Making the switch to AC

[Eddie Ellis]

I'm thinking about making the switch to AC now that Race 07 has faded away.
How does AC deal with DLC cars that one doesn't have, if another driver shows up with a car from a rare DLC or Mod? More specifically, can I race on RD servers with just the 3 Dream packs, the Ferrari 70th or the Red Pack? Do I need every DLC add-on ever made ?

 

[ALB123]

A lot of the DLC is road cars, and I am not that keen on road cars in AC, the tyres feel awful invariably, but some folk think it feels great. Just not me.

Race 07 is full of race cars, I played it for years too, a very under-rated game actually. Problem with AC is content, there isn't much and most of it is GT based. One decent single seater, a fairly average F1 rip off.

All you are going to get on servers are a few massively popular Gt events at Spa and Mugello every day, and lots of cruise events at the Ring and Spa, a few drift events and a few good servers that race at other tracks like Zandvoort, Brands, even push the boat out now and then to race at Monza, Dear God.

I haven't raced online much in the past year due to health issues, but I read comments similar to yours quite often, "AC has a boring online presence. Same cars & same tracks every day..." I'm in no position to dispute that, as I said I haven't even looked at the online servers in 9 or 10 months, but could you listen examples of race sims that have several varied online servers with active participation - more participation than Assetto Corsa? iRacing doesn't count, of course...as that's all it is and no one does it better. My question isn't meant to be snide or anything like that, I am very curious which titles have a more active, varied & interesting online presence. I fired up rFactor 2 yesterday. There were probably 50-60 people shown as being active on a handful of different servers. rF2 & AC are the only sims I own, so I can't check myself.

 

[Mircea Rad]

One decent single seater, a fairly average F1 rip off

By this you mean it's the only sim to have a current F1 car with properly simulated systems, a bunch of older Ferrari F1 cars (F2004, F138, SF16-H) and mods that include F4, GP3, F2, and various other F1 cars from great seasons like '91, 2005, 2007, etc. This without even mentioning the historic F1 cars available that no other sim offers or LMP1s, etc.

 

[Brandon Wright]

My four penneth.

Almost everything in your post is demonstrably false.

If you want to just race, don't bother with the DLC in AC, hardly anyone uses it and you can race against people using Porsches or newer Audis etc anyway, just you cant use them.

As has been pointed out, this is wrong. If you want to join a server using any piece of DLC you must own that DLC.

A lot of the DLC is road cars

Also not accurate. Almost all of the DLC packs have been a pretty good balance of road and race cars, and the last pack which was called.........wait for it........"Ready to Race" was all race cars except for one street car.

Problem with AC is content, there isn't much and most of it is GT based. One decent single seater, a fairly average F1 rip off.

There's ~150 cars in AC that range from classic tin tops, to street cars, to race cars, to track day cars, to open wheelers, to SUVs, to prototypes, and yes to GT cars. As for the one decent single seater, well there's four Ferrari F1 cars from the decade or so, not to mention a couple from previous decades, not to mention the Tatuus or Lotus's. So, yeah, plenty of open wheelers to choose from in the stock content (including DLC).

All you are going to get on servers are a few massively popular Gt events at Spa and Mugello every day, and lots of cruise events at the Ring and Spa, a few drift events and a few good servers that race at other tracks like Zandvoort, Brands, even push the boat out now and then to race at Monza, Dear God.

This is the one part of your post that's somewhat correct, except it completely ignores Sim Racing System which has hourly races using a wide variety of both stock and mod content.

 

[Rob Every]

Utter rot, you can join some servers without owning the car if you are in multi group classes like GT.

Only yesterday I joined a server with new Audi R8 and McLaren 650 and I do not own those cars, yet was able to race against them using cars I did own. But obviously if you do not own the TT you can't race in a server purely for them, but if you own the 919 you can race against Audi hybrids if you don't own them. I know because I have done it umpteen times. And I have gone into drift servers and seen the Japanese cars being used while I was using a Beemer that was free to me.

The DLC, one is based on drifting and tuner cars, quite a few DLC packs are largely road car based, albeit supercars, the Porsche pack is about a 60/40 split, ready to race fair enough, Ferrari packs, again a split. So coming from RACE 07 you would want racing cars largely, even they released road based content that no one ever used online much, other than stuff like Caterhams and Radicals.

A lot of people are not comfortable using mods, so you can't really classify that, and to find servers using them that are open is very rare, you might find the F3 mod being used a bit, but not that many.

