I'm shocked about AI

[barty]

ia why are so bad?

 

[Dave R]

I am curious about the motivations why one would choose to race against a computer over racing versus real people. Is it because online lobbies are full of people that cannot drive, time limitations, or something else?

Too much drama, too much BS, and too much trouble. I went premium on the site just to support the site, not to race online.

 

[vee10]

Couple of things.

Firstly, yes you're right: the time limitations.
My work/home schedule doesn't allow me to join any leagues as it's just not that predictable, so that's out the window.
Then my gaming time is limited anyway, I'm lucky most days to get an hour in at most (I have other hobbies too - guitar mostly, other things too).
I can either spend that hour waiting in lobbies or faffing with online voting in pubs, or I can sit with the AI and have a structured quali/race with them without any faffing, so actually feel like I've acheived a full (ish) session rather than wasting my fairly precious free time.


Secondly, I don't like people for the most part.
The last time I gamed online with any regularity was back in the days of Quake3 where there was a great community and a good vibe online, these days of facebook and entitlement there just isn't the appeal.




I notice a LOT of online racers think they "are" sim-racing, but there's a decent sized chunk of us that don't race online, maybe you're even missing a trick by not catering to them more - how about RD members Time-trial competitions? That might even pull you in more customers.

Totally agree mate, I am not going to spend my precious gaming time getting setup to race online to get punted off on the first lap like has happened in the past, sod that! There is some decent AI to be found out there in driving games, RF2 & Pcars do a decent job and give me more than enough pleasure racing. Also racing is not the be all and end all as regards sim driving, it's the other aspects like setup, car behaviour and learning the circuits etc that keep me coming back for more.

If I need human interaction I might speak to the Mrs for a bit, in between laps!

RD Time Trial is a great idea, that would be perfect for me. Just because you don't race online does not make you a valuable part of the community.

 

[xnorb]

I am curious about the motivations why one would choose to race against a computer over racing versus real people.

If you want to race a certain car on a certain track in a certain sim, then it's very likely you'll have to stick to AI racing except you're looking for GT3 @ Spa.
Especially if you're looking for a full grid.

Let's just ignore the fact all together that it's nearly impossible to have a clean race in a public server...

 

[poet]

Totally agree mate, I am not going to spend my precious gaming time getting setup to race online to get punted off on the first lap like has happened in the past, sod that!

Hear you there.

Tried 1 online race in recent times, PCars - Vintage Touring Cars, my kind of tintop fun.
30 minute quali, few idiots couldn't handle the lack of grip, but no deliberate wreckers, so had a poor quali but got 5th out of 20 or so, so not too bad.
Race starts, take a couple of them easily, the next two take themselves off, though one clips me trying to rejoin, wrecking my suspension, but I have the lead after 1 lap and a few seconds, so dived into the pits to get repairs, then the race ended while I was still in the pits, I eventually leave the pits in last place.
Idiot had set up a 30 minute quali for a 2 lap race!

If I need human interaction I might speak to the Mrs for a bit, in between laps!

LOL!

 

[Tobbe Bergman]

I am curious about the motivations why one would choose to race against a computer over racing versus real people. Is it because online lobbies are full of people that cannot drive, time limitations, or something else?

Hate to say it but !
You belong to a very small minority !

Read and weep !

Marco Massarutto ( Kunos Licensing Project Manager ) quote:
"Many people think that the multiplayer and online experience is dramatically important to every racing game. Still if you count the number of users that play online at any time of the day/week with all the available simulators on the market, and then you also count the sales numbers of all the simulators available, you will notice that the online active users are a tiny fraction of the whole sales, even on purely online dedicated sims. So we’re troubled… where are all these people? Why we can’t see more online active users, than 15-20% of the whole sales of all sims even by the most pessimistic sales projections? Obviously because only a small part of the customers have the time and energy to race online regularly."
http://www.simnewsdaily.com/assetto-corsa-exclusive-developer-statement-interview/


Stefano Casillo on Assetto Corsa AI vs Multiplayer
@ 1:18:00

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Jep, I realize that, and blunt statements as above are starting to irritate me to be honest. So because I belong to the minority group of 25% I don't count as a customer anymore and have to adapt to the wishes of a developer and accept that their focus is on the offline player? Or tell me how I need to read such lines of text.

