Lotsa responses in this one post and they all run together if you are quoted in here. Sorry, I'm long winded.
Oh I know. Simulation value has really plummetted.
All "funny jokes" stemming from PRC aside - it's actually gone the total opposite to that IMO to the detriment of the games and the community as a whole. We now live in a world of "endless tire model updates" - endless "whatever" updates - that
do deliver improved "simulation value". While at times updates have broken things, most of these developers have actually done very well to fix them quickly or make progress to eliminating them.
No one should say with a straight face AC was so much better in it's early access phase when cars were super glued to the road for example - but what does it
really matter? Has iRacing
really improved thanks to the NTM journey? Does rF2 having half of a weather system actually mean anything for anymore than about 50 people?
"Simulation value" is not the problem with any of these "games". "Game value" is the problem with these "simulations".
Let's be real - GTR2 drove fairly... bizarrely... at times. It's "simulation value" was questioned a hell of a lot of times early on in it's life. What wasn't questioned, and why is it now unanimously regarded as one of the greatest ever? Because it was a damn good game that happened to be a simulation. Or in other words : GTR2 doesn't have wiper blades. We cared in 2007, now no one remembers.
If you want a more modern stand in if you aren't familiar with GTR2's launch, Dirt Rally is an absolutely 100% perfect stand in as proof of the same effect.
Why do you say that the Reiza 2017 will be garbage? Or are you being ironic?
It's not only Reiza 2017 I'm talking about there. Anyone who knows me knows I've done more than my fair share for Reiza and I get a lot of enjoyment from their titles. No one who knows my past history would dare to think I'm a Reiza hater. Realistically though, what can you expect from Reiza 2017?
Maybe Unreal 4 graphics, maybe weather. You'd have to likely figure their own more modified ISI pmotor 2 physics and back end stuff given the time frame they announced even originally. Likely the same type of track and car list that appeals to some of us weirdos, but ultimately continues the trend of being a small niche title.
Remember when it was AC who would rejuvenate the sim racing community after the really "flat" launch of rF2?
Remember when rF2 would get the rF1 community back on it's feet and truly kicking at it's furious pace again?
Remember when iRacing's NTM would fix all of the flaws and make it a no brainer, best out there sim?
This goes on and on and on.
Perhaps my original wording was too harsh, but very rarely does the communities "expectations" match up with the realistic possibilities from the studio with the limits that they all have to deal with.
he might be basing it off the past as he said development is long and for sims its even longer. So it might not be based per say just that it is suffering due to taking too long.
Here is why I really wanted to mention these quotes all tied in to one another - see the response above. However, here is why I put this comment here : it
isn't just sim racing.
Story time :
My 2nd favorite genre of games are flight sims, particularly the combat ones. Let me just take the WWII combat flight sim market as a parallel - the same could be done with civilian sims as well as modern jet combat sims though.
IL2 in the early 2000s created a thriving community. It had several expansions on top of it allowing by the end of it to fly almost any fighter of note in WWII as well as several bombers. Everything was awesome - people were playing, people were having fun, the community was self sustaining.
IL2 : Battle of Britain was announced as the "next" IL2 game, some teasers, videos and screenshots came out. HYPE! Loads more detail, somewhat clickable cockpits, more realism, better graphics, a more "well known" scenario in the Battle of Britain. More sim! It took forever to finally came out - released as IL2 : Cliffs of Dover - and it
flopped. It ran like garbage, it had a (comparatively) limited aircraft roster because of the setting as well as the detail required to do aircraft to that standard. It flat out killed the community as everyone went and did what they felt best in the wake of that launch. Fairly recently, several years after release and abandonment because the game was a frickin' mess, the community has made the game much closer to what was expected originally. No one really cares though because people were already put off by the launch or are doing something else / playing something else. The ship largely set sail.
Fast forward to IL2 : Battle of Stalingrad (or Moscow) and finally we have a game that is a good enough sim to be a sim, good looking enough to look more than acceptable, has enough focus that it can
sorta get around the realities of the requirements of modern content quality. It's a step back to the former greatness of the series and the genre it solely carried on it's back, but because the previous title did so much to drive people off it's a losing battle frought with low player counts and a substantially weaker community - especially in today's climate where an increasing number of people are into the more "instant gratification" type of games.
TL;DR - Space "simulations" were huge in the 90s and 2000s, died off for a variety of reasons and have come back reworked with games like Elite : Dangerous and Star Citizen. This is the cycle of "simulations" as a whole for the home market.
When did you become so salty about sim racing? You always seemed like a such a reasonable voice.
Salty? No, not really. Heck, I have my real world job purely due to sim racing (I would have never, ever, ever become a "graphic designer" - I hate that term - if it weren't for skinning), I've had a lot of fun with the community and running the youtube stuff. I've more than "gotten my mileage out of it". I'd have done none of that if I didn't enjoy it.
However, being reasonable about the games themselves does not mean I am oblivious to the scenery that surrounds the games. When you enjoy something a heck of a lot and you see it dying as the community sticks it's own head up it's rear while the devs are sticking their own heads up their own rear it's easy to get fired up.
More people should be, frankly.
