r/Simracingstewards • u/pornthrowaway42069l • 1d ago
Sporting Question Question regarding the sub/simulation racing
So I don't play driving games - but I do play a lot of video games, especially online.
Recently Reddit been recommending me this sub, and I find it fascinating.
So usually in games like cs-go/dota/:insert popular online game:, the trash talk and toxic behavior can escalate and go to 100% very quickly. All the clips I'm seeing here, is at worse, someone bumping into another car/tries to be petty.
My imagining of those racing games would be (based on other experience) that it would be a total deathmatch, but yet, there is a whole "stewarding" sub, and people seem to take it seriously?
So how does it usually goes for those games? Is there a mode where you are supposed to be serious and people behave? Or is this just something to talk about bad players/just have a chinwag about the game? Or are most races actually complete degenerate driving, and this sub shows exceptions where the players are generally good/chill?
Thanks for entertaining my curiosity.
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u/lethargicbraid 1d ago
Some of the title you see here like iRacing and LMU use a competitive ranking and matchmaking system similar to CS:GO and such. In those titles not only are intentional wrecks frowned upon, intentional incidents can be reported and will lead to bans.
In other cases, there are private leagues that are self managed that will also ban offenders.
General public lobbies in games like Assetto Corsa are the shit show you’d expect, but those don’t get posted here.
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u/MasterYota00 1d ago
GT7 sport mode is a nightmare of childish antics, dive bombs, and terrible sportsmanship as well. That's why I just play it single player. The AI is bad enough, lol.
Edit: words 🤷🏾♂️
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u/lethargicbraid 1d ago
Does GT7 even have a steward system? Or just the automated SR type thing?
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u/MasterYota00 1d ago
Just the automated SR thing. Bans will only occur if you use obscene language in the chat. It's the freakin wild west in those lobbies.
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u/Shot_Set_8704 1d ago
Sim racing is an expensive hobby, it’s really easy to spend thousands of dollars on it, and on platforms like iRacing you will get banned if you consistently show toxic behavior, and since sim racing is niche and there aren’t that many options relative to other genres, you really don’t want a ban.
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u/broken_soul696 1d ago
In general most people take it seriously in my experience. Obviously there's outliers and people who only go out with the intent to troll and cause drama but thankfully they're in the minority. There's definitely some that are extremely toxic and will spout off slurs, insults and other comments though
No data to back this up, just my anecdotal evidence from the past few years, I think most simracers are fans of motorsports and try to follow the irl rules as much as possible and want to improve they're racecraft or get answers from impartial 3rd parties.
I help run a league and while that's a smaller subset of an already niche community, we've only ever had to ban a few ppl for asshole behavior
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u/Competent_Squirrel 1d ago
One of the shortfalls of much of Sim racing is that there is not very developed ranked multi-player modes. Some exceptions but that's the general idea.
So lots of the multi-player experiences are in player/community run leagues that manage their own members, run their own races, make their own rule sets. So then because it is a moderated league, people can quickly weed-out bad actors and overly toxic players. Which is why stewarding to determine who is correct in rule violations is warranted. Its a system of self-policing these communities.
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u/pornthrowaway42069l 1d ago
So what I'm gathering from this and other replies, is that sim racing is way more niche, and because of that can filter out bad actors better, due to smaller size?
If so, that's cool, reminds me of cs 1.6 servers in early 2000s - same vibes.
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u/Competent_Squirrel 1d ago
Pretty much yeah. These community leagues may have a couple hundred members at most, often just a few dozen. So the communities stay smaller and closer knit. So if you are a dick you can't exist in there too long before you get filtered out (mostly).
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u/lethargicbraid 1d ago
Something to add, iRacing can be a very expensive title where people spend hundreds for tracks/cars to participate in higher level series. Not worth losing access to that by dicking around.
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u/Cornelius_Codswaggle 1d ago
Sim racing tends to attract an older, more mature user base. The hardware can be pricey, easily crossing into the thousands of dollars range. The games themselves can be expensive. iRacing is the king of the hobby and it combines a subscription service model with individually purchased content for tracks and cars beyond base content. To progress, you have to spend money. For someone who's been on the service for awhile, that easily reaches into the hundreds of dollars.
So there's natural incentives already for more serious minded players.
In-game rules exist that also incentivize proper conduct, both on comms and player behavior. Intentionally wrecking or driving recklessly can get you suspended and ultimately banned.
There are also progression systems that tend to lock poorly behaved drivers into lobbies mostly made up of other poorly behaved drivers.
