Post by
YourMomSA | 2018-03-04 | 22:21:31
After a couple years, you stop getting agitated about weird things like this if they don't hurt your progress to the finish. You just keep going and figure it'll resolve itself. You have to also make the basic assumption that no one good enough to beat you has been sitting on the sideline waiting for the moment to pounce on a strange escort frigate position. With those in mind, you can find it more humorous than upsetting.
Things like the impact of the change to 2 kts min windspeed on the results of JVT, though... THAT's what I reserve my anger for. It's important to remember that if you freak out about every little thing, VR will write you off as a person with an anger issue. If you laugh about the little things and freak out when it matters, they might listen. A little. Mostly they just do what they want to do and regret it mildly if someone quits. Plenty of other people to replace each person who quits. If I quit at #1, that's ok... Someone else will replace me, and the "Happy" race proves that there are 800+ people ready to pay 25 Euros to do a 10-day race. It starts to make sense... why cater to the very precise expectations of the most serious players if hundreds will pay anyway? So it churns through people. When I started (three years ago, during the last VOR), there were some outstanding players that I still consider to be better than I am now. They eventually got fed up and quit. I still view my #1 status as being partly due to their absence rather than my skill and commitment. One day (maybe soon... undecided), I'll be gone too. My patience is thin now. That's ok. The bottom line is #1 is a combination of skill, commitment, and patience, not just skill and commitment.
It's fortunate that I was on a Boy Scouts campout yesterday with my son and his troop. I had to hike to a location where I could get cell coverage, and I don't post to forums in situations like that, so my rage about the impact of that change to my JVT race had a day to cool down before I could start posting to forums again. I think it hurt me, but it may have hurt more others worse, so I'm not sure yet if it hurt my end result finishing position. With that insight, I'm slowly working myself toward laughing it off. But that's very difficult to do now.
For anyone who ever wants to be near the top of VSR, my recommendation is that you get used to how VR does things, and work hard on controlling your temper and doing the best you can to minimize the damage when problems happen, rather than freaking out about everything.
In fairness... I have to say they HAVE improved a lot of things. The continuous evolution of wind, and the 1-minute iterations, make it far more realistic and I love those changes. The 2-kt min is better than the 4-kt min. VRO3 has reached the point where I believe it is now superior to VRO2 (I never played VRO1). I honestly DO believe they're turning out a good product, or we wouldn't be here, and I think it's important that we all remember that before trashing VR. The big problem is that I don't think anyone in the VR organization truly understands the level of personal time and commitment it takes to play the game at a seriously competitive level... and as a result, they don't fully understand how upset people will be when the minimum wind is changed from 4 kts to 2 when you're in the middle of a light wind area after spending 4 weeks of hard work to get there, or how upsetting it would be to the top 50 VSR players to introduce a 9-day Category 2 limited access race for 25 Euros. Either that or they understand those things and don't care because more money comes from the masses who don't play that seriously than the top VSR boats. And that's ok... honestly, it's business, and if 800+ people pay for the Happy race, then I can understand them not stressing too much about pissing off 40-50 highly competitive boats. If those top 40-50 quit, then some of the masses will get excited to replace them and will spend a few hundred Euros over the ensuing couple years before they get tired of it. I can live with that. I'd rather it not be that way, but it's a business, and they need to do whatever they believe will earn them the most money.
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