Open letter from Devs

[Antonio Crinò]

Can someone post it here please?

 

[FishPapp]

Thanks for taking the time to share your set-up folder BenC - no way I'll get near to your times but it'll make AC more fun and I might learn a thing or three on the way.

You've linked to your set-up folder twice, btw - if you could add your replays that'd be awesome - combining your replays, set-ups and maybe a track guide from youtube will make for a great tutorial I'm sure.

 

[Jason Whittington]

Very good read on the letter. The leagues that I have run in or have ran, we always ran a small school to teach race craft and setups. These were mainly done in N2003 and Arca08. We would run 2 nights of racing, one fixed setup and one of open setup. I personally always had more fun in the fixed setup as it came down to driver skill. You had to know the track, that setup, and how to manage the car over a fuel and tire run to beat the next guy by maybe a tenth or 2.

The open setup was also challenging for me because I could never get a handle on making a setup from scratch. I could always get one and adapt my driving style to the setup, not the other way around.

My big thing is having fun, I want a good clean close race, whether it be for first or 20th.

 

[Jeff]

i think he is right in his letter..

but unless youre trying to set world records there is just not enough to ac at the moment to motivate this kind of threads. And lets face it, the sim racing world is a niche market. And within this small group of people there is an even smaller group who actually take the time to setup their cars and try to perfect their lap times by finding the right lines and techniques. To be honest i think at least 70% of simracers are just gamers with wheels.

 

[BenC]

Thanks for taking the time to share your set-up folder BenC - no way I'll get near to your times but it'll make AC more fun and I might learn a thing or three on the way.

You've linked to your set-up folder twice, btw - if you could add your replays that'd be awesome - combining your replays, set-ups and maybe a track guide from youtube will make for a great tutorial I'm sure.

Fixed, thanks.

Link again just for redundancy.

https://mega.nz/#!B1BAna5C!r96n-DzdxDXYLu0VOeRnSPZEjq-YJYHV3MAx2OMLZVg

 

[McM]

What is this letter telling me? DRIVING simulator? I have bought a RACING simulator. Like it is presented and written on the official homepage. A driving simulator is just racing for yourself. But a RACING simulator means I have good AI in SP and a good MP! This is not the case... This letter is the same that the community is doing: complaining!

Give us good AI and MP and take your new licences to AC2. But give us a RACING simulator like promised and not a DRIVING simulator like discussed now suddenly.

 

[xnorb]

Was also very surprised about the "Driving simulator" part

 

[Bokonon]

I think it is in the nature of forums to complain about things that they feel are not good enough, rather than praise what is. I personally think that the AI from the last update is a huge improvement, and the ffb and physics update is fantastic, better than ever. I love it, yet the majority of comments and threads still focus on what is not done. If I was a dev I would be disappointed in the lack of positive threads after all that hard work.

 

[Tomas Torasen]

As you point out, Bokonon.. People tend to complain about things. For the dev's is is important to remember that people who complain are people that are invested and in some way like the game enough to invest time in voicing any opinion at all about it. Unless it's pure BS which we do see but very rarely and I guess not talking about specifically here.

I think the way people formulated themself would change drastically if they were talking to a person live face to face. It's just the problem solving/throwing out/exposing problems-brain of humans that are manifesting itself with too much of the human interaction taken away from it.

What a dev could do instead of complaining about the spontaneous and unregulated response on forums they have no control over, would be to start threads asking for advice and defining what they want as constructive solutions and examples to their percieved problems. That would be a more constructive approach than this letter, although I do understand his points and necessarily dont agree with them.

 

[fortyfivekev]

Although some people take it too far I think criticism of Kunos is mostly fair enough as they are selling a product for money and if you buy something that has some faults then you should be able to complain about it. Where I think things are way over the top is people hassling modders to improve/finish free mods that people are making for fun in their free time. The sense of entitlement is way too much.

 

[Jempy]

In fact, there are complains and ... complains
- legit and founded complaints from people loving this perfect sim but feeling important points are missing or unfinished. But this category knows what might be possible and ... not possible as rain, day-night for example.
Those are constructive complaints .... wishing the best to come for the sim.

- purely negative complaints ... but for not perfectly understood problems without any solution possible due to the sim's chosen starting points.
Of course these are pointless.

NB: even though we know that new cars or new content with a new DLC is the only way for Kunos to go on making money for the future, we must admit we sometimes feel frustrated to see missing features for a base version.

Mixed complains and congratulations and thanks to them are surely the most appreciated messages.
Simply because it's the proof their sim is attracting and has a big potential for the future.
We may be fans ... we remain logical fans if possible.

 

[Bokonon]

Yea, I wasn't suggesting that people should not post complaints/requests for features, just that the balance of positive /negative posts might get a bit disheartening as a dev coming here to read feedback from their hard work.

