Automobilista 2 October 2022 Development Update

Read the first post in this thread. You are literally in the official place that talks about what is coming next

 

I think they will either release it before Christmas or we will have to wait until middle of January or whenever the Brazilian Christmas holidays ends

 

more info on what to expect
Automobilista 2 October 2022 Development Update #741

 

I would rather the 80s and 90s but with current technology. The world was a simpler, less stressful place then. And less PC

 

Then I would like the FW14B

 

Wish and you shall receive, lol. Did you put in your Xmas list to Santa? Maybe you will find it under your tree on Xmas morning .....

 

My opinion is that I don't care that much if you're gonna deliver it in 2022 or 2023, as long as you maintain your word and the quality of content. Both of which you've been doing very well. I prefer quality over quantity or agility, so I don't get bothered by these delays that much. Just keep doing it with the same passion you've been doing since ever.

What you guys have been doing for Brazilian motorsport History is priceless. Not only AMS2 is an awesome game but also a powerful tool for when I want to teach people about our own History. And as Brazilians yourselves you know how much or own country is ignorant about our legacy in this sport.
I just wish that this game would have been more advertised by Brazilian content creators. Not only specialized racing games streamers, such as RafaBin or FlaGamer. But also by bigger ones, such as Zangado or BrksEDU. You guys really need to advertise this game more amongst Brazilians.

 

The reality is that the game is hard to recommend to people who aren't motorsport fans at the moment. Yeah it has a bunch of Brazilian content, and being Brazilian myself I do think that is awesome, but it lacks any sense of direction for people who aren't motosport enthusiasts and know their stuff and what to look for. I understand your argument about teaching Brazilian motorsport history, and while that's a noble cause, where can you experience that in-game at the moment really? there is no campaign, no videos or even written bits about the history of the sport in our country anywhere. If you're not a motorsport fan, all you're gonna see is a bunch of cars and tracks, maybe you've heard of one or two but without context its hard to appreciate it.

I believe once they develop their career mode by next year (hopefully) we could see some sort of direction that could attract more players and teach them about racing, like we have in some way with Project CARS 2 and their campaign mode (still to this day hard to beat, it's awesome). This is by far my favorite sim, but recommending it to people who are not racing game enthusiasts would be a waste of time and resources, at least at the moment.

 

I think you're overselling PC2 career mode. All it was, was curated races organized into categories that were similar slowest to fastest. There was no narrative, there was no rivalry system, the drivers and car liveries were random. Outside of multiclass scoring, which is sorely needed, I could create the same thing with custom championships in AMS2. The only thing missing would be the UI branch showing progression through each championship.

It wasn't like you got to sign endorsement deals, contracts with manufacturers, etc. You literally just went from one canned race to another and got a score added up. At least with custom championships we have autonomy over the race settings and weather. To make PC2 career mode fun you had to rely on a lot of imagination to form the narrative a career mode really needs and hopefully AMS2 has when it releases.

 

To be fair, most racing sims aren't exactly easy to recommend to non-motorsport fans. For as great as the driving experience is in many of these titles, they have a considerable amount of "jank" compared to your typical AAA title that most people are familiar with. AC was considerably more of a challenge to navigate with its UI choices than something like GRiD, Forza, etc. I want sim-racing to be more inclusive and draw a wider player base, but let's not kid ourselves, it's a niche market. Stuff like Gran Turismo or Forza do a good job of exactly what you're talking about, but they have millions of console players to draw from. While sim-racing has a much lower barrier to entry than IRL stuff, a good PC, wheel, pedals, etc. is a lot for someone to spend on for someone who isn't really excited about motorsport to start with. (Yes, I know many people play with controllers, but that's almost a more difficult learning curve than a wheel.)

AMS2 doesn't have to be Forza or GT7. I'm not meaning this in an "elitist" way, but more in a business sense with marketing. I'm not arguing for AMS2 to be purposely boring or overly difficult, but with other titles already being a good option for people who are curious about racing, AMS2 is more of a curated collection of well-rendered cars and tracks. AC didn't have the most engaging single-player mode either, but it's still highly regarded as the best overall package in the market. Meanwhile, Pcars2's was more of a watered-down version of GRiD's campaign mode. Both are great when you're trying to get to grips (pun intended) with the physics, but they get stale really quickly. Even DiRT Rally 2.0, which has a fairly decent campaign becomes a bit of a slog after a while of slowly unlocking stuff.

I will completely admit I'm biased towards multiplayer (it's 95% of what I do in sim-racing). I'm curious what the actual percentage of the player base that is predominantly single-player. If 60% or more of the community prefers a better campaign mode over more content, I'll concede that I'm wrong.

 

I think a strong offline experience is sorely needed in the sim market. That segment has basically been ignored for quite some time and I think the popularity of the F1 games career mode shows there is a market for offline racers beyond one off races or sterile custom championships.

I think a career mode that allows someone to progress with earned winnings, signing constructor contracts, building popularity/notoriety, would help separate AMS2 from other sims on the market. With the vast array of content you could even segment stuff into different time periods, regions, etc which is something I don't think any other sim could really do as well as AMS2.

I for one don't have a lot of interest in multiplayer because league races usually are smaller than a full grid. I don't have autonomy of what or when races take place, and public lobbies don't work for my time zone, so for me having an immersive career mode would be a huge draw to me and I'm sure many other offline racers.

 

Whilst I'm sure there's a market for a career mode in AMS2, I've set up MyTeam slots in various categories so I'm ready whenever that day happens... With the lack of content for full series representation of even a single top line series that market is minuscule when compared to getting an up to date MP...

Take F1 out of the F1 career mode and it would barely sell no matter how well rounded the experience is...