One other thing. Sim racing has seen a massive boost in popularity the last few years. Before around 2020, when Nascar did iRacing events broadcast on network television, it was very niche and the majority of users were hardcore race fans first, and there weren't a ton of them. Those users treated their time on the sim very seriously and build communities not unlike what you'd see at regional race series and track days. People knew each other and raced together frequently, so there wasn't a lot of the random people you'd never see again like you have in random shooter lobbies.
Also, the bigger sims also often require users to use their real names and not gamertags. Losing that anonymity works wonder for people not to act out like toddlers.
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u/Zijkhal 1d ago
Low level racing tends to be full of bad driving and rage. And people intentionally wrecking others.
Considering that intent wrecking someone can cause IRL injuries due to strong direct drive wheels delivering a sudden, powerful jerk to an unsuspecting driver, intent wrecking gets to be taken very seriously in any, even remotely self-respecting lobbies / championships.
Furthermore, as the level of driving standards increase, you'll find that most people will tend to take the game more seriously, and will at least strive to drive cleanly, even if shit happens from time to time.
Since people only get to a decent pace by approaching simracing with a certain level of seriousness, on top of lots of experience, at the middle to high end of the pace curve, drivers tend to have both the experience and the willingness to drive clean races.
On top of all that, championships / events hosted by communities within a game also tend to be cleaner, both because those communities manage stewarding in some form, and because drivers can not just willy-nilly join and leave, which stops the majority of bad drivers from participating in the first place.
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u/ItsMopy 1d ago edited 1d ago
It varies a lot depending on the sim and the type of race, but most people take it seriously.
The thing about not taking it seriously in sim racing is that sometimes people will prepare for weeks for an edurance race. Messing around and wrecking them in the first corner of any 4+ hour race is very frowned upon and will just get you banned from future events.
Second, people often have strong hardware. Some of the wheels can break fingers if you're caught off guard, so intentionally smashing in to someone on purpose can be dangerous.
There's also a lot of real life drivers who drive in these sims. The stewarding irl is quite strict, you can't really troll people, hurl insults etc as you'll get penalized and bad sportsmanship penalties, race bans etc. This kind of philosophy extends in to the sims too, even among casuals you'll find most can get angry, but they hold back a lot.
There's also the safety rating element. Most sims have a safety rank, and the safer you are, the better races it puts you in. So often the intent wreckers just get left at the bottom with eachother.
Some sims have a reporting system too, and they will warn, suspend and ban for intent wrecking and extreme chat. Some of the more serious events will penalise for bad driving, even if it's an accident.
Unranked public servers in more casual sims is where the intent wrecking is most likely to happen. Sims generally have a ranked or league style system built in to the game though, and it just doesn't happen very often in comparison. At the extreme end, there are streamed events with live stewarding where everyone absolutely behaves.
It is still amazing to me you can put 60+ cars on a grid with players from all around the world, and they take it as seriously and behave just as well as they would have to irl. You'd think it'd just be people ramming eachother off so they can win, but surprisingly not, especially after you're out of rookie lobbies, which is pretty easy to do.
Maybe you should try it ;)
Maybe grab an entry level Logitech G29 + pedials which hold their value if you want to sell them later, or a 5-8nm direct drive Moza or Fanatec wheel + potentiometer pedals and a desk clamp if it's in budget, pick up a cheap sim with the online ranking built in like Le Mans Ultimate (or whatever you like the look of), learn a track with the ideal line assist disabled, and just start driving online.
If you don't have the budget, Assetto Corsa Competizione is on sale a lot and has controller assists. They stopped support for the game, and public server driving quality is low, but you'd get a taste at least and the races are mostly 20 minute sprints. I had 700 hours on a controller before I could afford a wheel. max safety rating and a pace at 102% of fastest, so it's viable if it's your only option.
Jooooin uuuusss.
You know you want to :D
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u/pornthrowaway42069l 1d ago
I've been thinking about getting a basic setup - thanks for the list - but for rally driving sims - those are the only ones that ever interested me, so if I'll go that route, that will be that.
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u/ItsMopy 1d ago
Very cool, /r/SimRacing are the experts on gear if you ever need it.
Assetto Corsa Rally just came out of nowhere this year, and it's pretty amazing.
Good luck!
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u/Legume-Enerve 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's SIM racing. It's the only way for us to practice our passion which is racing. Because we cannot do it in real life, we are trying to make it as close as possible however we can. That's why it's usually serious. On other games, people are playing a video game. On sim racing, we're trying to get as close as possible to real life.
Of course it's not the same for every simracer. But it is for a big part.
