PS4 Grinding gears, rustling jimmies

There were no pre-owned copies available after a month, so I took this as a good sign. People not trading it in after the first week, they must be enjoying it, right?

Right?

Whoo boy. I feel like I need to do a Hillary Shimmy to launch into this one...

Kunos promised a lot with Assetto Corsa, and after that 1.03 update, they've mostly delivered that. Good visuals, decent framerate, decent sound, great physics, good driving experience. They didn't promise us good online/multiplayer capability, or private lobbies, or having our paid DLC cars usable in the half-assed multiplayer available to us.

But the thing is, they shouldn't have had to promise us those things. It's 2016. We're on the 4th generation of modern gaming consoles...

THESE THINGS SHOULD BE A GIVEN.

The fact that a player in North America can't log on to the multiplayer at primetime and jump into a race is ridiculous. I don't know why out of 10 total people participating in the crap selection of multiplayer lobbies 4 of them are in drift and 6 of them are running endless practice laps around Nordschleife, and frankly I don't care.

What I care about is that the selection of pre-made lobbies available is terrible and that now that hard copies are no longer going to be in stores the likelihood of more players slowly trickling in dwindles to nothing. I don't need a bunch of self-important and possibly well-meaning PC players telling us how they had a rough start too but they fixed it (with 3rd party modifications to the game which are literally not possible to have on a console) and we should too (since, you know, we bloody well can't).

What I need is the game developer to justify the $50 I just spent on a single player game that doesn't even keep track of whether I won or lost the three races I've managed to have in the 2 weeks I've owned their game.

It's my own fault. I should've rented this from GameFly for a week, then I could've sent it back with nothing lost. But no. I was so eagerly anticipating Gran Turismo Sport and impulsively decided to give Kunos my money when GT:S got pushed back and pre-orders refunded. I've been disappointed in a lot of games, but this is the first time I've actually been angry at a game for being crap.

Kunos, if you're losing your shelf space in retailers, you'd better have a damned good digital marketing campaign in the works, and you'd better do it fast. There's few enough players online, it's only going to get worse if it's not even being sold in stores anymore.

To keep the players you have, we need to see the following:

Ability to create our own lobbies, set practice/qualifying time limits, number of laps, weather conditions and assist settings.
Leaderboards, with wheel and controller icons next to our names - better yet, three separate leaderboards: Overall, Wheel and Controllers.
Individual player profiles tracking: Win/Loss records overall, Win/Loss records by track, Win/Loss records by class, best lap times by track.
Ability to view other players' individual profiles and see all of that information.

If we don't have 3 out of 4 of those things by Christmas, you can forget Assetto Corsa on the console ever becoming a successful endeavor. It certainly won't hold up to competition from any other racing/driving title that comes along.

 

Sorry for being a player on PC and answer on the thread. But we dont have 3 of those things neither so I dont think it will happend until Christmas, if ever.

 

What you do have, according to other PC players who've been trolling us lately, is all manner of 3rd party extensions and such, removing the need for Kunos to give you the functionality.

Console players don't have the luxury of programming mods for games. Not saying you personally, but a lot of PC players seem to take modding for granted based on the comments I've been reading here. It's like someone from Bel Air not understanding why people in the ghetto don't just call the police when they hear a scary noise - they don't even understand the concept of a police response time longer than 90 seconds lol

 

Four things that I miss ,

1 : Save your lap times from each car on each track
2 : Tyre wear and tyre temperature while driving
3 : Private intertits lobby's or you may call them dark rooms
4 : Making your on championship with track and car

 

I honestly dont understand why some think that we have to use 3rd party apps (even pc users that boosting about it). RSR (which is the leaderboard app) isnt used by a huge part of the playerbase. The 'must have' app is minorating that try to help with clean online racing and that is a server app and not something the users need to download. Dont get me wrong, I understand that you want things but a lot of needed things are found in the PC version and not trough 3rd party apps. Console version of the game is far from complete imo.

 

I see. The way folks make it sound, it kinda reminded me of WoW with its million modifications or Skyrim or any other PC game. In other words, the way people talk makes 3rd party mods sound much more prevalent. You guys don't have any way of tracking win/loss records and such either, 3rd party or otherwise? (Don't tell Kunos this, but I'd be thrilled at this point just to have that tracked. I mean FFS, even GTA tracks racing W/L).

 

I have been away from the game for a while so Im not sure. I think there was some app at work that tracked w/l somehow but that was also a server side app if i remember correctly. Yes, we do have a ****load of apps to download but its not something needed, its more good to have stuff. That is also depending on what exactly you think is necessary of course so that is kinda personal. We do have a tyre app as example which is needed imo so hopefully they add that to console too. Sorry for the massive offtopic but the modding is a good to have thing, and not necessary and i hope for you guys that the console version get as complete as pc.

