Is it time to be honest and critical about ac?

The biggest issue there is right now, is the AI. They finally need to get that one into a respectable shape. Currently, it is too wishy-washy, sometimes good, sometimes lousy, with a couple of conditions described when it really turns out to be a mess.

Almost everything else mentioned as complaints imo is only of medium or minor importance. Would it be nice to have all those mentioned, wanted features? Yes, of course, but wishing is cheap, the work is the hard part. . Are they all really necessary? No, for the most not.

So, top priority must be the AI.

Medium importance should be given to enable the sim to truly serve as a racing event simulator, not just the driving of the car itself, but the racing event in the pits, and on track. So after the AI has been kicked into proper shape, I would next focus on proper pitstops both in SP and MP, and better flag and damage system to make longer races a valid option both in SP and MP. The collision system also should get modernised. The penalty system needs to be brought to the standard one is used to from other sims - and is used to since many years. Hate to say it, but Kunos is years behind, in this regard.

All other things that Snoopy mentioned in his OP, compared to these ^ things are of tertiary importance only. Editor issues and special event issues I do not judge, since both do not interest me. So far I have not even looked into the career mode, and have not done one single event race. I simply do not care, I wonder why Kunos invested resources into designing that. I think it is a dead end they accepted to journey into, maybe misled by the belief that they need to try something like the GT series and other popular race arcade games with storytelling and such. To me, in the context of AC that neither is needed, nor was it desirable to get distracted by doing that stuff. Maybe they wanted too much there, loosing the red line of their focus a bit.

One should never forget that the core of AC - driving and physics - is extremely healthy and so superior on the market currently that it is the best you can get in any racing sim out there. By far the best I dare say. rF2 is not close to it, nor seems iR to be, or any other title that gets usually mentioned. - Do not try to do everything, Kunos team - do not try to do some things for every aspect of the genre for the only reason that other games offer this and that little feature, but focus on the core competence you seem to have: driving, physics. Focus on your strengths. Limit distractions by feature overload. Driving and physics need a proper situational context and its inevitable feature description: to serve as a racing event. Focus on this - AND FORGET THE REST. The driving part you have mastered with all excellence and A triple Plus grade. Now you must show that you can master the situational context of driving racing cars, too: you must create a convincing AI, racing event organisation (pitstops, flags, penalties, style of presenting the racing event to the player) - both in MP and SP. I say again: at least for the time being: FORGET THE REST of demanded features or features that already are there, but do not convince people. All that other stuff is not so important currently.

With limited resources, one needs to set priorities, a plan that shows in what sequence the issues get solved one by one. The important things first. The optional, the desirable, the less focussed and less important things last.

 

Top priority shouldnt be AI.. Sure more people play SP than MP.. But its the MP that keeps games alive..

Would LFS still be around now if it was only SP... No..

Would rfactor still be foing if it was SP only... No..

Different genres but would games like call of duty, league of legends, world of warcraft, minecraft, battlefield, counterstrike all be going today if it was just SP.... NO! Multiplayer is where games thrive..

People who play single player only modes usually move from game to game, they dont stick around... As soon as pcars gets released watch the userbase of ac drop..

 

Where have you been all this time. You have near 1000 posts and still don't realize kunos is focused on AI in every single update... Check the change logs. If anything AI's have been constantly worked on and developed with each bigger release.

If anything, something compact would be useful in meantime while ur waiting for your little AI's to have their brakethrough. The Ai is not even about work, it's about just finding that something for them. It's well past plain work. Whilst obviously the features are just pure work, coding, testing, getting it in place, moving on, getting the full picture and having the quality product.

 

MP are a minority, like it or not. It has so often be discussed, I do not go into that again. I only remind you of that less than 20 or even 15% ever go online in racing games.

So I stick to it: AI first, racing event simulation second (both in SP and MP). These arethe two highest ranking items on the to do list. Anything else is currently not that relevant and can be dealt with later. The important things first. The less important things not before the important ones got solved.

