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

I was laughing because of the 2 you listed I was surprised he disliked Hungaroring over Zandvoort. I know a few who like Hungaroring but no one that likes Zandvoort.

 

The historic Zandvoort layouts aren't bad, I like the elevation changes but I wasn't super excited to race the modern layout in the F1 games. Same for Hungaroring, it's popular for some reason amongst F1 fans on forums but if we look into the F1 game stats it is probably in the bottom half...

Going off the PC2 leaderboards, AMS2 should add Catalunya, Algarve and some Japanese tracks (Fuji and Sugo). Red Bull ring is really high on the list but I assume that's totally tied to an old e-sport competition. So that list isn't perfect but is pretty good.

I'd like to see the same from the F1 series.

 

For me, Hungaroring is a great track to drive, it's very technical and you can gain or lose a lot of time on some spots only by slightly adjusting your driving there, or trying several different approaches.

It's boring as hell to watch a race on though :-(

Zaandvoort is somewhat tricky, but I don't put it on the essential tracks list tbh.

 

Afaik Hungaroring & Paul Ricard are used in a number of different racing championships but they don't seem to be very popular among sim racers.

 

I play Hungaroring in ACC. Good fun

 

Lack of vitamins and fresh veg when they were young.

 

Would love to se this track in AMS2 as well.

 

I try to steer clear of it if I can

 

I think many have touched on this in this thread but the game suffers from a lack of polish. Given how negative some early reviews were, it's importan that when someone tries the game now they have a good first impression. Finding bugs or things that don't make sense is not good for building popularity.

Case in point: I just did a short multiplayer session. Multiplayer is my priority (not everyone's, but a percentage will be like me). Second race in, random engine blow up when in the lead. No crash damage or over revving.
Retire to the pits and wait for the end of the race. As I'm sitting patiently I notice the perfectAMS2 spotter overlay is informing me my safety rating is slowly losing points. Despite me doing the best possible thing given the circumstances. At the end of the race I get docked 25 points from my race rating too.

Imagine this was someone's first online race. Out through no fault of their own and then doubly punished by the game's multiplayer ranking system. Bitter taste in my mouth but I'll get over and be back for more. A new player might not.

 

I decided to do my own surveying in some of the circles I race in and got feedback from about 20 guys that own the game but don't play it.

2 of them said it was the multiplayer experience and the lack of ability to confidently and consistently race door-to-door without issue. I can totally understand that. There are times the same replay looks different on each guys PC.

Pretty much everyone else cited the driving experience as being disappointing. These guys all favored different sims. 2 or 3 connected this to the madness engine but many never even played Pcars 2. Some were of the belief Reiza were struggling to understand the engine and some honestly believed that Reiza intended to make a pseudo-sim. Some said it was the type of game they would boot up if they had a friend that was new to simracing. They ranged from average racers to aliens. The feedback on what they thought felt wrong or off did vary some.

 

Of the points raised from your socalled "guys" my oppinion is that its only the MP issue with the different replays that can be considered serious.
Because as you does mention this will get (new) MP users to write AMS2 off as a useable or serious sim.
The other points raised is only different oppinions raised from your "guys".
Raised because these people are more accustomed to other racing games.

 

Algarve is an underrated gem. Several unique corners and elevation changes that you don't find on other tracks. I was hoping it might get included in the game given it's had a bit of a Rennaissance with the recent F1 races there.

 

I really got into iRacing Street Stock for a while, and I 100% agree. It seems like it would be boring, but it requires a whole different skill set. The "Super-Speedways" (anywhere you don't have to lift) are all about working traffic and using the draft. You have to trust the drivers around you, just as they trust you to not move off of your line.

 

I realised a few days ago that I hadn't actually fired up ams2 since the last update, largely because of the protracted process of setting difficulty for each car and track, ai issues and lack of a purpose to even engaging. It just feels like I'm hot lapping while some unrelated ai have a scripted race around me. If they maybe made occasional mistakes, locked up, spun etc, this would break the thoroughly depressing predictability of it all. It saddens me but for the moment it's once again not even on my machine.

 

Late to the party on this but wanted to share my thoughts. All comes down to one thing in my opinion (assuming a functional base game which we have now): What compels the player to play the game?

My take on this is brutal, probably controversial, but simply that the online experience is lacking compared to other sims. By focusing as much on the single player side of the game, it is shutting itself off from where the sim racing market is already at.

