PC1 Seriously..how did some of these issues get thru?

[Msportdan]

im confused here...

This game has been in the making for what now .. 3 years. Its had a vast community beta testing this and im sure some of these guys if not most were sim fans.

This begs me the question of how the hell did some of the issues we have now. not get spotted by anyone? It took me a few days to see these below.

-Ai in the wet, being a)not affected b)dont pit for wets.
-The Ai on some tracks just simply run off the end of corners with hardly any speed loss. (summerton tight right handers/zolder 1st corner at start. about half a dozen cars go off on first lap.
-The AI are way too overagressive. In one way is good but in another its frustrating to play. especially they dive bomb every corner
-Car setups not saving.
-Wheel is annoying in the menus when you forget to centre it after a run.

-and lets not forget the mass confusion, which is the FFB settings. Really.. could of they not made this simpler. Rf2 has one car specific setting?!

plus loads more..

This is agreat game/sim, but ive postponed my career as somethings above are game breakers .
i mean did SMS have their own agenda in the end, or did they just rush this out and these issues were known. But seriously some of these issues should simply, never of got to gold!


I mean i know rf2 is in beta, but pcars is in no better state imo.

 

[Kevin Jay]

I'm thinking he forgot got a comma after "years".

Yes, I meant 20+ years ago.
<Mod edit: Off topic post removed>

 

[Grim]

I think one of the biggest problem is that some people don't understand the complexity of games nowadays. Games development is very challenging even with massive budgets and teams let along smaller development teams like SMS.

I also remember back to 'the good ol' days' where games were not as buggy as they are now but you are living in a bubble if you believe that games CAN be released fully bug free nowadays.

Even if a game like pCARS was kept in beta for another 2 years there would still be plenty of bugs on release, the reason for this is changing and testing code relating to bugs.

When a bug is discovered it then needs to be figured out what is causing it, then changes made to fix it, but and this is the big but, the changes made often (actually usually) affect something else, which requires testing and lots of it to discover what has been affected. This cycle goes on until the bug is gone and all other affected areas are either back to normal (pre bug fix status) or a balance has been met with affected areas.

Now that was an example of ONE bug, think about how complex a game like pCARS is, how many variables, cars, tracks, weather, AI, setups, the list is almost endless. Now consider how much testing is required after every little bug fix and you will start to get your head around the magnitude of the job. When it comes to the online part of the game it's even more difficult to test as you have even more variables at play.

The hours of testing the variables with say a team of 10 testers working 12 hours a day for a month would equal around 3600 hours. So lets say they were able to test all variables for 30mins to an hour in those 3600 hours (not at all likely but this is just an example). Now consider 1 million users playing 4 hours a day for a month equals 120 million hours. Can you see the difference? How many variables do you think 120 million hours would uncover compared to the team of testers, it's almost infinitely more.

While I can accept some games being released too early (Battlefield 4 was a classic example) most games nowadays (especially open world, online or racing sims) will have bugs on release and a bit of patience is required from the player in order for them to get ironed out.

You have a choice, read reviews, go on forums and check the status of the game before you buy, if there appears to be too many bugs that would affect you then DON'T BUY IT, wait for the bug fixes and jump in a little later OR buy it immediately and help out by contributing to the bug reporting and enjoy what game there is to play at that point.

At the end of the day SMS have created a game with the community in mind, no other developer is willing to do that, take it now or leave it for a bit but don't buy it with the completely unreasonable expectations that it will be bug free then continue to whine and moan on every forum on the net about how its a disgrace and you feel ripped off etc etc.

Nonsense attitudes like this remind of 10 year old kids at school.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

The hours of testing the variables with say a team of 10 testers working 12 hours a day for a month would equal around 3600 hours. So lets say they were able to test all variables for 30mins to an hour in those 3600 hours (not at all likely but this is just an example). Now consider 1 million users playing 4 hours a day for a month equals 120 million hours. Can you see the difference? How many variables do you think 120 million hours would uncover compared to the team of testers, it's almost infinitely more.

WMD currently has over 10,000 active members out of 80,000 registered users. Registration closed in 2012 (?) so this is over three years of at least 10,000 people testing a game x daily testing builds = how many testing hours? That's even more than your 120 million hours example.

This forum now has a huge catalog of posts made by WMD members that have defended each and every spot on constructive and non-constructive criticism about project cars for years with comments like it's "pre-alpha", "game is still being worked on", "you need to report this at the WMD forums and not here" etc etc and what is the result? A very promising game in many areas but crippled by a serious amount of bugs, design flaws and missing features that can't possibly be overlooked.

A few hours after release we had our dedicated server running and within an hour we spotted and reported red flag issues that should have been addressed during the development phase and that I blame some of the WMD guys for. Spreading marketing messages for years and now the game is out this website and some of it's (vocal) members are being put down like a bunch of haters and some of you guys now say you didn't really have any influence during the whole process?

A small group of professional beta testers would have picked up these bugs, reproduced them properly so that the dev team could have addressed them before release.