 

The features are needed in single player too. They're double usable. I won't explain which features are transparant from one side to the other, but most of it are. It's race features. You need them to have better racing experience.
Besides, if you do some exploring you'll find out that these so called "single player players" didn't complete almost any milage, which only goes to suggest that they tried the game. Didn't like it. Moved on. They're by no means any strong statistic. They probably didn't even buy DLC. Since they didn't like game's quality.
If anything that goes to suggest that there might be more people playing online then in single player.

 

my guess is that 2 years from now Kunos will be working on AC2 (which could be good thing .. chance for new less limited engine, learning from mistakes, etc) and AC will be left in hands of modding comunity .. at one point Kunos should consider to hire more man power .. i know it is a small team but how long can we apologize almost everything with size of Kunos team (considering AC cost the same money as another AAA games) ... hiring someone to help with AI and with coding could really help the game ..

 

I agree, mp players are a minority, im not disputing that, But without mp expect your game to be dead in 2 years.

Is that what kunos want?

 

-The phisic is very good at high speed. Slow speed is strange feeling
-please i want stall the engine. I can't see the engine go under the minumun rpm and do not stall. Then I get problem with torque. Not real at all
-false start
-pit stop single player with rules and manual pitlimiter
-ai that try to over take and battle. Try to press crtl C. Fast cars do not over take slower cars. Boring race

AC is the best keep working

 

Oh, I am aware all too well, since I am extremely focussed on how the AI unfolded over the past months, since I favour SP over MP. I posted many postings on that over the past year, especially in the first half of the year. - So where have YOU been all the time?

And that is the problem I have - that after one year, the very same basic fundamental issues still show up again and again. They should have been gone, at least seriously been reduced. But some certain issues are as present as many months ago, it seems. Yes, other aspects of the aI have been changed, have improved, and some problems may come from needing to balance various critical things. And still - the problems the AI severely suffers from today, are the same problems that were there many months ago, many release versions ago.

I use to be a big and convinced defender of AC, and Kunos' general attitude - but on the AI I slowly start to lose my faith in them, I admit. Almost one year for this little progress on basic AI issues - that is not really convincing, I'm sorry to say. I even ask myself whether they really have a solid idea on what is going wrong why there. I am not convinced they fully understand the nature of their problems. And mind you: they did several physics and driving engines before, several simulations, thats why they now know so much on that and can present such a superior result now - but this is the first time they do an AI. And AI coding is new terrain for them, no other game of theirs had an AI before. I could imagine that this has something to do with their problem to get the AI fixed. It would only be human, I admit.

 

Have you noticed that their end screen now says something like "copyright Kunos 2010 - 2020"...?

And modding - well, compare the activity level AC modding already saw in late summer last year after just 9 months in EA, and compare that to the relatively lifeless modding scene in rF2, for example.

No, I do not fear for the next years future of AC. Not at all. And not when many people already are satisfied with AC being a hotlapping simulator - with these quality cars and tracks available already, both default and modded.

 

That's probably a typo. 2020... However, wouldn't of you much rather enjoyed a race or even spectated a broadcast of one if tired (AC race), then bemoan here the essentials that are preventing that to happen. Let's hold on for a moment and look out if there were actual races going on, wouldn't number of MP players double? I sound like a salesman I know, its something RaceDepartment should be doing. They need this support more then anyone else. I'm certain ud enjoy their broadcast even if you never played AC. Only if they could host one, it might make you want race there, hehe.

 

maybe you misunderstood.

i meant that if AC has no MP at all it (no onine, no RSR records to try beat etc) would be dead in 2 years.. maybe because its mod-able it might last an extra year, but seriously.. without any form of competition no game would survive..

 

If you're kunos why would you care that out survives for more than a few years anyway.

They're a company to make money, not to build an everlasting monument.

 

Im sure they care..

 

There is a lot to be done for sure to get THE racing simulator as you guys said,

but give time to time lol we'll see what the team will bring us thereafter !

