Zezo forum:

Post by pmangino | 2017-09-18 | 19:23:42

Do you have any information to share so far with us in regard to the VOR Virtual Game..?
Best regards,
Princess Marina

70 Comments

Post by zezo | 2017-09-18 | 20:45:07

There are rumors that VR are rewriting the user interface and the new one will be used for the Clipper (from Leg 2 on) and possibly for the VOR. I've seen Facebook posts with screenshots by supposed beta testers.

Post by Old-git | 2017-09-21 | 18:51:35

Are you talking about a newer interface than vr03 which came out the day after you posted your comment ?

Post by pmangino | 2017-09-19 | 00:21:22

Is it confirmed that VR will be the official site of the VOR..?
Where can I see the Facebook posts with the sceenshots..?
Thx Cvetan.

Post by zezo | 2017-09-19 | 14:51:56

They have updated the game page with the new interface and some info.

Quote:

Skipper your own boat all around the world in the most famous sailing races (the Volvo Ocean Race, Vend�e Globe, Transat Jacques Vabre, Fastnet, Sydney Hobart, Route du Rhum, Clipper RTW and lots of others). Race against hundreds of thousands of rivals in real time.

Post by pmangino | 2017-09-19 | 18:10:18

Thx Cvetan. I can see now...

Post by pmangino | 2017-09-19 | 18:14:25

We need your help urgently..!!!
The zezo extension is not longer in use... I hope you can put it to work again soon...
Best regards,
Princess Marina

Post by toxcct | 2017-09-19 | 18:24:24

You can still type the coords manually.

The brower add-on is one of the lower issues we're encountering with the new interface... unfortunately.

Post by zezo | 2017-09-19 | 19:59:57

We need a browser plugin to shop playing cards indeed ;-)

It's entirely new protocol. Not sure how exactly the plugin interface handles that type of communication, bit it may be possible to do something. I'm doing some research now.

Post by pmangino | 2017-09-20 | 14:30:53

Cvetan,
Thx for your precious help. However, so far I agree with many other player's decision in not participating in a playing card game. Too much money ($$$$) and to much abuse. Good bye Virtual VOR, unless they reconsider their mistake.
Princess Marina
Skipper

Post by karriv | 2017-09-20 | 15:53:15

If yo are interested in a free, more predictable and realistic virtual navigation game (with a lighter client), please check sailonline.org.

Post by pmangino | 2017-09-20 | 17:39:46

Thank you karriv,
I'll check it out...
VR and its crew have been steping backwards for more than two years now...
I can asure you that the number of players will decrease drastically sooner or later, unless they revise and correct their voracious appetite for money ($$$$$$).
Best regards,
Princess Marina

Post by karriv | 2017-09-20 | 17:47:29

I understand that they run a business. But from a doubt the steps they've taken, taking into consideration all the feedback I've seen on the forum, are wise even from a business perspective. One would think trying to keep the customers happy would be good for business.

Post by Michel | 2017-09-20 | 19:47:02

I tried this new game and new interface wih the VG full options and the Bridge whithout option.
Yesterday i tried the Latest version ! Is it yachting simulator or Blackjack ?

I return on Liveskipper

Post by MarinsEauDouce | 2017-09-20 | 19:50:26

I am posting a post on this forum to let you know that I have posted all the information about the new version of Virtual Regatta.

Take a look at http://www.facebook.com/MarinsEauDouce.

As the ClubHouse on VR is closed, if you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask them on my Facebook page (whether technical or not, I have the answer to all your questions). I will answer you with pleasure.

Post by NOR7034 | 2017-09-20 | 21:35:23

I was really looking forward to VOR, - but I agree with the previous posters, - not very interesting when card playing has become part of the game....
But what other options do we have (if we want to participate in VOR)? Liveskipper looked interesting, but no mentioning of VOR on their homepage.. Could it be that VR holds some kind of rights to the VOR virtual race?

Post by zezo | 2017-09-20 | 22:42:05

That's the real problem with all real races. The organizers hold the IP rights, therefore VR has to pay license fees. And then VR wants good ROI (that also works as advertisement fee because there is no better way to advertise a sailing game than to have a link on the real race site)

So the real advantage VR has is that they have real world connections with the real races.