 

[xnorb]

I think one of the biggest problem is that some people don't understand the complexity of games nowadays.

Racing sims are really simple "games".

Leaving the physics engine alone, what's left?
Tracks - with enough data a no-brainer for modellers
Cars - with enough data a no-brainer for modellers
Texture work - a no-brainer for any 2D artist
Career mode - nothing outstandingly complex there
AI - now there's a big chunk of complexity there, but looking at implrmentation in AC/PC... aehm ... ok

Add on top of that a billion hours of testing by the WMD community.

And now come back and tell me: Why did nobody notice that FFB is a desaster on launch?

 

[Andy_J]

At the end of the day SMS have created a game with the community in mind

Maybe you should change this part to read "created a game with a community in mind". The console casual gaming community most probably. Because as Bram as alluded to, there are many things missing that are needed in the sim racing community. And yes, 3 years of testing pre alpha/beta builds should have picked some of these things up.

But SMS have promised that they will keep on supporting Pcars for at least two years. Hopefully that bodes well for the improvements it badly needs.

 

[Yapci]

Maybe you should change this part to read "created a game with a comminity in mind". The console casual gaming community most probably. Because as Bram as alluded to, there are many things missing that are needed in the sim racing community. And yes, 3 years of testing pre alpha/beta builds should have picked some of these things up.

But SMS have promised that they will keep on supporting Pcars for at least two years. Hopefully that bodes well for the improvements it badly needs.

After release they will solve what they didnt during development with testers in 3 years...mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. ..not optimistic!

 

[c172fccc]

WMD currently has over 10,000 active members out of 80,000 registered users.

The forum is saying that there is 9,442 active members. I've made a bit of research and apparently a member is considered active after making 1 post (in 4 years). There are approximatly 3000 members that made atleast 10 posts and if we go up to 100 posts, there is not even 1000 people. The forum has been opened for aproximately 1324 days. So let's see how many people have a ratio of 1 post a day. Hummm, 100. How many of these posts were proper testing? I don't know, but not all of them for sure. However, we were not only there for testing and bug reporting. There was plenty of other ways to help making the game. Yes, we helped making the game, but if you think that we were only bug reporting, well, you're wrong.

That said, we helped fix a hell of a lot of bugs during the development, especially during the last few months. However, I think we all thought that most of them would have been fixed way faster. There are some issues that just wouldn't want to go away, and some fix that would bring new bugs.

SMS really wanted to release the game without any obvious bug, the game wasn't delayed many times for nothing. Everytime we were near the release, I was always saying to myself, damn, they won't be able to fix obvious bugs. Most of us thought that the last delay was the good one, well, it wasn't, but after all these delays, it wouldn't have been wise to announced another one. Another thing is that I think that some WMD members were expecting that the famous day-one patch would fix most of the obvious bug, it didn't.

Also, we (I) expected the consoles to have less issues, oh god I was wrong.

 

[bmanic]

Bram, what is it with you and your constant exaggeration of absolutely everything when it comes to SMS or pCars? Not enough drama?

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

It's a vbulletin forum, similar like we used for years here at RD, and an active member is a member who has logged in during the last 30 or 60 days (don't quote me on that as it has been a while )

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Bram, what is it with you and your constant exaggeration of absolutely everything when it comes to SMS or pCars? Not enough drama?

What am I exaggeration exactly @bmanic? Like yourself I am a paying customer and I am entitled to give my opinion just like anybody else.

 

[jimortality]

What am I exaggeration exactly @bmanic? Like yourself I am a paying customer and I am entitled to give my opinion just like anybody else.

Sorry Bram, this seems to go a lot deeper than you just being a paying customer.

 

[c172fccc]

It's a vbulletin forum, similar like we used for years here at RD, and an active member is a member who has logged in during the last 30 or 60 days (don't quote me on that as it has been a while )

You're probably right. There are 9697 members with atleast 1 post and 9442 active members.

 

[Andy_J]

Sorry Bram, this seems to go a lot deeper than you just being a paying customer.

What do you mean by that little accusation?

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Sorry Bram, this seems to go a lot deeper than you just being a paying customer.

Sometimes you need to explore the past to understand the present.

 

[jimortality]

What do you mean by that little accusation?

How long as your name been Bram?

 

[Andy_J]

How long as your name been Bram?

Since yesterday when I changed it by deed poll. You have a serious problem with people having an opinion you don't agree with. Get over it.

 

[jimortality]

Sometimes you need to explore the past to understand the present.

Well that's fair enough but the past is the past and personally I think things should move on. We are not privy to what went off but I think there are a lot of people that would like to see bridges built and have a good relationship with the people of project cars.

 

[jimortality]

Since yesterday when I changed it by deed poll. You have a serious problem with people having an opinion you don't agree with. Get over it.

<mod-edit: No need for this kind of language folks, lets keep it civil>

 

[Andy_J]

You know what, <snip>.

There is no need for that. You are acting like a child who cant have his own way. Grow up.

 

[jimortality]

There is no need for that.

<Mod edit: Insulting or hateful comments are not tolerated>