Depends on your outlook. Seems a few folk on here are happy to never race online, to use the game as a track day tool. Fair enough. But the guy who started the post did not seem like that, he played RACE07, which for years had several good servers with quick races, that sped through various tracks sequentially at the same time during a night, so you could stay in the same server and race at multiple venues while being in there, helped keep it full and also encouraged you to stay.

AC is rarely like that. It is the same tracks every day, same servers.

And not everyone wants to be in leagues or clubs, some of us don't want that hassle or regimented way of playing. I never have and never will. Being punted is annoying in public servers, but in all honesty part of the game online, do unto others as is done unto you. If you don't want it, race in leagues, if you don't mind dishing out what is given, race in opens. each to their own.

 

[Brandon Wright]

Utter rot, you can join some servers without owning the car if you are in multi group classes like GT.

Only yesterday I joined a server with new Audi R8 and McLaren 650 and I do not own those cars, yet was able to race against them using cars I did own. But obviously if you do not own the TT you can't race in a server purely for them, but if you own the 919 you can race against Audi hybrids if you don't own them. I know because I have done it umpteen times. And I have gone into drift servers and seen the Japanese cars being used while I was using a Beemer that was free to me.

You should not be able to. You're the first person I've ever seen say they could join a server using DLC they didn't own. Frankly, I won't believe it until I see proof.

The DLC, one is based on drifting and tuner cars, quite a few DLC packs are largely road car based, albeit supercars, the Porsche pack is about a 60/40 split, ready to race fair enough, Ferrari packs, again a split. So coming from RACE 07 you would want racing cars largely, even they released road based content that no one ever used online much, other than stuff like Caterhams and Radicals.

I did a quick count, RACE 07 came with around 40 race cars. AC has around 80 race cars, so literally double the amount of race car content RACE 07 had. AC also has around 80 street (or tuned/drift) cars, so at best it's a 50/50 split between race and road cars, leans more toward race cars if you include the tuned/drift versions in the race category.

A lot of people are not comfortable using mods, so you can't really classify that, and to find servers using them that are open is very rare, you might find the F3 mod being used a bit, but not that many.

Sim Racing System has hourly races using both stock and mod content and lately the grids have been pretty well packed.

Depends on your outlook. Seems a few folk on here are happy to never race online, to use the game as a track day tool. Fair enough. But the guy who started the post did not seem like that, he played RACE07, which for years had several good servers with quick races, that sped through various tracks sequentially at the same time during a night, so you could stay in the same server and race at multiple venues while being in there, helped keep it full and also encouraged you to stay.

Sim Racing System has hourly races using both stock and mod content and lately the grids have been pretty well packed.

AC is rarely like that. It is the same tracks every day, same servers.

Sim Racing System has hourly races using both stock and mod content and lately the grids have been pretty well packed.

And not everyone wants to be in leagues or clubs, some of us don't want that hassle or regimented way of playing. I never have and never will. Being punted is annoying in public servers, but in all honesty part of the game online, do unto others as is done unto you. If you don't want it, race in leagues, if you don't mind dishing out what is given, race in opens. each to their own.

Sim Racing System has hourly races using both stock and mod content and lately the grids have been pretty well packed. No firm schedule, you sign up for whatever race fits your schedule, no regimented way of playing, for the most part pretty clean racers too.

There's plenty of things to criticize AC for, the things you listed are wide of the mark IMO.

 

[ALB123]

And not everyone wants to be in leagues or clubs, some of us don't want that hassle or regimented way of playing. I never have and never will. Being punted is annoying in public servers, but in all honesty part of the game online, do unto others as is done unto you. If you don't want it, race in leagues, if you don't mind dishing out what is given, race in opens. each to their own.

Doesn't SRS help in this regard? They're glorified public races, but I'd venture trolls don't go through the effort of joining & installing SRS. I'm pretty sure you can sign-up for races days in advance too, which is nice is you're a Mon-Fri 9a-5p worker. Signing up for a Saturday 12pm race on Wednesday night is nice. Kind of like reserving a tee time at the golf course.

EDIT: Looks like Brandon beat me to it. NINJA'ed!

