MSA TORA GT Season 11 - General Discussion

I posted in the threat stating I was available for hosting. I will always be, but I can't be much of help when no one contacts me to help when I offer it..

LMR Panamera wrote:I posted in the threat stating I was available for hosting. I will always be, but I can't be much of help when no one contacts me to help when I offer it..

In which thread the Marshall's GT thread? Can't have as you don't have access to it.

If you mean the Application thread then its been inactive for a while, the last group who applied I sent PM's to with forms to fill so I can get to understand them and if accepted, train them personally, if you were one of those recent applicants you too would/should have had a PM from me.

Ultimately, there are people here who help out, and there are people here who expect the world handed to them on a plate.
If people feel things can be run more smoothly when the sometimes extremely busy staff team are away (which we are allowed to do-shock, horror) then by all means apply to join one of the support teams. Its one thing to talk, a whole other to act.
We are never dismissive, people who think that don't understand what goes on behind the scenes. As for the poorly angled video, that will not be discussed further in open forum. If a genuine concern existed I would expect the parties involved to raise an SI.
That process is in place for a reason. If certain members are dismissive of it then, frankly, they lose the right to complain about it.
There seems to be a feeling of ill will towards the staff again because we weren't there. We have lives. We run all of this for free and for the enjoyment of all, often to the detriment of our real lives and wallets. Just remember that.

As a new driver to TORA I just wanted to give my opinion. I know it won't be worth as much as the seasoned drivers here, but here goes.

Organisation - it was a bit mish mash. But the X1 doesn't help with that either. I ended up adding a load of people from here, then saw who was in my lobby and just joined them that way rather than await an invite. I find the invite system on the X1 a shambles. I can also appreciate what with it being Easter weekend that people aren't going to be about, and it was reflected in the confusion as to when we should start racing. It does seem a lot from that should have been from lobby D missed out because of the lack of direction. As I said above, maybe people just need to join the party/game rather than await an invite.

In-game chat. I have massive issues in hearing people during the race via game chat, but when I was in party chat I could hear fine. I don't know if this is an issue with my connection, or if it was just game chat in general. Is there a limit to how many people you can have in party chat? If not then it might be an idea to have people in party chat rather than game chat so you can hear when the green light is given to race.

Racing - The initial rolling start lap on both races was a bit of a shambles. Well, at the back it was anyway. And the front runners were shooting off and leaving a load of space inbetween those at the back. I thought there was supposed to be a speed limit on the first lap to keep the group together?

In my first race, at the end of the first racing lap I was punted off. Which then ruined my race as I had to put straight away. I've submitted an SI as advised on the forums. As a new racer I don't know what the procedure is so I can't comment further on that.

2nd race, my impression what that the race was meant to be in reverse grid order of the first result. Yet we stayed the same as the first race, and again the front runners sped off from the start. Another race incident at the beginning of the first racing lap resulted in me getting punted off again, but I would consider that a first corner race incident what with everyone braking. So I haven't filed an SI for that.

I'm by no means an amazing driver. But I like to think of myself as a clean driver. And that's one thing that attracted me to TORA. Have I been put off by the disorganisation of my first foray into racing with you lot, no, I can't say I have. It seems like this past weekend was just a bad time to start my racing "career" at TORA.

Matt wrote:Ultimately, there are people here who help out, and there are people here who expect the world handed to them on a plate.
If people feel things can be run more smoothly when the sometimes extremely busy staff team are away (which we are allowed to do-shock, horror) then by all means apply to join one of the support teams. Its one thing to talk, a whole other to act.
We are never dismissive, people who think that don't understand what goes on behind the scenes. As for the poorly angled video, that will not be discussed further in open forum. If a genuine concern existed I would expect the parties involved to raise an SI.
That process is in place for a reason. If certain members are dismissive of it then, frankly, they lose the right to complain about it.
There seems to be a feeling of ill will towards the staff again because we weren't there. We have lives. We run all of this for free and for the enjoyment of all, often to the detriment of our real lives and wallets. Just remember that.

This was in reply to your initial post (im guessing you edited it), the one were you said the cars are fine and Worm only comments when he wants to have a whinge post   

Regarding the cars, and this is just my personal opinion for the good of the series.

To me balancing is more than just seeing if they can achieve similar lap times, they have to be able to race together. Now the GTR was the first car on my mind when i seen the car list as its one of my favourite cars in real life, so naturally i spent alot of time building/tuning. Effectively you have created a bullet car to fit into a race series, being 10-15 mph faster than some cars down the straights but quite unpredictable through the corners. Even though the likes of the SLR was pulling away out of the corners by initial acceleration, the mid-to top end of the GTR is quite insane. Now you pair that with the handling of the vanquish and now your getting problems in a race situation.