Post by pmangino | 2017-09-21 | 01:28:15

I understand the business issue of VR. Any entrepeneur is looking for a good ROI. In this case Volvo is a big great Global Company, their mistake is that they chose the wrong partner.
VR performance has been decreasing in freefall.

Post by zezo | 2017-09-21 | 10:20:58

Their business model boils down to "kill the competition, secure a monopoly and then screw the customers however you like"

Which is not unheard of, especially among mobile carriers and the like, but I still don't like personally.

Post by karriv | 2017-09-21 | 09:08:28

I think other platforms (sailonline.org, liveskipper.com) might have races one could mistake for VOR, but naturally are totally different races.

Post by marcusbelgicus | 2017-09-21 | 22:15:54

I was somewhat negative at the beginning with this new version. But given the amount of credit you get at the beginning of the race, the amount of cards you get, you can actually be competitive without giving 1 single $. Which was clearly NOT the case before, impossible to be in the first 200 without paying for the options, and see Toppen and Co always at the first places was quite boring.
To me the main negative points this new version have are : too much memory consumed, you need to go to the 3 D screen to get your position, you don't see the first boats, they should remove those 'help cards' which are useless.

Post by zezo | 2017-09-21 | 22:41:39

You got that amount of credit just because it's a public beta.
In the real game each card is going to cost you few real bucks.

And Toppen and Co. will still be in the lead given the same amount of money as anyone else.

Well, maybe the real goal of VR is to get rid of Toppen and Co. I was thinking about that today. If that's the case they are doing a pretty good job and we all could wish them good luck.

Post by SnowPetrel | 2017-09-21 | 23:26:15

I am trying out this VR version "vor3" with the Opening Race. I find it a struggle to use this interface. How long has this been around? It is a memory hog, no doubt. The fan on my Surface Pro is blowing full bore all the time the VR is on, even if minimized.

I get the boat position off the boat info panel. (Click on the your boat, or any boat, and scroll 7 clicks to the right.) I do like the card chum barrel, but only if it keeps on giving. But I really dislike the cost and clumsiness of waypoint placement.

The display of wind is an interesting concept, but <6 knots is impossible to see graphically, especially if there's any light on my device.

Without the search function, or the message function, or mouse-over name display, the social side of this is tedious. I tried to zoom in and click around in the known Lat/Long of a friend, and I couldn't get any other boats to pop up.

The 3D option is a waste. The sails don't change, and the boat is always on a reach. So far, you can't toggle for the names of nearby boats. You're stuck with dark at night. Air temp?? None of the data boxes update. The wind waves and swell is always the same; no such action is being modeled in the game.

How does the un-grounding process work in this version? Last VORG (last time I did this), sailing back off a boundary took some pretty careful attention and patience. Here, the closest zoom is the 1 nm scale. The coastline starts to like like Dora the Explorer.

Post by marcusbelgicus | 2017-09-21 | 23:44:17

Yes you might be right, I guess we won't get so much credit in the future. Now let's see how much they will pay back for the cards we have not used, I have plenty of them !!!
I just think that there are 20-30 players which used to be 'without options' that can now compete with the old 'AO' so the game will be more open. But I might be wrong and the top 'with options' might still be significantly better than the 'without option', we will see.
My feeling is that they want to have a group of 50+ players that can compete, not only 10-20.
What they want as well is to force more players to connect more often, to get the free cards. And then generate more traffic for the ad. So far no ad, but they will come back again for everyone. But they might be cards to 'rid of the ad', that we will need to pay, off course.

Post by Toppen | 2017-09-24 | 18:26:10

Marcus, you shouldn't be bored by "Toppen & Co", you should be inspired ;)
I personally don't think the new version will cost more ("full options") than the old version. If you don't by extra sails you won't stand a chance, just like the old version (as someone said, the free credits we got for the test races will disappear from The Mini Transat and forward).
I think not much will change regarding top 10-25 or top 50 or top 100. As soon as we have figured out all "stupid" things like the 4 knot rule (i guess it will disappear after the test races, after all they claim they use real weather data and not manipulated weather data) and the polars are back, zezo has made his adjustments, other routers has made their's etc it will look the same. On the down side for "the top players" is that we don't have free waypoints and programming options any more so i assume there will be an increased cost for the top 50...
VR will lose some more top players as they did with the version 2, and there will be new ones on top 100 list.
zezo is spot on about my future with VR - Toppen will most likely not do "almost every race" from now on, the next race for me will be VOR and if things doesn't change i will do very few if any more races. VR tend to implement too many things that has nothing to do with racing and they really suck at communication.

