My Feedback so far 0.3.5

Hi everyone,

I signed for the Early Access of ACC, and I feel I haven't gave a proper feedback yet about the game, so I'm going to sum it all up now and pay my debts.
I'm gonna start to explain the context in order to make my feedback more relative to my own opinion.

So I'm 22, before ACC I never raced online on a sim racing game, even if I played PCars 2 until then (never online).
I'm playing with an Xbox 360 controller on a laptop at least 1 - 2 or 3 hours a day (I feel it relaxing to play after you had your work day ^^)
Sometimes I even play more than 4 hours in a row, so I wouldn't say I'm a casual player anymore.

For some reasons I feel it challenging to play with an Xbox 360 pad, now I quite master it and I can be competitive.

So let's dive on the feedback now:

About the graphics, my laptop is quite outdated now even if still powerfull I can't run the max graphics, so I use medium.
It's ok, you know you're so much focused on what's happening that if you don't see every details it's still ok.
There is a major problem tho with ACC medium graphics, I don't see the rain !
I feel it's a bit of cheating to play with a full clear screen while someone with good graphics will have trouble watching throught his windshield..

The sounds, I'm not gonna say like everyone I think, I've ever driven a race car before, a Ferrari 458 with track specs on a track. I feel yeah sound is quite good but we still lack some environment sound, the engine of other cars etc. You have to know that these cars aren't made to be confortable, they are made to be fast and thus, you hear everything when you're sitting inside, not only your engine.
But it's a detail, the hardest part is done imo, you got the proper engine sounds I think and gear shifting sounds, tyres sounds, brakes sounds etc.

The handling, I was really dispointed during build 1 because driving with a controller was quite impossible.
Now in the current build 3, it's been improved by a lot, you can be smooth either on steering and braking/going on throttle etc.
A lot more fun and to me that's a key aspect of a good racing sim, controller drivers are not left on the side !

The ratings, ok now we dive on a cool and innovative part I feel.
There are some adjustments to do in my opinion, some weird things that happens, like some SA rating going down for no reasons, CN going down after the first 2 laps of a race etc.
But overall, it's really usefull, I LEARNT SOOO MUCH WITH THE CC rating.
Here are my current ratings for build 0.3.5 :

RC : 99
SA : 94
PC : 91
CC : 91
CN : 90
TR : 74

My CN dropped down lately since I tryharded AI races and for some reasons it dropped from 94 to 90 but it's still fine I think.
The TR rating is useless, remove it or tweak it, it doesn't mean anything (it's a mix of CN and CC, just no point letting it imo.
The greatest rating is the CC, it really helps to have it showed when you're driving to see when you push too much, plus it's pretty accurate (EXCEPT FOR : T3 Misano & T7 Paul Ricard, that gives you a red sometimes for absolutelly no reasons)

Let's talk a bit about the AI now.
Ok so first, it seems a bit crazy to complain about since it's probably the best AI I ever raced (fair/fast/aggressive/adapting etc.) but there are still problems.
I know you made some drivers more aggressive than others to match their real life behaviour, and I know that Dries Vanthoor is a perfect idiot IRL x) but please make him less stupid in game he pushes me wide everytime.
I'm scared everytime that I see him coming in my mirror, bumping you, dive bombing (like in real life actually ^^)
You also need to make the AI more challenging in defense maneovers, they never defend, they all hold their line and boom you overtook them. They need to sometimes defend their posistion aswell, especially known
defensive drivers like Winkelhock, Engelhardt etc.
Sometimes you see that AI is losing the car, and with some magic tricks they survive and save the car, you don't know how, they were completly sideways and they still get a good exit for the straight lol, fix that please, let them spin sometimes, would be more realistic.

For the tracks my feedback is gonna be really basic since I never drove on one of these tracks, but it feels really similar to onbard views you can find online, bumps, kerbs, etc. So well done no bad points here, elevation changes looks very reallistic aswell.