If those 25% aren't important enough to them (anymore), why was online multiplayer included in the first place? Why were the online hardcore sim racing players targeted in the initial hype when AC needed it's first paying customers during the Steam Early Access period?

Lets apply that same logic to a site like RD. Over the last nine years less than 0.5% (half a percent!) of our daily visitors race in our clubs and leagues. The majority of the visitors reads news, participates in forum discussions, views videos, downloads mods or does something else that we offer.

Yet 99% of our time as staff is put into facilitating our online races. With the above logic it would make our lives a LOT easier to just drop the focus online racing altogether and go after the big and easy numbers and put all our time into satisfying that other 99,5%.

If you are passionate about online racing whether that is as a player, a website or a game developer you put the time and efforts in to make that a better experience and stop downplaying expectations by throwing irrelevant numbers as an excuse. Online racers have always been a minority for as long as I play racing simulators but only in 2015 it's becoming some kind of a problem and we need to be marked as a special group?

We are all playing racing simulators, simulating real life racing as close as possible. We use steering wheels because real drivers use them, we use real names online as Hamilton isn't known as TheDarkDudeBlondy1985 in real life either and we race and test our skills against other real life human beings because they do the same in real life motorsport.

Many people think that the multiplayer and online experience is dramatically important to every racing game.

Yes 25% of your customer base is important. It's 25% of the food we put on their tables. Seems like a pretty big deal to me when you have yourself, two kids and a wife to feed.

Before the silly comments are posted that this is an official RD site statement or that I don't love Kunos enough to be worthy of having a personal opinion. No it's not.

This is my personal view and indeed I don't love any game developers . I respect and (mostly) like them for their skilled work they do and be grateful that they create games for our awesome hobby and that's about it. I only love my family and friends. And in return they should respect me and everybody else as customers, not as loving friends.

Let me ask you this, are we asking irrational things from Kunos (or any game developer for that matter) to at least have the basic online features implemented that used to be standard back in 2005/06/07 when games such as rFactor, GTR 1& 2 were being released? I don't think so. We online sim racers haven't changed, game developers have.

As long as it's okay for offline players to complain about the state of the AI and make demands for improvements, it's perfectly fine that the 25% of the rest can voice their wishes for a better online netcode and basic features as well.

 

[poet]

Jesus Bram.

You let the Troll rattle you over comments someone at Kunos made 3 years ago?

Meh, we're all Sim racers, offline/online. Race and forget.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Meh, we're all Sim racers, offline/online.

My point. Both off- and online as well.

 

[Dave R]

I don't race online but I'll agree with Bram. It's not smart to alienate 25 percent of your user base. It's also not smart to make the jump to consoles with your current multiplayer model where online costs money and there are many more online console racers.

 

[Chris]

There's a simple reason for the Kunos MP numbers to be as low as 15% of their customer base. It's because the Multiplayer in Assetto Corsa is crap. Simple as that. Logically, if the MP were better, there'd be more people playing it.

I've been organising Assetto Corsa club races every single week here for over a year now ever since AC MP was released, so yes, I bloody well do know what I'm talking about.

I've recently been becoming more and more disillusioned with the state and direction of Assetto Corsa, and so I've been checking out GSCE and it's fantastic. Racing with a ping of 250 is completely fine, and after about 30 minutes of joining a public server (in non-peak time), more and more people joined, and pretty soon we had a large grid of drivers. It's was excellent!

7 months on and our open letter rings truer than ever. People are voting with their feet.

 

[Tobbe Bergman]

The Online community fans are a lot like a terrier, they think they are much larger and important than they really are

 

[Radu Oros]

There's a simple reason for the Kunos MP numbers to be as low as 15% of their customer base. It's because the Multiplayer in Assetto Corsa is crap. Simple as that. Logically, if the MP were better, there'd be more people playing it.