I think VR should do 3 things to make everyone happy including the CFO at Virtual Regatta:
1. charge every player a small amount of money (�1?) per race (incl relatively competative sails/options, the difference should be not more than when we sail with the maxi trimarans) and keep full options at the current level (maybe some adjustments relative race length and VSR category?), and get rid of the stupid cards...
2. set up a reference group among the players and start develop the SW using that group to canalize requirements etc
3. improve communication by a 1000 % or so...

// Toppen

Post by zezo | 2017-09-24 | 20:33:17

My guess is that right now Toppen is not in the lead of zanzib 2 not because he forgot to renew the autosails or did not have good enough cards to play. It's just the weather was unstable and some of us chose the losing card. Fort me the beauty of the game is the proper forecast. It's random enough so you don't need to add more chance for the game to be fun.

Two editions ago the VOR was implemented from scratch by a Dutch company. They probably did not have enough time so had a lot of issues with the scalability, but other than that:

1) Hired the winner of the previous VOR as consultant. The guy knew the game inside-out, and also happened to be a great engineer/programmer.

2) Made the charts vector-based. I still wonder how the intersection check for so much line segments worked so well, especially server side, but it did.

3) Had a protest committee with with few members from the leading players (at least the winner of leg 1 AFAIK)

4) Did not stop developing the game. Each and every leg brought new features, and those were useful tools for the players, not new items to sell for cash.

P.S. Top players change all the time anyway. It just get too boring/tiring at some point. I have been playing for about 10 years and have seen hundreds of players on the top 10 list.

Post by sen317 | 2017-10-03 | 10:08:51

They had some availability problems, but the _game_ was good! I really miss that, and the one before that was good, too.

This card game nonsense is borderline insulting.

Post by marcusbelgicus | 2017-09-25 | 00:00:29

Hi Toppen,
Just to clarify my thoughts...What I wanted to say with 'Getting bored' is related to the fact that only players that buy the options could have won before.
When you were starting a race with the old version, somebody that did not take the options could not target to be within the first 200. Many SO have asked for a special 'ranking' for them because you have almost 2 races in one, one for the AO and one for the SO. Which never happened.
The new system will merge those 2 groups, and I strongly believe that there will be a broader range of winners.
Regarding the cards, this seems to be the best way to maximize the traffic on multiplayers games....And this is what VR is interested in, generate a maximum of traffic to get the max amount of $ for their ad, ...which is what is paying them, not the options. I don't think asking the players to pay 1 EUR will change anything, you will have a lot that do not want to play anymore, even for 1 EUR and so reduce traffic and EUR coming from ads.

NB. I fully agree with you that they need to improve the way they communicate, and also getting some feedback from a selected group of players to improve their soft would be very helpful for them. And also a more detalled manual, with all the rules would be far better.
NB2. Congratulation for your performances!

Post by zezo | 2017-09-25 | 07:46:03

The as income from one single player is something like 1 EUR/month.

Which is comparable with the income from the paid options (let's say 5% of the players times 20 EUR/month)

For purely ad-sponsored game to work you need to be able to engage few million schoolboys and build something called "Clash of ...." (I have a 5th grader at home ;-)

But I doubt that 5th graders will be too interested about a sailing game.

VR hate SO rankings because they feel it steals money from them. People play to see their name on top of a list, and if they can see it on a top of free list it makes no sense to get on the paid list.

But I don't see how exactly the cards merge the SO and AO player groups. 5% (ot 10% with foils) extra speed is still extra speed, everything else being equal.

Personally I don't think that you need a barrel of gold and stack of cards to keep people engaged in a sailing game, because we already have the stack of cards Mother Nature and NOAA throws at us every 6 hours or so.

P.S. Waypoints are also billed incrementally like the programmer.