Credit to TORA for bringing the cars together, but my initial thoughts are that they wasn't tested that much under race conditions. Running them one by one to see what lap times they are capable of is not an effective way to test cars for a race series. Apologies if im wrong, but you really did let something fly under the radar if they were tested under race conditions.

First off, I'd like to apologise for the night as a whole. When we created the calendar I didn't even consider Easter holidays when I put the dates together, and didn't know the WEC dates as it's not something I keep an eye on. Nothing was said during the build up and then this week it became one of those "guys I'm not available this weekend I'm away at WEC/with family/away for Easter" and we then realised we had an issue. I PMd a few people around and also didn't consider that we don't have the same pool of possible hosts but it seemed like it could be handled by the people available. I did consider cancelling the event and delaying the series back by 2 weeks but we went ahead with it and it looks like it was the wrong decidsion.

Regarding the car balancing I agree to an extent, it wasn't rushed, but it wasn't tested as in depth as it has been done in the past mainly because of community expectation to get some racing going seeing as we weren't doing anything at all. I was worried about the final car list balance going into Silverstone but everyone seemed quite happy with the series cars and enjoyed the racing. Two weeks later we get pages of grief regarding unbalanced cars. Whilst we did say engine swaps were allowed I don't think many of us considered doing it during the testing we did. We made a base list for cars and builds, tested them within out relatively small group, and then we asked the community openly if they would help. Very few people did offer to help and we could only go with the data we had. No one had said anything about the cars or unbalance on the run up to Silverstone and then people praised the cars after Silverstone so if we don't know there's an issue then we won't be able to do anything about it.

Organisation wise, I'm in some agreement with what has been said. There's been a lot of talk in the admin sections regarding our virtual racing (what we're here to do) and our real racing involvement (which is a nice to have) but I'm not going to drag it out into the public eye. I think it is a lot more noticeable just now because our prime series are starting to run on FM5 and with it mainly being the staff that owns XB1 if we aren't there to run the racing (like the good old days) then it becomes a bit of a cluster [Censored] basically. My thanks go out to Wingnut who has helped us out in a major way over the last two weekends, and hopefully we'll get back to normal from next weekend.

Regarding on track racing I can't comment, I'm not an A lobby racer but it's been awhile since I've seen any particularly bad racing in the races I have been in. I've had some great racing here on a night whilst hearing the the lobbies above me have had a terrible night, so I think that's something that the racers need to fix themselves and SIs can help with that - of course only if the racers are sticking around.

It disappoints me to hear that people have lost patience and want to leave after a bad night of racing. I can understand why someone wouldn't want to race again after a frustating night but it's not particularly encouraging to be told to scrap our series and we shouldn't still be doing this. I know people are getting sick of hearing 'oh we have real lives and are busy' and such but in most cases it is true, although we really should have back ups in place to account for these things. Maybe some of us are just now getting older and where we had the time over the last 8 years to do all the great things we did, we simply don't have that time anymore and have too consider our positions and what we think we can keep doing.

I'm not going to make excuses to try gloss over things, we didn't do a good enough job this weekend and should have realised it earlier than the day before. Car balance wise if we go and scrap the series then we won't get any large pools of racing data to allow us to rebalance for next season. We'd have to go back to a small group of people as when we asked for help we didn't get a huge amount of support for testing these cars. If we keep the series going then we'll actually get an idea as to where we need to and what we need to do with the cars.

Car wise they were balanced by Staff with access to XB1 and not by a testing team, we do have a group setup for it but most of them are either on FM4, Inactive or just don't want to help out, I can't comment on the cars themselves as I cannot see them, but if you feel like you can do a sweet job in helping us balance cars for next season or for the next series that comes up, feel free to ask.

The more you put in to help, the more you get out of it at the end, as Matt and Richy have said above we are relied on to do every possible task (which is expected with our role) but we simply don't have the time to do the minor tasks inbetween (lobby hosting/Car balancing), we'd love the people who have observed and put forward their thoughts on the cars to join in this group, if you can see issues early on, maybe those same people can help solve them before it goes Live.

I wouldn't exactly say car balancing and lobby hosting is a minor thing in terms if running an online race series

However yes, I know we have set it up and are expected to run it in a way that is expected of TORA and so we have let our community down in that regard for this round of our new series. Hopefully we can pick up our game, and get some more marshals to help is out in the general series running.

I meant minor as in easily done with enough people, hosting a lobby isn't majorly difficult and car balancing takes some work but can be sorted over time with the willingness to communicate in the process.

@Richy - As always your honest and balanced views are gratefully received.....many thanks!!

