GPL/VROC still blows doors off N3/Won

It seems to me that VROC attracts a much more mature audience than what I've experienced so far using the Won servers and N3. My biggest complaint involves a few hosts that think they are in "Offline mode" and restart the server whenever they crash out or are having a bad run! I've run VROC and never to my knowledge been booted because the host had a bad run. Perhaps this is due to dedicated servers on VROC? Or just the quality/class of the individuals. Since purchasing my copy of N3 Wednesday I have been flamed numerous times by numerous individuals for nothing more than being in wrong place at wrong time. Usually warp generated, (not always though, mistakes happen). In the months since I've been on VROC I have not had any controversies or flame wars for any reasons! Why would you suppose this is? The TEN mentality? More racers? Closer racing? or just a lame physics engine that requires so little skill from the driver that whenever a mistake is made a war erupts? Beyond these issues I would also like to voice my opinion of N3. Sierra/Papy can add all of the "eye candy" they want, but it's still N1/N2 (un-believably boring). Even Indy can't help this title. Perhaps if N3 came out prior to GPL I would look differently at this situation. In my eyes all "simmers" took a GIANT step backwards, and had to pay $50 to find out. Mitch Alatorre Unhappy camper

On Fri, 17 Sep 1999 12:42:33 -0700, "Mitch_Alatorre"

Quoted text (8 lines)

>It seems to me that VROC attracts a much more mature audience than what I've >experienced so far using the Won servers and N3. >My biggest complaint involves a few hosts that think they are in "Offline >mode" and restart the server whenever they crash out or are having a bad >run! I've run VROC and never to my knowledge been booted because the host >had a bad run. Perhaps this is due to dedicated servers on VROC? Or just >the quality/class of the individuals.

I have been using VROC for a few days now with GPL and have been immensely impressed by both the quality and generosity of the individuals. They are extremely helpful, polite, etc. I have yet to come across anyone that would be considered a jerk much less a problem maker. I have hosted races of 17 laps or more where in the first 3 laps I discovered I had such a horrid set-up that it wasn't worth continuing.. instead of screaming and dropping the game I simply exit out to the replay screen and focus on how the top-3 are doing from different angles. Why? I can learn things! Alternately there is NO reason to boot other people out just because I had a bad night. That's something for the ***'s to fume over. I have also been in games with over 20 laps where the host got screwed up badly in the first two or three. Messages usually read as "I'll be back when it's over" but they DO NOT reset the games! The only boots I have experianced was due to one persons having computer problems while hosting and even dumped when he was running with an extended lead. When you do get shunted off or booted about you are almost always greeted with an apology, not laughter and that apology is nearly always met with a 'No Problem'. I can not think of a more polite online-society to date, at least not in my experiance.. maybe it's the genre attracting an older and more mature audience? I would really hate to see it as a class versus slob argument. I will (against my better judgement) be picking up N3 this evening more for the sounds and supposedly immersive experiance and a different type of online racing than for the fact that it's a Nas***race sim. I can't stand Nas***but I'm willing to support Sierra/Papyrus in hopes that they come out with more sims, preferably a WSC type race that is considerably better than Sports-Car GT or some other similar series. I have noticed some serious warping from time to time during peak hours on VROC but usually it's taken in stride. Nothing quite like trail braking into a hairpin from nearly 180mph only to have a car magically appear at a dead stop 3' in front of you. Something tells me Jim Clark never had to deal with that! (give or take the odd idiotic pedestrian and a goat or three) ;) (Joke mode on) Maybe they accidently swallowed their dip when they got nudged out of line?? :) I am already expecting a physics engine well below that of GPL but this is going more for the sounds and different tracks than pure computing experiance. Hopefully it isn't TOO bad.. ____________________ Hydrogen and Stupidity.. The two most universal elements

