An Open Letter to the AMS2 Community

Last night I did a 90 minutes, 48-cars Suzuka multiclass (LMDH, P1 Gen2, GT3 Gen2) and I have to say, it dispelled all worries I had for the AI that I still withheld while watching the preview videos. Even in such a narrow and tortuous track such as the Japanese 8, the AI went around lower class cars very well, even better than I could manage.
I used to run 117 AI difficulty in 1.5 or less, but yesterday I didn't manage a top 10 with 115.
Well done, Reiza.

 

I just have done a 90 minutes race at Spa with LMDH & GT3 gen2 and i saw some strange things.
My settings were: 100 AI strength, AI Medium Agression, 25x time progression, 2x tire wear, 2x fuel consumption, with mandatory pit stop and one random FCY, driving the Lambo LMDh and made 9 laps in qualify session (The AI was about 4 seconds slower in the race than in qualification).

The AI still seems to have a strange pit strategy, because some LMDhs pitted in lap 5 and 6. They could have drive about 13 laps normally. They pitted more times than me, because I started at P15 (spun the car 3 or 4 times) and I still finished P1 with over a 1:30 min gap to P2. P4 was pitting two laps before the race have end.

Was using medium slicks and did not see any tire wear in the hud, should there be any visible with 2x tire wear?

There was no yellow flags shown (only one double yellow at end of FCY) as I or the AI spun out but the blue flag behaviour was a little bit better than in 1.5

But never the less, I am very happy with the update so far but have to test more...

Thank you Reiza for your dedicated work!

 

I just want to chime in as well.

I think we all see some people from time to time come in and start rants, go on tirades, post from a position of entitlement or just post without thought. Such people often have the mindset that every allowance should be made to them and their behavior and the company producing the product must always act, behave and deliver in a perfect way. On the opposite scale nobody in the company is allowed to be a human being with emotions or pride in their work. If endless hours of work is put in to deliver that smth nobody else has ever delivered, it is perfectly fine to just s*** on them and even call them lazy. The posters usually then take the position of a victim and label what they post criticism and when they find themselves not welcome, they call it communism and nazism that they got banned. Some of these people then migrate to Steam forums and start endless hate posts there.

I would also like to point out that whilst we see seemingly a lot of these people, they do actually represent a vast-vast minority. Overall, actually the picture is very good. Here are statistics based on 28 November 2024 from Steam on user feedback. At the moment AMS2 is the best reviewed sim out there:

Automobilista 2
RECENT REVIEWS: Overwhelmingly Positive (97%)
ALL REVIEWS: Very Positive (92%)

Assetto Corsa
RECENT REVIEWS: Very Positive (91%)
ALL REVIEWS: Very Positive (92%)

Assetto Corsa Competizione
RECENT REVIEWS: Very Positive (94%)
ALL REVIEWS: Very Positive (92%)

Dirt Rally 2.0
RECENT REVIEWS: Very Positive (89%)
ALL REVIEWS: Very Positive (88%)

EA SPORTS WRC 24
RECENT REVIEWS: Mixed (58%)
ALL REVIEWS: Mixed (62%)

F1 24
RECENT REVIEWS: Very Positive (80%)
ALL REVIEWS: Mixed (69%)

iRacing
RECENT REVIEWS: Very Positive (90%)
ALL REVIEWS: Very Positive (83%)

Le Mans Ultimate
RECENT REVIEWS: Mostly Positive (79%)
ALL REVIEWS: Mostly Positive (74%)

rFactor 2
RECENT REVIEWS: Very Positive (85%)
ALL REVIEWS: Very Positive (80%)

RaceRoom
RECENT REVIEWS: Very Positive (87%)
ALL REVIEWS: Mostly Positive (74%)

WRC Generations
RECENT REVIEWS: Mostly Positive (76%)
ALL REVIEWS: Mixed (68%)


In the end I also see no good way to deal with such people either. But I am in complete favor of banning such people with no warning - there can't be endless babying of such people, they are not likely to be a changed person or change their world views 180 degrees after a gentle warning. It is no surprise most dev companies elect to keep any communication to a minimum.

