I have just spent around an hour and a half online and have failed despite maybe 20+ attempts to compete in any sort of race whatsoever, it's not an uncommon experience for me. It is not down to connection issues - apart from the occasional incompatibility ones - the problem comes from both a design and a user etiquette perspective.
I had a rally car I wanted to try out and was happy to race one any of the smaller courses. I spot plenty of rooms that look fine to try but by the time I enter, they (slowly) load up and once I can access regulations I see that for a multitude of reasons I cannot use my chosen car. These reasons can be specific car selected, bhp limits etc. and of course the room host at that point has the right to set whatever he likes as his criteria, you just get no indication of this before you enter a room frustratingly as the only information you have there are NORMAL RACE and the virtually pointless RACE QUALITY. Often you will go in a room while a race is ongoing, wait patiently for it to finish as only then can you access regulations and then find out you do not qualify. A lot of time can be lost.
Even more frustrating is poor host etiquette. You get in a room, your criteria is fine, the Event Status says Free Run and Race but the host never actually starts a race, he can be messing about drifting, chatting to his mates, whatever. You comment in the room asking when the race will start and get no reply. This goes on until you eventually get really annoyed and leave. This happened a dozen times or so tonight. Surely if the room status is set to Free Run and Race then the rest of the room can force a race start after a certain amount of time? Again, this would be helpful if it is indicated on the room summary before you enter in the first place, perhaps the amount of time since the last race finished if one is currently not ongoing. Another big loss of time.
Final issue I experienced a few times tonight was getting kicked for no valid reason. I went in several rooms and was kicked out, the one regular factor in these seemed to be that everyone in that room was of a certain nationality and I was not of the same. Now, if someone wants to set up a nationality filter on room creation that no-one from another country can enter, well I still think that's not a good thing but it would at least save you entering, loading up, setting up your car and then getting kicked. Again, a lot of time wasted. I think perhaps you should have more than one person needed to kick someone too, I was kicked by this Spanish git last night after beating him in a hotly contested race, his last action being trying to plough into me but missing and ending up in a fence. Kicking me was done in a fit of pique which is not a good reason.
So yes, an annoying evening and these are all issues that I think are much more important to sort than implementing mechanical damage. I yearn for the simplicity of Prologue online at the moment.
