A few suggestions for US members

Sk3ptik0n · Dec 7, 2014

It's no mystery that while there is a healthy contingent of US members at RD, races in our time zone are few and far between.
That's no fault of the staff, as over the years they have tried their best to improve things. I remember when we had EU and US races (basically the same race in 2 different time zones) and other things to try to make RD more friendly to its US audience.

The fault is ours. Already some races attracted no ore than 5 or 6 members, then when you actually showed up, 3 would be there. It was disappointing and I don't think it's going to get better.

I am on the west coast so for me things are even worse. I have the east coast about 3 hours to my right, but then unless volcanism really picks up in the pacific ocean or people start simracing on merchant vessels, there is nobody until we get to Japan. It's frustrating.

Anyway, here are some ideas that may help improve things and should be fairly low maintenance:

1) Americas sub-forum: This could be a good way to connect US, Canadian, and Latin American members and discuss how to make things better, organize races and so forth. Eventually it can be broken up with its own sub-forums for leagues and pickup races, but for starters it could be useful to experiment with a sense of community. In fact, I would call it "The Americas" and try to involve central and south america as well.

2) Flags or continental marks on profile pictures. I am thinking of something that tells us at a glance where a member is from. This would also be nice in the "buy and sell" area as more than once I have seen things I wanted and then noticed the price in EUROs.

3) Make the US "club" Sim Agnostic. Somehow the US moderators coordinators should be able to access races in all Sims. One easy way to do that would be simply to make the races the same as the EURO ones, only give the Admin the ability to manage it at another time. Since I don't know how this works, I'll leave it to you to find a viable way.

4) My fourth suggestion is to find a way to rent servers to leagues the way iRacing does. I think it could be a good source of revenue for RD. Something for you guys to consider.

Dennis Phelan · Jan 5, 2015

@Sk3ptik0n Sorry, I haven't looked in this forum for a long time. Yes, life was good to the America's in the past, Euro races had full grids and there were enough US racers around to at least get regular races for Eastern time. You did try to help whenever Race07 events were put up and unfortunately they became a waste of time. Currently there is one racing club that does have US events scheduled on a regular basis, Assetto Corsa! It's the most popular sim and has the overflowing grids that allow a separate "sub club". Of course, not everyone has it or wants to give up their current racing club.

I cannot address all of your suggestions, I just setup events but I can say as far as Race07 goes,that what you say in your first one is very easy to do in the Race07(or any other]). Start a thread to get racers from the America's to discuss times and days that they might be willing to race at. Any race decided upon would be late enough to not bother other drivers online for some practice, you might even pick up one or two. In Race07, any driver can move the action forward to the next session. This is not done during scheduled events. Normally one is not supposed to go past a Qualifying session when practicing as it limits others from joining in a practice but it is possible to do in some of the Sims. I think AC with it's system of booking might be difficult, I really don't have any knowledge of how it works and AC already has US events. I think most "US" races would be late enough to not bother practice habits of Euro drivers.

Hoping you are successful in your scheduling of events. I'm sure staff would start to help by posting your time and day as a scheduled event in the club.

Sk3ptik0n · Jan 26, 2015

Thanks for the reply Dennis.
I have been thinking about this US EU AU problem (I included Australia because they are always a fairly dedicated contingent) and it occurred to me that among my suggestions there is one that could be a good start for then implementing the others in time.

The "Sim Agnostic" Forum for US/Americas members and one for Australia/Asia members.

It could go under "General Forums" and be identified by name and by GMT + or GMT - so that members from other areas but with schedules that allow them to race at odd times for their area can also join up.

The way I see it, having our own forum spanning all the different sims and activities would give us a chance to connect and discuss scheduling, sim popularity and so on without encroaching on any specific Sim discussion. The reality is that many of us have more than one sim. And those that don't would be probably willing to try one out if they see it would give them more chances to race in their time zone.

But no matter how much I think about this, I don't see a way to even start without having a dedicated "Americas" and "Australasia" forum in the offerings.
I am a web developer so I know creating a new forum is not hard and if a moderator is needed, I'll volunteer (and my first order of the day will be to find at least 2 other moderators to spread the responsibility).

Once we have our own sub-forum, then we can start discussing the racing issue in more generic terms, poll the kind of sims we are using now and keep an eye on what sims are used more and more and so forth.

What would it take to create these two Forums? Who do I ask?

mcnasty1 · Jan 28, 2015

Agreed!

Doc · Apr 12, 2015

Very good ideas!

I'm from the Eastern U.S. and am looking for races, for example, and I think most people are sleeping. It would be nice to hook up with drivers from the States.