I've been organising Assetto Corsa club races every single week here for over a year now ever since AC MP was released, so yes, I bloody well do know what I'm talking about.

I've recently been becoming more and more disillusioned with the state and direction of Assetto Corsa, and so I've been checking out GSCE and it's fantastic. Racing with a ping of 250 is completely fine, and after about 30 minutes of joining a public server (in non-peak time), more and more people joined, and pretty soon we had a large grid of drivers. It's was excellent!

7 months on and our open letter rings truer than ever. People are voting with their feet.

Very flawed logic there. Or by the contrary, if your logic is spot on, then all the other sim racing games are worse developed for Online play than AC is. So the best online goes like this: GT -> Forza - iracing - pcars - assetto - raceroom - gsce - rf2. In this order, these are the games that count more online activity.

Btw, is not like Kunos stopped working for the Online system, they've been doing it for a couple months and the trend seems to continue.

 

[Chris]

Very flawed logic there. Or by the contrary, if your logic is spot on, then all the other sim racing games are worse developed for Online play than AC is. So the best online goes like this: GT -> Forza - iracing - pcars - assetto - raceroom - gsce - rf2. In this order, these are the games that count more online activity.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love Assetto Corsa, it's still my favourite sim, which is why it frustrates me so much to see its Multiplayer languishing behind the likes of Race07 and rFactor 1! It's got so much potential to be the ultimate consumer simulator, but it's just taking way way way too long to get even the most basic MP features in the game, coupled with poor design choices that render many of those features completely impossible. It's just frustrating most of all.

 

[Radu Oros]

I really doubt the online activity will raise just because you want safety cars and such. This talk of what sims did 40 years ago is only used derogatorily towards the newer game. What sims did before is not a full proof of success; if because a group of devoted/hardcore simracers find those features essential and indispensable, that is not the formula for online activity success.

I think it would go with better physical contact between cars during online play, and other things like auto track change, support for custom penalty system that affect all the players in the server. So if people want to use the PitLanePenalty system, then this is forced for all players in the server.

But it goes much deeper than this. Is not about how many extras and things you simulate from real motorsport series, because there are games that do it and that isn't what keeps people using more and more the Online, nor brings new users.
Wouldn't matter if rf2 had 1Mil users, with its current online system the activity would still be low. The problem goes deeper, because it lacks on engaging and keeping people embracing the online system like it would be a game inside a game. So Online needs to be The game, if you want people committed to Online; otherwise it will remain a niche hobby.

Is about a system and interface design, so the eyes need to be put on the newer games of Forza, iracing, pcars to some extent, dota2, cs:go. After you have an adequate online system and interface for random people/friends play together, after that, all the extras you can simulate from the motorsports/simracing world, would make sense and would be useful.


Honestly, what is preventing people from joining and keeping up with RD for online racing in higher numbers? across all the sim racing games you support.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Honestly, what is preventing people from joining and keeping up with RD for online racing in higher numbers? across all the sim racing games you support.

If you simplify the question like that. V8 Super cars, Bathurst and awesome netcode http://www.racedepartment.com/threads/v8-supercar-bathurst-sunday-6-september-2015.110556/

And you have 40 people ranging from Canada, USA, EU and Australia signed up for a lag-free single online race.

 

[Radu Oros]

There are more premium members interested in the V8 supercars in a multi-continent event. And maybe not in formula 3.5, mazda 787b, 90s dtm, formula reiza, v8 stocks, formula classic, mini.

But yeah you proved it and I got it. SCE's RD online races are more popular than RD's online races for AC.

In overall, the online attendance in private and open online is low, in all sim racing games. And at this point, the features/tools of SCE might prevail over the ones AC currently has, so that makes the difference; the type of content raced also makes a difference in sign ups.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

What I wrote above there is no valid reason or excuse why a next-gen simracing game doesn't have the basic features that games from 10 years ago had on release day.