As an online league admin AMS2 is my favorite because it has so many crucial small features which make the experience feel authentic, from climatic conditions to real fuel limits and so on. I can deliver my users a robust 3D experience very easily. People seem to like detailed experiences like this but understandably don’t want to spend the time creating them for themselves, only to be limited to racing robots. Online racing adds something that AI will never be able to reproduce. That being said:

1. Server stability. The game net code handles global drivers relatively well but the P2P nature of the in game lobby can inherently cause issues where players desync and aren’t scored/timed correctly. I’ve seen this occur lots of times running an online league. Only need to not be timed correctly (sometimes people drop a lap weirdly or don’t get scored at all) once and someone will be put off investing their time, fearful it will be in vain. This also affects the ranked system as is known.
2. Lack of an effective dedi server system. Whilst the in game servers are easy to put up for pick up races, the only dedi tool available for AMS2 is a ported homebrew PC2 one which is offers no real options to a league admin beyond a way to automatically limit grids to 22 and under as it kicks drivers above that level. For leagues to seriously use the game we need a stable tool which the capability to hold as large a grid as possible. A dedi enables a server log file to be produced which enables leagues to create championships easier, which in turn makes it more compelling for the online racer. Beyond this, the ability to manually bop classes (restrict power %, add kg) further enables the admin to create various compelling scenarios for their drivers which directly drives game usage. The sky is the limit here and the more tools (such as race type options etc) that are available really opens up the game to the creative admin to craft compelling racing and boom, you’re talking 25+ returning users per league.
3. Scheduled ranked races. Much has been said about this and it speaks for itself. Leagues can be intimidating to join, so a centralized system of races can be an effective way of birthing users into the online part of the game. It’s basically what is keeping R3E on life support, serving as proof that people like scheduled events where they don’t have to spend time thinking about what to race and how to setup the race. I would caution though that this is best applied with thought to keeping the grid clean, which is where iRacing and R3E fail. I like how leagues can hosted ranked servers in AMS2 and feel we as leagues can contribute a lot to the community this way as we can police our grids, creating a easy way for drivers to find grids and communities without a large input of resource creating a cumbersome ranked structure.

I appreciate that I only represent a small part of the community but I feel that every improvement on the online experience to AMS2 directly helps it and provides longevity. You still see AMS1 being used in leagues so I think that proves my point that a solid and well thought out online experience really extends the life to the game.

There’s so much to like about the core driving and racing experience in AMS2 that once the final polish elements come, then it really will take off. I don’t see why AMS2 can’t overtake R3E and rF2 in the near future. I’d say already it’s overtaken R3E outside the EU (North America, Australia/NZ etc).

 

Wholeheartedly agreed.

Unfortunately I don't expect these features coming in the short or even mid term, and when they finally arrive the boat will have already sailed away.

 

Where will the boat have sailed though? There isn't really much out there, the sim world is pretty small and if you're not into iRacing or ACC your choices are very limited.

However, I agree that the multiplayer features discussed above are critical to making 2022 successful. Same for AI in single player. Once those get attention the player count will start to grow steadily. But It has been holding strong at ~500+ for a really long time now, so I'd say that's positive.

The tire bug seems to have had some long-term fallout that is still being worked on and Reiza is probably also in the process of updating the older content with the latest and greatest physics changes. These are all things that will get AMS2 positive attention but if new players run into MP issues or AI issues in SP they won't stick around and the numbers will stay where they are.

On the flip side...once MP and SP get some attention (and we get some QoL changes) the numbers will start to rapidly increase. To grow this community we need continuous incremental improvements and reasons to stick around (hosted multiplayer, time trial of the week, single player hotlap challenges and invitational races). Once that's in-place, they can expand a bit and focus on pumping out content.

They've been silent for a while now...that can only mean they are about to drop some major updates in the near future.

 

As a VR and online racer, those are also the 2 points the sim doesn't shine (anymore).
With the introduction of the latest content, there are some performance issues which I can not get rid of. Thinks worked better in the past and, at least for me, a sim should be as reliable as possible in case of performance. (rain / night have always been problematic, but now even dry + sunny weather gives me problems with some track and car combinations).

2nd point is the online experience, which simply isn't "there" yet. similiar as above, net code issues which result in strange things like cars jumping all over the place, wheel2wheel racing hard or even not possible with higher ping drivers (reliability!) and the physics doing interesting things on some contacts (even if it wasn't a contact at all) is a real issue to me.

Especially on the 2nd half of 2021 I've always tried to do some sort of organized online racing with AMS2 and enjoyed it most of the time, but I've not seen any improvement in that area. AMS2, right now, is not the sim I would choose if looking for a stable experience.

So, all of this leaves me with offline racing, which I'm also not into, especially looking at the flaws of the UI (settings it up correctly, their behaviour on track, etc.).
Comes down for me to booting it up once in a while if new content is added (which IS a big plus for this sim) and testing things in time trial, but only so often. Nothing which gets me back into this sim on a regular basis.

still, there is so much potential in this sim to keep it in my mind and looking on the forums like every day. I'm really looking forward to the day this sim gets some highly needed QoL improvements, as I wish to race it more.

 

I'm considering going back to iRacing, even though it is clearly (in my opinion, ofc) a very inferior game, however it nails one core feature that is strongly missing in AMS2: competition.

I'm not going to make the switch for now, tho. I still believe AMS2 can outplay every other sim out there, however I can't be waiting forever.

Also, its already 2022 and we still don't have all tyre compounds to F-Reiza, for example. I could list a lot of things, but these have been exhaustively reported on this forum.

Fingers crossed for the next few updates.

 

The name doesn't quite roll off the tongue. Doesn't really describe what the product is. It's not aligned with any major racing series or gaming studio.