In terms of getting the revenue for a fleshed out career mode with all the bells and whistles you listed... The only way towards that is to bring the MP into the present and then ride that wave of popularity whilst adding the bells and whistles to the career mode...

As much as I do have faith in Reiza's ability to finish their job, there's most likely a huge gulf between what those like ourselves want in a career mode and what Reiza see as "finished"... That gulf will close greatly if AMS2's popularity rises and pushes further development into this title... Rather than getting to a stage they are happy with and going "We're done with AMS2, time for AMS3." whilst leaving many of those bells and whistles missing in the career mode...

 

I never understood this sentiment. The modern world isn't as bad as people crack it up to be. You're gonna get the same problems you have no matter what decade you are in, especially if you're gonna keep the technology. The only reason you hear about those people that make the world too "complex and PC" is because of the internet. You're gonna find people that disagree with you, who won't be charitable with you no matter what you can't escape that reality. That "PCness" is just gonna come earlier because it is a direct result of the internet, people being more connected. The decade being the 80s and 90s isnt gonna change human behavior.

 

So m@#%#@@$ingly true...

The technology pushed progress, you can't stop progress... No matter how deep the hole in the sand is... The 80s and 90s being held up as a glorious period for free speech is an absolute joke considering the lack of free speech for the majority in comparison to now...

 

I agree, though before a career mode is added I'd want the AI to be in a bit of a better state. But I think it's something that will be needed sometime in the near-ish far-ish future.

 

From my POV I think it's a much harder hill to climb to enter the MP arena than the vacant SP arena. Look at ACC, rF2, or R3E. ACC and rF2 rely on a 3rd party MM and even with it covering arguably the most popular genres of race cars both still struggle to pull in enough people to allow for online MM to just "work" at any point in the day. For R3E it did what so many people are calling for here with their ranked MP and yet it hasn't miraculously made R3E a huge success. IR has a strangle hold on sim racing MP and while the games that have tried have found some success, they pale in comparison to what IR provides. There's only so many people in this market to attract and IR has so many people invested I just don't see it being something that Reiza or any other studio yanking people away from IR anytime soon.

We even have a hard time pulling decent numbers for people to consistently test MP in the beta. I try to join when I can during my lunch break, but for as much as I see people clamoring for MP to be better the participation in testing to help with that can be in the single digits at times.

In a perfect world I'd love for AMS2 to have a robust SP and MP experience, that's why I try to help with MP testing when I can even if it wouldn't benefit me directly, but with such a small team, I think expanding what the SP offers is a more attainable goal at this moment. But Reiza are working to create a better MP experience with what I've recently seen in the beta so they are not handling this as an either or situation. They are working hard to improve both aspects simultaneously which is very good for both sides of the aisle I think.

 

The SP arena isn't vacant at all... From Gran Tourismo to DIRT and F1 there's plenty of SP options out there... The focus being on a popular series or popular cars to get people buying and the SP experience is made to keep them coming back to it...

For AMS2 which doesn't offer all the cars and tracks of a series the level of F1, WEC or even BTCC it's just not going to be a marketing boon to flesh out a career mode... It's a nice addition for a small part of the sim racing community...

There's many reasons why the focus of the simulation leaning side of racing games focussed more on MP... It's not just the fact that the physics of the player car and AI cars have to be different which causes lots of AI calibration issues... The main reason why is because that's what the community wanted and pushed for during development phases...

iRacing has it's fans that are happy to throw money away and cornered a small chunk of the sim racing market (those with heaps of disposable income), which killed R3E's chances when they went for a pay by car and track model, Simraceway also died from following that model... Rennsport has to hit the ground running and do things better than iRacing in order to have a chance with that payment model...

rF2 and ACC have had huge periods of activity in the esports world, which is where the best marketing takes place for sim racing... You can't compare that to the lucky few who have the keys to the current BETA of AMS2... It's like comparing a puddle to an ocean...

 

I think you are misunderstanding me. There is nothing really compelling in the sim market for SP. The titles you listed are fine for more casual experiences, but all the major sims right now have pretty basic SP experiences with AMS2 being probably the best in terms of actually simulating motorsport properly. ACC may have all the cars and tracks for European GT3, but their AI is very bad and they have no flag rules so the immersion just isn't there.

Right now the way the market is basically if you want a realistic driving experience you choose a sterile sim with one off races or custom championships, but nothing immersive in terms of a career a mode. The entire sim racing market is too small for every single game to simply rely on MP alone. That creates over saturation in a market that is already small in comparisons to other games.

I am not against investing in improving MP, again I actually help with testing to improve it, but I think you are greatly underestimating how popular IR is and how much of the market it actually has. E-Sports does nothing for the average player and is even a niche inside our niche. If it was as important as you claim it is then RF2 and Motorsports Games wouldn't be in the financial trouble they are in and ACC would have steady access to full lobbies which it certainly doesn't in my time zone.

This idea that racing sims will be MP only focused moving forward is greatly overestimating the available player size. The fact that titles who have leaned heavily into MP with little to show like R3E and rF2 shows that in this small niche market, there is a want and a need for SP improvement and career mode. Just look at how many people are upset the rF2 AIs long standing issues and how S397 caused it to get worse than it was before. You have plenty of people on this very forum asking and talking about their desire for an immersive career mode in this title.

I'd rather not argue about this though as I am not against MP improvements, which it seems like you think I am. I am just trying to be realistic when it comes to expectations towards how big any sim outside of IR can get with just a MP focus and again Reiza are committed to improving both so arguing over one or the other is just a waste of time.

 

Removed as I was incorrect. Apologies.