 

I almost hope the next dev cycle is Reiza expanding their license portfolio with new tracks and cars, exclusively. Maybe just tighten up the physics a little here and there, and get more people in with the few cars they wanna drive that aren’t accounted for yet.
After this long I don’t even think swapping out the Madness engine will convince the usual suspects on the physics front.

 

@Renato Simioni

In my optinion there was nothing wrong with your communication, it was just that some people didn't have the patience or self-discipline to wait until the work was completed.

I enter the forum quite regularly to look for news and I noticed many people had nothing to talk about before the updates so they were talking ABOUT the updates, which is normal. But then a vocal group got overexcited which then lead to frustration and some started to negotiate and sulk,
which is annoying but also will never change, no matter how many open letters you write, because you are dealing with gamers and not professional business partners

Say what you want but I like the athmosphere here compared to other gaming forums.

 

isn't gonna work in todays work climate either.

If I tell my business doesn't have a completion date it will be interpreted as a severe red flag and sign of weakness, then customers will start grilling you until you give them some date.

The only thing he could have done differently was say late 2024 from the start. BUT there is a good chance that this would have created a different problem internally at Reiza, since the deadline was Christmas it would have lead to people going overboard with features and the update would have been been delayed into lets say summer 2025

A good rule of thumb is that in software development EVERY major schedule or deadline will be overrun by several months, and then still require months of fine tuning afterwards. The only exception is when marketing has total control and can bully developers to release "what they have". This is what usually leads to absolute trainwrecks of release ( eg Flight Simulator 2024 ) that should have never happened.

 

Not sure if the absence of future updates will fix the toxic posts here, but I guess we’ll see ! It’s a bit of a shame to be honest... I felt that this connection with the developers was unique and brought a lot of value.

 

I still don't see what's so bad about some "toxic" posts, in fact I haven't seen any in this forum yet (did I maybe not look enough?)

People, it's the internet .. !! ..those things will never go away. Either you ban certain people (if they only want to create a bad athmosphere) or ignore some things you don't agree with. But that people are extremely impatient and ungrateful is not something that will go away. Probably your boss, your collegues and your customers are like that, your wife and your kids if you have them, they only ask "when is it ready?!!" meaning ""cause we need everything, all at once, and then we are not gonna bother to look at it cause we are lazy!" That's not a problem specific to Automobilista but the status quo in the world in general.

 

I'm sure some of the worse posts were deleted.
And while it's understandable to be disappointed because of the delays and unclear communications it doesn't excuse just being a ****ty human being and demand stuff in an unprofessional manner. Just because it happens in the wider internet doesn't mean we should be accepting it here.
A level of civilised behaviour is expected and some folks have been banned as a result.

I think we should in general be better people. We are annoyed about rammers and people misbehaving on track, why not expect the same on forums and have some decency to create a space where we can talk to developers freely and in civilised manner?
"Because the rest of the world does it" is not an acceptable answer.

 

This is the typical behavior of backless invertebrates.

 

I see, someone thought it was time for a little demonstration to prove the problem ..

But no, people with a strong back don't have to demonstrate it all the time by fear-barking at random trees.

 

Sadly, there are those who are quick to shout about their perceived 'rights', while oblivious of their responsibilities to the well-being of the group.
Anger is a secondary emotion. It masks fear. The trolls demonstrate their fear of not getting what they want when they want it.

 

I just have to say:
Saying and pillorying waht's bad is easy and stupid but saying what's good is a knack.

 

Sad to see the Dev-Updates go. Those were one of the things that differentiated Reiza from Kunos. I understand the reasoning behind it. It is always frustrating when you put a lot of time and effort, that you also could spend on the game itself, into those writeups only to get som toxic feedback (among a lot of positive messages, but the negative ones sting harder).

I hope you will keep the detailed Patch Notes. If Reiza also goes the Kunos-Route ("We changed some things, details are none of your business!"), I don't know if AMS2 will stay relevant.

So I am perfectly fine with no detailed dev-updates, just give me the same detail of patch notes you had so far!

Thank you for the work so far. LFM really gave a push to AMS2 multiplayer. I hope you will be able to fix the beggest issues quickly to keep up the hype!

 

It’s always the same , the few spoil it for the many.