Good now?
Lada_Akula_-_RSLimited.car (33.2 KB)
Here’s the problem: you never even mentioned that realism or theme-appropriateness was going to be considered. In fact, the rules seemed to suggest the opposite. For example, When you defined the challenge in the first post, all you really said was “…it’s about building an affordable sports car that looks good and performs well.” before describing the specific rules. On it’s own, that almost directly means “As fast and good looking as possible within the budget” And that’s why most of us (including many people like me who you did accept) jumped headfirst into Camp B.
Even just a simple, vague statement to the effect of “cars that are too unrealistic or stray too far from the theme will be binned” would have helped loads. That kind of statement isn’t perfect, but at least it would leave people expecting realism to be considered, and trying to fit your theme. I mean, you’re style grading is similarly vague, and that works pretty well. And if there’s confusion, people will usually ask.
TCup also made some good suggestions on how to add further specificity, which would help even more (especially regulating power-to-weight, which is something real life race series do). But even if you don’t want to make the rules too restrictive, a specific definition or clarification of what the theme is, and what that means for a practical sense would also have helped. There’s a reason most forum competitions start with very long briefs; it’s all about communicating everything up front.
Here's an example of how the original post could have been changed to be more specific:
Let’s try expanding that initial statement slightly.
“…it’s about building an affordable sports car that looks good and performs well, while still being realistic to its era.”
That, alone, helps re-frame the competition into what you want. But for a bit more clarity, let’s add a second paragraph, either right below it or in “inspirations”:
“Budget sports cars are usually designed to be as fast as they reasonably can, but they aren’t full track cars; they’re still road-going cars which might even expect to be someone’s daily driver, and still have to be at least mildly comfortable, drivable, and sensible. Budget sports cars in this era usually did not exceed 200hp, and stayed away from excessive cam profiles and valve types; they still tried to have respectable fuel economy and not be deafeningly loud.”
And then we’d have to add to the rules: “Cars that are too unrealistic or race focused, or don’t appear to be factory spec, will be binned.”
And now, everyone is on the same page at least. They know which end of the field to shoot for, even if they don’t exactly know where the goalposts are. And they can ask for more detail if they feel its not specific enough.
Another thing that could also help is, if you do see someone post something here that looks like it might not fit your needs, warn them- on the public forum. Even if you’re no re-submissions rule doesn’t let them fix it, it could save someone else from making the same mistake. And it starts discussions like these earlier, when people are less likely to get fired up and its much easier to correct or adjust things.
TDLR: If something is going to be important, or even might be relevant, make sure it is explicitly said from the beginning. It doesn’t have to be super detailed, it just has to be there in the first place.
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Just as an exercise: what’s the lowest market score for e.g. Light Sport (Budget?) or Fun in the yellow group? And the highest in the red group? If there is a clear distinction, then that’s something simple to keep in mind for the future to keep realism in check.
Cost (or ET or PU) doesn’t really help, I could quality spam easily where it mattered. Turbos are dirt cheap - but turbo vs NA can be an interesting choice if balanced right.
Edit: A $15k challenge in the same vein, that’d be interesting, but a different thing altogether.
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I truly appreciate your feedback, thank you. I will be honest, I was thinking all that, I just didn’t put it in written form (or spoken in the video). You see, the problem is, I’m used to running challenges with my youtube viewers and on youtube, short videos tend to do better than long ones because the average viewer on youtube apparently has a very short attention span. So the video can’t be too long, nobody wants to listen to me ramble I’ve found. Might just be because it’s me, but that’s besides the point.
What I’m quickly realizing here is that people here on the forum are different in that regard, people don’t mind reading through gigantic walls of text like in the CSR rulesets or whathaveyou. The challenge for me now becomes, how do I combine the two? And I guess the answer is, give a brief overview in the rules announcement video with the general idea of the challenge, and point people towards the more extensive post with the complete rules which will be here in the forum. I know that now for next time 
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I guess probably the best thing to do would be to give an overview of the challenge and format in the video, with a few key rules a basics. And talk about the theme and what you’re expecting to be submitted, which should keep things nice and brief. Then have the detailed rules in the actual forum post, along with everything you’ve said in the video too, just for people to refer to at a later date.
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That’s a perfect idea! Text is a lot easier and faster to read through than a video, but video is better at conveying emotion and tone. The video could great for setting the mood and theme of the challenge, while the post can cover more dreary and wordy stuff like rules and guidelines. :D
I guess not >.<
Definitely wasnt expecting that.
Guys, I apologize for my mistake and will make sure to make the rules clearer next time. The cars that got DQed despite meeting the rules will also be raced by me on video, but they won’t count towards the competition. I’ll try to get the video done as soon as I can but I have to find the time for it. I’ll keep you up to date on that
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It just so happened that I got a window of time today which allowed me to record the disqualified cars going down Hakone. Let’s just say, some of these cars are very impressive!
Here is the video: https://youtu.be/z56iKNH9Vto
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Hey thanks for doing this!
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Hey, It takes a lot of character to apologize and like that, mate, let alone to go out of your way to do those cars anyway.
Much respect mate, and can’t wait for next weekend. :D
(and looking back, I’m sorry again if my tone came across as too harsh at some points)
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I would only add that, even in your rules video, you can write out the complete rule set in the description and simply tell people in the video to check the complete list before submitting. Just a suggestion. I’ll have to wait for next challenge anyways as I didn’t make the deadline.
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Yeah, at the end of the day it was my own mistake and I will happily admit that. Don’t worry, I don’t think you were too harsh and I appreciate constructive criticism. I have got together with my friend and Discord mod Sedan57Chevy to plan the next challenge together because I wanted to make sure there’s no oversights or mistakes with the ruleset of the next challenge, and I will definitely do that again. Up until this point I’ve always run these challenges completely on my own but I think they will be more enjoyable for everyone (not just myself) if more than one person are involved with setting them up.
With this being said, I’m also looking forward to the weekend and the additional 2 race tracks. For the DQed cars I’m probably gonna race them on both tracks in the same video because the tracks are relatively short, especially the Neon Course.
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The second race will start in a bit over 1 hour from now, and it will be streamed on my youtube channel again, just like the first race: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEazrZkjQcCxLaMmj79c62Q
Well… It’s halfway 106 (hence Saucisse) and 306!
In french 106 and Saucisse are nearly phonetically the same!
Race 2 is over! Due to technical issues for which I apologize, the stream quality was rather bad and I don’t feel comfortable sharing a bad quality stream VOD. I managed to fix the issue afterwards, but here are the results in form of the spreadsheet:
But to prove that the new stream settings work, I streamed the second and third race of the disqualified cars: 1995 Budget Sports Car Challenge Disqualified cars Race 2 & 3 [Automation/BeamNG] - YouTube
The 3rd and final race for the regular competitors will be tomorrow at 6pm CEST
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Note: since I missed the stream, I would be fine with viewing lesser-quality video if it meant I could still compare how the cars performed relative to each other.
But either way, glad to see how this turned out, and excited for tomorrow! Right now there seems to be a few clear leader, but the 3rd track is certainly much different compared to the first to, and a lot still has the potential to change. (:
In a bit over 1 hour, the 3rd and final race of the competition will begin! I will once again stream it on my youtube channel and I’m sure this time the quality will be good again: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEazrZkjQcCxLaMmj79c62Q
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