Post by marcusbelgicus | 2017-09-25 | 20:14:54

There is probably not more than 2-3 % of players that pay for the options, based on the ranking of the best SO. So probably not more than 15000 EUR/month of income for most of the months (except when there is a big race). How can a company can survive with 15000 EUR/month without having large sponsoring from ads? Maybe they have students that program for them for nearly nothing...that might explain the 'amateur' way of treating their 'customers' - us!
Yes you need to buy the extra speed cards to be competitive. But this is the only option you need, if you manage well your credits, you can buy them with your credits previously accumulated. Before, to be competitive, you had to buy not only the extra speed, but also the automatic sail change, which basically meant you had to buy the full option package.
I agree that we don't need the cards to stay engaged, buy most of the old 'SO' did not connect every 6 hours, now they have a justification : get more cards, and the more cards you can get, the more you can sell at the end to get credits for the next race !!!
And don't forget the best sailors will get a lot of credits when they win, which will allow them to buy a lot of cards for programming in the next race.

Post by Nicky761 | 2017-09-25 | 01:43:45

My natural tendency is to dislike change. I knew how to use the old version, and I didn't see a need to change. Therefore, its easy to focus on the negatives. I sail with twa turned on at least 90% of the time and like to have a schedule set for 24 hours in case I can't get to the Internet. I also like to experiment with different courses and change my mind a lot. If I try to use VR3 in this manner, I'll burn through large numbers of program cards that only come in Nav Packs. I'm not going to spend that kind of money.

However, I can see how the new system is more attractive to SO sailors, since they can get some of the functions that previously cost money. It will not make them equal since the boat will be slower unless you pay for the extra sails etc. However, having a few waypoints will allow them to sleep more and still be competitive.

I'm willing to keep an open mind for some period of time and see what happens. Maybe they can adjust which cards they give away to make them more useable. What am I going to do with the 8 Help cards I have other than sell them back?

As Toppen said, one of the biggest problems is a lack of communication. At this point I'm hoping VR is listening and we will see some of the problems addressed. However, since they've shut down the forum and don't answer help emails, I don't see much indication they want to communicate with the users.

Post by karriv | 2017-09-25 | 09:55:40

Actually I think the cards system makes a bigger difference between people who don't want to spend money and people who do.

I see that this game has two aspects which decide how good one does:

1. Choosing the correct strategy (= route)
2. Implementing that strategy to the smallest detail

Now, the first item is similarly available to anyone. The difference between "SO" and "AO" comes from the second item. From now on there's going to be a continuum from not spending any money and being able to use a few programmations or waypoints per day, or spending a ton of cash and being able to use really a lot of programmations. Believe me, it makes a difference if you know the bearing you want to use for VMC sailing and then have the correct heading for each iteration. I've been racing at sailonline.org where the boat position is updated several times per minute. There the differences arise from adjusting your course up to 20 times per hour, making tiny adjustments of 0.1 degrees.

My two cents on how I think this game should done: The two items I mention are the things to compete in. Anything else should be made as easy as possible. As Cvetan said, Mother Nature deals a random enough hand of cards, an more importantly, that hand is the same for everyone. No need to add any other dimension of lottery. Naturally this game needs to be financed somehow. I think the earlier system of options was good. If Many Players want to introduce a way to collect a more stable stream of revenues, they could consider the Candy Bar system which was present in the edition Cvetan mentioned.

Post by Nicky761 | 2017-09-25 | 16:24:57

Totally agree. The new system gives some benefit of ease to the SO players, but anyone willing to spend serious money can buy an advantage. I just gained several places at end of leg 2 by setting 5 waypoints to jog through the islands. The free cards will never be enough to implement your strategy to the finest detail.

More money = finer detail

Post by YourMomSA | 2017-09-25 | 17:52:18

Excellent summary. I fully agree with one exception: I believe there are two ways to achieve #2. One is by spending a lot of money on Nav Packs, as Karriv suggested. The other is to be online constantly and hand-steer the "smallest detail". You don't need a lot of programmations or waypoints if you hand-steer. You just have to be online constantly.

Neither is good for the game. I have done well in Zanzib Legs 1 and 2 because it happens that during the last week, it has been easy for me to get online many times per day, and the timing of these races worked out ok for me to be able to sleep during the US nights. I think I bought one Nav Pack in each race, to get through the nights. For longer races with complicated night time navigation, I will not be staying up all night, and I also will not be spending thousands of credits per race on Nav Packs. Those who do either of those will win those races.

