really play iracing for; the clean online sim racing. Therefore, why should I spend to get started into it now? GT Sport was sort of a dumpster fire, but it too saw the success of iracing and wanted in on it. Wonder what GT Sport 2 will look like
There's many people that believe iracing is the top dog and deserves the money that you throw at it over time, the more you play the more fun you want to have, the more you buy and it's all worth it!... I'm just not gonna bother following that logic... I also don't know what I'm missing nor do i care. Have fun~!
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Scaff
Moderator
- 29,026
- He/Him
- ScaffUK
The base package for iRacing gives you more than 1 car and 1 track, so I'm not quite sure how you got the idea that you're limited to that?
The base is 16 cars and 22 tracks, which accounts for around 20% of the total content currently available.
That's 22 track location, not layouts, and a number of them have multiple layouts.
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- 13,729
- Adelaide
- Neomone
Or like, you could just say it clearly instead of expecting me to interpret your "true" meanings. How am I supposed to know what it is you mean to say if you won't say it yourself? I'm not going to waste time trying to read your mind.
You said something that wasn't true and I corrected it. iRacing is in fact about as cheap and easy to get into as any other hardcore sim.
iRacing isn't predatory. It's expensive to play long term. There's a difference. A BMW isn't predatory because it costs more to run than a Toyota.My whole point is, I beleive iracing is predatory by default. And I firmly believe something else will come along soon enough and provide what you really play iracing for; the clean online sim racing. Therefore, why should I spend to get started into it now? GT Sport was sort of a dumpster fire, but it too saw the success of iracing and wanted in on it. Wonder what GT Sport 2 will look like
iRacing has clear prices on all it's content. If you want to run a series, you know exactly what it will cost you for the season before you buy any of it. You know exactly what the subscription will cost. These prices are all easily available and haven't really changed in about a decade.
It would be great if there was a true competitor to iRacing, but the reality is that it's a niche market. We saw this with the tiny amount of GTS players that actually engaged with the Sport mode. The fact that iRacing manages to have something like 100k active subs seems to me to be way beyond what I would have thought a hobby like this would support, but in the face of games like GT7 and FH5 it's tiny.
It would have been nice if GT7 could have at least offered a simplified and more accessible version of what iRacing does, but it's just not on the same page. FM8 might, but it seems unlikely. Not being full of drunk casuals is a decent part of what makes iRacing attractive.
Like it or not, in the competitive sim racing space it is the top dog despite all it's problems and costs. It may or may not be worth the money you pay for it over time to someone like you, but a lot of people seem to keep coming back to it. And like all motorsport and racing simulations, there's an endless struggle to improve - which can be fun if you're into that. Developing and honing any new skill can be fun.
For those who are seriously into competing online, they're doing themselves a disservice by not at least trying it. It's clearly not a game for you, but you seem bent on making it seem unappealing to everyone for reasons that are entirely unclear given that you very obviously have never even thought about playing it.
I'll be the first to admit that it's very, very much not for everyone, which is why I emphasise trying it for cheap. For those it works for, there really isn't anything else that provides a similar service. It has a unique place in the sim racing genre. People who are cut that GTS is dying and that GT7 online is **** should give it a shot, because the worst case scenario is they hate it and they're out five bucks.
- 1,173
- Australia
This is pretty silly for both of us, since what I meant is that yes, if interpreted that way, it can be defined as "wasn't true", if however you would understand what I meant rather than what I said, "wasn't true" wouldn't apply. If however you gleefully choose to ignore what I meant, then sure, "wasn't true I corrected it" is all you seem to want to hear. We are in agreement that iracing is cheap.
I think it's predatory in that it took them over a decade to fix the nonstop complaints of the on/over the limit tyre grip, has it been fixed? how much of it was addressed and how long did they take to address it via an update directly to the tyre model?
GT Sport tried, and for the most part it was okay, nice enough venture from GT6 I suppose. They sucked at fixing the penalty system. It never got the attention it deserved.
