Happy holidays everyone! Today, I have the season conclusion post for The 2018 Oppositelock Forza 7 Endurance Championship. Included here is the post race for round 12, season highlights, the final points standings, and some info about what to expect in 2019.
THE RACE
If you missed the race, check out the streaming list. All of the replays can be found there. Special thanks to everyone who streamed. There were some great battles, but eventually luck is what won the day.
RESULTS
Here are the results by class, as well as a picture of the car used by each driver. Here is the full results sheet.
Sports - Proto
GT
PHOTOS
Here are some more photos from the race. If you have any pictures from the race that you want to share, post them in the comments.
THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS
This was a chaotic but fun race. There was a lot of on track action. However, Forza wouldn’t let the series go out flawlessly. Signs and curbs seemingly took out many cars. It’s one thing for a race to be ruined from a in race incident, but getting taken out by a probably cardboard sign is pretty shitty. I would still consider it a good send off though for what I thought has been a very fun series.
SEASON HIGHLIGHTS
Now, here are some photos showcasing highlights from all of the races this season.
FINAL POINTS STANDINGS
Here are the final championship standings for both drivers and manufactures in both classes. For sprint and endurance cup standings, click here to go to the full points sheet.
Sports - Proto Driver’s Championship
Sports - Proto Constructor’s Championship
GT Driver’s Championship
GT Constructor’s Championship
THE TROPHIES
And now, to distribute the prestigious awards that have been fought hard for all year.
The trophy for the Sports-Proto Sprint Drivers Championship is presented to HCR Phloofy.
The trophy for the GT Sprint Drivers Championship is presented to Corey CC97 (yay me).
The trophy for the Sports-Proto Endurance Drivers Championship is presented to HCR Phloofy.
The trophy for the GT Endurance Drivers Championship is presented to Corey CC97 (yay me).
The trophy for the Sports-Proto Overall Drivers Championship is presented to HCR Phloofy.
The trophy for the GT Overall Drivers Championship is presented to Corey CC97 (yay me).
The trophy for the Sports-Proto Sprint Manufactures Championship is presented to Lola.
The trophy for the GT Sprint Manufactures Championship is presented to Ferrari.
The trophy for the Sports-Proto Endurance Manufactures Championship is presented to Lola.
The trophy for the GT Endurance Manufactures Championship is presented to BMW.
The trophy for the Sports-Proto Overall Manufactures Championship is presented to Lola.
Finally, the trophy for the GT Overall Manufactures Championship is presented to Ferrari.
Now as far as I know, Ferrari, BMW, and Lola are not on Oppo, so I emailed them to make sure they got their awards. I’m sure the prestigious trophies will be displayed alongside their Le Mans winning race cars that were campaigned valiantly in this series.
FINAL THOUGHTS
This is a series I had wanted to do for a long, long time. Since I wrote that post, I had been kind of mentally planning how and when I wanted to run this. I finally pulled the trigger starting in October of 2017, and the original plan had become much more ambitious. To my knowledge, this was the biggest series run on Oppo, and maybe even RORA, in terms of total content used. 60 cars racing across 12 tracks with different BoP for each track. This was a massive undertaking, though one I happily signed myself up for, as I wanted this to be my magnum opus. These cars are ones that I have wanted to race more so than any others, though with a very close second to the cars that are up for next year. I wanted these 12 races to be some of the greatest we’ve ever had, to capture the magic of one of the most legendary eras in racing. But did I succeed?
I think that is up for interpretation. In a lot of ways yes. This was the most attended series in the history of Oppo on Forza, to my knowledge. Grid sizes were consistent and large. This year’s Daytona 2.4 had 32 people across two lobbies. The Le Mans 2.4 was the biggest we’ve ever had, with 24 people. Even after a year, a lot of people didn’t get tired of the same cars, which is always a good thing. Though it was a pain in my ass, the variety in the field got people interested. And helped create some great racing, with all different kinds of driving styles and strategies being created. Seeing almost everyone in a different cars was deeply satisfying.
