Why don't we have reasonable Practice sessions?

Lazza said:
From what I’ve seen, staff are inclined to encourage people to take part in races when online and use offline for longer practice.

They’ve said they’d like to make it easier (replicating conditions etc) but I wouldn’t expect it soon.
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It is not right when staff is forcing people to do something they do not want to. According to this topic people do not want to practice offline but online (unlimited time) as it is usually with most of other racing games and racing services.

(here you can join practice season in five out of six available racing games, except LMU)

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barrett said:
The actual effect for me has been to take part in fewer races.

I load up LMU and want to have enough practice time available to actually run a few laps, get used to the car and conditions and maybe try a few needed setup changes. Instead i wind up bouncing between practice sessions that only have 8 minutes remaining trying to decide which race i may want to do. Eventually i just give up and go practice for a championship race that i may or may not run a day or two later, because the servers are available.
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I'd like to practice online too, but given that it's not an option and doesn't sound like it's on the cards, you have the information necessary to stop bouncing around short online practice sessions (and waiting for them to start etc), look at the schedule for a race you want to run, practice offline in preparation for it, then join when it makes sense to.


Matej L. Kleindienst said:
It is not right when staff is forcing people to do something they do not want to. According to this topic people do not want to practice offline but online (unlimited time) as it is usually with most of other racing games and racing services.
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There are always people who want this or that, and they're always the most vocal (people happy to just jump in race after race aren't coming here saying how happy they are that practice is short).
If it didn't cost anything for them to run multiple servers I imagine they'd do both, but that's not the case.
 
This then begs the question: why bother at all with having online practice servers?

Also, I am sure I am not the only one, but almost every time I am in an online server my lap times are faster than when I use single player mode. That is with matching weather, track grip. Literally, every time.
 
AlanR_77 said:
This then begs the question: why bother at all with having online practice servers?
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You're asking for there to be no practice, just a short practice session for actually joining the event?

No, of course you're not. You're just jumping to the other extreme, and I get it, but that's no improvement.


PS The thread is asking why... and I said why. We can all disagree with it, and quite a few have on here (across multiple threads), but ultimately it's up to the devs and staff how the game works.
 
AlanR_77 said:
And what is "the other extreme"?
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Can't get the practice you want, so why have any. "I can't get as long a practice as I want, so why bother having it at all?" (paraphrasing)

Then if it's 1 hour, people say "I can't practice double-stinting tyres, so why bother having it at all?"

Then it's a 3 hour session, but people can still join with an hour left, so now let's make it 4 hours. Or 8. Or a test day with a 24h length. Now do you have time progression so people can test for different times of day? Or static so people can judge setup differences properly? Tyre warmers so people can test changes quickly, or not so people can practice the warming phase? Multiple practice servers covering a few of those combos maybe?

I'm being facetious, but there's no pleasing everyone. Offline lets people practice exactly what and how they want, and doesn't cost S397 to have extra servers running (longer) that are potentially empty 90% of the time.
 
Interesting that the point about servers running is raised, as I am fairly sure you would only be able to use the bloody things if you paid for the subscription anyway, which is the point
 
To be honest, Lazza, I in fact mostly do practice offline. It's probably a hangover from my GP3 and GP4 days.

Just to be clear I am not saying or aksing for anything; I was simply playing Devil's Advocate myself in response to previous comments.. Here we have you saying that the developers would like for people to practice offline and then use the online services for races. If that is what they want then they are entitled to want that. But if that is what they want then why do then make online practice servers available at all? Wouldn't it be sensible if the dev team really want that to make it the only option?

From my personal point of view, yes, I would like online practice servers. For daily bronze and silver races they would have static weather and track grip that reflects the event weather and track grip (for Gold races perhaps some variety in weather if the event has variable weather). And they would run continuously. That is utopia. That also probably will never happen. I accept that probably will never happen, and can cut my cloth accordingly. But I can see why other people are quite vocal about the subject.

