Hi devs, Long-time regular here on the ranked servers. I'd like to pitch something I genuinely believe is one of the highest-leverage, lowest-cost moves available to RaceRoom right now: an official public website showing the ranked racing ecosystem in real time. Why it matters for growth: Visibility before installation. If anyone can browse upcoming ranked races (track, car class, entry list, driver ratings) the game becomes discoverable to people who don't even have it installed. Seeing a full grid at Spa in GT3 just in 30 minutes is a far stronger hook than any trailer. And it directly drives content sales: "this race needs the DTM pack" is a purchase trigger. It signals a living game. The biggest doubt for anyone considering a sim is "is anyone actually playing this?" A live, public schedule with real entry lists answers that instantly. RaceRoom is dramatically cheaper than iRacing and has far more variety than LMU, but that argument only lands if the player can see the activity. Public ratings and history. Who's racing, who raced, rating/reputation evolution... you already have all of this data. Making it public and linkable gives the community something to share, compare and talk about. That's free, self-sustaining marketing. Why it matters for current players: Steam login + race signup from the browser. Let me register for the race in 30 minutes from my phone while I lunch, without launching the game. Lower friction = fuller grids. As a regular player, I'd keep a tab open all day tracking which races are filling up and jump into the popular ones. Right now that information is invisible until you're in the client. The community is already building this. There are user-made sites consuming your public JSON endpoints (I use some myself). Your own players are proving the demand and doing your R&D for free. Why not pick up that baton and do it properly and officially? I'd happily help test or contribute if useful. One related note: race scheduling. Right now there are too many simultaneous ranked races, so most grids end up with 0–5 drivers. You have the stats on which car classes and tracks actually fill. Use them. Fewer, better-targeted slots would consolidate players into proper grids, improve the racing experience and reduce server costs. A win on both sides. Who thinks this will add value (players) to our daily ranked racing experience? Thanks for reading and for a sim that deserves a much bigger audience than it has.
I generally agree. RR has a common problem of being stuck in the early 2000s with almost everything! I will also mention liveries. People love custom liveries because they like to have their own team identity. There is a reason why almost every serious game includes custom liveries. It’s the same in other games—I played World of Tanks in its early days, where clans, badges, tags, and now custom paints, all helped create a sense of identity. Official liveries are great for official championships, but for single-player online racing, they’re less impressive. I just watched their Instagram posts and saw a replay from one of the races featuring the Alfa 155. It looked unattractive, 7 or 8 cars in the replay with only 2 liveries, all looking the same (if you hunt for details, even same numbers on the cars, and same driver names - totally meh). This made the scene appear unnatural and unappealing to watch. I love RR and own about 75% of its content, but I mostly use it for time trials because it lacks many modern features that (at least in my opinion) connect average player with a game.
Liveries would be the opposite of "low effort, high impact", since it not only requires developing support for custom liveries, but also getting the approval of this feature from every car manufacturer (or whoever licensed the cars to Raceroom). (Upd: Someone decided to "Disagree" with facts?)
Yeah, custom liveries are a different request that, like Maskeared said, it affects to the manufacturer licenses. The central topic of this post is to propose and upgrade that I think can benefit both sides: company (KW Studios) and active players. If we get more people on the online races, players will be happier and also KW could get more sales. I think its a WIN-WIN situation. Maybe its too much, but, If they provice me an API access point to the needed information, I will be happy to develope it by myself and make it public. But sadly I think I wont be able to create that "Register to race" button (for obvious security reasons). And that point I think its important.
I definitely like the main idea proposed by op but personally dont like the ideas of offering fewer races with only the most popular combos or custom liveries. Id rather drive a combo i enjoy with 3 opponents than a combo i dont enjoy with 20 opponents and the fewer options to choose from the less likely it is ill find a nice combo. As for custom liveries, "unnatural and unappealing to watch" is exactly the reaction i have when seeing custom liveries used in other sims. They make the cars look like random fantasy objects rather than the wonderful machines i know from watching real life motorsports which for me completely kills that identity aspect.
Well, one can argue, by your logic, when racing in RR, to be trully "not fantasy", drivers should be limited to cars and liveries only used in that particular championship and race. So no, 6 of same nr. 27 Alfa 155s driven by Xxxxx Xxxxx driver (giving random example, and random car number) is also fantasy, and at least to me, ugly. + the tracks should have sponsors from that race and championship specifically, so... some fantasy things don't bother you (or me, or someone other), but others do! Also, many real liveries are ugly and meh, and many fantasy ones are really good. I don't play GTurismo but I follow their Livery Community on FB, and people make really great full fantasy or their re-editions of historic or famous liveries, and those cars look amazing. So in the end, we can have different opinions about different topics, but fact is, general population likes stuff like that (one of them being custom liveries)... and fact is RR has player count that it has, and games that support custom liveries (iRacing, LMU, ACC, GT7 etc.) have player count 10, 100, 1000x higher! Ofc, it's not only because of liveries that that is true... I just gave one example why (among many others) RR is still (sadly, because I love RR) not as popular as it should be. And with more players, comes more money, comes more content, comes better content etc. Let me give one more example why I think RR is killing itself, that can be way more easier to "solve" than custom liveries. Updates, they tease new content like 5-6 days before update. People nowdays need hype! People get hyped for 10 days, get the new update and then it all gets forgotten for 2,5 months... if devs are working on LMP2, LMP3, other cars, tracks, again, in my opinion, they should post dev. updates of new cars, tracks, content etc., (lets say) once a week or two, to keep players hyped. It's just how it rolls there days (I hate it, but it's what it is). But if one wants successful business, one must adapt (survival of the fittest). I am not the only one realizing that RR devs are not the best in marketing and community managing, and that's also hurting player count, because, Gaussian curve, what matters is basic general player base, at least if you want many players and more money. If they want super niche game and to struggle with licences and content and updates, because they don't have devs (can't pay them because no money) or can't aquire licences (again, no money), then, they're on the good path anyway!
Some things are easier to implement/enforce than others so there are things i have to just live with but that doesnt mean they dont bother me to some extent (e.g. why would anyone run a bathurst livery at the nordschleife or a pccna livery at the norisring etc ) and it also doesnt mean i have to welcome developments thatd add such issues. But is the main reason i even jumped onto this one. Youre more or less presenting opinion as fact. Its hard to tell how the playerbase truly feels about these things but the couple times there were polls on similar topics on here the results were surprisingly balanced overall. Agree on more frequent dev updates tho. A couple times a week seems rather extreme to me but like once a month would be nice just to stay engaged a bit more
Thank you all for the comments. Just write to remind this topic is about public ranked races info and signup mainly. Maybe if you have interest on that upgrade, would be a better option to open a single thread about it. I will be happy to contribute with my own pov.
it's kinda funny that u have that conclusion based on this particular event cause these recent Alfa races they posted were actually run with custom team liveries cool league btw, interesting format