Open letter from Devs

[Antonio Crinò]

Can someone post it here please?

 

[Radu Oros]

I think my comments were far from "fanboy" type. I tried to comment in an objective way, to make him do fair-objective comparisons between games and real life.

 

[Brandon Wright]

Well, we all desire different things from our sims. I happen to prefer a few bells and whistles to fill in the blanks that our equipment can't replicate, and other sims do a very good job of this. Maybe they exaggerate these things which makes them not quite true to life, but that happens to be what I enjoy and what gives me the sense I'm in a moving car. I would never consider sims like GSCE or R3E to be comparable to Need for Speed, but both of them manage to produce the feelings I desire and enjoy so I mainly just stick to what gives me enjoyment.

Like I said, I'm not bashing AC or people who enjoy it. I don't hate it, it just happens to not suit my preferences as well as other sims do. We're all entitled to our opinions and just because they might not match up doesn't mean one is better than the other. Per your descriptions, AC is possibly more "realistic" than other sims, but that doesn't mean it has to automatically be the one everyone enjoys the most. Some people like their pizza with lots of toppings, some like their pizza with just cheese, and both choices are completely valid.

I think my comments were far from "fanboy" type. I tried to comment in an objective way, to make him do fair-objective comparisons between games and real life.

This was never about which game is more comparable to real life driving, but simply about my own personal preferences. I wasn't trying to argue that my preferences are the correct ones or that people who enjoy AC are wrong, I was just trying to add to the discussion about why some of us don't spend a lot of time in threads discussing the little nuances of the sim. Just because it's not my favorite sim doesn't mean I was implying that it's terrible and everyone who enjoys it is terrible. We're lucky enough to have many sims to choose from right now so we can all stick to the ones we enjoy most.

I will bow out now as this has become about whose preferences are right or wrong instead of the original topic, and it was not my intention to take the thread off-topic.

 

[Radu Oros]

Thanks for further explaining Brandon.

 

[Brandon Wright]

Thanks for further explaining Brandon.

No problem mate. I know that when it comes to forums (or life in general), differing opinions can often be taken as fighting words or insults so I tried my best to make it clear that I was only speaking of my opinions and that I was never trying to imply my opinions were the only correct ones, or that AC was a terrible product just because it doesn't happen to 100% suit my preferences.

We all love sim racing and that's all that matters, whether we all happen to like the same exact sim for the same exact reasons should have no bearing on our shared love of the hobby. Some prefer ultra realism, some prefer realism with "enhancements", some prefer arcade elements, all are valid preferences and just because someone prefers something different than we do it doesn't mean our preference is any better or worse.

 

[brooptss]

How I understood his post: "Appreciate more the quality and depth of the driving experience in AC, and look past the issues with the game because of it." No, then the game ends up being exactly what many are accusing it of being - a hotlap simulator. Those who complain about lack of realism or poor driving experience without appreciating the nuances of setting up the car is unrelated issue. This multiplayer game is missing core multiplayer features. It's like playing a multiplayer football game where there is no header feature. Sure, you can enjoy the mechanics of teamwork and movement and scoring a goal, but without headers its not quite a full football game and rightly so.

 

[Brandon Wright]

How I understood his post: "Appreciate more the quality and depth of the driving experience in AC, and look past the issues with the game because of it." No, then the game ends up being exactly what many are accusing it of being - a hotlap simulator.

Yeah, that's pretty much how I took it too. That's disappointing and kind of gives insight to what their original intentions for AC were. I think the shining light is that they're moving to consoles, and in order to make console players happy Kunos is going to have to change/improve some things. If they were to release AC in its current state to console players, I think there would be much unhappiness and whinging and poor sales. Especially when you factor in the lack of mods on consoles, they're really going to have to beef things up so let's hope that PC users see some good benefits from that.

 

[xnorb]

I don't think the majority of console players really minds the starting mechanic, lack of rolling starts, the poor flag system, the laughable cutting penalties, league features, advanced server browser....
A good career mode is way more important than all that for consoles.

 

[Brandon Wright]

I don't think the majority of console players really minds the starting mechanic, lack of rolling starts, the poor flag system, the laughable cutting penalties, league features, advanced server browser....
A good career mode is way more important than all that for consoles.

I spent years playing Gran Turismo, lack of rolling starts (on road courses), lack of flags, and laughable cutting penalties were often sources for complaints. As was the terrible career mode, and AC's career mode (in its current state) really isn't much better than GT6's IMO.

 

[fortyfivekev]

I don't think the majority of console players really minds the starting mechanic, lack of rolling starts, the poor flag system, the laughable cutting penalties, league features, advanced server browser....
A good career mode is way more important than all that for consoles.

You're right and even though I know they have another team working on the console ports I can't see Kunos making a big effort to add the sort of "hard core" racing features that console users don't need. Us PC users will benefit from the extra content being developed and also maybe from some optimisations that the less powerful consoles will require but other than that I don't feel that positive about AC's future

My personal hype machine is now waiting for Reiza's new sim as for me at least a combination of GSCE++ and modern visuals would be about perfect