A Great Read (About Us)

[Greeny]

I came across this article today. It discusses a brief history and the current state of Monster Truck racing and video gaming. It is extremely well written and very refreshing. Take 5 minutes and read it all if you have a chance.

http://pretendracecars.net/2015/06/13/an-updated-look-at-the-history-of-monster-truck-games/

Thanks,

Green.

[Sergeant Politeness]

"The third, unfortunately, is the community. As with all games that rely primarily on third party content to enhance the experience, the community is ripe with forum drama, politics, and immaturity. Stolen content, little kids, cheating in online events, egos, internet cliques, and power-tripping moderators dominate the landscape of what is otherwise a rock solid Monster Truck sim. Upcoming releases are previewed but never distributed, only to be finished privately and hoarded among cliques to childishly taunt other members of the community who aren’t as skilled at creative programs like Photoshop or Blender. Drivers double as “race officials” in online events and are allowed to hand out penalties at will, significantly skewing the points chase. Modders format their entire PC’s out of anger at other members in the community, only to rejoin the mod team the next day. It’s an absolutely dreadful community to watch in motion, and unless you get your feet wet, introduce yourself, and ask a few questions, you won’t figure out how to properly install the game."

So painfully accurate

Other than that it was a fun read, and bloody hell did they know their stuff

[rockgod88]

Wow where famous guys.

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/450709089677301484/ADB80EA7B8F2863283AE4288D3032035113DE6F8/

 

[Greeny]

Yea, very well-informed writer there.

Lol. The bad stuff has stayed the same for years, that's for sure.

On the bright side, there seems to be more of a light at the end of the tunnel, we are seeing the game start to naturally interact with the real event more and more these days:

"The physics are very convincing, and many Monster Jam drivers quietly praise RoR for its accuracy; some using it as a way to brush up on their skills during off-weeks and their driving styles have noticeably changed because of it. These trucks are a handful, and it’s no wonder why some ex-motocross stars such as Damon Bradshaw, and CORR drivers like Todd LeDuc are starting to cross over into the Monster Truck world. The events may be celebrations of destruction and promote what all other racing series hate, but there’s no denying that these trucks take talent to drive on the limit, and the Sim-Monsters trucks faithfully recreate that experience."

 

[DannyMackey]

I remember when the original article was written in 2013 and was posted here.  Oggy wrote it, for those who remember him.  He ran back in the beginning of Sim-Monsters and RORMJ, not sure if he ran back in MTM2 but he might have.  Had some conflict with people in the community and was banned from the league and site after a while.

 

Here's the original thread when it was posted, does a better job explaining at least what was originally said than what I can do:

[Tom P.]

Its funny because it was all true, until this site died.

Edited October 30, 2015 by Tom P.

[Outlawed]

Context of the original article (which was written in 2013) pertained to an disgruntled ex member on here that was directed to a previous admin and moderator (as someone who was minor staff at that time I got to witness all of it first hand). Anyone that knew or dealt with Oggy, he was an interesting character though had a pretty nasty habit of inserting his foot into his mouth. As for the accuracy of the copy pasta'd article, if things were still the way they were, there would be a helluva lot more members banned. be no member run leagues,  content would be handed around and never uploaded.

None of those things listed are unique to this site, check out other racing communities. Different games but the same core issues, you cannot control what people do, say or act. Is Sim Monsters perfect? No, but where we are now vs where we were headed cannot be discredited.

Edited October 30, 2015 by Outlawed

[Stephen Hopkins]

Oggy....... Man I wish non members of Iracing could see the poo he stirs up..........  Hes a piece of work...... For those that dont know him be thankful, very thankful. TBH that article is one of the few decent articles he wrote before going insane....... 


You know its bad when Iracing basically perma bans you........

Edited October 31, 2015 by Stephen Hopkins

[Roach]

I truly miss when this site was booming during SM Season 1. It was so much fun. I wish we could go back to that but people get older and people lose interest in some things. I hope this site can be like that once again.

[Sergeant Politeness]

I truly miss when this site was booming during SM Season 1. It was so much fun. I wish we could go back to that but people get older and people lose interest in some things. I hope this site can be like that once again.

Honestly the only thing I can think of that would lead to such a boom is if we ever convert to BeamNG or something of that type. When SM Season 1 came out RoR was still a relatively new concept to us, it was such a mind boggle considering the most realistic monster truck simulation prior to 2010 was a 10+ year old Microsoft game

[Zach Nicholas]

I really don't see BeamNG ever being a thing, as most of the work that was being done is dead/nonexistent. I mean, I'd be willing to work if I knew what I was doing, but I just barely got the monster truck to do donuts on dirt, given that there is no rear steer at the moment.

