An Open Letter to the AMS2 Community

Biggybaz · Nov 29, 2024 at 4:02 PM

C’mon, i got money to spend.

Oh and well done guys. I can imagine pressing the post button on that letter was both hard and really easy to do

Manbird12000 · Nov 29, 2024 at 4:03 PM

Take my money! As much as you want. Just keep doing what you’re doing!

Praz · Nov 29, 2024 at 4:11 PM

I have so much respect for what you guys are able to achieve, this game has come such a long way and has been my go-to sim since the initial release. Keep up the fantastic work, and enjoy some time off while we all enjoy the new content!

Much love, from Canada

Lou' · Nov 29, 2024 at 4:13 PM

Wow Reiza team, I'm speechless... One of my most exciting simracing moment; many thanks for all this work, congratulations

Raimundo · Nov 29, 2024 at 4:14 PM

One of the best games I ever play in my entire life, not only in sim racing, it's about all games. This games deserves the goty or something similar, it's brilliant and after this update even more.

stealthradek · Nov 29, 2024 at 4:18 PM

Yay, Christmas arrived early!

Well done to everyone at Reiza, it's been a long and bumpy ride but you did it!

Dirk Hofman · Nov 29, 2024 at 4:19 PM

Thank you Reiza for this amazing game.

AdrianSPFC · Nov 29, 2024 at 4:19 PM

You guys know exactly what time the update will be release today? Thank you very much Reiza.
We appreciate your work!

MaxWrt · Nov 29, 2024 at 4:20 PM

But when will it arrive for Steam?

*_ LeazesNDR _* · Nov 29, 2024 at 4:25 PM

Manbird12000 said: ↑

Take my money! As much as you want. Just keep doing what you’re doing!
Click to expand...

Wot he said!

Joseba · Nov 29, 2024 at 4:26 PM

Renato Simioni said: ↑

Greetings Everyone!

First of all, some great news - we are happy to confirm the V1.6 update to AMS2 and all associated DLCs are rolling out over the course of today. We also have a Dev Update following up shortly with some notes about the udpate and the IMSA Track Pack, whch previous Dev Updates on V1.6 haven´t yet covered.

The above is the most relevant bit of this letter - if you are in the silent majority of users who are happy with AMS2 as is, happy to see V1.6 incoming and to take updates and developments as they come there is precious little further below you´ll find iof interest so you might as well skip it; if however you are one of those outraged or simply disappointed by how we have communicated (or not) during the course of V1.6 development and even before that, or if you are outraged at the outrage and thus taking part on the usual merry-go-around of internet drama, it might be worth reading on

We have always been a group of developers first and foremost; it´s what we do well and mean to focus on. We don´t want a team of managers and marketing people around us, and we want every bit of revenue to go for the developers and to fund further development. It´s definitely an approach of pros and cons and I wouldn´t suggest it is the optimal way to run a business - it is just the way I mean to run mine.

With that said, there are obviously limitations to how well one can handle various aspects of the business especially when a lot of is concentrated on one person, who isnt´necessarily skilled at all of them. I am obviously well aware the scattered breaking down of news, dev updates and mis-timed previews have grown long in the tooth and worn down the patience of many users, and now that we are on release day, I think we can discuss a few things about it more clearly, and how we plan to handle things moving forward.

As you know v1.6 is a major update to what is already a big game, and it has had a challenging gestation, including one of the major must-have features only really coming together over the last 10 days But the update is much more than this feature, the IMSA content, or the physics updates - we have reworked a lot of the game from the ground up, which should be evident to anyone who sees the contents of Pt1, Pt2, the New Cars of V1.6

Irrespective of that, a segment of our users clearly isn´t happy with the approach and that is not something we are oblivious to. Here perhaps it´s worth offering a brief historic perspective on our dev updates - we began them way back in 2013 during the development of GSC Extreme, long before these were the norm within sim racing development, just as a way to keep users attuned to what we were doing with it; by mid 2015 we had had a crowdfunding campaign to continue developing GSC Extreme beyond the point it had become commercially viable for us to do so in new sales alone.

The campaign was successful, GSC Extreme ended up becoming AMS1, and thus Dev Updates thus became not only a tool to communicate with the user base about development of the game, but a way to keep backers and early buyers attuned to what was happening to the thing they had backed. With AMS1 and then AMS2 growing ever larger and more wide reaching, these updates became denser and denser, and an expectation began to foster for this to keep going into bigger and bigger updates, always preceding by these big dev updates.

