Again a troubling team event. Daytona 24h this year didn’t differ too much from previous special events and disconnections and technical problems with servers were the main issue. This is not new and many topics have already been opened to argue about what is exactly happening inside iRacing to solve this.
Endurance events are one of the main products iRacing have to face this new e-sports wave that is showing as a promising incomes source in the near future. Many competitors are in the starting grid but few of them, almost none, have a powerful infrastructure as iRacing has. Unfortunately this doesn’t seem enough for the events worked flawlessly and no load nor test events has been carried to get more data and try possible patches o solutions.
This summer appears in the horizon as a reachable goal where day night transitions and dynamic track conditions have to be applied in real time to every participant and load in every sense will be a lot higher than has been until now.
Worse even is the lack of effect in many of this events to the racers who race in. Until now only SR is applicable to these events, therefore many of the race drivers goes in and goes out with any responsibility of their actions in the track. Many people doesn’t even try to sign because the lack of reward or punishment. Some of them try for a few laps without care due to non iRating involved number.
Is it really a difficult task to address? I guess if already SR is working, this should be a trivial addition, but something is not fitting in the staff minds to put it in place.
Joni Backman, a pro simracer, did an approach to this matter a couple of days:
iRacing already has the system built fully capable of dealing with this, it’s just a matter of “please implement this”. The addition to the current system is the simplest math you could think of.
It cannot be that difficult!
We already have the endurance race signup process in effect which calculates the average iRating of all signed drivers. The same system can be used to calculate iRating spread in a race.
Like so:
Drivers A+B are in team with iRatings 8000 and 3000 …. so that car’s average iRating is 5500, which is used to calculate the sof. And no it doesn’t matter if someone joins the team mid-race, because the final driven roster is what matter as the final SoF of the race.
And after the race, the iRating gained would spread according to the % of laps completed.
Like so:
Let’s say their team wins a 4000 SoF race and their team with avg 5500iR gains +80 iRating from that race.
Now….
Driver A did 90 laps in a 100-lap race, and Driver B did 10 laps. Therefore Driver A will gain 90% of the 80 iRating, and Driver B will gain 10% of the 80 iRating. That means Driver A receives +72 iRating, and Driver B receives +8 iRating.
Honestly, it cannot get easier nor more fair than that. If you don’t drive a lot in that race, you won’t gain a lot in that race. That way nobody can tank their iRating by just sitting in a fast team. You can be slow in a fast team and only drive minimal distance, fine, but you won’t be rewarded for that much either.
Also, this would get rid of the “we only race leagues so our iRating is not high enough, but pace is” problem in the long run, because these guys would start gain iRating from these endurance events, eventually putting them into the split where they feel they belong.
iRacing, PLEASE! Make this happen, and the endurance races would have something to drive for. Currently they are just SR grinding series, which means a lot of people are not even interested in clicking into the race, they just join in case they need to grind SR. For example, in WhatsApp conversation, a lot of people already disliked the fact that LMP1 cars only race against SR, not iR… and a lot of guys lost interest in racing those because of if.
Endurance races need something to race against.
There was a problem with just 1 server in this year’s 24. iRacing has explained what happened and what they’ve done to rectify that issue. That 1 server was hosting 4 of the 17 splits so the problem was a bigger problem but it wasn’t a systemic issue. Most of the splits were trouble free. As for iRating in team events, iRacing can turn that on at any time. Their main fear is that it will reduce, not increase, participation.
Hi Wayne
Do you have the link to check it? I’d like to read it, not to rectify because information was true. It was a problematic event and for the people who lost the chance to race doesn’t matter if one or ten servers died. If the issue is located and was an isolated issue, better. I sincerely expect doesn’t happen again.
Yep, iRating thing is debatable, some people thinks one way others against it. I have mixed feelings.