READ HERE About 1.0 multiplayer structure

First, English is not my native language, so I apologize in advance, if this comes across aggressive or insulting, it's not meant that way.

I never expected a one time payment to get me iRacing level of official servers.

What I did expect was that a game with Competizione in the title would be centered around, well, competition. Which means that there is a way to keep score. That the races would have consequences. That the results would matter.

I was hoping that this would be a game for competitive people, who like to play against others in an online setting. The fact that they choose to use GT3 cars on race tracks for the competition is almost secondary. We already have a game for car enthusiasts - AC1. I was hoping this would be a game for racing enthusiasts.

If the qualifying and race results have no influence on anything, event the RC rating considers them secondary the racing looses a lot of it's appeal, at least for me. For example, I will turn my phone off and lock my dog out of the room, when playing that other game, but just recently I stopped 30 minutes into a 45m race to check a text message, because it just doesn't matter if I finish or not. I have been part of many races, especially the ones over 30 min where it starts with a full grid, but at the end 5-6 people bother to finish the race.

I fully understand that without a subscription you can't provide the server infrastructure, but why can't you implement a global rank based on my completed races on the lobby servers? Assign some kind of points for finish positions based on the strength of field, give some bonus if the player has completed races on all tracks within a week, give penalties for dropping out of a race, etc. And create a global ranking that way.

Give the some love to the competition part of the game as you have given the simulation and ratings part.

 

If you're a little company with a niche product you can't host a ****load of servers without collecting a monthly fee from your customers no matter if you also reach some customers of another company with another niche product....

 

There are other options apart from Azure and AWS, which are much cheaper and used by many developers and websites, you could look at Linode and DigitalOcean.

Linode and DigitalOcean have servers in,
1. North America (Seattle, New York, Fremont [California], )
2. Europe (Germany/Netherlands)
3. Asia (Singapore)

These servers start at $5/month and include AT LEAST 1 TB of bandwidth each

The pricing is public, easy to calculate and seems like a better alternative?
1. https://www.linode.com/pricing
2. https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/#Compute



Now if the MP server works only on Windows (and not Linux) then ignore the above and look at Vultr (multiple location cloud) which has Windows too,
https://www.vultr.com/pricing/

Windows plans are starting at $10/month + $16/month for the Windows OS = $26/month for 2GB RAM & 2 TB of bandwidth.

All these providers bill hourly, they have an API for create/destroy virtual-machines, they support snapshot/backup images which you can deploy etc too.

So you can create "1 master" image with the MP server pre-installed and then deploy that when the load increases and then destroy that when the load decreases and pay only hourly cost on the machines

If the cloud pricing/platform is a concern in anyway, let me know (yes yes, I know many have offers advise and such) but I don't mind discussing up about these 3 platforms as I have used them extensively in the past.

 

Were less than 3 weeks away from launch and we still don't know much about the multiplayer,
- What is the lobby limit?
- What does the Competition rating mean?
- Is there a way to live steward races so communities can organised special events?
- Customer liveries online without the need for files?
- Can we do driver swaps online?
- Do we have to create teams to enter races together for driver swaps to work?
- API for crew chief?

Edit: Communities can host special events like iRacing for example, but if we can create teams with driver swaps, I'm not racing 24 hours of Spa by myself.

 

Man, why do you feel the need to argue about everything? If you read his post, he talked specifically about the people who are being critic with the current multiplayer, and then he talked about the rest of the users. If you are in the first group, you can't be in the second, unless you can divide yourself in two.

 

If famous youtubers keep scaring users with more sensationalistic (is that a valid word?) crap, we will have even less users. Period.

And all people with ultranegative posts in this thread are not helping either.

 

@Minolin, thanks for the detailed answer

This point is key to the conversation

I'll throw it back at you. Considering the competitive simracing/esports landscape of 2019 and the communication failure regarding this specific topic with the impact it has been causing, what do you think will be the conditions in 5 quarters if Kunos decides to follow this path?

This isn't 2014 anymore. The multiplayer functionality is the make or brake feature of the product. All of your competition (including Assetto Corsa!) are extremely well made and being the simest sim that ever simmed isn't quite enough, as the others are almost siming at the same level.
Project Cars 2 already tried the browser model. They lost 2/3 of the player base and if GM isn't streaming, the MP is as boring as watching Formula1. Hell, even the original AC tried the browser model. The numbers were stagnant until a little mod called SRS became popular.