If VR changes nothing, the only way I can see myself continuing to play is if I can actually continue to perform well enough to earn enough credits to buy a lot of Nav Packs without spending a lot of real money. You can buy something like 15 Nav Packs for the same 3400-4500 Credits price of the VOR2 races... and if you do well, then your finish bonus, card buy-back return, and start bonus should cover the cost of customizing the boat... So for me, that's the deciding point. If I can do well in a 3-week race while spending less than 4500 credits on nav packs, I might keep racing even though I think the whole card game thing is stupid. But if I find myself losing to people who hand-steer 24/7 and people who spend 10000 credits on nav packs, it will be time to quit.

Post by Nicky761 | 2017-09-25 | 19:11:25

I agree with everything you say. In the old version I found sailing SO was difficult because of the need to constantly hand steer. I thought it was much easier to compete with Options.

Now it requires either being online much more often to hand steer or buying large numbers of Nav Packs. I don't want to do either of these. My competitive nature will not allow me to play half way, so my outlook is not great.

Post by marcusbelgicus | 2017-09-25 | 20:24:35

Hi YourMomSA, actually, I realized that the best value for money is to buy random packs, not the Nav packs. And also take the random pack with the bucket to get as much as cards as possible. You don't care if you got 20 useless help cards or 'mode furtif', you will sell those to VR at the end of the game, money that you can use for the next race.

Post by Nicky761 | 2017-09-25 | 16:58:57

I have not seen any evidence that VR will be doing the Volvo. On the VR site I don't see the Volvo on the list of upcoming races. On the Volvo site I don't find any reference to doing a virtual version. The real Volvo starts in less than 27 days, and they should both be advertising by now.

Post by zezo | 2017-09-25 | 17:01:34

The VR home page says this next to the VR Offshore link:

Quote:

Skipper your own boat all around the world in the most famous sailing races (the Volvo Ocean Race, Vend�e Globe, Transat Jacques Vabre, Fastnet, Sydney Hobart, Route du Rhum, Clipper RTW and lots of others). Race against hundreds of thousands of rivals in real time.

Post by Nicky761 | 2017-09-25 | 17:16:08

Yes, but at the bottom where they list the upcoming races, the Volvo is not listed. I believe the text you reference is boiler that has been there for a long time.

Post by Toppen | 2017-09-25 | 17:35:38

That text has been there for quite some time now. I was asked to translate some text to Swedish (and that was in July...) and the text above was one of them. I'm trying to figure out whether or not VR will do the VOR through the Swedish VOR Group.

Post by pmangino | 2017-09-25 | 18:12:19

I understand the business issue of VR. Any entrepeneur is looking for a good ROI. In this case Volvo is a serious geat Global Company, their mistake was that they are choosing the wrong partner.
VR performance has been decreasing in freefall since long time ago...
Nicky761 is right. I have not seen any strong evidence that VR will be doing the Volvo, in non of the two sides.

Post by karriv | 2017-09-25 | 20:37:32

There are some hints that would lead you to think that VR is actually going to do VVOR.

http://www.volvooceanrace.com/en/game.html

What you get from there is a DNS error in the frame where the game should be for vvor-org.virtualregatta.com. If you access that site from a mobile device, you get a message that the game doesn't support your device, but fortunately there's an app for it and it links to the VR Offshore app in Play/App Store.

Of course those could be just leftovers from the previous edition.

Post by Toppen | 2017-09-25 | 20:48:11

I think VR will do the VOR but I assume the negociations are tough right now. The link you posted is probably from last VOR since all the news/articles under the empty screen is from 2015. We'll see... don't thik Volvo has got a backup plan and no virtual game is no option

Post by NOR7034 | 2017-09-25 | 23:13:11

Marcusbelgicus suggests buying the Random Packs as best value for money as we can sell back the unused cards to VR after the race. That worked with the Opening Races, but have You found anything from VR promising that we will be able to sell back unused cards in the future races also?

VR seems to change the rules very often now, - in the Zanzib races the DISCOUNT Full Boat Pack was only available for hard cash....