People are always bashing ISI / rFactor 2 but in all fairness the old-gen simracing games based on the gmotor engine still do a stunning job online. Maybe not as pretty and fancy looking as AC and Project Cars but they beat both games handsdown when it comes to online racing experience.

Online numbers can be easily raised in AC as well. Improve the netcode, add the bare minimum of racing and server features and cut a bit away from those profits and run an AC Academy style event.

If we can become virtual stars and win a race seat in a GT3 Ferrari for the next Blancpain GT Series you'll see how those numbers go up. And no that doesn't cost millions either when finding the right partners.

 

[Radu Oros]

No we don't need to give any excuse to anything.
It was simply a choice of game design from the beginning, in all ends; offline and online. From Kunos part.

More than being disappointing for others that AC doesn't have such things, it is more disappointing seeing people complain that past games had this and this much better than next-gen sims. The intention was never to mimic what other games did before. They only started adding more support and unplanned features-tools, after the community pressured and asked Kunos to add more things. So I think Kunos followed that because I think they want their community to remain interested in their game.

But is too bad to denigrate someone/a company over things it doesn't have in the game, with arguments that other games had it and is unthinkable for next-gen sims to not have it in 2014/15. It was never the plan nor intention to make such a deep game as other previous/current games were/are developed.

A simple example of this is when you say that is disappointing to not have more race cars, or just race cars. But you do know that their intention wasn't to mimic what other sims have; they wanted their game to have a rooster both with interesting or mildly interesting road cars, and race cars. But even so, it manages to have plenty of race cars, as much or more, or just close to games focused solely on race cars.

It is very wrong to compare things, people, companies, organizations against others, and say is disappointing that one has this and the other doesn't. You have to realize that each one took a different path and followed a different plan.

 

[Andy_J]

But you do know that their intention wasn't to mimic what other sims have; they wanted their game to have a rooster

both with interesting or mildly interesting road cars, and race cars. But even so, it manages to have plenty of race cars, as much or more, or just close to games focused solely on race cars.

It is very wrong to compare things, people, companies, organizations against others, and say is disappointing that one has this and the other doesn't. You have to realize that each one took a different path and followed a different plan.

A rooster eh?
Seriously AC would do better in my opinion without road cars.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

But you do know that their intention wasn't to mimic what other sims have; they wanted their game to have a rooster both with interesting or mildly interesting road cars, and race cars.

First of all I didn't know and secondly why do you care so much what I think of road cars? You call them interesting and I am not offended, I call them, with exception of the KTM Xbow, boring as hell. It's my subjective opinion and our both taste is obviously totally different. I would trade all road cars in game for one proper set of balanced touring cars.

If a racing simulator is branded with the Italian name Assetto Corsa which means race trim I expect race cars. If the subtitle of the game is Your Racing Simulator I expect nothing else than cars build for racing. Does that mean it's bad that there are a lot of road cars in it? Not at all, by all means I hope those that like road cars go crazy with them, it's just not my cup of tea, as here it comes: I race online and I do that with race cars only against other people. Haven't touched any road cars in RACE 07, Project CARS, rFactor 2 or Stock Car Extreme after an initial test either for the same reason: boring.

If I want to cruise with super cars I'll fire up Test Drive Unlimited and I could drive for many hours in a row in that beautiful open world.

That I would like to see more race cars doesn't make AC a bad game, if it was we wouldn't have been so supportive since the first announcement a couple of years ago. The game has an incredible potential* but then the lack of some basic but very important features really needs to be acknowledged instead of being swept under the carpet by either fanboys or the studio itself. And let's hope it doesn't happen, that these features will never come, no love lost then there is still enough choice out there to race. I paid 40 euros for my game and got a lot more out of it already.

Personally I am slightly disappointed that we still cannot give the green light on a kick ass online GT3 series, as that would be totally awesome to race and spectate with AC.

*My definition of potential is something different than the record sales this game has already made.