A.R.S.E.

i have a question for you lads. I have tried iracing for a month and decided i'm not going to bother extending my membership. I was just digging around in the account settings and it seems to contradict itself. In the Cancel/Renew Membership section it says

Your account is currently 'Active' and your subscription currently runs until 2010-05-13. If you do nothing you will be able to access the member site until 2010-05-13 at which point your account will be disabled.

however in the Change Subscription section it has this

Current Subscription Info
Monthly Subscription
A one month subscription to the service. Subscription will automatically renew unless you either created your account using PayPal or you cancel your membership in the My Account section of the website. Includes the cars and the tracks used by the Rookie Oval series and the Rookie Road Racing series.
$14.00

i used Paypal to buy the $5 trial, so i assume it will just not automatically renew?

Go into paypal and cancel the subscription in there, worse comes to worse iracing will chuck a fit when it tries to renew your account

mine says "Current Account Status: Don't Renew"

this was in the cancel/renew section. You want to make sure it doesnt auto renew somehow. plenty have been caught out by not reading/understanding.

Anyhow, I didnt have you pegged for a long term membership but what did you think from the little bit you got to see?

Bauer wrote:mine says "Current Account Status: Don't Renew"

That's exactly how to do it; go into the account section (or subscription? can't remember) and untick the renew box. You can also send them an email if you can't find it, they'll help.

Bauer wrote:mine says "Current Account Status: Don't Renew"

this was in the cancel/renew section. You want to make sure it doesnt auto renew somehow. plenty have been caught out by not reading/understanding.

Anyhow, I didnt have you pegged for a long term membership but what did you think from the little bit you got to see?

i have no option for renewing or not, hence why i asked. Maybe that option would come after i went onto a proper subscription.

As for the game it has good an bad. Remember i am only an occasional racer so my opinion is based on my part time experience.

It gives good feedback when driving and is very rewarding. It reminds me a lot of how i felt when driving GPL in the early days. It has that typical taily papy feel, as in most of the control is done with the throttle and you just use minimal steering. It can be fun when your on top of it but when your a part timer like me it can throw you into the weeds quickly too and that gets tiring quickly. I love driving the Legend even if it is incredibly twitchy, but the other 2 standard cars weren't really worth worrying about. I also found some of the features were quite cool. I booked in for a race and then went and did a bit of practice beforehand and i liked the timer counting down reminding me how long until the race.

The bad, i HATE having it run from a browser, having to exit the game just to swap a car or track is a pain. I understand how it all intergrates with the web but LFS seems to make it feel more like a game rather than having it feel like bits of games. LFS is a more intuitive game in my opinion as far as menus etc but lacks what iRacing does as far as physics go, in my opinion of course. iRacing gives a bit better feel but LFS is a much simpler design. iRacing feels slow and clumsy being browser based. The menu's are also very crowded and hard to get used to for a newbie. I've sat there a few times not knowing which bit of the webpage takes me to where i want to go to. A lot of it is click and discover. Probably fine once your used to it but it's quite cluttered. There's bits and pieces of info all over it and it's all seems to have different designs, rather than all being simple and neat and easy to understand.

I also think it's way over priced given what you get as a basic package. 3 cars and 8 tracks is not enough for over $100 a year. Given LFS is about $30-40 and it's yours forever it makes iRacing look very poor as far as value goes. Sure it's got extra stuff being added all the time but that all costs extra. I also don't like that points system, i am too afraid to go online incase i spin off and crash and mess up my rank or whatever it is. It's like having a school teacher watching over you and smacking you every time you do something wrong. Again i understand it's to minimize idiots online but i find it messes with my head.

I'd also like to have the option of racing with AI. I'm not a huge fan of online racing, it can be ok if your with a decent bunch of guys you know but it can also be a huge pain when your with random people and you have no idea what they might do next. The best times i've had online have been racing mates, otherwise racing strangers has no real meaning to me. It's like having a one night stand, you go through the motions but there's no real emotional connection.


It's a good game for full on serious racers, but for the occasional blast it's way over priced. Sadly there's very little out there for people like me. LFS is essentially dead and rFactor is mostly a game for modding. Once upon a time we'd have a few sims coming out every year but now it's almost non existant. There's not much of a market for casual gamers any more.

Awesome, i didn't know they had that feature and I wasn't planning on renewing once my subscription was up. Ive now set mine to "Current Account Status: Don't Renew" as well.
I barely race anymore. Might pick it up once the V8's are out and ive moved house.

Thanks guys

I feel the same as you w00dsy, I started playing again the other day and came to the same conclusions, I don't mind the whole based in a internet browser thing, I mean it could be the rfactor browser..

My two main problems are. I dont like how the races are every hour. Not sure if this is because I can only do a few series as a rookie, but most races ive done take 20-30min, so when im done I need to wait 30min for my next race. If I wanted to jump on for a few hours I only get through 1-2 races.

