Is it really fun?

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Bhowe83

Bhowe83

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Bhowe83
Now, I had iRacing for about 4 or 5 months earlier this year, and I will say the physics and graphics and detail were stunning. However, it isn't truly fun.

Now let me explain, I love a hardcore sim-racing game. I love the challenge of racing against real people in realistic cars and tracks and having to exert every ounce of skill to be good. I loved having to work my way up the ranks from rookie to Class D, C, B, and A while learning more and more on the way.

But, I did not like the price box you are put into. To play, you had to pay. Your success and license depended mostly on your wallet.

But now, into the bigger chunk of my argument, the safety rating. I absolutely hated this. This forced you to drive on pins and needles to make sure you made absolutely no contact with a competitor or a track object. This made the racing experience terrible. Instead of racing the whole race trying to have fun and just push hard, you spend the entire time making sure you don't get a 2 or 4x. It took the racing element away. You are no longer able to beat and bang a little or shoot for a gap that may not be there, because you fear the repercussions doing so will have on you SR. Don't even get me started on restrictor plate racing, where you must bumpdraft to be fast. Therefor, to be fast, you must constantly have a 0x because of the contact, causing double the chances of a 4x when there is a wreck because the possibility that the guy pushing you or that you were pushing is involved, sub-sequentially involving you by association.

So I quit iRacing. I cancelled it and went back to my league in Nr2003. Since then I have enjoyed racing so much better. I have virtually the same physics (iRacing was built on Nr2003, only thing new is the tire model), but now I can race as hard as I want. If I hit the wall, oh well, if I bump a guy, oh well, if I cause a wreck, I serve my EOLL and apologize and oh well.

So ask yourself, is having to race with the worry of tarnishing you SR hanging over you the entire time really worth it, and is it really fun?
 
Iracing isn't for everyone. Your points are valid but your success has nothing to do with your wallet overall. I've stated I pay monthly and own a few tracks and cars not a whole season worth.

Yes you do have to drive on fine line but beating and banging isn't racing. 0x don't cause issues on any level and that more or less is your racing hard. I've got into wall hard by pushing too much with only 0x, or slid up into a car with same results. 2x is more or less if you cause a spin which makes sense because if someone makes bad move then should be some form of penalty. They force you to drive clean and smart which is why some never like it or get it.

I have fun almost ever racing and like current way even if I get caught up sometimes. It happens and it's part of racing. Someone here said think about it as having to pay for damage on real racecar to the ratings.
 
Na I'm asking myself what's the point of your rant. You've found a sim you like more yet your wasting time here :confused:.
 
I just felt like it needed said.

And I'm not saying beating and banging is the only point of racing.
 
Bhowe83
I just felt like it needed said.

And I'm not saying beating and banging is the only point of racing.
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Well based on what you said that's your issue with and getting a penalty. I really don't get why you can't race clean but hard? Mistakes do happen but I find them not as much as you might think.

One series are you any or racing anyway?
 
When I first started iracing , I felt a little intimidated by the SR hanging over my head but not anymore. A couple of weeks ago I had an absolute shocker race , lost 0.6 SR and about 90 irating all in the space of a few laps. I got both points losses back over the next few races. It's easy to go and do a few TTs or quali sessions to boost it if need be.

If the SR bothers you to the point where it influences your experience negatively , then iracing isn't for you , as you have already discovered. I have found that it's not a big deal , over time both your SR and iR will settle into a "zone". If your SR keeps dropping , you're pushing too hard IMO.

The other option to to just do league races where the ratings don't matter.

Edit: The league I used to race with on GT5 ran heavy damage. I felt more intimidated by that than iracings SR rating !
 
I love the safety rating. Without it iRacing would be a disaster. I think it's what makes iRacing the way it is. No other game will punish you for racing like an idiot. Sometimes someone else is the cause of your SR fall, but it evens itself out in the long run. If you are fast and clean you will fly through the liscences and not have any problem with the SR. If you push to hard and cause alot of accidents then your SR will suffer and you won't be able to go into the higher levels.
What I love about it is that just because you pay to play the game that doesn't meen you deserve to compete in the top races. You have to earn the right to get to A class. I love it. iRacing is simply the best competitive online game I have ever played that you didn't have to organize things yourself.
 
Bhowe83
Now, I had iRacing for about 4 or 5 months earlier this year, and I will say the physics and graphics and detail were stunning. However, it isn't truly fun.