I have read with interest the replies from staff members since the 2nd Round - some have been surprising and some have only reinforced the opinions I already had.

I may well want to add to my initial post and I will accept Matt's invite to do it privately.

Matt, I was only commenting on the problems. If anyone is dismissive it is you. I haven't tried to create a problem, I blamed no one for the incident and said things happen, I said I know how tough it is so your edited comment was uncalled for.

Richy59 wrote:Regarding on track racing I can't comment, I'm not an A lobby racer but it's been awhile since I've seen any particularly bad racing in the races I have been in. I've had some great racing here on a night whilst hearing the the lobbies above me have had a terrible night, so I think that's something that the racers need to fix themselves and SIs can help with that - of course only if the racers are sticking around.

I really don't think it was bad driving that created this incident though I do know people have stopped racing because of it in the past. Things happen and over time that frustration builds. This may have just been the last bit to send someone over the edge. The cars created the problem, for one we are driving 3400 lb super cars. I know not having GT cars across the board limits that but the game is far from limited. You can make these cars handle capable of their power. Right now they do not and the balancing, keep using that word and it may not be correct, is the main issue other than the lack of organization on this particular night. Did anyone ever ask community for help, even if it was a small bit on either side?

Balancing was left to Staff to sort since the Testing team for FM5 is currently not showing any effort (something which will be amended).

Which I agree isn't ideal, the Staff arn't neccessarily the most capable in setting a podium time and have limited free time to come on at all to even work on the cars, however one or two entered drivers in this did actually sign off on the cars too, one of which is is a TG member.

As for assistance there was a thread opened up in the Marshall's area to which NO FM5 hosts responded, maybe we should have opened up a thread in this section to ask for help but here's another issue, Wingnut had to host A lobby on the evening, if people weren't willing to help out at last minute, why would they before hand? We shouldn't have to chase after people then get the flack from those same people who had the ability to assist the whole time.

I'm not disagreeing with you by the way, just pointing out some information that may have been missed or you were not aware of,

We really need to try to make something positive from this we can now see the balancing issue is somewhat bigger than initially thought and yes i am somewhat responsible for this as i signed the car list off and made a fatal (noob) mistake of not even looking into the engine swaps ,but we are looking to find a solution to this hopefully that will be done quickly.

Hosting is increasingly becoming a issue with a lack of marshals on FM5 or more so a lack of marshals that can actually run events without a staff presence we all know how valuable Chris is (aero) and the role he plays but due to his real life he cant and should not have to run these events so for this reason we will soon be looking to expand the marshal team and hope that some of the more experienced members here will step up to help us.

But for now all we can do is try not to point the finger at anyone and try to work together to make a fix.

How a site that has been running series for 7 years and planning TORA GT for months can not even provide hosts with the most basic of things that are essential to running the race - i.e. lobby settings is beyond me. And that was round 1. And then 2 weeks later at round 2, knowing full well no staff would be available, the same situation occurs again.

To say that staff are too busy and have "lives, wives, houses etc" shows contempt and arrogance for the 60 people that bother to turn up to race in YOUR series. Do you not think we have the same things to deal with?, but instead we wait for 45 minutes for qualifying to get underway while the lobby hosts flounder and try and get the lobby settings correct. And so it falls to the drivers racing to actual sort out YOUR series - I doubt there's many MSA-sanctioned series where the drivers end up running the events.

Nothing you do here is exclusive, anyone can setup a series anywhere, using the same game, console, cars and drivers. What you offer here is a SERVICE, if you don't provide that service there's no point us racing here. We are you customers, not your employees. We can help out if you provide guidance and support, if none is forthcoming then people won't race here, simple as that, there's plenty of other places to race that offer better organised racing.

You don't run a restaurant, invite 60 people and expect them to cook their own dinner, without even having a recipe to work from, and then pat yourselves on the back for running the best restaurant in the world.

That entire post makes no sense Magic, you speak like all the time and effort we put in for YOU is Mandatory, we do this for Free and have to take time out of our schedules to not only "make" the evening like everyone else, but plan it long before hand.

Another thing is we cannot host EVERY lobby for EVERY series, we need drivers to come forward and offer to help to host the races they run in as its a very simple task, same for building the cars, we are not the most competitive out there and there are drivers racing AND posting who do know extremely well how to help build a balanced car list, but rather than offer to help and create a resoloution they either ignore it or moan about it.

"Providing hosts", how can we provide hosts if none come forward, its really that simple.

TG member or not, was the people you used a wise choice of people? Has Takumi ever done extensive testing before?

