iRacing League Discussion

[Kenadian]

Hey fellow iRacers,

We'll be having a Teamspeak meeting the weekend of January 3rd 2015 to discuss forming a league.

Right now we have close to a dozen or so drivers many of whom continually practice and/or race together.

I was asked on our Twitch Stream today by one of Dino's buddies from Assassins Elite if I'd be up for forming a league and if we can get between 15 - 20 people interested then we'll do it.

The consensus so far is it will be a GT3 league where the minimum requirement is a C Class license.

Right now that's pretty much the only criteria we've discussed so if you have any ideas please share them here.

 

[Slider]

Was it slash47? That would be Tim. We (him, myself, Ryan Casteline and 2 more guys) were talking about an idea of a league between all of us, but I kept forgetting to mention it to you.

Initial idea we had was to do a draw to see what car/track it'll be that week, maybe have everyone pitch in $1 or 2 for the prize (winner takes half, 2nd an 3rd rest) or something like that. Ideas were definitely revolving around trying to give everyone an equal chance as some are better in lets say GT3, while some in SM. You get the point.

I'm definitely up for running like a small test league at first to see what the turnout is. Also, I'll be at work during the meeting, but I might be able to setup TS3 to listen in.

 

[Daunt]

A "test" league or something that allows us to gauge participation and such for a few races before launching an actual league would be a great idea slider.

A SM and GT3 mixed session would be absolutely awesome, but I think until we get the numbers, I don't think it is feasible. We would need ideally at least 15 drivers of each class.

Here's a couple questions to think about before the meeting (mull them over):

• Track selection? (Close to official series schedule?)
• Weekly vs Biweekly?
• Race length?
• Day and time to race?
• Rewards? (As dino said)
• Might want to consider a penalty system (just in case, hopefully we scarcely need)
• Points system?
• Enforcer of rules? Have a small group of "marshals" that will review anything if necessary

That is all I can think of for now. Biggest thing is going to be time and day. It will have to be a late afternoon type thing (for me) so that both europe and US can participate; and so probably a weekend. I am quite excited for it!

 

[Slider]

All of the above.
Daunt, I didn't mean a mixed session, but vary the car line up with each race to suit everyone.

 

[Daunt]

All of the above? What?

I think that is a worse idea, because then you're assuming everyone has and races most of the cars we'd switch between. I don't have nor would I drive SM, for example. Plenty of guys won't touch the V8SC... so participation would be pretty low. GT3 would be the best because everyone here drives it and drives it regularly.

 

[Slider]

"All of the above" -> I agree with all of the points you made.
As I said: it was just an idea that would potentially attract a greater audience.

 

[Noodleguitar]

Should the league have something that sets it apart from other leagues? If everyone with a C-license can join, won't it be just another GT3 league? I know at first it will consist of Practice Pals drivers but we all agree we'd like it to expand. So what would our target audience be? Clean, respectful drivers that seek competitive racing?

I'm not against asking entree fees so we can have a prize pool but I think it might prevent people from joining. Especially new drivers and drivers that are insecure about their race craft.
Also, it's hard for people to trust us enough to be willing to pay for races if we're not an established league like NEO or something. This is not a big problem if the fees are small.

Personally, I'd like to have a set of rules to make the racing fair. Ideally this would contain straightforward rules that can be checked. As an example, if we make passing under yellow illegal it would be really hard to check as replays don't contain flags.

I think penalties for avoidable contact should be included. Probably in the form of protests as live stewarding is probably not feasible. This to keep the racing clean. Such a penalty could be in the form of point deduction in the standings or loss of grid positions in the next race. Obviously this only works if the league has a sequence of races that form a championship/season instead of single events.

I'm pretty sure the biggest annoyance of official series is the standard of driving so if we can make sure not to tolerate such driving our league would be attractive for more people.

I think we should make the races at least 45 minutes, possibly with an enforced pit stop to make it more interesting. Anything less will make it similar to official series. I might be biased here because I don't like sprint races .

We could also introduce variation in race time, with most of them 45 minutes, a few sprint races and a few endurance races.