[Tom P.]

I really don't see BeamNG ever being a thing, as most of the work that was being done is dead/nonexistent. I mean, I'd be willing to work if I knew what I was doing, but I just barely got the monster truck to do donuts on dirt, given that there is no rear steer at the moment.

First off it can be a thing. The JBeam of the truck we had was built when BeamNG was only a few months old. When RoR came out 10 years ago, there would have been no chance in hell a fully functioning Monster Truck would have been made. The BeamNG team has actually done ALOT of small things to make their game great, and are continuing to do so. Its all too late for me, because over time I have completely lost interest in the whole competition and building aspect of this community and I don't plan on participating in either any more. I didn't really come to the conclusion after one day, it has been this whole string of months that Sim-Monsters has had nothing to offer like it use to. Touching on what Roach, Sim Monsters was so fun back in those days, Season 1 and Season 2. I remember looking forward to every race and having a great time, whether doing good or doing bad, it didn't matter. Maybe because the whole thing was still fairly new, I'm not sure. I don't ever seeing it being restored to the way it use to be, and it's hard to explain what exactly made everything so much fun. But whatever it was, its gone and it has been gone for a long time.

[Stephen Hopkins]

I'm with Tom........ The Fun Factor left for me......... It had become more of hassle than it was worth. I had achieved what I had always wanted to do from the MTM2 days (win a racing and freestyle event). The challenge of driving the trucks had begun to diminish and it just wasnt fun anymore. The trucks used to be a handful, those who were winning races where on the ragged edge and pushing the trucks for all they had (both racing and freestyle). Today you can do the same with literally no excitement. The trucks slide like they are on glass even at stupidly high rates of speed. No matter what you do they land fine and shrug it off.... The challenge of putting the truck on the edge of control is non existent. Any other sim (Iracing, Dirt Rally, etc.) when you're on the edge of control you know it, and to that point its very hard to drive in each of those sims at the very edge of control. Today in Sim-Monsters anybody can drive at the edge of control because it isn't hard. Its lost the Sim feel..... and thus lost the simulation based fans that originally ran both RORMj and the first season of SM...

 

Im not even going to talk about how online events are run today........ 

[Outlawed]

I would like to raise my hand in rebuttal here, BeamNG is still a far distance off from being a reasonable platform to move over to for MT's. Yes they have made progress but the direction the dev's are moving in is not one that has MT's in major concern. Losing interest is fine, if it was not for SMRA I would probably be as inactive as I was when we first moved from MTM2 to ROR. But as for both Tom and Stephen harking backing to the "good ole days" I flat you disagree, the original years were just as full with bullshit in the racing side of things as they appear now and to think or say otherwise is just flat out lies. I was part of the minor mod staff during that time, I got to see what went down, there is a reason I had less then 8 total events participated in over the original 2 seasons. As for the trucks not being realistic, Box5's original trucks were far from "sim" feeling and while it is true the toyko drift machines that V4 brought were not any better (which if you look at the low cg trucks of today, they all slide and rarely high side anyway). When it came around to doing new node/beams and physics for V4, there was a larger select group that did not want to change it because then all the trucks would not be equal/fair for online racing (because we all know that they are the same in real life *cough*). Sadly we wasted what should have been the most productive years on here in my opinion. That is not to say it cannot be turned around (working on that part), but it is going to take alot more work with fewer people helping.

Edited November 3, 2015 by Outlawed

[RKM]

I don't remember Oggy from MTM2 at all, I believe Harlow was around for a little awhile at some point over there. I don't really feel like getting into it too much but if Oggy and a few others were still active/not banned there would be a lot more flame wars and useless arguments on here that go nowhere.

 

As far as improving or upgrading the game I honestly think we're better off sticking to what we know works or getting a group together to build our own game and we all see how well those group projects worked out in the past so that almost instantly kills that idea. Losing interest like Kozak, if it weren't for SMRA I wouldn't even check the site the 3 times a month I currently do. It seems that at certain points of the year there is just nothing going on that has a major following because they all seem to be around at the same time when pretty much leaves a massive dead zone in other times of the year. I'm all for more leagues and special events but a lot of people are hesitant to join a league run by someone with little or no experience doing so as it's led to more failures than I can count in the past.