CQR MAGiC wrote:provide hosts with the most basic of things that are essential to running the race - i.e. lobby settings is beyond me

Excuse me Warspite, who said anything about 'providing hosts'? I said, and the quote is above again as you clearly didn't bother to read it correctly first time - providing hosts with the basic things they need to run the race, e.g. lobby settings, for the second round running.

LMR WARSPITE wrote:That entire post makes no sense Magic, you speak like all the time and effort we put in for YOU is Mandatory, we do this for Free and have to take time out of our schedules to not only "make" the evening like everyone else, but plan it long before hand.

Another thing is we cannot host EVERY lobby for EVERY series, we need drivers to come forward and offer to help to host the races they run in as its a very simple task, same for building the cars, we are not the most competitive out there and there are drivers racing AND posting who do know extremely well how to help build a balanced car list, but rather than offer to help and create a resoloution they either ignore it or moan about it.

"Providing hosts", how can we provide hosts if none come forward, its really that simple.

I usually ignore your posts Warspite but this is exactly the arrogant dismissive attitude I'm talking about  It's not up to the community to come forward, if the staff need help then the staff need to come forward and ask for it before people end up sitting in lobbies for hours on end, there are plenty of good people here willing to help. Richy's post is the first sensible post I've seen from the staff so far, he gets it but I can't say the same for you.

This arguing isnt solving anything as a collective im sure we can work things out in a adult manner without having to bicker.

And as i pointed out in my last post i will take on the chin the car balancing as i signed it off.

You guys realise Wingnut was not only forced to step up to run the evening... he lost out on racing too so A lobby could run as no one wanted to help right?

In the lobby Wingnut said he wasn't going to be online that night and wasn't even planning to race, and said he had to come online to sort out the mess that was Sunday night.

Ill point something out that I saw somewhere in this thread, someoone mentioned about the start that they didnt know if it was the pole guy was saying 'GO' or '3-2-1-GO' Etc.Two things 1) read the rules before you enter a championship then you will know, If its not in the rules for whatever reason (just checked thats its not in the Rules for S11) and noone in lobby knows, just agree on a start between yourselves.

I also noticed this in the Rules

Richy59 wrote:Car PI

Due to the fact that Forza Motorsport 5 is a new platform to us all we will continue to monitor the car balance between the start and mid-point for Season 11. We believe and are confident that the cars are indeed balanced and have proven to give similar laptimes around a variety of tracks, and a good balance difference between the types of tracks in the Season. However, as has been shown in the past we may miss a few things and a number of cars exceed their performance expectations over the course of the Season.

To this effect TORA will make a decision at the mid-point of the Season when the Car Swaps window opens. We may choose to make some minor PI changes to a number of cars at this stage, but will only be done so after much thought and understanding of what the cars are doing, and by gathering feedback from all the Teams and Drivers involved. Doing this at the mid-season Car Swap window allows everyone the chance to freely swap into a new car if desired, or if the PI changes do have such a great effect. No one will be penalized and we will not make the mistake of changes PIs of cars before we have reached Round 1.

The current PIs on the cars will not change between now and the mid-point of the Season.

Any changes that are made will be minor (there won't be a change of PI from e.g. S720 down to A700) and will only be done if there is an obvious flaw in our Car Builds and the performance difference is substantial. This will not be done on Driver and Team ability as we all have a good understanding of how much difference a good Driver/Team/Tune combination can have on the cars.

All the data collected throughout Season 11 will go on to make Season 12 even better.

This shows TORA were aware it wasn't 100% bang on BUT were willing to look into any issues with the cars at the mid point of the championship.

LMR WARSPITE wrote:You guys realise Wingnut was not only forced to step up to run the evening... he lost out on racing too so A lobby could run as no one wanted to help right?

I really didn't want to post publicly again but you have a way of driving me to despair.

If you read back through the earlier posts you will notice that everyone that took part on Sunday has widely and universally praised Wingnut for his efforts - the only person that has had a bad word to say about him was..................you   

LMR WARSPITE wrote:You guys realise Wingnut was not only forced to step up to run the evening... he lost out on racing too so A lobby could run as no one wanted to help right?

He wasn't forced, he did a decent thing and deiced to go ahead and run it so the rest of us didn't waste our 2 weeks tuning and testing and making sure the evening wasn't a complete failure. I think many people will join me in thanking him for that otherwise this thread could have been a whole lot worse. In essence i think some staff need to stop going on the defensive anytime someone criticizes anything, listen to whats happened and make changes and figure out a way to help/change it, otherwise its just going to get worse. Some of the staff have already come out and admitted the have made mistakes which is great yet some others seem to try and say there is nothing wrong and cover it up when what you should be doing is listening to the community and make changes based to the feedback.