Multi-class races would be cool but as Daunt said you need a lot of drivers to make that work. We could always separate the two and have them race at different times so that everyone can participate in both if they want to.

Qualifying should probably be solo qualifier for 15-30 minutes.

 

[Daunt]

I agree on most of your points Noel. I would have to say this of course will be a legit league, not a string of events, so there will be proper standings, penalties that carry over if necessary, etc.

We would need a committee of something like 5 or so drivers to take a look at any protests (or maybe just review all the 4x accidents as well no matter what)

As for money, I think we need to be established first. I'd hate to lose even 1-2 drivers at this point due to money concerns. Our biggest priority up front should be growth, then once we've made it through 1-2 seasons then I can see us getting bigger.

 

[Kenadian]

A lot of terrific ideas around here to be sure and a lot to discuss especially when Dino's guys join us in TS.

There are a lot of things to consider because any structured event will require a Team to ensure it keeps inline with it's original goals. For every 2 or 3 Team Members who help keep this thing organized, we'll need at least 1 or 2 people willing to step in at a moments notice to help should real life get in the way (which it always does).

After doing this sort of thing for a long time I can say without hesitation that most get into it with good intentions in the beginning but are quickly weeded out or just disappear leaving a precious few doing all the work.

If this happens our League will die a quick death.

Want to handle money, we need a treasurer for that.

Want to police it, we'll need at least a few people handling disputes.

Want to run a Hosted Official Session, we'll need at least one (preferably 2 or 3) administrators there to make sure it runs smoothly.

We'll probably run comms while we race as well however TS doesn't work with 20+ people in the same channel. I've yet to see one instance where any competitive game can handle more than 5 or 10 people in comms at once.

That means TS discipline which I'm the poster boy of how exactly not to do it.

I do agree that asking people to pay a few dollars/week may weed out some potential drivers but it may also weed out the kiddies who are on mommy and/or daddies credit card which may not be a bad idea either.

If we're going to have a serious League then it can't be populated by knuckle draggers simply because we need the numbers. I'm more than willing to run 90 minutes worth of laps with 10 quality drivers rather than 20+ dodgy ones.

We'll probably need a reasonably strict rule set but not one that removes drivers from the League either. We'd rather have drivers decide it's not for them rather than kick anyone out as it can have the appearances of us being heavy handed and elitist.

I personally want to see Practice Pals be the doorway into this League as we can learn a lot about the drivers through this program.

I do understand your thoughts on the C Class license Noel however if we really need numbers we'll have to strongly consider allowing C Class license holders in.

In racing Ruf Cup, Global Challenge and GT3 I can say without hesitation that license level is no guarantee of good driving.

We also have people on rotating schedules not to mention people from other sides of the pond so the chances are exceptionally slim that one timeline will work for everyone.

It may be prudent to run 2 official League Races/week just so everyone has a chance to participate.

We'll also need to consider fixed vs open setups (my preference is fixed on this one).

We'll need to consider what to race and when because we won't be able to afford our own practice servers weekly. This is why I suggest we run alongside the GT3 schedule (or what have you) every week.

As I said, a lot to consider to be sure and it won't happen fast. If we have a well run and organized League up and running by Spring 2015 I'll be very surprised.

 

[Daunt]

I do agree that asking people to pay a few dollars/week may weed out some potential drivers but it may also weed out the kiddies who are on mommy and/or daddies credit card which may not be a bad idea either.

I disagree with this. I think iRacing's payment scheme already does wonders for weeding out the Gran Turismo wannabes. I've yet to run into a racer that isn't serious about it... not to mention our league should be quite strict on entry. Not strict as in, hey you're not good, just strict as in knowing each individual driver and knowing they're who we want to race with.

Overall I think we should just completely ignore license levels, or anything of the sort. All we need is a good look at someone that participates with us in a few PP sessions and we should be able to tell if they're good enough / clean enough to race with us.

I still am going to strongly advise against an entry fee to begin. Maybe in the future, but I think we should try a major testbed short season to really get a grasp of how feasible this is. I will come back to this in a second.