 

[RMR1]

RF2 is mostly used for leagues, AC has none of that because AC has terrible/nonexistent league support, no driver swapping and no spectating, AMS is even smaller community than RF2. AC is probably the largest non-subscription based wanna be sim.
The AC online gameplay is IMHO dwindling down in numbers. It's mostly boring GT2/3 and cruise servers. The interesting and fun to drive cars, hard to find online as people in almost if not all sims just want to drive the boring GT3 aero cars with infinite grip. In that regard I guess it's no different than any other sim and if you want to drive a lot of unusual, historic, slidey RWDs, proper cars with no ABS/TC/... then it's tough in AC to find servers and weekend races.

All of the sims need DLC...
Probably get AC and then the DLC you want, sometimes there are large discounts so wait and buy it on discount.

Did you ever heard of SimRacingSystems for AC? If not you really should check it out!
Cheers

 

[RMR1]

Utter rot, you can join some servers without owning the car if you are in multi group classes like GT.

Only yesterday I joined a server with new Audi R8 and McLaren 650 and I do not own those cars, yet was able to race against them using cars I did own. But obviously if you do not own the TT you can't race in a server purely for them, but if you own the 919 you can race against Audi hybrids if you don't own them. I know because I have done it umpteen times. And I have gone into drift servers and seen the Japanese cars being used while I was using a Beemer that was free to me.

The DLC, one is based on drifting and tuner cars, quite a few DLC packs are largely road car based, albeit supercars, the Porsche pack is about a 60/40 split, ready to race fair enough, Ferrari packs, again a split. So coming from RACE 07 you would want racing cars largely, even they released road based content that no one ever used online much, other than stuff like Caterhams and Radicals.

A lot of people are not comfortable using mods, so you can't really classify that, and to find servers using them that are open is very rare, you might find the F3 mod being used a bit, but not that many.

Depends on your outlook. Seems a few folk on here are happy to never race online, to use the game as a track day tool. Fair enough. But the guy who started the post did not seem like that, he played RACE07, which for years had several good servers with quick races, that sped through various tracks sequentially at the same time during a night, so you could stay in the same server and race at multiple venues while being in there, helped keep it full and also encouraged you to stay.

AC is rarely like that. It is the same tracks every day, same servers.

And not everyone wants to be in leagues or clubs, some of us don't want that hassle or regimented way of playing. I never have and never will. Being punted is annoying in public servers, but in all honesty part of the game online, do unto others as is done unto you. If you don't want it, race in leagues, if you don't mind dishing out what is given, race in opens. each to their own.

Yeah great stuff! If you could be a tat more stupid you could explain openly how you cracked AC to do that stuff...
Thumbs up Mister...

 

[apex11]

Well with AC for sure since i switched from console to PC has come alive, it still took a while as i have been using other sims more, but once you delve into the mods it becomes a game in itself just playing around with stuff, such fun and such a great feel to it, i can still go from game to game with little issues, its all just driving car at the end of the day which i can do like billions of people around the world.
Would really really love to get more into the online side of it, any stuff any of you guys are doing that i could join in with? I am a very fair and safe racer and use iRacing and i'm not an alien but i am competent to the point i have been allowed to test race cars in real life.

 

[Majuh]

I did a quick count, RACE 07 came with around 40 race cars. AC has around 80 race cars, so literally double the amount of race car content RACE 07 had. AC also has around 80 street (or tuned/drift) cars, so at best it's a 50/50 split between race and road cars, leans more toward race cars if you include the tuned/drift versions in the race category.

Race 07 including all its DLCs had way more race cars than 40.

 

[Brandon Wright]

Race 07 including all its DLCs had way more race cars than 40.

I didn't find all of that in my quick search. But if you take out all of the DLC race cars in AC there's still nearly 40 race cars left, so pretty even with Race07 on amount of race cars with the vanilla game. And with DLC it's doubled the amount of race cars, so plenty of race cars in AC if that's your thing.

 

[Mircea Rad]

Rob, it's easy, you can either enjoy what AC has to offer: huge official cars variety, excellent quality mods, leagues (with standard content, DLC or mods), SRS, SP races or random on-line races or you can choose to ignore it and use other sims. It's up to you, but stop spreading false information, some people might actually believe you and miss out on some very good stuff.

Btw, in general, if you want servers to run the content YOU like, it's going to be hard, unless you like what is extremely popular (like GT races). But this is the same in every sim, last time I checked in iRacing (which has the best organized MP structure and plenty of people racing) the GT races were by far the most popular, with some of the other series barely making a full grid, except a few selected times when all the hardcore fans of that particular car were joining. It's not AC's fault that most of the people prefer GT races or that they voted the SF70-H

 

[Andy_J]

There is nothing wrong with Assetto or any of the other sims for that matter. They are all good in what they offer. I love em all.