 

[xnorb]

if you buy something that has some faults then you should be able to complain about it.

AI isn't broken.
MP isn't broken.
Physics aren't broken.
Cars aren't broken.

I don't see a faulty product here.
I also don't see an unfinished product here for the featurelist that is available on the store page.

It might be not as good as we'd want it to be, but that's a different story.

Nowadays people are buying a game with an expectation rather than simply looking at the feature list and reading/watching reviews to base their purchase decision on.
It's not the fault of Kunos that we thought the MP part would be more like iRacing and the AI would be more like in rFactor 2. As far as i can tell, they never promised anything in that direction.

 

[Jempy]

I really understand people claiming for a better AI, if you're not mostly driving online.
As league member and co-admin, of course my 90% driving is .... online.

When I sometimes, rarely in fact, try a race with AI .... it remains very poor: Spa and AI problems at Eau Rouge Raidillon ... or worse mostly: 10 laps race and after 4 laps: 3 or 4 ( if not less ) cars remaining on track !???

There's something I'm thinking of for AI: most sims have talent files for drivers.
Has AC such a file somewhere ? ... maybe hidden in a kn5 file ?
If not, maybe the AI problem might be there.

 

[FishPapp]

It's human nature to complain loudly especially when you can sit behind a veil of anonymity afforded by the Internet. It's similar to driving where normally decent people turn into small-minded, angry a-holes at the slightest provocation.

Disabling caps would help as the only time caps are used is when common decency has left the room to be replaced by righteous indignation.

It is unfortunate that the voices of the many, many thousands of people that play and love AC are drowned out by a tidal wave of petulant 5 year olds who want Santa DEAD for not bringing EVERYTHING on their Christmas list. Especially the FREAKIN' UNICORN!!!

WHERE'S MY FREAKIN' UNICORN SANTA?

No game is ever perfect but AC is far, far from being broken (just google 'broken games' to find out about actual 'broken' games). If you bought AC without bothering to read a single review then you Sir, are an idiot (every review mentions the wonky AI and sub-par on-line experience) - please, go and play something else.

And, who cares if KS call it a driving sim or a racing sim - the game has to be marketed as something - it's not like you've been Rick rolled, you have a game with cars that you can race, against other cars. That sounds like a racing simulator to me.

 

[Ernest Aubert]

I rarely browse the forums any more, but did today and saw this thread. My interest is in fast driving, not in competition, so it didn't bother me at all that AC was referred to as a "driving simulator"; that's what I care about. It would be of mild passing interest to me to know how my lap times compare to someone else's in the same car with the same setup (I only use the default) at the same track, but competing against them on the track? I tried that, and always got taken out by being hit from behind while I was driving cleanly. It's driving skill, not mastery of setups, that means something to me; those are two distinctly different subjects.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

I tried that, and always got taken out by being hit from behind while I was driving cleanly.

I see these comments all the time. Why aren't you racing online here at RD then? We don't have such driving standards in our club races

 

[FishPapp]

Having only played sp during my 150+ hours with the game I thought I'd see how horrendous the MP is - and it isn't, really.

Finding and connecting to a race was fine and practice and qualy were uneventful.

However, corner one at Spa was the clustercluck I was expecting - you can simulate a race but you cannot engender the fear of borking a €500k GT car and neither can you instil a sense of physical fear - so crashes are more likely to happen than in real life. After that I had fun.

Now if I can convince Fishpapp Jr to leave me alone for an hour and a half on Wednesday evening I'll see you at Spa for some RaceDepartment flavoured racing so I can see how that goes.

 

[Ricoow]

Now if I can convince Fishpapp Jr to leave me alone for an hour and a half on Wednesday evening I'll see you at Spa for some RaceDepartment flavoured racing so I can see how that goes.

To avoid disappointment on wednesday night being disallowed: please get a month (or longer if you wish ) worth of premium. In that month you can drive a few events, see if you like the RD Club Races and then opt in for a longer period. Without premium we cannot allow you to join in unfortunately.

 

[Hal Burns]

I see AC as a "sandbox"...the tools are there to create mods, leagues etc. and use it as you like, including a "driving" simulator. The SP is not as good as others, with premade competitions and championships, but that does not bother me. The AI seems OK to me now. I have F1 2014 which we use for league races...the included championships etc., while cool, I will probably never get to. Club racing is the way to go.

 

[xnorb]

you can simulate a race but you cannot engender the fear of borking a €500k GT car and neither can you instil a sense of physical fear - so crashes are more likely to happen than in real life.

iRacing would want to have a word with you

Of course, a crash means way less in a racing sim than in real life,
but you can still put mechanics in place that punish reckless driving to some extend.