Pardon me, but I ran GPL til N3 came out and people were complaining JUST as loudly about this in GPL as you are about N3. From my experience, it's not as much a host restarting the event as much as it is the sim crashing on them. Last nite, I tried FOUR TIMES to run a race at Talladega and each time the sim sim crashed and took me back to the windows desktop. I think I've discovered the problem - if there's no AI in the event, the sim crashes. -- ========================================================= Redneck Techno-Biker (Zerex12) http://www.members.home.net/jms1/index.html Barbarian Diecast Collector (370+ cars and counting) http://members.home.net/jsimm/diecast_index.html Internet Grand Prix Series Season 2 http://www.paddedwall.org/igps2/igps2.html North American Stockcar Racing Online Competition http://www.paddedwall.org/nasroc1/nasroc1.html Super X Philes http://members.home.net/kap/superx/superx.html If you want to send me email, go to the first URL shown above & click "Send Me Mail" in the contents frame. =========================================================

Last night with N3 was my first online racing experience. First race I joined, which was not passworded BTW, I'm greeted with "Who the *** are you?" So after a few unsuccessful attempts to join a race, I hosted my own. Have to tell you, I got off to a miserable start and was BAD throughout. Felt like bailing, but I assumed hosing a game because I was doing badly would be very bad multiplayer etiquette. Stuck it out and was rewarded with fourth place. Warping was TERRIBLE, and lots of complaining by certain racers throughout. And guess what, it was still better than racing the AI. I just hope it gets better. -- By the way, if you'd like to get paid to surf the net, try this link. It's free and it really does work. http://www.alladvantage.com/refhome.asp?refid=BHX158

Give it a rest. its only 3 days old for Christ's sake. I can remember when VROC was utter chaos as well. I have been racing GPL online for around a year now. NAZ3 for 3 days. I have had more close racing in those 3 days than I have in 3 months with GPL. I fell in love with GPL like most everyone else, but head to head competition most every race, you cannot beat N3 for online fun. I have found many good racers and HOSTS, on these servers. You are taking one or two experiences and blowing it way out of proportion. Rick Sweeney

Quoted text (30 lines)

> It seems to me that VROC attracts a much more mature audience than what I've > experienced so far using the Won servers and N3. > My biggest complaint involves a few hosts that think they are in "Offline > mode" and restart the server whenever they crash out or are having a bad > run! I've run VROC and never to my knowledge been booted because the host > had a bad run. Perhaps this is due to dedicated servers on VROC? Or just > the quality/class of the individuals. > Since purchasing my copy of N3 Wednesday I have been flamed numerous times > by numerous individuals for nothing more than being in wrong place at wrong > time. Usually warp generated, (not always though, mistakes happen). > In the months since I've been on VROC I have not had any controversies or > flame wars for any reasons! Why would you suppose this is? The TEN > mentality? More racers? Closer racing? or just a lame physics engine that > requires so little skill from the driver that whenever a mistake is made a > war erupts? > Beyond these issues I would also like to voice my opinion of N3. > Sierra/Papy can add all of the "eye candy" they want, but it's still N1/N2 > (un-believably boring). Even Indy can't help this title. Perhaps if N3 > came out prior to GPL I would look differently at this situation. In my > eyes all "simmers" took a GIANT step backwards, and had to pay $50 to find > out. > Mitch Alatorre > Unhappy camper