Post by marcusbelgicus | 2017-09-26 | 15:15:12

Yes that might happen, or we might be able to buy cards to get rid of ads, etc...
We will see, anything else is speculation. We also see get credits for the places and I got 1600 for a VRO=6 so I believe better ranking race will give more....
Personnaly I prefer to focus on the improvements, the coasts seem to be more accurate than before, the recalculation every minute is a significant improvement, the differences between SO and AO will be smaller. Do I like the system with cards? I guess I don't care if they buy them at a decent price at the end.
What they really need to do is to make sure there is no bug, what happened to LaMerNoire and others is totally unacceptable and as already pointed out, improve dramatically their communication skills.
Overall, I prefer this new version.

Post by YourMomSA | 2017-09-25 | 23:19:55

I think this FAQ confirms that we will always be able to sell unused cards back...

https://virtualregatta.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001511314-What-happens-to-the-cards-I-don-t-use-

However, I also agree that these Category 6 opening races might be evaluating cards, boat upgrades, etc, all differently from what we'll see in future races. I worry that everything will be more expensive in Category 1 races and/or the amount we get back at the end for unused cards might be less. Since VR isn't publishing the details, we just have to wait and see.

Post by pmangino | 2017-09-26 | 01:44:06

Unfortunately, I must say that I have lost all confidence in VR and its people. Constant changes in a very short period of time reveal their complete lack of loyalty and commitment toward their customers. It make no sense to combine lottery cards with offshore sailing. Their ambition for $$$$$$$ is excessive..!!!

Post by karriv | 2017-09-26 | 09:39:16

I think the biggest problem currently is the way programmations (and waypoints) use cards, that is one for the first one, two for the second and so forth. I used to always have at least 12 hours programmed in, just in case "shit happens". That will not be an option now, or at least not for me since it would be very expensive. Even if I change that approach, there will be instances where I'd like to use the full 10 programmations, which would cost 55 programmation cards... For the nav-packs, assuming you'd get a random 50 % of programmation cards, that'd require 11 packs = 2970 credits.

Regarding VR buying the cards back, I think I got something like 600 credits back after Zan2 race, and I believe I had >50 cards left. That would mean they reimburse 50 % of the purchase price, which IMHO is not a very good deal. Still I can't exactly remember the quantities, so it would be interesting to hear if someone has more accurate figures to share.

All in all, I think it will now cost more to be competitive in the game, and that is because of the way programmations use cards. Needless to say I think VR should change that to one card per programmation.

Post by JohnT | 2017-09-28 | 05:51:39

That's very similar to the way I play, and I completely agree with your analysis. One other possible solution would be to give us an option to buy 'unlimited' programmations - ok with real money! I might decide that was too expensive, but at least the price is fixed, not dependent on the timing of the weather versus events in my real life (sleep, meetings, forgettings, and all the other reasons I don't get online at exactly the time I should to change course :)

Post by Toppen | 2017-09-26 | 11:27:28

We get 10 credits back per unused card.

Post by Toppen | 2017-09-27 | 13:29:45

I have confirmation from the VOR organization that there will be a Virtual VOR also this edition. I also asked whether or not VR will organize the virtual race but still haven't got an answer. It is said that it will be launched "soon".

Post by zezo | 2017-09-27 | 16:34:06

They seem to have more important issues right now, concerning the future of the real race.

Post by Toppen | 2017-09-27 | 20:32:51

Cvetan, the 4 knot limit is here to stay. They just forgot to tell us aboutit, they thanked me for pointing it out and have now updated the help section. However, it is not a fixed 4 knot limit, they will change it according to their liking maybe depending on race length, etc. Not sure if they plan to have different limits within a race or not, i kind of lost interest.

Post by zezo | 2017-09-27 | 20:45:54

Yes, it's a configuration parameter, and is currently global, i.e. not per race. Comes with the list of active races and such.

windMinKts : 4

Post by marcusbelgicus | 2017-09-27 | 23:24:44

I have been wondering if it is not a question of resolution, with the 1 min recalculation and a wind of 1 knot, the boat must not change a lot of position from 1 point to another and there would be too much error in the calculation.
I am not an expert in numerical calculation ...so maybe wrong in my assumption.

Post by Toppen | 2017-09-27 | 22:22:52

They are actually implementing a windMaxKts as well, they will set it at "7" in the Mini Transat...