The UI isn't great tho, plenty of bugs, especially during replays, virtual mirror not popping sometimes, virtual mirror merging with rooftop sometimes depending on your car and view settings (MUST FIX THIS!!)
I'd rather watch the "incar" UI which is the real life one and far better if not bugged.
We also need a equivalent of CrewChief to know the track temp, gap ahead, gap behind, cars left and right, 3 wide, etc.
And not a guy that randomly says "yellow flag ahead" while you are P1 LOL!!

We still need fixed Yellow flags, adding SC and FCY procedure, with penalties when you go over 80kph under FCY procedure etc.

Multiplier Menu is really messy, it needs update to make it looks better (still a WIP I know)

I feel like the Setup menu isn't complete yet, there is no way to modify gear ratios which is problematic.

Overall it's a good feedback from me, I hope it was clear enough and sorry for my bad english, I tried my best to make a correct feedback that will be usefull for devs.

Add me on Steam : https://steamcommunity.com/id/NewPhoenix96/

And have fun =)

 

Great summary
Just one thing about your setup comment:
AFAIK the gearboxes are locked in the Blancpain GT3 series. No adjustable gear ratios

Greets After_Midnight

 

Ah Ok, I was wondering actually if it was normal.
So it's locked just in BlancpaiN ? Because in other racing sims, we can setup the gear ratios for GT3 cars

 

TR shows you know the tracks, I think they arent maxed yet as it will probably include something like a clean 1 hour stint or wet and dark clean laps. This should be usefull for mp filtering as possibly servers could have option to only allow those that have maxed or 90+ TR on it.

The ratings are cool but will be a big part of mp matchmaking. It should help find servers with people at a similar level. Racing others with similar stats to you should give way better racing then with AI. For me this looks real promising and having recently tried some enduro stints on a drying track I cant wait til mp matchmaking and racing kicks in.

SA I think includes off tracks and contacts, sometimes you cant avoid contact but someone running off offtrack lots is also a hazard.

In general dont focus too much on ratings more what it can give you and thats a way better mp experiance. The cool part is even for mostly offline guys its interesting, but if it works well it Marty encourage more good offline only drivers to jump into mp sessions. The more we get online the better the experiance will be for all.

 

Yeah I only play online since it got released, I just played AI yesterday to raise up my SA rating cause that was the only one under the 90's
Now everything is above 90 so i'm done with AI ^^

 

I think its nice to have an option to show racecraft and safety rating with AI rather being thrown into the wild west servers to show your competant in traffic.

I think those open free for all servers are what turns many off mp.

 

I wanted to do a small overview of my MP/AI experience but after Ælleden's exhaustive post don't think it worths a separate thread

MP:
- The first try was a failure. For some reason Nurbugring track didn't have any grip at all, it was like drifting on ice surface. Don't know if it was a server configuration or a bug.. If it is configurable - I would like to see grip info in server info.
- The second one was ~ OK at Paul Ricard, but.. Some drivers constantly went out of track and collided with each other, the whole track was full of yellow flags even after they returned to the track again in those places. Also lack of virtual mirror at helmet view didn't help - I had to change a view.

AI:
- Yes, they definitely should defend more. Gaining high RC with such an AI isn't as hard as it should be.
- Also definitely this AI is so much better than in original Assetto Corsa (I never saw AI dive bombing and also some dirty racing like cutting or going wide are rare cases)
- Formation lap. Can anyone explain me why AI isn't warming their tires up? Is it a rule that you should just roll in a procession or just isn't yet implemented?

 

The Race director calls over the radio to the cars to close the gaps and stop weaving in the last corners of the warmup lap. So it is realistic IMO since we don't get to do a full lap.

 

There is option on settings where you can chose full lap. But at the moment it limits every single car to drive 2 by 2 formation trough the whole track until the green flag

 

Yes, I have a full formation lap option enabled. So an expected behaviour should be "weaving / braking / etc the whole lap until Race director calls to the cars to close the gaps and stop weaving in the last corners"?