That's not what I meant. I like improving my skills to a point too. I wonder if you can relate to this iracer's video if you have the time. Because I do very very much! :
This is hilarious, bit of a tangent and quite the assumption from you. You're fairly unbiased on this forum, but this, this is hilarious, what you've assumed!
I've thought about playing it for sure, make no mistake, I've given it thought about myself and how I'd slot into it's economy specifically, but research on the pricing model? hell no, you've got that base covered.. I don't care if you play iracing, or anyone does, You brought up a lot to discuss about iracing, so I simply gave my perspective on it. Yes I do like saying that PC crowds can be a bit elitist, but so what? I have a PC myself and enjoy playing it. I also have many consoles and play them. I even have the same game on multiple platforms. So I'm making fun of myself too.True I guess. if more people tried iracing, then maybe that would mean a good thing for me. In that they would either play iracing and we'd have more sim racers and/or they'd respect racing in racing games more. This includes titles like GT Sport, GT7, GT Sport 2 etc.
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- 9,430
- Portland, OR
- Jump_Ace
- JUMPxACE
I've tried iRacing 3 times over the years, each time I'm not blown away. Most recently was about 6 months ago after I was chest-deep in ACC. In iRacing, things were too smooth, too easy, the physics felt flat and I had a hard time connecting the car to the road as it felt like it was floating. It reminded me of GT Sport with the perfectly flat road surfaces. Plus the graphics weren't that great even with my new 3080. I won't try iRacing ever again, but thats just me. I'll flip between ACC and GT7 for the time being.
Jerome
Jerome
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- 1,173
- Australia
iracing doesn't exactly work like that. As I understand it, You don't pay for everything in one go, you pay for the content you want to try out. So you can play the same tracks as long as you are subscribed and paying, once the sub runs out then you have to pay again, and you pay on top of this for the new content you want to give to yourself, there's not that much in terms of "unlocking content" for free in a typical game-progression, you pay more for what you want out the gate and for the most part if you don't pay for the other tracks and cars then you don't get to play them at all. though as scaff said you get about 16 classes/cars and 22 tracks with the base package (only 20% of the entire content available, the rest you have to pay for more expensively like $15 for an extra track I've heard). That might be enough for anyone to put in a hundred hours or a lot more, without playing/paying the other DLC and being able to make a definitive statement on the quality across the board or give the entire software a proper rating without paying for everything and trying everything out.
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- 13,729
- Adelaide
- Neomone
Most of the "hardcore" sims are pretty similar, because they're all decent representations of real world physics. It certainly doesn't take 100 hours to go from one to another because there mostly isn't little physics quirks to learn like there is with something like Forza or GT. If you can drive fast in one of them (or in real life), you'll have little trouble getting up to speed in the others. It's basically the difference in tyres, and between games with decent simulations it's more or less like moving from one type of tyre to another in the real world. Both can behave differently, but both behave and respond like you expect a tyre to*.
The main struggle is usually making sure FFB is set up right, but that's less of a problem these days.
The sim-lites are realistic-ish, but if you want to be really fast you'll have to learn how to abuse the areas of the physics that aren't quite there. That's why it actually takes time to switch into something like GTS or FM7 and be quick if you're not used to it.
I'd say if @Jump_Ace has spent a few hours in iRacing and not felt the spark, that's probably enough. Their tyre physics have always been controversial and the game is categorically not a looker. If you're not feeling it then it's not worth making yourself miserable for a hundred hours when there are so many more games out there you could be having fun with. Even in sims, fun is the most important thing.
I wouldn't say someone needs to play GT7 for a hundred hours to know that they're not having fun.
*I'm pretty sure every sim has at least one car/tyre that is an exception to this, but that's how it works. Sometimes it's a bug, or sometimes a car or tyre is just built badly. One bad apple doesn't necessarily reflect the overall physics of the game.