Once AMS2 came around, again with a Season Pass and a backing campaign we continued delivering both game updates and development updates pretty much on a monthly basis, always trying to balance reviewing of the work that had been done for and incoming update with what would be coming up next, with some foresight into where the overall was heading. The primary goal of the dev updates thus has always been to communicate about development to people who had already given us their money for the products we had already sold them.

In this time the user base for AMS2 has also been steadily growing and at this point the majority of our current users aren´t old timers from GSC days, but people who come and go from other games sims and many of them do seem to find all this previewing a little jarring; slowly but surely these updates have become harder to write as shorter term developments become more scarce, more time was being spent in deeper development efforts that are both inherently less predictable and more time-consuming to deliver; more new content is reliant on premium licensing agreements that can take months if not years to bring to conclusion; and more demands were put writing about what the user base wanted to happen to AMS2, rather tha purely what we were doing; unfortunately some of what they want simply don´t happen within the time span of a month or two or even four (such as Multiplayer development); some of it just wasn´t what we mean to offer with AMS2.

This has become a slow-growing conundrum and one we have tried to balance as well as we could, admittedly with diminishing success - on one side we have some of our most loyal, long-standing users who not only enjoy but have come to expect the dev updates to come in regularly, packed full of info and previews and foresight of varying accuracy, and who are always hungry for more information; another segment of the community is more anxious, less tolerant of information that isn´t strictly precise, and see these articles as purely ads or teasers, which ultimately becomes frustrating if they are for products they can´t yet enjoy.

At some point trying to find a balance that appeases these diametrically opposed expectations has become untenable and the whole exercise not only futile but counter productive as it ends up centering every AMS2 discussion around whether this or that is happening, whether our estimates are going to be right, rather than what we believe is what should matter, which is what the game currently offers and the sheer volume of progress that is delivered on a regular basis, be it timed to perfection or not. Irrespective of how much you enjoy the end result of V1.6 one will be hard-pressed to dispute it packs an impressive amount of progress that is not typical of most game updates, let alone most racing sims within the time span of seven months.

We all should be able to agree that this dynamic does the community, ourselves and especially AMS2 a disservice, and for this reason we are going to change the approach moving forward by dropping the publishing of regular dev updates; they ren´t really necessary anymore, we are not selling things in advance to warrant them nor plan to; we also think that AMS2 V1.6 is at a level of maturity to stand tall on its own without constant forecasting future developments. .

Our primary goal has and continues to be to make the game better, faster so it becomes more competitive to fund further development, in keeping that ball rolling we continuously aggregate more value to those of you who already own it the soonest. Anything that ultimately distracts or detracts from that goal or from that perception being reality isn´t actually worth doing.

This isn´t to say that moving forward we´ll be entering radio silence mode - we will still engage via social media, occasionally pop in the forum to contribute with objective answers to pertinent questions and the odd whistling emoji, and obviously in the Paddock Club where the day-to-day development grind takes place - while we obviously don´t want people leaking content and videos of updates before they are ready, it is perfectly alright for members to share news about bug fixes and improvements with non-members so that more information becomes common knowledge. And when release time approaches for a new update, we´ll have development overviews in text or video form to cover the progress that has been made.

With all this housekeeping well out of the way, let´s get on with what we are all here for!
Click to expand...

F2020 · Nov 29, 2024 at 4:27 PM

AdrianSPFC said: ↑

You guys know exactly what time the update will be release today? Thank you very much Reiza.
We appreciate your work!
Click to expand...

I think they usually hit around 6pm

Joseba · Nov 29, 2024 at 4:27 PM

*_ LeazesNDR _* said: ↑

Wot he said!
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+1

Cyneo · Nov 29, 2024 at 4:28 PM

TacticalNuclearPingu said: ↑

Just read the letter and I’ll pop in some thoughts as someone who is quite active in the AMS2 community outside of the forums.

It’s super nice to see positivity in the community now on v1.6 release day. From the user perspective it’s been a bit frustrating with the stop start nature but as someone who has worked in small technical companies much of what Renato has mentioned is extremely true and expansion and growth can be difficult to manage.

I think we as a community need to take a deep breath and think about some perspective. As someone who entered the AMS2 ecosystem in Winter 2020, the game has not only evolved massively - the technical challenge they’ve over come should not be underestimated. To frankly piss off come of the sim racing community, simulating vehicles is dammed hard and there’s not many folks on the planet who actually are good at it. Yes we see other titles, yes we see twelve trillion mods in other games, but to deliver something of the quality AMS2 now is rightfully should be commended.