* * *

What we currently see (for Bronze races, just as an example) is pratice servers rtunning for around 15 minutes, then rebooting, which takes around 5 minutes. So practice servers are active for 40-45 minutes each hour, there or thereabouts, but never for long enough to complete a meaningful run. If it is simply about the cost of running servers, and the dev guys are satisfied that it is currently financially viable, then surely it would be better to run 40 minute servers which start at the point where it is possible for RCP subscibers to sign up to an event, up to the actual start of the event. The same amount of server time used, but a better user experience. Truthfully, I really believe that would be a massive step forward. If the devs feel even the current model is not financially viable then they should just be honest, bin the practice servers completely and explain why.

We have ourselves a magnificent game on the whole. Being honest and open with the user base goes a long way; right now many feel a bit in limbo. The current situation doesn't seem satisfactory to anyone.
 
Well, why not...
  • Make a simple button to create an offline practice that reflects the track conditions, and has an active alert to when the event you registered to is starting - really no cost associated with this....?
  • Make a quick "self-hosted" session that replicates track conditions and your friends can join - so you can talk about your day, or discuss telemetry, or whatever...?

There are options to make things available for each user without even starting a (running) cost discussion...
Take GT7 as an example of being able to join practice/qualy or doing time trials on your own at any time, for any length you want.

And considering the not cheap Pro subscriptions, at least have a longer lived practice session server only for the subscribers, and spin new servers up as needed for people.

Honestly I don't get the logic of having 1/2/3/4 servers running at all times, but recycling them every 20 minutes (unless you have a memory leak no one can fix) - you know your usual player "load" at any time of the day, just scale the servers accordingly with time of day and run them until the number of average players goes up or down.

I understand people not having any complains about the current system because it works for you, but can't tell me there aren't viable alternatives without some dev doing an in-depth interview with Digital Foundry :p
 
IIRC the practice servers used to run for longer, but then users complained that they were missing the start of their races (even with the notification on screen) so they were made to shut down right before the respective race servers start.

FWIW this 'behavior' is not present in the championships.
 
Fitz said:
simpler to practice in race weekend
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you cannot get same conditions in offline.
track temp, wetness, cloudiness, RealRoad conditions (track usage %) and you will miss people on track, if you want to learn to drive in traffic (faster/slower persons + multiclass)
I do offline when I want to prepare for next week, having all listed limitations. but when week starts, I get online immediately.
 
xyz.asdf said:
you cannot get same conditions in offline.
track temp, wetness, cloudiness, RealRoad conditions (track usage %) and you will miss people on track, if you want to learn to drive in traffic (faster/slower persons + multiclass)
I do offline when I want to prepare for next week, having all listed limitations. but when week starts, I get online immediately.
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either you are a pro gamer and this will likely affect you.
Either you are a random driver (like me and a tons of people) and this will not affect you.

regards to trafic : people don't run practice as they run a race.
Not the same amount of tension, not the same goal, etc... Maybe you do but that's not a practical reality :)

Btw if we lean on the reality side : you are not supposed to know minute by minute the state of the track the day you race.

Practice should not be a thing since you can 100% time your race (prepare for wet in adavance, etc...) and that's not a good thing on the realism part. Race is always a rush to adapt not a full partition you follow cause your know every second of the futur race.
 
Fitz said:
either you are a pro gamer and this will likely affect you.
Either you are a random driver (like me and a tons of people) and this will not affect you.

regards to trafic : people don't run practice as they run a race.
Not the same amount of tension, not the same goal, etc... Maybe you do but that's not a practical reality :)

Btw if we lean on the reality side : you are not supposed to know minute by minute the state of the track the day you race.

Practice should not be a thing since you can 100% time your race (prepare for wet in adavance, etc...) and that's not a good thing on the realism part. Race is always a rush to adapt not a full partition you follow cause your know every second of the futur race.
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I really wish they'd get dynamic wind in the game. The aliens will still be aliens, but at least it won't be possible to replicate lap after lap within thousandths...
 
roberto.schneiders said:
I find it hard to believe people think the current practice sessions are reasonable. I can't make sense of it. I have more than 10 years of experience on iRacing and recently switched to LMU. These days, I have very little time for the simulator, so when I do have a bit of extra time, I need to practice for half an hour before a race just to get things going, but for some reason, I can't do that.

I open the game, and I find a session that interests me, a GT3 race in a track that I like, I think, ok, let's practice a bit and go for a race. The practice sessions available end in 3 minutes, so there is no point in even going into that session. Why would a practice session be linked with the Race session? Even if you manage to get the practice sessions at the beginning of the session event, it's just 15 minutes!!