Along with the strict ruleset is a committee to oversee the league in general. Basically a team of admin who can oversee any decisions they're not directly involved in. I'm going to say these would be the admin you say we'd need to oversee hosted session... I'm not sure why they'd be a different set of people?

Back to the testbed season. What better way to test the feasibility and participation levels then a short but intense season. I am talking about a max 6 week season that has all of the big name tracks like spa, silverstone, the glen, bathhurst, etc. Everyone owns and runs and loves these tracks, so no one, or very few, would need to make purchases to participate (as opposed to running alongside GT3).

We can also use the testbed season as a benchmark for seasonal point systems, test how penalties are handled and correct as we go, rather than be committed to a full season without really seeing how well this works beforehand.

 

[Kenadian]

One way or the other I'm sure we'll see but if you need proof of concept on what I mentioned above you need look no further than Matt Malone's streams with that one kid he has there all the time (can't remember his name).

He crashes out of virtually every race and is no stranger to the dispute system either.

There was even that kid in one of our PP Sessions that you and I joked about sounding like my little sister. I think there's actually a shocking amount of youngsters on iRacing so it should be interesting.

We will need a license cap and there is no way around it. Rookie's and D-Class license holders cannot jump into open Practice with us can they? Even if they can do you think their racecraft will be even close to developed enough to race cleanly in a League?

Anyway, we'll have to hammer out all the details in TS with a lot of people on because I really think we're only scratching the surface here.

We'll also need to know who volunteers for what because we will need a Team of people we can depend on if we're to pull this off.

 

[Slider]

So much to write, not enough space. I read all of you guy's points, but best is for us to talk in TS. Unfortunately, I'll be at work when everyone will be here, but I'll try to join in anyway.

Duke, kid you're talking about is probably Maverick, another one is Preston, but he's not that bad, he just talks too much sometimes.

 

[Kenadian]

lol yup it's Preston.

 

[Daunt]

Still though, they're extremely rare as far as I've found. And like you said Ken, PP should be a gateway [drug] to our league. So we'll know personally everyone that joins.

 

[Lockard.J]

I'm not opposed to throwing in a few bucks to add to a pot (even though I won't win it back). but I agree with Duke, not yet.

I really don't want fixed setups. The GT3 cars are pretty setup dependent and driving style can make perfectly good sets nearly undrivable if it doesn't suit someone's style. I think there will be plenty of shared sets in the forum and sessions.

As far as tracks go I would say either follow the official series or use as many base content tracks as possible. Following the main series has it's advantages like more setups shared on the official forum but then we're just like the official series with a more selective grid.

 

[Noodleguitar]

I got a great idea. We could just do Bathurst for 12 weeks straight. No difficulties in setups or buying tracks. If people get bored, we alternate the weather between grippy and slippery. P)

I agree that entry requirements should be one of the first things that need to be determined.

Around what time is that meeting? Something ridiculously late or will it exist in European zones too?

 

[Kenadian]

Mea habbe n0a idear?

I'm going to idle in the 'morrow so just yell at me when the bulk of you are around.

 

[Daunt]

So to get the discussion going again, since our meeting didn't really take us anywhere, where to begin? I think we should start by getting a solid list of racers that will be participating for our [probably shortened, test] season. Once we do that, I think we can take a poll and see what weekend day works best. This is only to start... as Duke suggested, we'll modify days and times for the first season to see which works best.

During this time I think the officials will finalize rules and then we can finally get to planning our first B2O race.

 

[Slider]

Why limit to weekend? There's a lot of SOF and other league racing going on as is, why not open the poll to all days. But yes, we should continue on with the discussion.

 

[Noodleguitar]

Why limit to weekend? There's a lot of SOF and other league racing going on as is, why not open the poll to all days. But yes, we should continue on with the discussion.

Because if you do it on week days it essentially will become an America-only league. That could work too, but I think the idea was that all regions should be able to participate. That's going to be hard no matter what, because there is at least an 18 hour time difference between all regions.