Now let me explain, I love a hardcore sim-racing game. I love the challenge of racing against real people in realistic cars and tracks and having to exert every ounce of skill to be good. I loved having to work my way up the ranks from rookie to Class D, C, B, and A while learning more and more on the way.

But, I did not like the price box you are put into. To play, you had to pay. Your success and license depended mostly on your wallet.

But now, into the bigger chunk of my argument, the safety rating. I absolutely hated this. This forced you to drive on pins and needles to make sure you made absolutely no contact with a competitor or a track object. This made the racing experience terrible. Instead of racing the whole race trying to have fun and just push hard, you spend the entire time making sure you don't get a 2 or 4x. It took the racing element away. You are no longer able to beat and bang a little or shoot for a gap that may not be there, because you fear the repercussions doing so will have on you SR. Don't even get me started on restrictor plate racing, where you must bumpdraft to be fast. Therefor, to be fast, you must constantly have a 0x because of the contact, causing double the chances of a 4x when there is a wreck because the possibility that the guy pushing you or that you were pushing is involved, sub-sequentially involving you by association.

So I quit iRacing. I cancelled it and went back to my league in Nr2003. Since then I have enjoyed racing so much better. I have virtually the same physics (iRacing was built on Nr2003, only thing new is the tire model), but now I can race as hard as I want. If I hit the wall, oh well, if I bump a guy, oh well, if I cause a wreck, I serve my EOLL and apologize and oh well.

So ask yourself, is having to race with the worry of tarnishing you SR hanging over you the entire time really worth it, and is it really fun?
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I only race on the roadcourses and not in any leagues. I know the oval is much tougher since you are running door to door, lap after lap. It sounds like you are having much more fun with NR2003! Please continue enjoying that game!

Personally, I am glad for iRacing aiming high with SR and iRating rather than having very low hurdles. Also, my strategy (road only) is to run tests with the car/track until I run the race distance with few or no off-track incidents. After that I run in some practice sessions with other pilots - this allows me run in traffic with a car and track that are now familiar to me. And, as you may know, SR is not calculated in practice sessions so if I have incidents they are not penalized as heavily as in an official race.
 
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Patrocles
SR is only ~0.3x in practice sessions so if I have incidents they are not penalized as heavily as in an official race.
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I didn't think SR was effected in practice sessions. I'll have to stop letting friends try iRacing out in practice then. I've been letting them run about a half hour in test, and then letting them run a few in practice. I had no idea they were killing my SR.
 
bevo
I didn't think SR was effected in practice sessions. I'll have to stop letting friends try iRacing out in practice then. I've been letting them run about a half hour in test, and then letting them run a few in practice. I had no idea they were killing my SR.
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I will have to check or maybe someone else can add to this. That is what I always believed so don't take it as fact just yet.
:)

OT....got it.
You are correct!! no penalty for practice!
The chart does not format from the pdf to here. check the sporting code
Table 3.6
 
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Yes, practice and 'testing' the car on track are freebies - as SR goes.
Only races, Time trials and Quali's count towards SR.

The penalties in practice and Testing do show up on screnn as per usual, but they are not tallied and do not affect your SR.
 
In my opinion the safety rating makes you a better driver and less likely to make a mistake because you actually have something to lose... and with better, less accident prone drivers comes a better racing experience.

But like Wilbur said, iRacing isn't for everyone.

But I can assure you, probably everybody on this forum does like it.
 
SKIDMARX
In my opinion the safety rating makes you a better driver and less likely to make a mistake because you actually have something to lose... and with better, less accident prone drivers comes a better racing experience.

But like Wilbur said, iRacing isn't for everyone.

But I can assure you, probably everybody on this forum does like it.
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Exactly, it has it's downsides, but for the most part it's a great idea. It keeps people "in line" and less likely to do stupid things, although it still happens from time to time.
 
Mac K
Exactly, it has it's downsides, but for the most part it's a great idea. It keeps people "in line" and less likely to do stupid things, although it still happens from time to time.
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Totally agree with this 👍
It seems that the SR has an extra effect on driving cleanly IMO. You wind up knowing how close you can be without touching cars because the SR pushes you to maintain a clean line as opposed to 'getting away' with acceptable contact. In road racing (real life) there is almost no such thing as acceptable contact. I can see how the SR would be a pain on ovals - Street stocks on short oval comes to mind - good luck getting 20 cars through lap 1 without any contact :nervous: They almost need an ammended SR system for ovals that allows for a certain 'threshold' adjustment for those situations. A slight rub in those tracks should not cost SR points as it really is part of that racing.
 