 

[Emery]

I didn't find all of that in my quick search. But if you take out all of the DLC race cars in AC there's still nearly 40 race cars left, so pretty even with Race07 on amount of race cars with the vanilla game. And with DLC it's doubled the amount of race cars, so plenty of race cars in AC if that's your thing.

The difference is that Race07 and the DLC were nice collections of race series (just like R3E) whereas AC is more of mishmash of unmatched cars that require buying all the DLC just to get a GT3 field.

 

[Brandon Wright]

The difference is that Race07 and the DLC were nice collections of race series (just like R3E) whereas AC is more of mishmash of unmatched cars that require buying all the DLC just to get a GT3 field.

No arguing that!

 

[JackCY]

Wow, wait til the Kunos see that!

Zero ducks were given. The more you dig into AC and any other game/sim/cade, the more you will see how many simplifications and things not being simulated at all there are. Some are for performance reasons some because it's not a vital function just another layer in the depth. It's up to everyone to decide where their limit between sim and arcade is. For me AC is in between, kind of unable to decide which direction it wants to take as arcade = more money but going that way will piss off/upset a lot of existing users, there are already way too many arcade features if you ask me for it to be called a pure sim at any time.

 

[norbs]

Ha, I notice my post was edited by a moderator, without mention. Sigh. Probably reported by the Italian submarine or another fanboi. And i thought that Kevin dude at the AC forums was hopeless.

 

[RasmusP]

Well with AC for sure since i switched from console to PC has come alive, it still took a while as i have been using other sims more, but once you delve into the mods it becomes a game in itself just playing around with stuff, such fun and such a great feel to it, i can still go from game to game with little issues, its all just driving car at the end of the day which i can do like billions of people around the world.
Would really really love to get more into the online side of it, any stuff any of you guys are doing that i could join in with? I am a very fair and safe racer and use iRacing and i'm not an alien but i am competent to the point i have been allowed to test race cars in real life.

If you can afford iRacing you might not be bothered by the price of our premium membership.
The AC club will welcome you with open arms if you want

Yes, I was sceptical about it too, I never regretted it and as you can see I liked it very much

And no, we don't earn anything from it

There are of course other possibilities like Brandon mentioned

 

[Rob Every]

Did I say there was anything wrong with the game? No.

Just you fanboys all clicked haha and sad as soon as anyone did not shove a gaming Emmy up Kunos bottom mentioned anything! Silly boys. I play the game every day, it's fun sometimes but like everything can be improved.

I can categorically say I have been in GT servers and seen cars in them that I do not own but could, yes I can't drive them obviously but I have seen them, usually 650 McLarens and new versions of the R8 GT car. I can recall a couple of days ago watching some alien freak in a 650 McLaren destroying my PB onboard, a car that I cannot drive in any server.

I have never said I can use them, merely that I can see them in servers whilst present. I remember being behind one in a pit box!! I have even clicked 650GT Macca to enter a server, obviously am in a 4/12 when I get there.

These are observations, not criticisms, you fanboys just jump at the chance to have a go at anyone who even makes observations, it's so funny. I don't like playing games with road cars in them, I don't like the feel and don't really see the need for them to be there, that an opinion. You know those right?

Others clearly do or they wouldn't be there would they? Or might it also be that the only way Kunos can get these licenses and deals with manufacturers is that they HAVE to have a percentage of road cars from the current lineup present?

Regarding RACE 07, really the clue is in the title is it not, that is all there is to say. You can class race cars and road cars all you like, but I always felt there was more of a race bias in that game, you did not get endless tourist servers etc in that game, most of it was racing. OPinion and experience again, remember those things?

Finally, I have a few DLC packs and can happily admit there are some cars in them I will never, ever drive, so pointless are they. I perhaps would if they were EVER used anywhere online, but they never seem to be. I don't play this game to hotlap, might do very rarely. But usually I spend time online.

That DLC waste to me is a waste of my time and I will not be buying any more DLC that has even a two or three road cars in it ass I will never likely drive them. I don't begrdge spending the money, its my choice, but in future will select things based on content, my bad, but I will not be doing it again as for me the content simply does not add up to good value. I spend 95% of my time in game playing base content.

 

[Mircea Rad]

So if you spread completely false information (e.g. One decent single seater, a fairly average F1 rip off) and someone jumps in with facts, they're a silly fanboy. Ok then, moving on...