Is AC struggling to keep people interested?

When I first purchased AC there were 1000's of people in-game when I logged into steam, now at best there are only 200-500 people in-game at various different times. I work shifts so the times vary quite a bit. Where has everyone gone or are we just waiting for the magic v1.0? Yesterday evening there were more people playing MotoGP 13 than AC. That has just got to be wrong. This post was prompted by the constant 30k plus people in-game on Skyrim and as I play AC all the time I'm on my Laptop I've been monitoring the numbers.

 

I've got a couple friends that played AC a little but have no desire to mess with it again until MP is released...There are probably quite a few people that feel the same way....And there is no telling how many people are playing off-line.

Discussion about AC has all but come to a stand still over at Race Department so maybe the average persons attention span has been exhausted.

 

In my case I'm waiting until MP. When AC was announced everybody was waiting for it so bad, it's logical the people isn't so "over-hyped" now as they were when it was released. When we have a real MP date you can be sure there will be much more people playing AC, I think right now many people (like me) aren't very motivated to play against nobody else.

 

Land mines make it a little frustrating and keep me from wanting to throw time into laps when at any point my car might get tossed around by an invisible object. And the fact that they still haven't addressed simple annoyances like the major delay with the paddle shifting animation. I thought that once I could remove the wheel I'd be okay with that - but they left the paddles! I know that the group over in the Oculus Rift thread are curious as to when anything will be done to update that support as well.

 

I'm waiting for the modding tools and more tracks to become available.

 

Personally i don't play it since last update on last Friday (played around 30 minutes) and didn't touched it anymore, i'm only waiting for MP...

 

Alot of the people that are waiting for MP will still move on to the next shiny thing within a month or two...it just seems to be the nature of things now-a-days....attention spans get shorter and shorter....I just hope there will be enough of us that stick around to make it worthwhile for the devs to keep supporting this project for the next 5 years like they want to.

 

I reduced my time and wait till the game deliver more concentrated potential, so if its more finished, before becoming bored with the half finished game.

Hotlapping was becoming boring, besides JP, which took the game on a new level for me.

AI wasnt good and still is nothing I would consider good.
Mugello and Imola arent very exciting and the others tracks are even less interesting (NR GP, too).
Waiting for better AI and Spa, Trento and many modder-tracks.

Many cars are too slow (struggling with single monitor FOV, between low speedfeeling and realistic view).
I dont drive anything under a GT3, M3 DTM and 458 S3 anymore.
Some cars drive like **** and are no fun at all (MP4-12C).

The sound is still bad. Even other racing-games dont get that **** together, too.

Game feels kinda dead, somehow, too.

 

"If you build it, they will come!".... A good MP that is.

It doesnt matter how many have bought it or still play so far, if the MP is good enough (whenever it comes) it will attract the masses!!

 

Comon stop this attentionspan-nonsense. And it arent always young people. Often simply adults with a limited amount of time. Look beside your PC and you see many things you can do that are as or far far more exciting (and many other games worth your time too).
Seriously, what the **** is wrong with some people?
If I buy the game and leave it after a few weaks or just play and enjoy it for an hour per month its totally legitimate, especially cause this stuff you call real life.
"Nature of things now-adays..." Jesus Christ...

 

It is only natural that something totally new triggers more interest than it can keep over the longer time once the initial starting phase is over. Everybody has gotten his idea on what it all is about, and starts to invest a little of that interest into others things again. My love belongs to AC, it is the sim I will stay with, regarding driving, but that has not stopped me from also going for GSC2013 early this week, because it is not expensive, offers a really well-done Nordschleife as mod (main argument for me to try the sim), nice driving and physics, and the Transfagarasan Road as mod, also, the Karts are extremely well done and great fun. Tomorrow, if Kunos should release a new track, I will for coming days reshift attention once again, back to AC. Also, AC is not complete, and some people just wait for their most-loved feature to come. Me personally, I still enjoy to hotlap my one or two most favourite cars, but I feel that interest is suffering a bit due to those landmine-events.

However, you just do not play one and the same game all day long, for weeks and months. Interest goes up and down a bit, in waves. Only natural, I'd say.

Also, modders still have not switched to full gears regarding tracks. Me, I am not waiting for skins and cars, but tracks, for tracks are what keeps my interest high in racing sims. Hope there will be Nürburg GP tomorrow.

 

I don't think so. If MP will be good and we will have modding community, people will be playing it for years like rF. There are people that just move to another new game, but they are not important. There is only few sim racing games so, they really don't have anywhere to go.

 

Not sure what your issue is but you damn sure have one. Where in my post did I say age had anything to do with it. You are right that there are many different things to do that are vying for peoples time. I spent over two years playing Forza 2 when it came out because there really wasn't any other competition for my time without buying a pc or ps3...Right now there are at least a dozen different sims to choose from on my hard drive alone.
Not sure what the **** is wrong with you and Jesus Christ indeed......

 

The last update was mostly fixes which are not that exciting. New content will draw the crowds back. Just wish the multiplayer was in game before the damage. I have a few friends that won't touch it again until multiplayer is in, I can understand their view.

 

I think once V1.0 is actually released there will be a decent sized community that will be around for the long haul.....I don't agree that there is nowhere else to go.....iracing, rf2, possibly project cars, potentially R3E, and a still loyal group to GTR2 and rf1 is alot of choices for a niche market. It's a good time to be a sim-racer but time will tell how good of a time it is to be a sim developer.

 

^^This^^ for a lot of people.

Personally I'm waiting for MP. I know the sim is good and I trust the dev team will make it better but without MP it's pretty boring for me now. The novelty has worn off.

I've gone back to R07 MP until AC MP is released. For me sim racing is all about racing with and having a laugh with friends on TS. That's not to say we don't take our racing seriously, because we certainly do, but solo racing is just a bit boring IMO.

I'm quite sure the interest will be reignited when v1.0 and/or MP is released.

 

The online community is like a positive feedback mechanism - the more people there are the better the experience and the more people it attracts. So let's hope that when V1.0 is released there are enough online racers to ignite AC and build it up. Without a large online player network I think AC will fail - so Kunos really need to make sure they get MP right. Yes, there is single player but that will not sustain AC long-term and maintain modders interest IMO.

 

This will depend mostly on modding community, if some content starts to be paid, etçª i'm afraid this will not happen and people go in other directions, What if i want to race in a championship that has 2 paid tracks out of 8? What is the fun of racing only 6 races of a championship because other 2 are paid and i can't afford them (or don't want to pay)? Most people will run away from it, i'm just warning...

What kept rFactor1 alive was precisely that...

 

I spend the same amount of time here as from the beginning.
This is still a simulation under development and hence changes in small and larger steps.
The AI is under development as the rest of the simulation so I'm not worried for that part knowing Kunos and his teams talents.
Have faith/patience my young padawan and time will show...

 

This is another thing...back in the day it wasn't that hard to rip a track from an older game and convert it to rf1 or GTR....Even the scratch made content was far less work graphically than trying to make something that compares to the DX11 laser scanned goodness that Kunos provides. There will be recycled converted old content that people will jump on the first few months after mod tools are out but it won't take long for people to expect scratch made content of very high quality...There are only so many people that have the skills and desire to produce this content and some of them will want to get paid for their time....We all can debate for days whether it is right or wrong but it still remains a fact.

I can only think of two, maybe three quality scratch made mods for rf2 right now and one of them is payware. I am completely conflicted myself about whether or not to pay for mods; I know the modders didn't pay for a license but at the same time if it is a quality mod somebody spent hundreds of hours making and I am going to get hundreds of hours of enjoyment out of isn't that worth a few bucks?