Simracing is by design competitive. Kunos has a kickass simulation product *and* a license for a kickass series that includes pilots that do a lot of competitive simracing.

If Kunos want to waste the perfect opportunity. it's your perogative, but tell Marco that for the AC2 he needs to bundle the DLC in something that makes sense for a buyer.

 

And that would make server costs even higher

In the end, its all about money.

 

More players = More money (Pay for the game and/or subscription)

 

So do you expect people to be like "Oh, everything is perfect! Please start playing ACC so we can have more players because it's just the perfect game?"
People will say what they think and that's their right, perhaps even their obligation.
I'd rather see an honest bad review than a fake good one, it's the developer's job to make sure the reviews are good, not the reviewers'.

 

If we talk about a subscription, sure. If we talk about a one-time payment, nope.

 

You know the term "middle ground"? Look for it on the dictionary.

If something annoys me is people that can only think on the extremes.

 

Picking @Minolin examples, the lowest price on the table just to support the servers plus the bandwidth required for 500 players would be 14€/month: 1000€ for the servers + 6000€ for bandwidth / 500 users = 14€/month

Some calculations could be made to maximize the investment at the expense of increased system failure risk, by considering that wont be exactly the same 500 playing simultaneous, but that would be a risk that I doubt anyone one would want to start with.
But still, imagine someone would be risky enough to follow that path, an estimate could be presented of how many players, in fact, would be playing at the same time, so, very optimistically assuming that no more than half of the total number of players would be online at any given time, let me say that 1000 players could, one time or the other, make use of the servers and of those, no more than 500 will be online simultaneously. With such a risky move, considering that if more than 500 of the 1000 would go online at the same time the servers would not be able to accommodate them all (big problems ahead), it would be 7€/month per player, who were oblivious that the server could crash at any time.
So that would be a very risky move just to offer a cheaper fee and yet, that would still be a be a loss because there would be other costs to consider than only the servers. At the very least, the wages to pay to the people required to manage it all would also need to be added.
Probably some 2€ or 3€ more per month (being optimistic) will be required just to keep things going and covering the costs, so something like +16€/month or (for the risky not recommended path) +8€/month

Now, to be on the safe side and don't having problems with players not being able to play online, how many ACC players would be willing to pay +16€/month, +192€/year to have access to ACC multiplayer? And would it be feasible to consider that it could be maintained, that enough players will be paying to keep the servers going? And now compare it with Iracing prices. Even with risky proposal of +8€/month it's more than Iracing is charging and Iracing have other business models attached, selling also cars, tracks, private races and merchandising.

 

So if i understand this right, we get up to 36 Players on a server ?

 

R.I.P. my CPU

 

Weren't you the one telling everyone that was upset to get a refund?
How "middlegroundish" is that?

 

The argument "We don't want to better utilize the 4 servers we already run because we know it would be very popular, and they'd be full all the time" seems strange to me.

Either way though, I love ACC, and just want to go back to being hyped for all the amazing stuff coming in only a couple weeks, rather than whining about an issue that's ultimately pointless in the long run. Whatever Kunos can't/doesn't do, the community will do, as it always has for decades.

 

The issue with utilizing those 4 servers to provide an Iracing clone is:
It's an official service, so you would expect to always be able to connect to it if you own the game.
It would always be full, so you'd rarely be able to connect.
Then people would rant about how "If you're gonna provide matchmaking for 96 people only, then don't provide it at all".

 

For me it's not a matter of being possible or not. I don't have a shadow of a doubt that they try everything in their hand to meet user expectations even against their own desires regarding the game. It's a matter of being very clear with what the game is going to be.

Will offering something close to what people thought matchmaking meant redeem them from not being clear when advertising the game? Yes, of course. But I'm not going to be here trying to convince them to do it. If they want to do it, good. If not, also good.

Whatever happen I will be very cautious when buying another Kunos product. It's not being negative or having a desire of revenge. It's simply being cautious with your investment: last two times I bought a game from them, IMO they advertised something quite different from what they sold (with console AC1 was objective though).

I dont doubt of what they do. With or without (what IMO is) proper matchmaking, whatever comes of Kunos factory is top notch. I doubt of their marketing campaign. For whatever reason, what they advertise ends up having differences with what they offer. Again, IMO.

Of course, like the several IMOs induce, this is a personal opinion and in no way is meant to represent a general way of thinking therefore not meant to force any kind of reaction from no one. It's just that: the opinion of one user.