 

The thing is for me tracking win loss stats are pretty much pointless anyway, what does it really tell you. Anyone can easily win if the opposition is not good enough and against stronger competition you may not win much. The main thing you guys need is some way to host your own servers, with passwords and other options and server admin control for those that want to run better pickup servers keeping out those ruining the experiance. On PC there are plenty of mods but as above I dont think any are must haves other then say Minorating which is server side. Stracker server side with ptracker client side which tracks actual mp results, laptimes, send setups and greatly improved timing.

I think Kunos should really add this app officially to the game for all builds as the actual in game timing on PC is quite terrible and I dont imagine it to be any better on console. There are also quite a few built in official apps we have on PC that I am amazed didnt make the console builds, apps like tyres app which shows temps and pressures in real time. I dont know why this stuff didnt make the console build unless python is not at all supported on those consoles which is the likely reason.

Ive seen some footage of GT sport and I am amazed how poor the actual racing looked with no realistic collision physics and pretty much drive anywhere racing with bumper cars. That is pretty much how the last GT I drove was and I would have thought that them going towards a more sim and competitive type racing game they would make the actual contacts between cars more realistic as well as not being able to wall ride everywhere and drive anywhere between the fences at Nords as in some preview videos I saw.

Sure AC has omitted things that seem puzzling on the console release and hopefully for you guys these will be added in soon enough. I really cant imagine bothering to race in MP on fully open public servers on PC or console so thats something that is really needed to be addressed to give the console release some long term player base.

 

I think the tyre app especially has more to do with time constraints. Stefano mentioned in his last stream that it takes a very long time to approve a console release, several weeks I think he said. So I guess by the time the console versions had to be sent in for final approval was even before we had the official tyre app on PC. We don't have it for that long either, since v1.7 or v1.6 if I'm not mistaken? I'm positive the tyre app will come to consoles some time. It is essential after all.
I also don't think they omitted something purposefully, more that they either ran into troubles making it work right away on consoles and need to find a way, or that they had to prioritize for the timeframe they had, and that it's the same with the patches. Bugfixing first, features second, as time permits.

 

Lot of people on PC don't care about mods. They think mod content isn't good enough for them, or too much of a hassle to install and keep updated.

Modding is hyped by many here, but lot of AC users on PC never even visit this forum. Or never heard of racedepartment.com which is a big site hosting mod downloads. Would assume majority of PC playerbase has non-modded game, or very little mods. RSR Live Timing is the leaderboard app, but personally I don't even use it because all the record times are done with Optimal grip, and I race always on Green grip with TC/blankets off so my laptimes aren't comparable. Competing against myself is enough.

Leaderboards would be very good, tyre app is essential, racing all DLC cars online is essential, private lobbies are essential. Hope they can add it.

 

Let me tell you one thing. I dont have the same taste for the options of a race than you. Neither all the comunity. Every single person has its preferences. So the best way is to find a middle term or some options where all the people may be reasonable happy.

What are those race options? The ones there are right now on the lobbies. TC and ABS? Factory, just like the real races. Qualifying and race time? 15 and 8 or 5 laps. Wich are reasonable I think.

Sure should be more variety. There are a lot of combinations not used right now on the multiplayer, like sportscars/HotHaches/classic cars races. BUT, to leave the control to the people means there will be some people very happy, and a lot annoyed by the race options other people create and they dont want. Best way=middle term=just like now.

 

If you dont like the way users have setup their servers you can always race on official ones.

 

Maybe would be a good idea to have both, but I suposse it would split the community

 

Im not sure how these things work on console but if you find a serious server with active admins, they should be able to keep the bad apples away from the server. Just because its a server run by users doesnt mean that it have to be a lot of weird rules.

 

In consoles all servers are official, so is like public online without customization with predefined lobbies.

 

I would like the game to store lap times for hot laps. I would also like ghosting so I can try to replicate what I did well in a turn. Every racing game I've ever played that had lap time targets had those two things.

 

Um... it does?

 

Well I don't have to worry about it anymore. Traded Assetto Corsa in for Project Cars. If I should read somewhere down the line that Kunos has figured out that you can't throw a nice graphics engine with a nice physics engine and call it a day, that a game needs more than that to be successful on a console landscape that forbids 3rd party apps created by players to fill in the blanks, then I'll see about picking up a used copy somewhere (I'll be damned if I pay the brand new price again, Kunos already got my $50).

 

It does? On console? Where? Each time I enter a special event hot lap, there is no record of my last attempt. I am given no option to load a ghost of my last attempt. So please enlighten me, oh guru, where can I find this info? On console. PS4 to be precise.

 

Yeah I would like to know as well then I can stop using a spreadsheet to do it all manually.