Then you decide to just wait for that session to start, to get a practice session on the next one, just to discover that there are no practice servers on the new session event. Sometimes it takes 4 minutes to get the practice sessions going.

I know I can pay a subscription to have access to practice servers in advance, but that's just nonsense, isn't it? I could also set up a local game and race against bots, but that defeats the purpose. You join a practice session to check where you are against other people, maybe have a sense of how it is to race very close to other cars in certain parts of the track...

I really don't get how a game this good fails so badly in such a basic feature.
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Thank God I'm not the only one experiencing this.
I have the exact same problem. After launching the game, I can access the training server once. However, after switching to the next event, the button remains gray—or, alternatively, no servers are displayed after I select my vehicle. I’ve reported this issue multiple times, yet nobody seems to care—even though I’m paying for a subscription.
 
I've said it in other threads about practice servers, but the current state made all my buddies quit LMU. Since we have different skill levels, the most fun we had was running practice servers together on LFM & iRacing, teaching eachother how to improve, etc. You can't do that on LMU so everybody (except me) quit the game. I don't think the dev understand the importance of practice servers, just in my circle that's 3 people that won't spend money on the game anymore because of this. I've just learned recently that they run 2hr practice sessions for weekly races, to me that added insult to injury because it proves they can do it.
 
zxpro said:
I've said it in other threads about practice servers, but the current state made all my buddies quit LMU. Since we have different skill levels, the most fun we had was running practice servers together on LFM & iRacing, teaching eachother how to improve, etc. You can't do that on LMU so everybody (except me) quit the game. I don't think the dev understand the importance of practice servers, just in my circle that's 3 people that won't spend money on the game anymore because of this. I've just learned recently that they run 2hr practice sessions for weekly races, to me that added insult to injury because it proves they can do it.
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So they are ok to pay at least 70$ a year in Iracing so they can have practice server....

But they can't spend 20$ after the yearly racecontrol plus and have 1500 credit....
75 hours of practice server.... if you are 4 : 300 hours a year !
AND you don't have to add all the additional cost of iracing (track + car)

Yeah i guess they have the right mind set and a good perspective :p

I prefer the model of LMU. Even if this mean i have to spend 26 cts on each hours of practice server
 
Fitz said:
So they are ok to pay at least 70$ a year in Iracing so they can have practice server....

But they can't spend 20$ after the yearly racecontrol plus and have 1500 credit....
75 hours of practice server.... if you are 4 : 300 hours a year !
AND you don't have to add all the additional cost of iracing (track + car)

Yeah i guess they have the right mind set and a good perspective :p

I prefer the model of LMU. Even if this mean i have to spend 26 cts on each hours of practice server
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That is shortsighted, those that also had iracing kept their subscription, so a lost to LMU, and those who don't have iracing went back to LFM, another lost for LMU. Using credit above a subscription and having to setup a server, to then not have the same conditions, is a poor comparison to the game providing longer practice servers like any of its competitors, which is a couple of clics away. You focus on iracing but the better comparison is LFM, on which we actually spend most of our times together in practice servers. Also you have to buy the credits, even if you have a racecontrol pro (which I have) on a game that is not supposed to have the same model as iracing.
 
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This guy does have a point

In my younger days, I used to race with friends, and NONE of this was ever done in race sims or servers set up to run races, it was always done in a 2 or 3 hour practice server.

it is a great way to bounce ideas about, lead and follow., try setups etc.

And putting something as simple as that behind a paywall for me is almost crazy.

I understand why they have done it, it's about money, but you are in some ways cutting your nose off.
 
We are not agree. I'm ok as a lot of player with the current model.
Sure i would love to be able to hosted server so i can host my own server as i was able with AC or AMS2 but this is not a deal breaker.

A tons of point are Deal breaker on Iracing or LFM for me and for other people.
 
In the 'old days' a server could be a couple of older boxes in the closet of the DEV team. Now, to meet demand & bandwidth, servers are rented from AWS. Every second a server is active is a 'cost' to the company. They try to limit costs by providing users the option to either rent some server time or practice offline.
I understand driving online is often different than offline due to lag and rented server/offline's lack of a weather forecast. finding a method to communicate that information could be helpful.
 
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