I think you missed the point of this. It wasn't to rant about iRacing in general, it was to argue the point that the Safety Rating system is messed up, especially for ovals.

For Road Courses it works fine, you have enough corners that making a mistake won't effect the SR, and contact is never good on road courses.

However for an oval, it isn't the best of ideas. There aren't many corners, so each mistake has a drastic effect.

Basically, my argument is that the safety rating system needs to be fixed for the overall enjoyment of racing.
 
I don't think the point was missed by most responses that address your issue.
The SR is a great system, but it is a bit flawed when applied to the Oval racing aspect of the sim. For road racing it's fine as - is.
I think you and most drivers would agree with that 👍

I think some of the responses are a reply to this part of your OP:
Bhowe83
However, it isn't truly fun.
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Clearly there is strong disagreement on that...
Personally, I've never enjoyed a racing sim more than iRacing.
 
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SR makes you indeed a much better driver. I was a very agressive driver in the past, now i am very calm.

I love the safety rating but still i think they should fix some things.
Some corner you can cut whitout a loss of SR, other corners you get SR becaus you have one wheel on the grass. I never though this is a problem in real world racing.

But SR can be frustrating as hell. 60% of the points i recieve are mistakes by others.
30% are moments i have to leave the track to avoid certain drivers or when i got OFF Track for no reason at all(one wheel of track). Only 10% of the SR i got are race incidents or my mistakes.
 
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Hydro
I don't think the point was missed by most responses that address your issue.
The SR is a great system, but it is a bit flawed when applied to the Oval racing aspect of the sim. For road racing it's fine as - is.
I think you and most drivers would agree with that 👍

I think some of the responses are a reply to this part of your OP:

Clearly there is strong disagreement on that...
Personally, I've never enjoyed a racing sim more than iRacing.
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Ahh yes, I did word that wrong. iRacing is a great sim, and a ton of fun. However the safety rating issues hanging over your head take away a good bit of that fun, for me atleast any ways.

I'm not telling you what you should and shouldn't enjoy, I'm just stating my simple views on the flaw of the safety rating and how it effects the sim overall
 
Bhowe83
However the safety rating issues hanging over your head take away a good bit of that fun, for me atleast any ways.
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That's why when you don't want to worry about it there are various hosted sessions with pretty good variety and are clean.... for the most part, that's what I do when I don't have time to practice an entire week before jumping in an official race
 
I think its fun, and it definitely has the best online racing that can be found outside of a league. I think their netcode is awesome because cars rarely skip and warp like other sims when online.

With that being said I do not think its near perfect, or as realistic as they claim in ad's and with driver testimonies.
 
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getting tired of the people who say its too expensive.... its a hobby

I've looked into real racing and the cheapest form of it is probably either Ice Racing or Karting.... karting isn't cheap ... a high end kart can be as high as 3 thousand dollars... and I'd get maybe a good handful of outings in that kart in a whole year...probably nothing in the winter - that doesn't include club fee's, race fee's that can be upwards of a hundred dollars for race weekend which I'd have to pay everytime i race... I simply can't afford either ice racing or karting right now... would love to do it and probably get a bit more thrill than iracing but just can't afford it

by comparison iRacing I can do it ANY TIME I WANT.... it cost me 99 dollars for 2 years... the cars/tracks were expensive compared to other games, maybe, but I calculated in the first year I played it I still spent more on coffee on my drive to work than the cost of my membership and all the content I bought, its not real-life racing, but it is still real racing ... i sweat, the emotions are probably the same, i get an adrenaline rush... i used to think fps shooters were competative.... but in an fps you die and respawn so often that it makes death irrelevant ...I havn't found anything my gaming experience ever that was this much of a competative rush and for me thats fun

your comparing it also perhaps to racing games I wouldnt' play ... actually don't play that are free because they aren't competative... is it fun? yes and to me if it wasn't for iracing the next best thing for me isn't another racing game.. its probably battlefield 3.
 