Those of us around since the early days of AMS2, I can say we’ve all seen how fundamentally ugly sim racing as a whole can be and how much flak Reiza have got from I’m redacting thoughts on sim racing community members here, as a sim racer I take a dim view of the hobby and the bully boy mentality that exists from grown adults and adolescents. Even as players we’ve received flak from the community simply for backing, enjoying and supporting the game. So I fundamentally forgive Reiza some of the prickliness.

To anyone with a grain of understanding of vehicle dynamics and simulation the potential of the Madness Engine has been there since day 1. Devil is in the detail and it’s always been a case of getting to this stage.

Personally I can’t escape criticism myself, as I’m sure I’ve gotten on a few devs nerves advocating for MP work for the past few years, but gladly have eaten delicious humble pie since late 2023 as the effort from Reiza, JustRace and LFM has been considerable and consistent. I’d have liked to have helped more but Time Zones are a bitch. Anyone who races MP should give Rezia plaudits for taking the flak that came their way and getting the job done when they could.

I hope a page is turned with everyone involved and we can just focus on enjoying the game. I hope that the wider community responds positively and we can take some of negativity out of things and that the community comes around. I have to give credit as well to some controversial influencers who realized the toxicity of the situation and moved forwards positively afterwards and are helping to contribute to a better wider vibe. Respect is due there as well. As for the rest I’m sorry I can’t hear you over the wonderful new sounds of the Lamborghini Super Trofeo.

Click to expand...

I wrote this in April 2021 on Steam as review :

Este simulador es genial, según mi humilde opinión, hasta ahora lo que he probado es muy realista (coche de Fórmula 1), la conducción es una gozada, muy muy realista y como se comporta el coche, dando mucha información sobre su comportamiento. Las físicas son espectaculares y los gráficos son geniales y tiran bastante bien con mi tarjeta gráfica, que es una RX 580. La IA en las carreras está muy muy bien, aunque es muy agresiva a nivel alto, metiéndose en todas las curvas a adelantarte, aunque aun la pueden mejorar mas para perfeccionarla. Aun tienen que mejorar algunas cosillas, pero en general este simulador es lo mejor que hay en la actualidad y es el presente y futuro de la simulación, según mi humilde opinión.

Translate :

This simulator is great, in my humble opinion, so far what I've tried is very realistic (Formula 1 car), driving is a joy, very very realistic and how the car behaves, giving a lot of information about their behavior. The physics are spectacular and the graphics are great and work quite well with my graphics card, which is an RX 580. The AI in the races is very very good, although it is very aggressive at high level, getting into all the curves to overtake you, although they can still improve it more to perfect it. They still have to improve some things, but overall this simulator is the best there is today and is the present and future of the simulation, in my humble opinion.

---------------------------------------------

I had only played about 32 hours when I did the review and I already saw what AMS2 was.

As of today I've played 1251 hours, and I haven't played more because I've had spurts where I couldn't play.

It is a real privilege to be able to play AMS2.

Thanks a lot Reiza for everything.

Dicra · Nov 29, 2024 at 4:33 PM

Now is the time for you people to play 1.5 one last time so you can directly compare

Mking · Nov 29, 2024 at 4:36 PM

Thanks to Reiza and the team for the great work. I'm going on vacation now I'm excited to see what else you can do with ams2. keep it up! Thx for all

Maverick Knight · Nov 29, 2024 at 4:36 PM

cuadolo said: ↑

It's Xmas!
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It definitely feels like!

jeanvendors · Nov 29, 2024 at 4:43 PM

F2020 said: ↑

I think they usually hit around 6pm
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I do NOT have a problem

pipimax007 · Nov 29, 2024 at 4:44 PM

In Argentina we say "Gracias por tanto y perdón por tan poco".
(Thank you for so much and sorry for so little) English
(Obrigada por tanto e desculpe por tão pouco) Portugués -if google is right.

La team Pirate · Nov 29, 2024 at 4:44 PM

Vous avez créer votre "drama" vous même n'accusez pas les autres de votre façon de communiquer !
You have created your "drama" yourself do not accuse others of the way you communicate!

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An Open Letter to the AMS2 Community

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An Open Letter to the AMS2 Community

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