Automobilista 2 August 2022 Development Update

What is your question?

 

I don't doubt that they are working hard and that the update will be awesome when it drops but I also don't think there is a reason why it has to be either no contact or mention of upcoming content at all or setting a date in stone.

I think most of the people here would be satiated (at least temporarily ) with short comments every few weeks like 'we're working hard, cool stuff coming soon' and the occasional teaser pic.

I don't think anyone could suggest that the effort required to do so would compromise the development of the game.

 

When it comes to dev communication I don’t need the world, just a whistle emote here and there

 

That hasn't been the case in the past. Specifics (content or dates) have always generated more anxiety than cheer--at least here in the forum. You can also simply look above to hear people disappointed that something that was "teased" has not yet been released--as if there is a statue of limitations on how long you are allowed to go between tease and release.

Despite the slow down in communication, which does not in any way reflect the continuing work load of the team members (no, there wasn't a beach party or mass vacation), it is my impression that we still hear more frequently from the CEO of Reiza than from the CEO (or official spokesperson) of any other popular sim (all of which are from publishers/companies with actual communications and marketing staff).

And to anyone who is reading, there are two fundamental approaches to game development:

1. Decide and communicate a specific set of features, content and release date...and then deliver what is usually a half-finished, bug-ridden version of the promise...and then we as customers hope the publisher will allow the devs to finish the job. (And I am still waiting on some titles for many years, or, have given up since it is apparent the promises will never be delivered).
2. Reiza's self-published approach, which is to acknowledge up-front that some elements of content and features will have to be queued for development because there simply isn't the resources to do all things in parallel. This has been communicated ad nauseum by the CEO in the form of "AMS 2 is an evolving project" or "AMS 2 will develop over several years and not reach full maturity until near the end of its development cycle", etc. Patience has been asked for multiple times.

Why would anyone want option #2? Because Reiza has demonstrated in the past that it can take a simulation engine and wring more quality and value out of it than even the original makers of the engine! AMS (1) proved this quite definitively.

AMS 2 is a bigger challenge due to the amazing and deep capabilities of the Madness Engine. Some aspects of it are great right out of the box. Other elements (and we all know what they are) were never fully completed or polished by the authors of the engine. Some of these elements just require some care and attention. Some are major and cannot be addressed without a major investment of resources. I think it should be obvious why Reiza, with about 1/100th of the resources of the original authors of the engine, should not promise exactly what can be done by date X to address (or redress) some of these well-known areas.

You have to have patience and faith. I am 100% confident that, in the end, AMS 2 will exceed in terms of simulation quality and accuracy any other title based on the Madness Engine. But between now and then there is still a lot of development work to complete and it will come incrementally. It is frustrating that certain features are not fully complete yet, but the same process occurred with AMS (1). It is the necessary way for a small team to tackle building something that ultimately exceeds the original.

 

(loads sign with tapping intent)
Don't make tap the sign, no whining about the "whining"

 

Would be nice if a developer just quickly said “no update this month, fixing bugs”.

 

I have no issue with what the Reiza team deliver when they deliver. It's all good stuff. What gets me is when they don't deliver and there's just silence.

I'm still waiting for the historic versions of Spa and Nord, which were the main reasons I paid for that DLC in September 2020.

 

Well, if they mention a date, and release an update a week earlier, people will be in general very happy, because you surpassed their expectation, if you mention a date and release 2 days later, people will not be very happy, so whenever they are thinking of mentioning a date, add 2 weeks to that date and communicate that, if they then run a week later then their original date, nobody has to know, and people are still happy they got it sooner then expected.

Just a mindset thing for most people.

Also a short message that there wont be an update in a few weeks time, because they are polishing things or whatever other reason, would take literally no more then 5 minutes, but does mean a lot to quite a number of people here.

 

There is a contract and a deadline with the people who bought the season pass. As I said before, in a minute you make a comment about what happens with the season pass and that's it. That reluctance makes me think that there are some problems and quite a few delays in the horizon. I hope I'm wrong, but silence is revealing

 

True, it also would be good to add/edit the steam season pass page with the delays/info regarding what happens, so new users wont be misinformed, as that makes ams2/Reiza look very bad to those people

 

Silence to me means that guys are busy brewing something exciting, not necessarily that there are issues. And it's not a problem with this forum alone but across other platforms and dev studios. A public communication happens (even not related to planned update) and immediately people are asking for this and why something wasn't added yet. I feel sorry for Reiza to have to deal with this as it's just unnecessary. No wonder why they prefer to stay quiet.

The pressure we're creating here on such a lovely dev team is just pointless and just doesn't help anyone. We know they can deliver and they'll announce something when it's ready. They fell victim of being nice and keeping us in the loop and those monthly releases. Sadly...

 

Well, most pressure comes from the fact that people bought DLC which has certain dates/timeframe mentioned, and only part of it delivered, ofcourse people are gonna ask questions or get annoyed at some stage, especially when it remains quiet, keep in mind that there are a lot of new AMS2 users since the 1.3/1.4 update, who quite possibly not read up on everything on this forum as well

 

Looks like a pre-Christmas update great,
My top hopes are:

time trial fps problem sorted

Replay in VR tv style camera & buttons working properly

formula trainer problems + other less developed cars updated

multiplayer system / net code etc improved

 

It was already extended once, is that such a big issue? Maybe I'm missing something.

 

I dont see any mention about any extension on the Steam store page, which is my point, new users dont know that, or if there will be any extension to come......

 

I've suggested several times here in the main forum and in the beta forum that Reiza should update the store pages for season pass & DLCs but never got any response.

 

Yeah, and that is the one thing you really need to be on top off, as thats the first thing people interested in AMS2 look at

 

That's understandable and I agree that the Steam descriptions should be more accurate, especially what each DLC contains, but there's plenty of negativity in other posts in this thread alone that I simply don't understand and that's the core source of why I'm puzzled. We all know it's a long term project, yet the expectation seems to be to have it all now. BeCaUsE We'Ve SpEnT OuR mOnEy.

I massively appreciate stuff that Reiza do and given their size they definitely punching above their weight. They are like Jordan F1 in the 90's fighting much larger budgets, not doing everything perfectly every time but consistently overachieving.

 

Keyword in this is communication, just a short message about whats coming or not, i think the biggest issue is complete radiosilence for 2 months, people will have their thoughts and assumptions go anywhere, something thats easily prevented by a short message, its not always needed to have half a forum page with info on whats going on, surely there are 5 minutes or less to be found somewhere to post such a message