What do you think is the most significant reason AMS2 userbase is so small?

After spending some time with PC2 again, I think trophies, hot lap challenges and some sort of career mode will keep people around. Everyone is different and others couldn't care less about that stuff and only race online. Luckily both are in the works so everyone will be happy at some point.

Looking at the recent beta releases on SteamDB, it looks like they've been very busy over the past few weeks...

 

I jumped into AMS2 last night after years with AC and ACC. Very impressed with the Force Feedback - way better than PCars. The VR experience was amazing (my primary reason for taking a look). This will be my go to racing sim for the foreseeable future.

 

I'm brazilian, and even here the game is not popular or well known, still very niche (even for a niche sim racing game). So, in my opinion the game needs more advertising a lot more, maybe a major AAA publisher to help boost it? Also, from a particular point of view, it needs some better textures cause all cars looks like are made of plastic lol, and more mp content.

 

Maybe the userbase aren't small, maybe they are far away?

 

I'm 190cm (6'3") tall so certainly not small!

 

So i don't count with my 165cm?

 

Think positive! The smaller input lag from your shorter arms and legs gives you a clear advantage on the racetrack

 

plox, just remembered the scene, don't get offended lol

 

For my part, I simply find it hard to believe that any PC owner who is interested in sim-racing in 2022 (e.g., a person who owns any kind of steering wheel & pedals and who wants to get in touch with their inner Ayrton) has not heard of Automobilista 2. Reiza Studios, while a relatively small developer, has a very well-respected track record when it come to racing sims, and AMS2 has "Very Positive" review standings on Steam for all the world to see. Unless we're talking about a person who is either unwilling or unable to conduct the most rudimentary search on Google or YouTube, I think we can simply dismiss any arguments related to "not enough people know about AMS2" and that sort of thing.

For those who can afford it, iRacing--at the present moment--still continues to offer the most robust and complete multiplayer simracing experience available, despite whatever drawbacks simracers care to point out about the title. iRacing's phalanx of iRacers are also, truth be told, probably loathe to spend too much multiplayer time in other titles given their ongoing investment in iRacing. Additionally, ACC and rFactor2 both have well-established, if niche, multiplayer events that sync with various races across the motorsports calendar and receive more media attention than your average online race. The evergreen Assetto Corsa continues to seduce more than its fair share of multiplayer sim racers due to its unmatched modability.

In contrast, AMS2's multiplayer, by Reiza's own admission as well as our own experience, is more of a work-in-progress. Unintentionally, one of AMS2's greatest assets (i.e., a tremendous amount of wide-ranging content) also has the unfortunate side-effect of thinly spreading its userbase "like butter that has been scraped over too much bread", to borrow a phrase from an unlikely source. While not as large as AC, the motorsports world that Reiza has created is still quite wide-ranging and arguably more beautiful, yet sparsely populated. Probably the best one can do to improve the demographics of simracing is word of mouth and social media.

 

What I noticed from watching random Twitch streams is that people who try AMS2 for the first time really enjoy the game, love the FFB, the graphics, the performance.

However, soon enough AMS2 hits them left and right with bugs, bad MP and inconsistent AI. This seems to turn them down, so I rarely see them trying the game again after a couple of days.

It is like they go "cool game", but then it doesn't hook them up.

So I think AMS2 is a great sim, but it is so sparsely broken the replayability is damaged. If AMS2 AI was consistent, many players would stick with the game. If the MP was reliable I would say many more would get hooked up. But none of the two are well rounded quite yet, so people try it for a while, like it, but do not feel inclined to invest time in it.

 

I come back from time to time after the updates to see the progress but there's way too many annoying behaviours and missing features that would hook me too it over a long time.

The AI is way too bad to make it a good single player experience and the missing multiplayer features and small lobbys don't do it either.

everything feels unfinished. This starts on navigations via keyboard that work only 80% of the time but then some elements can't be reached, HUD / Notifications that are only editable about 80%,... small stuff that but it sums up. I really don't mind about new tracks and cars if the AI is that bad or no lobbys to race online are available.

Also not putting MP on the top development spot is a terribbly wrong decision by the devs imo. you can't become a serious player in the market without a good MP community. You'll stay niche like a NFS title. And with all the potential AMS2 has, this is really sad...

 

Content is not the problem, it’s the broken features that make it not enjoyable. The Ai was better before this latest build, not their like they have adhd and didn’t take their meds

 

Dont't forget about long standing bugs inherited from PCARS2 that are still harassing MP session like the once popular "Touristenfahrten", technically set up as a permanent traning session, where damaged cars stay visually damaged dto othere clients after repair, resulting in a grid of racing wrecks.

 

Last Friday, three cousins and me did a barbecue to watch Brazil parading in FWC2022 (and we were disappointed, to say the least... but the churrasco went fine)... all the three of them (two Italians and one Brazilian) are PC players and used to go to the Stockcar Brasil races... none of them knew AMS2 when I talked about it (paga eu, Reiza!).

AMS2 marketing is nothing more than this player base talking about it with other folks.

 

Same here: have a colleague who's a hardcore ACC and iracing player who did not even know AMS2 existed and what it is about

 

our community is in the process of our first league, and i gotta say it's a huge pain because the multiplayer setup in this game is atrocious, i doubt hardly anyone of our community will stay long term and we'll just move onto something else

 

Honestly with the newest builds, I think multiplayer issues might have gotten worse in AMS2.
Higher latency and worse netcode.

This is really disheartening. It's why my league rotates between AC, AMS2 and ACC. ACC being the best when it comes to setting up a multiplayer race. If AMS2 can get to ACC multiplayer state, AMS2 would be on the top of my list at all times.

 

It boils down to relying largely on word of mouth and online media... Reiza doesn't have the budget to force the brand on track side signs like other companies do...

And with word of mouth largely being negative due to the poor MP features and prediction... It is what it is...

 

We tried to build a community on Steam dedicated to AMS2 online racing. Reiza not only ignored our existence (what I'm not complaining, but just not a smart decision, specially because it was just a couple weeks after the 1.0 release and the userbase back them was, obviously, way worst than today) but did absolutely no effort to give us any support (even to, at least, do some sugar coating... "hey guys, we will work on these issues"... just to show that they care about their consumers).

At one side, Reiza team maybe is the hardest working among all devs, but for somethings they are completely negligent, inefficient or disinterested. Still like they don't understand how important a good online environment is. Even if it's getting better overall, still way out of target. Maybe it explain why there are so much sim players just ignoring AMS2.

Just think: ACC is far worst in content... iRacing had a huge paywall and is way worst in physics... but both sims have a way better online environment. Don't know how this can affect AMS2 sales, specially because I'm not into multiplayer as I was in the past, so am not the better person to judge it... but maybe people can tell if this correlation is true.