How to host, or participate in a competitive lobby?

Rough draft. Didnt know where to put it. More of an answer than a question, Mods feel free to delete or move. Hopefully it helps some people.

HOW TO HOST, OR PARTICIPATE IN A COMPETITIVE LOBBY

Joining a Lobby:
Competitive lounges will require friends only lobbies. To join a friends only lobby, go to community. Find Either the Host, or a member profile who is currently in the lobby. Select the person and go down to their lobby. If they are In a lobby, an orange symbol will be displayed beside their lobby. Once highlighted some text will appear saying ‘playing’, click on this and you will be shown a list of who is in that lobby as well as some other information. Select join.

Hosting a Friends only lobby:
The simplest way to do this is go to community, select your own profile, scroll down to lounge and click it.

Running a lobby:
Once you have opened your lobby there are a number of settings for you to choose in order to make races fair and competitive and to keep things going smoothly. A headset/microphone helps a lot in my experiences. Most people can hear you over the headset even if they don’t have one themselves. Its important to let everyone know what is going on and how long they have to prepare for a race or qualifying.

Lobby settings are at your discretion but in order to make thing fair, a number of settings should be set. Tires should be restricted ( except in the case of endurance races), Host should set which cars are selectable by going to race regulations, picking select from garage, and then setting one or more cars as usable.
If you intend to hold qualifiers, Starting grid should be set on ‘fastest’. This can be done in event settings. *

N.B. It is important to inform everyone how long qualifying will last. Allow for at least 2 flying laps after car and track has been set. Qualifying is done in free run, and personally I like to tell people how long they have to set a time judging by the free run clock. E.g. ‘qualifying until 7min people’.
Obviously other settings like what assists are restricted are set by the host, but im pretty sure all gtpers race with none. These can be set in Race regulations.

Penalties are at the hosts discretion and depend on the level of skill expected from the racers.
For purists, I recommend turning false start on. This rewards timing and throttle control, but again make sure everyone knows its one. A warning does appear but some people don’t take heed/don’t notice it.

Race etiquette:
Once a race starts, responsibility shifts from the host to all in order to have a good race.
Here are some tips,(to be updated with suggestions) for good race behaviour.

Know your braking points! If qualifiers were held, there is no excuse for ramming into people because of late braking! If for some reason you don’t, then you shouldn’t be trying to outbrake people by huge margins. Especially on the first turn people, this isn’t NFS!(no offence intended) you’ll only either annoy people or end up in a sand trap.

If you do spin, and no penalties are set (I.e people cant just whiz through you like a ghost), check your map for oncoming traffic. Don’t re-enter the racing line if someone is about to go by at over 200km!

If you are coming up to someone at speed, let them know with a quick shout on the mic of ‘on you’re left/right. This works better than inside/outside because sometime the two can get confused, especially when the other person doesn’t have a headset.

If someone is coming up to you at speed, and doesn’t have a head set, don’t try to block. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with holding your line or a bit of ‘rubbing’ or closing a line off- stuff like that, im talking about you just messing up the turn before a straight and the person behind you has an extra 100km. The best thing you can do is HOLD YOUR LINE. don’t try and give them room on the left or right. It’s their responsibility to avoid you as long as you’re not weaving all over the place.

If you do spin or otherwise impede a fellow racer in a competitive race, be sure to correct your position accordingly. Replays are saveable so any disputes you don’t think will go in your favour are better of resolved on track. Don’t seek revenge if you’re the victim, just let the host know and a warning plus points correction should be implemented.

Post Race:
Hopefully a good race was had by all, if not, save the replay by going to race results and selecting, you guessed it, ‘save replay’. Host should allow time for a bit of post-race banter and announce when the next race will be. Now is the time to suggest cars and tracks to the host if they have not been already decided upon. Host has the option of setting track choice to ‘vote’ and this can be done in the track menu.

Other Info:
If the host leaves, ownership of the lobby passes to the member who has spent the longest time in the lobby

Rally stages and NASCAR races can be set as rolling starts, very advisable.

Once a race has been started, players have a set period of time to enter track mode. If you want to race, make sure you ‘go to the track’, otherwise you’ll be sitting out.

That’s it folks. Have fun and please don’t bash me, I’m just trying to help. Feedback and suggestions extremely welcome. What needs to be on this list and what needs to come off? This is a rough draft and its your’s too so get involved.

Tom.

* Not sure if that’s the correct menu title.

Mods can you move this to the gt5 online racing forum please.

Thank you, interesting guide:tup:

This would be a great add to the FAQ thread, nice info

I'm not one to bump, but it's getting pretty hard to find a well run lobby. please read, ignore spelling and grammer, and run some lobbies!!!!

Thanks for the guide! Subscribed.

Good guide. I like the pointers on race etiquette.

How about mentioning (the obvious) that it's best to join lobbies of your own nationality. The reason for this easy, communication. Unless you know the language of the lobby you're joining (which it's evident from experience that a lot of people don't) then you'll have a tough time communicating. Communication is key in the online portion. Sometimes (and I've done it too) people mute everyone else in the lobby when they either don't have, or aren't using a mic. Despite not wanting to hear people whining or trash talking, this is generally a bad idea. A lot of hosts tend to announce rules (car restrictions that can't be set) and if you can't hear them, you'll likely get booted. And again, if you don't know the language, then you won't have a clue.

On the flip side, as a host it's best to announce changes or rules both over the mic and in the text chat. If you made a lobby called "anything goes" but decided you wanted Touring cars later, people need to know. The last thing you want is a bunch of hate-mail because someone got booted when they didn't know what was going on because you didn't let newcomers (or no-mic-ers) know.