WedgeX
getting tired of the people who say its too expensive.... its a hobby

I've looked into real racing and the cheapest form of it is probably either Ice Racing or Karting.... karting isn't cheap ... a high end kart can be as high as 3 thousand dollars... and I'd get maybe a good handful of outings in that kart in a whole year...probably nothing in the winter - that doesn't include club fee's, race fee's that can be upwards of a hundred dollars for race weekend which I'd have to pay everytime i race... I simply can't afford either ice racing or karting right now... would love to do it and probably get a bit more thrill than iracing but just can't afford it

by comparison iRacing I can do it ANY TIME I WANT.... it cost me 99 dollars for 2 years... the cars/tracks were expensive compared to other games, maybe, but I calculated in the first year I played it I still spent more on coffee on my drive to work than the cost of my membership and all the content I bought, its not real-life racing, but it is still real racing ... i sweat, the emotions are probably the same, i get an adrenaline rush... i used to think fps shooters were competative.... but in an fps you die and respawn so often that it makes death irrelevant ...I havn't found anything my gaming experience ever that was this much of a competative rush and for me thats fun

your comparing it also perhaps to racing games I wouldnt' play ... actually don't play that are free because they aren't competative... is it fun? yes and to me if it wasn't for iracing the next best thing for me isn't another racing game.. its probably battlefield 3.
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well said. I never understood the hate for something that people don't like....I guess "sour grapes" and all gets people foaming at the mouth when criticizing iRacing.

My hobby is online pickup racing. I never "hated" iracing but when I first heard of the game I thought, "No way, I am not going to pay to race when I can do it for free after a buy a game like GT5. After 2 years of the crashfest that is GT5 online pickup racing I finally took a closer look and eventually joined. iRacing is a good fit for me!
:)
 
Patrocles
well said. I never understood the hate for something that people don't like....I guess "sour grapes" and all gets people foaming at the mouth when criticizing iRacing.

My hobby is online pickup racing. I never "hated" iracing but when I first heard of the game I thought, "No way, I am not going to pay to race when I can do it for free after a buy a game like GT5. After 2 years of the crashfest that is GT5 online pickup racing I finally took a closer look and eventually joined. iRacing is a good fit for me!
:)
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This is exactly same mindset I had! I just switched from NTG to Iracing because I was tired of crap like that, Nascar 09 was perfectly fine for me and was happy with the racing.
 
The problem is your comparing a racing simulator to racing games. iRacing is a sim, not a game, the fact that there is a score and a rating system is a fact of the sport, not the design of software.

Like any simulator, you can spend as much or as little as you like, you can go full motion custom platform, Obutto, playseat or just a cheap-o wheel and your desktop. I used to be in to flight sims for a long time, no score but different license ratings, and I could buy a Cessna 172 for $35k, or the sim for $35k or a B747 sim for $500k if I wanted to.

The reason we use simulators is simple, its cheaper to hammer out the 1's and 0's when you hit a wall (or the ground) than the real car or airplane. People dislike the SR system, so do I, it needs to be rethought but its the best way so far to do it.

When you "go for a gap that isnt there" or "use the whole track to just go like hell" in a real car on a real track at best your asked to leave and not come back, you will not only cost yourself the repairs (if it can be repaired) of your car, but others around you as well.

You bounce off a wall in real life and your done not just for the day, unless your wealthy (guessing if you think iRacing is spendy your not) your done for the year.

I do find iRacing fun (frustrating, aggravating, irritating, adreneline producing, blood-pressure raising, emotion inducing, pressurized fun), because as MS always touts their flight sims ""It's as real as it gets"", I'm not upset that if a crash is bad enough your done and out of the race, I'm impressed. I just wish all the "Grand Theft Auto" children would keep to their games and stay out of the simulators.
 
Jdraegon
The problem is your comparing a racing simulator to racing games. iRacing is a sim, not a game, the fact that there is a score and a rating system is a fact of the sport, not the design of software.
games and stay out of the simulators.
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yea exactly, that's what I was saying or trying to say,

iRacing is an alternative to real life racing, not other racing games.... until all the other games catch up in realism, net-code, reliability, crashing/damage consequences etc. - and having a constant talent pool of people just as willing to race round the clock ... its the only game in town for this level of competition

my friend who didn't like iRacing complained that people took it too seriously - I think the real shame is people don't take their real-life driving seriously enough, judging from people I see driving everyday... iRacing is the one place I know where driving/racing is given the respect it deserves.
 

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