My personnal thoughts is that we could have more options in MP, this way we could have MP for casual players and have some races for fun,
and others servers for hard core simracers, who get punished if they do a false start

The best is yet to come have some faith

 

The thing is online content is mostly user created whereas offline content is fully developer created. This means that creating continously developing game based on purely offline content is a huge time investment for the developers. This would specifically mean constant addition of new cars and tracks just so you can create new career events.

Meanwhile for online racing you just need to provide the tools and the users can then create endless amounts of content out of that. And just like niki said lots of the same content that is needed for offline use is also needed for online use.

And it is very true that it is the online that keeps the game going. It keeps people talking about it which in turn brings in new players. People post videos to youtube, use the social media and discuss about the game on various forums which are not all focused on sim racing.

Focusing on offline racing is a suicide for game like ac which has really poor offline content. Ai that is not fun at all, career that is repetitive, unbalanced and unrewarding. Even if you fix all that you have only created lots of one-time use content. If you create a race event at most every ac player will play it once. Allow players to create good quality online races and you have lots of content available. It all builds up to multiple levels. If you focus on offline content you are just creating one type of content all the time. It is impossible to build on that

 

I'd just like to be able to see my sector times while sitting in the pits in this "hot-lap simulator". Why they removed this I cannot fathom. Also, since some versions ago, my gap to opponents is not working, though that may just be caused by some mods (?) and so I now use a 3rd party app to give me information that Kunos won't.

The racing is really not good at all, default tracks w/default cars, default tracks w/modded cars, modded tracks w/default cars or modded tracks w/modded cars...it's all not good for "racing". How can they (beta testers) have not noticed that the AI don't race? This I can't fix.

The penalty system seems to have gotten worse, which is why I still leave it off.

For a game that is "modder-friendly" there is no support documentation. Basically modders are figuring out the game engine by themselves, somehow managing to create great content that Kunos doesn't seem to want to make (tracks)...and that's not good, because without the modders I'd have already shelved this game ages ago.

How the hell can anyone who's beta tested this thing not see that the clouds in game should not be moving at 6000 km/h? And why is everything that's over a few hundred meters from you a solid block of color? At least this I can (and have) fixed for me.

My attitude towards AC hasn't changed in the 15 or so months I've been driving in it....it's nothing more than a hot-lap simulator. It's really very good for hot-lapping IMO, but I need to add 3rd party content to make it very good. It's a SIM with "pretty" content, and decent performance (I've got an old PC and can still play), but it's nowhere near other race games in terms of "racing" IMO.

tldr: I agree with many here, AC needs work still.

 

- Fix the stutter: https://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/i...-need-a-little-help.19204/page-22#post-417769
- Fix the stutter
- Fix the.. ok you got my point
- AI is better than before, but still can't spin if you hit them, still not overtaking you
- Proper end race exterior camera, the fadeout to black is really lame
- False starts
- Ignition / engine stall would be realistic, but not a big issue
- Triple screen should be adjustable in a way, that players who have mismatched screen sizes can still get a matching picture (separate panning for each screen)

 

1.1

Its just a number

We know the game will continue to be updated. Its not like the old days when you bought a game in a box for $90 and how it played then was all you could ever expect from it.

 

I thought of sharing my opinion as well. Since Kunos is a smaller company they could prioritize the features they are consider adding or changing in a poll form for the community.
That way the players will be getting the choice to decide what they want to see and everything would be more organized as well. It would also give the devs more time and focus on each thing.

I always love seing devs being close to the community and working together to improve what already is a great game so I hope things get even better, in time ofcourse.

 

It's hard to believe people still feel this way about AC. The game is incomplete and in nearly all components, when compared to other racing games, is still in the pre-alpha phase. Penalties are a joke; there is no live-timing; pitting is rudimentary; crashes occur randomly and without explanation; the AI and single-player in general is worthless. The list is endless.

All Kunos needs to do is release a few cars and a track here and there and everyone thinks he's a god. AC's overall plan of development from the start has been flawed, and the bugs and missing basic features continues to pile up, one on top of the other. If AC was a government entity, it would have been toppled long ago.


Alan