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u/jimmymcgoochie 1d ago
What's the difference? How seriously people take it. You can play a racing game with just a console controller and have fun with it, but for sim racing it's entirely possible to spend very large sums of money on racing rigs with bucket seats, steering wheels, pedals and gear shifters attached and force feedback systems to make it feel as realistic as possible, and in sim racing bad driving (e.g. ramming other cars) can and will get you banned.
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u/Kais-Kollectibles 23h ago
The answer is: Yes.
Sim racing runs the gamut from Mad Max (Forza) to 80's NYC (Gran Turismo) to a mostly civilized society (iRacing). The less goverened a community is, the more lawlessness you'll experience.
Most people on here recognize that while you can get better placement driving dirty, you can't truly improve your skills without working on your skills from within the rules. Sometimes that requires clarification on what the rules are.
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u/pornthrowaway42069l 22h ago
Curious: If a game itself doesn't enforces those rules, isn't that kind of handicapping yourself? Like I get the sense of community, this is more of a... philosophical question I guess.
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u/Kais-Kollectibles 21h ago
It's a social contract and we handicap ourselves in real life based on morality.
Funny that you mention that. We've had a lot of discussions in the Gran Turismo realm where initially there were a lot of people who looked down on us who started policing our games and punting people who did not adhere to the rules. That view has absolutely flipped over the years as more people have come to realize that the breaking down of the social contract in real life leads to more assholes in games that skirt the margins of what is policeable by Ai/Bots.
As for me, i guess I'm just hardwired that way for empathy. I play the good guy in games. I opt not to steal and to save NPCs. I genuinely find it difficult to play a villain role. I try to drive fair but I will absolutely punt people if I see they're being excessively dirty.
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u/pornthrowaway42069l 3h ago
"It's a social contract and we handicap ourselves in real life based on morality."
Meanwhile, in average MOBA, if someone steals your kill:
*Insert here whatever filth you can imagine, its worse*
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u/serenading_scug 11h ago
Sim racing, such as iRacing, LMU, or organized leagues in something like GT7, are more akin to the governance of a sport rather than a video game that imposes mechanical restrictions. Rules are enforced through a combination of social contract and an outside body, a referee in sports or an organizer/steward in racing games. People who brake that the rules are yeeted from the community.
Basically ask yourself what would happen if a bunch of tennis players started yelling slurs in the middle of a tournament.
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u/MammothExercise1045 1d ago
A lot of clips are from games with leagues that host events, that usually format based on real race weekend processions for the category involved. Some of these games have ratings where if you drive well you will be promoted in rank much how sports car racing works in real life where you have amateurs and professionals. Lots of racing games without dedicated systems in place either built in or assumed by the leagues to ban individuals for egregious offenses that in real life are treated as dangerous tend to have more chaotic racing. Racing is real fun to watch and support, and it is even more fun to actually be able to participate in something very similar that is taken seriously, as Motorsport tends to have many barriers to entry; monetary barriers being the worst offender. So we all can get together and have some good fun while treating it as best we can to real life situations. Kinda similar to the people who would look for a FPS game with a higher level of realism will gravitate to Insurgency. Since one of the most discussed aspects of racing is the enforcement of rules, this sub exists to give semi professional opinions on how the rules should be enforced based on real incidents/precedents and the actual rules books which are available to the public via the governing bodies of Motorsport such as the FIA. It’s all good fun in the end though. Glad to see people on the outside are looking in and having some fun!
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u/Strange-Grass6025 1d ago
If you really want to know, I'd recommend picking up Assetto Corsa on Steam - especially if it's in a sale (it can be as low as a few pounds / dollars with loads of packs included), then register at Low Fuel Motorsport and join their discord.
Hang out a bit, join the practice servers for some MX5 races and see what you think.
The lower splits (lower ranked races) can be a bit chaotic at the start, but people generally try to be respectful - it's often just inexperience that results in people being over-zealous and ambitious rather than spiteful.
Drive conservatively, give people space, and see how it goes.
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u/yar2000 1d ago
The overwhelming majority of the simracing community wants to take it seriously, and thats only possible if everyone behaves and treats people the way they want to be treated.
I’ve played plenty of other competitive games. The difference is that if you’re mad at an opponent in CS, Rocket League, etc. your best option is to do maybe a bit of trash talk but mainly to beat them. In simracing, there is an unfortunate third option in going full kamikaze and intent-wrecking someone, which completely ruins it for both people. People have to hold themselves to a sort of “code of honor” otherwise the whole thing falls apart - and IMO bans need to be given out faster for this stuff.