[Russell Sobie]

The advantage that iRacing has over SRS and any other multiplayer sim racing is population. It is actually the same with ever multiplayer game with a rating system: if you don't have enough players on at the same time, your rating system is going to fail in one way or another. For every stage of rank, there will be fewer people they are allowed to play against. And if you can't even fill a single server up with players, your multiplayer game dies.

We already have a huge number of Rookie Series going on right now: it's any race that doesn't have a rating requirement. So that's what, 18 out of the 19 racing series are custom made just for Rookies! Yes, I'm being silly here... I'd personally be fine with requiring new members of SRS to have a few less options to race in, but my guess is that that would be a great way to see the influx of players to SRS dwindle. Hell, I'm having a hard time recruiting people I KNOW would love SRS because they are so strapped for free time. Not to mention the "hosted" racing series seem specifically targeting players new to sim racing, so I think those are going to be 0 requirements for the foreseeable future.

At the root of the problem is that there is a particular type of individual who will join a sim racing server that simply does not have the mind set that they are actually in "racing simulation" but instead just think of it as another multiplayer video game on the Internet full of anonymous faces doing random BS for entertainment. I'm not really sure how to reach these people. They certainly aren't reading this post as they don't look at these forums. And these are the very people you have to be wary of going into Turn 1 of any race on SRS (or anywhere). I'm actually surprised that these people even found SRS in the first place and bothered to sign up. Maybe forcing them to "graduate" in a very limited number of races here is the answer? Hard to know without trying. I just don't think we have the numbers to do that at this point.