Post by Alexandria | 2017-09-28 | 00:09:27

Sorry, but I do not understand what is going on. What do those "windMinKts" and "windMaxKts" parameters do, exactly?

Post by zezo | 2017-09-28 | 12:04:18

windMinKts sounds like the wind in the game is never slower than that.

It may affect some strategic decisions when sailing via "wind hole" areas.

I hope that Toppen is pulling our legs with the maxwind parameter, but you never know ;-)

Post by Alexandria | 2017-09-28 | 13:26:41

So, what we now have is a post-truth sailing game - if they are not happy with the winds, they can change it.

Post by mak08 | 2017-09-28 | 14:27:09

I think the minimum wind speed is silly, but capping the wind speed at a maximum value actually makes the game more realistic. If you're unfortunate to get into 12bft with your MiniTransat IRL it's game over, at least for the boat. (And I hope the cut-off is at 70kts, not at 7 ;-))
The MiniTransat polars range upto 50kts.

Post by Toppen | 2017-09-28 | 17:47:06

Not only can they change the wind - they have said that they will do so. The question is, based on what? And within a race - maybe if a race suffers from lighter wind and is taking too long just turn it up a bit? My post about maximum level was of course a joke but if someone would have told me 1 month ago that VR would start to manipulate weather data by setting a minimum wind speed level i would have thought they were joking...
The next invention could be slowing down anyone leading by more than x nm or y % or to limit wind shifts to a maximum of z %...
I thought we were going to have conditions, boat and sail performance etc that were as close to the real boats as possible... i think we are getting away from that at a very high speed. The question is why someone at VR believes this is a good idea..
Ant btw - the polars (the graphical view showing the best speed, when there are sail changes etc) will not come back, the developers has decided not to have them anymore (i have asked and gotten that answer)

// Toppen

Post by karriv | 2017-09-27 | 22:43:58

So much for racing the real winds with real boats (I suspect the VO65s will have foils;).

Post by lemulot79 | 2017-09-27 | 22:54:46

Thank you all for your interventions and your "knowledge". I am an unconditional "VR", and I have always adapted.
For the 3 "test" races I did, I did not lose any credits.
As Cvetan always gives us "zezo", I will make the race "mini" and I will judge at the end.

Post by JohnT | 2017-09-28 | 08:51:23

Another twist on the card game: earlier today I saw an offer for single programmation cards @ 25 each, which I thought was a positive step! And, of course I did not take any then, thinking I would exchange some credits when I wanted to use them. So now that offer has gone - but they offer individual auto-sails, which I already have more than it would be possible to use in this race.
More frustration...

Post by zezo | 2017-09-28 | 12:12:37

Ooops. The first card is actually a time-limited offer which expires (there is a counter below it)

But the card also changes when you buy it, so it's another mini Russian roulette game designed to keep you online 24/7 ;-)

Post by Toppen | 2017-09-28 | 16:25:53

I will try not to use a single card during the 3rd leg of the Zanzib Cup. So far so good. Of course this leg isn't the most complicated but anyway... so far no used cards either with Toppen or Ventus Mare... i'm getting rich! ;)

Post by marcusbelgicus | 2017-09-28 | 19:19:36

I only have used one to put a 'cap change' in case I cannot connect...and change the position of it each time since I was able to connect at the right time.
And using the winds of leg 2. A good practise is also to take the max number of card, the pack of 5 from the box...
For the ones who are interested, I found some financial data about VR...and it becoming more obvious to me why they decided to move from VR02 to VR03 after only a couple of years.

Post by zezo | 2017-09-28 | 22:40:42

Because investors demand it? Nothing new under the sun.

Post by pmangino | 2017-09-28 | 20:58:43

No more waste of $$$$$. Too many changes in a very short period of time... Nonsense.
I'm not minded to keep following this stupid game of VR�s wise guys. I will take the chance to make the Mini and live the experience...
If VR will not reconsider their lack of sensitivity on how they have handled things, I'm gone.
Bye bye VVOR...

Post by zezo | 2017-10-02 | 18:34:25

http://www.volvooceanrace.com/en/news/9986_Volvo-Ocean-Race-teams-up-with-Virtual-Regatta-for-2017-18-race-game.html

Post by meteo79niort | 2017-10-02 | 18:41:12

Yes, and here https://www.facebook.com/virtualregatta/