Some things didn’t quite work though. Chief among which is the game itself. Forza. Motorsport. 7. Where to fucking begin. Many of you have written excellent write ups surrounding what I’m going to talk about, so I’ll keep this brief. We basically beta tested this game for Turn 10. At the beginning of the year, it was borderline unplayable. It was a miracle if we could sit in a lobby for more than 10 minutes without game crashes. If you want to see it at its worst, read the Round 5 post race. For better or worse, we persevered and the game is actually a product now. Mostly. I can’t help but think what could have been if the game was complete on launch day. Moving on to the series, the prototype field was light at times (special shoutout to everyone who stuck with the class all year). I think two factors caused this. First, the GT class was so diverse that everyone found a car they like there better than the protos. Second, the protos drove like ass. They were a bitch and a half to drive fast. Hell the fastest times were set by four wheel drifting every corner. The class suffered the Can-Am effect. The cars were awesome on paper and the thought of driving them was great. But when it came down to it, they were just too wayward to be fun for most people. You can have the coolest cars in the world, but if they don’t play nice, few will stick around. I should have seen this coming after Can-Am since this proto class is very close to Can-Am, but it felt wrong to not at least offer them, and that is something I will stand by. In addition, there were the championships, which were determined mostly by attendance, due largely to the year long calendar. Though I have always said show up to race not win a championship, so I can live with this. And no I’m not saying that because I swept the GT championship.
There was also something else, something intangible. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and this definitely applies to the veteran drivers much more than the newcomers from this year. I’ve been comparing this in my head back to the first OEC in 2016 and the stuff we did in Forza 4, and it just feels...different. At times, just not as fun. But why? I feel confident saying that from an organization and racing quality standpoint we are at a high, but its just not quite the same as the early days of this. And I think I know why now. When looking at the game in a vacuum, we’ve all played it so much that playing the game by itself isn’t fun, it’s the competition that makes it fun. So when someone is no longer competitive, there’s nothing left. Looking back at Forza 4, it was fun, either because it was a great game or because we were all still new to the whole esports thing. So you could crash and still have a good time just playing the game. It wasn’t a competition, just a game. It would be wrong to not acknowledge the role of the state of Forza 7 on this, but I definitely believe it goes beyond that. This definitely isn’t a blanket statement for everyone, its more of an assessment of my position on it. Though I do think it is worth thinking about.
However, this isn’t stopping me from playing this game any time soon. Despite my critiques, doing this is still something I very much enjoy. See, I set out to do one thing this year with this series: create some great on track racing. And that is something that definitely happened. The on track battles were some of the best I’ve ever had. The GT class was a constant swarm of close racing. Many races came down to the wire and had great finishes. Even with a lack of people, the proto class still managed to have great battles and memorable moments. Though I think all of this is more down to the drivers than anything. From an organization stand point, I wanted to try (and will continue to try) to do something. That initial magic of getting involved in these events may be gone for me, but I hope I succeeding in giving it to others. It’s not my place to say whether or not people got that feeling, but a lot of the new drivers from this year have stuck around, so that’s at least worth something. There’s something else though, something I never really expected. The Discord. I created it back in 2016 after the Teamspeak server went down. I only intended and expected it to be used for race chat, like the Teamspeak. But then people started posting on it. And then more. And more still. And now, it has evolved into its own community with nearly 100 registered users. The majority of what is posted there now doesn’t even have much to do with Forza. Though unexpected, it is definitely the best thing that has come out of doing this. The community that has arisen there is something truly great, and I am proud to call many of you my friends. And all that is why in my eyes OEC II was a success, and why I keep racing.
SNEAK PREVIEW OF 2019
I’m sure those of you out of the loop are wondering what is next. Well, I am happy to say that next on the calendar is the Oppositelock Endurance Championship III, and we will be racing Group C/GTP and Group 5/GTO cars! Format will be the same, monthly races, show up to have fun. Round 1 will be the prestigious Oppositelock 2.4 Hours of Daytona on January 12th at 8 PM EST. Before this though, make sure to join in for our last race of 2018: Viggen’s Gulf 3 Hour, featuring GT3 cars and a diverse GTX class. And of course, our friends at r/redditracing have many things planned. Who knows, there may be some more Oppo stuff in the pipeline for further down the year as well. I can say that I’m working on a one-off event of my own. But beyond that, we’ll see what happens.
THANK YOU
I have a lot of people to thank, as this series would not have been possible without the help of many great people.
- Anyone and everyone who helped with BoP at any point in the series
- Whitnith for being our pace car at nearly every round
- Kchrpm and SFM Darkzer for helping to create the points sheet
- Alphalead15 for creating the results sheet format and helping populate them
- Viggen, SFM Darkzer, SFM Cowmaster, kiwichris1709, and Terminator for being flexible with their race schedules
- Anyone and everyone who has streamed the races and/or uploaded them to Youtube
- Anyone who saved the replay for me when I dropped, did a dumb, or sat helplessly while Forza gave up
But most of all, I want to thank each and every one of you for racing. This series was a success because of your interest and continued racing. And I can only hope that continues. Here’s to the next year of racing on Oppositelock.