Rick, I concur wholeheartedly. I suggest anyone who thinks N3 sucks online, try racing on Rick's server. I was there this Friday night, ran several races, and they were extremely smooth and warp free. It was like running offline. At a Taladega race, we had a 5-car pack up front that swapped positions repeatedly - you'd go from 2nd to 5th just like that. It was just like real NASCAR. It was extremely fun. Thanks a ton Rick!! This was the best server I've been on, but I've been on many more good ones than bad. I've seen at least as good racing ettiquette from the N3 drivers as I've seen on GPL, a very good thing considering it's only been out a few days. I've seen a few boneheads, a fair number of online rookies who make mistakes, and a warp-induced accident or two. Nothing not seen on VROC. Compared to the laggy, warpy, 19-car pileups at Monza that usually characterized the early days of GPL online racing though, N3 is doing very well. Plus, as Rick said - the racing is much closer. Instead of waiting for the guy in the Lotus ahead of you to spin, you have to stick to the bumper of his Chevy for 5 laps and work your way around him. In the meantime there's a guy on your Pontiac's bumper trying to do the same to you. I think N3 is much like GPL when VROC started, everyone is trying to see how well their machine can host - we had a LOT of people trying to host 8 guys on a 56K during the first days of VROC, or guys who thought their cable modem, etc., simply HAD to be able to host a full 19 cars. As time passed, the server ops figured out what worked and what didn't, and the guys who simply didn't have the horsepower or bandwidth to host stopped trying to. One thing, with the probably exponentially larger sales of N3 vs. GPL, there will be that many more people with good connections to host. -- Ken's Sig 3.0 "Who is the more foolish? The fool, or the fool who follows him?" - Obi-Wan Kenobi Go #43 and #44! volksy (at) geocities (dot) com volksy (at) yahoo (dot) com >Give it a rest. its only 3 days old for Christ's sake. I can remember when VROC >was utter chaos as well. I have been racing GPL online for around a year now. >NAZ3 for 3 days. I have had more close racing in those 3 days than I have in 3 >months with GPL. I fell in love with GPL like most everyone else, but head to >head competition most every race, you cannot beat N3 for online fun. I have >found many good racers and HOSTS, on these servers. You are taking one or two >experiences and blowing it way out of proportion. >Rick Sweeney

Well my predictions were true. Stock-car racing is much more accessible to the Mass market than a *** simulation of 1967 Formula 1. Nascar Racing 3 has built-in online multiplayer matching servers, so it can be raced by anybody. You don't need to know a little the community (You only know about VROC if you have a slight idea of the GPL community, remember) to hop in and race online. restrictive. The average age was around 30. For GPL, personally I have never seen somebody flame a driver in the VROC channel. GPL drivers are almost all Gentleman and Sportsman who enjoy the fun of having the chance to drive those beats. Now let's go forward to N3. It's in the nature of the sport. There is all those Kids who now can race for free. Keyboard drivers who are simply not the market of GPL and the NROS. There is all the people using AOL who would never be able to race the NROS/GPL online. There is keyboard drivers. On the NROS those keyboard drivers are easy to find, they never have a LPI over 20. This way you can look at the statistics for those drivers and simply not race with them. For GPL racing with a keyboard is impossible. But for N3, all those type of people are unfortunately like you, in the same place, trying to race. Most of them have no experience. They do not know the morals and ethics of online racing. Most of them will learn, but not all. Unfortunately we do not have a centralized chat system to learn them about those issues. We neither have rankings so that we can know who are those drivers. -- -- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard> -- May the Downforce be with you... "People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realise how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

Isn't this the same basically? How can you tell the difference between a crashed sim and the windows desktop? ;-> Uwe -- Uwe Schuerkamp http://www.schuerkamp.de/ Herford, Germany (52.0N/8h30mE) Ever wondered what's wrong with the world? http://bnetwork.com/ PGP Fingerprint: 2E 13 20 22 9A 3F 63 7F 67 6F E9 B1 A8 36 A4 61

>I have been using VROC for a few days now with GPL and have been >immensely impressed by both the quality and generosity of the >individuals. They are extremely helpful, polite, etc. I have yet to I agree. I've been racing online for maybe six months now, and the quality of VROC really is extremely high. Nice people, the only bad thing happening to me was someone going around the track the wrong way. Uwe -- Uwe Schuerkamp http://www.schuerkamp.de/ Herford, Germany (52.0N/8h30mE) Ever wondered what's wrong with the world? http://bnetwork.com/ PGP Fingerprint: 2E 13 20 22 9A 3F 63 7F 67 6F E9 B1 A8 36 A4 61