But the main thing is the cost, sure I dont mind the monthly fee, really I don't.. Being a ex-wow player I was always happy to pay a subscription as it guaranteed new content, support and what not.. but what annoys me is that each track/car costs money, in the last week ive dropped ~$60 getting a few different tracks/cars to race around with, and I dont have anything I cant race (other then the v8/philip island) and plenty of things I dont.

When I go up a licence, I need to buy the Jetta or the Skip, plus the tracks that go with it, so another $40 to get going :s

If the hourly race bothers you, you'll be really annoyed up higher; there are classes where you need to wait a couple of days for the next race...

I've bought a lot of crap, too. Wasted money. Just buy the skip barber, it's a biatch but a great learning car. Work your way up, and forget the other crap; you won't look back IMHO.

I think they should have (and still should) make free test drives available (empty track, only you and the car).
- any car, free of charge for every paying member, no time limits. So you can get to know the car, figure out if you really like it, want to race it, or not. Hell, I'd even pay $1/day for a test session.

And if you want to log onto online sessions, you should be forced to buy.

Cheers, I wasnt sure If I should get the Jetta or the Skip, but ill just get the skip.

Couldnt agree more on the testdrive, I mean even if its just the cars not the track that you get for free, it would make decisions soo much easer.

cant wait for the f1 car tho!

There is a Dallara, and it's awesome. The only problem is that the Riley is even more awesome (for me) - and does not have bloody ovals in the season
But the biggest problem; all the higher level cars need regular practice from me to keep them on the road for a full race, which I don't have the motivation for, at the moment

Yeah, I'm missing the LFS pickup racing with friends, too.

And I cant believe its $3 for them to host a race.. such bs

nutty wrote:And I cant believe its $3 for them to host a race.. such bs

I can believe it. If it was free it would totally destroy what they're aiming to set up. There are some flaws with the hosting - not being able to pre-book a time and just have it kick off then, for example, but I don't see the price as being a real issue. People would bugger off and do their own leagues (as happens in every other sim) rather than hanging around for the almost but not quite 'pick-up' racing.

Good point, what if ratings where unaffected? People could use pick ups as

Has anyone brought up the idea of doing a once off ARSE only race? perhaps and oval? those LFS oval races we had on here is some of the most fun I had online racing

Mazdas at Richmond or Charlotte, that would be the most LFS like?

Jiminee wrote:Mazdas at Richmond or Charlotte, that would be the most LFS like?

charlotte is to banked for mazdas in my opinion and the car is to twitchy, and Richmond would be to slow for the Mazda. a great combo to mimic lfs oval whilest still being easy would be late model at Charlotte. It's flat out and easy to drive

I actually kinda wish I didn't renew my yearly membership last August, my last race was July last year, on my birthday funnily enough.
Lack of time is really the main reason but there's a number of things that tend to annoy me and take the fun out of it. I need to put in a lot of practice time and in the higher classes often Sat and Sun mornings are the only time to race. Say what you will about SR and iRating and I think for the most part they are a good thing but getting taken out or screwing up and then waiting a whole week to make amends started to become a chore.
There's also a number of physics issues that just wore on me over time like car behaviour on kerbs and grass, the way the cars always want to swap ends and the very basic transmission/drivetrain model.
My other thing and it's probably my biggest gripe is that new cars are simply rubbish when they're first released and take multiple updates to resolve glaring issues. Why should I pay good money to beta test their cars?
Hmm I guess there were a few things I wanted to get off my chest, it's certainly not all negative and I've had some of my best ever sim racing in iRacing but a combination of lack of time, the above mentioned issues and it sometimes being all a bit too serious has kinda killed things for me, at least for the time being.
I can't see myself renewing next time around but I've got some left over credits so will give PI and the V8SC a look.

Just a quick bumpy here, I bought a month with paypal, i got an email saying it is going to auto renew.

However there is no "Don't Renew" or cancel subscription button anywhere, and from what I gather on the site and here if you use paypal it won't auto renew ?

petey wrote:Just a quick bumpy here, I bought a month with paypal, i got an email saying it is going to auto renew.

However there is no "Don't Renew" or cancel subscription button anywhere, and from what I gather on the site and here if you use paypal it won't auto renew ?

goto My Account (iRacing home page, top right).

then Cancel/Renew Membership.



Smile!

Customer ID: 46047
Member Name: Peter Sheppard
Cancel/Renew Membership
Current Account Status: Active
Account Valid Until: 2010-06-21

Your account is currently 'Active' and your subscription currently runs until 2010-06-21. If you do nothing you will be able to access the member site until 2010-06-21 at which point your account will be disabled.

Evidentally I should have read the whole thing. I saw active and figured it would try and renew there you go ^ ^