Automobilista 2 April 2021 Development Update

Maybe that is because ur general public multiplayer experience sux major ballz since skill level is all over the place?

 

Me and several of us I mentioned in a prior post do this every week. We make them public to fill out the field. Everyone bails after 5 laps. It's usually just 3-5 of us finishing the race.

 

I think the focus and where AMS aways stood out was the rich\varied content and good driving experience and that they are delivering very well btw. for those that want to race the same car and same circuit again and again on multiplayer....AMS is not the best option for u. Maybe ACC with your very limited content....

 

Great update.
Pumped about the seasonal foliage combined with configurable date.
Will result in incredible vistas.

About Multiplayer, I must say I am exclusively a Single player myself. Simply because it allows me to drive the car/track/weather combo I want with the settings I want when I want, without being forced to what's popular online which always come to the same car/track combos. And although I can drive somewhat competently, I would always fear to ruin someone else race.

I can understand why many here want thriving multiplayer, but I do not think it can ever happen without it being given 100% focus by the developer. ACC and iRacing do it to great success but it is their core experience and they put all their resources behind it, and ACC has limited scope on purpose. Proper MP is a game within the game and requires massive efforts to cater to today's simracer expectations, which are extremely high and through the roof (well...not that roof!). Look at Studio 397 rF2 MP competition platform efforts: they put massive resources into it but are not there yet and may never be. Attracting simracers in MP is massively difficult. If you do not have a super slick package with a 1 click solution giving you access to populated race every hour of the day, people go elsewhere. And you have to keep them going back, maximizing so-called "engagement". You can bet iRacing and ACC have "engagement" experts in simracer psychology.
Maybe Reiza could give MP its full attention when the SP part of the game is mostly done and where they want it to be (which could take a long time).

 

I don't mind the game having a default controller setting that's aimed at casuals that play with driving aids enabled and use tap steering, but ideally there should be options to completely disable all driving aids and disable everything else that interfere with driver input (deadzones, dampers, filters, etc), give players the option to have raw input (a must have for players who use precision steering and no driving aids) and option to adjust individual settings from there as needed just like we can do in AMS1.

 

Please don't make these at times that only suit certain time zones? Like the beta MP test races, I never get a chance to jump in because they are at terrible times for me as a resident from down Under.

 

WoooooW Reiza, Holy freaking sh**t update. So BIG. I cannot even control my self. My dream track """long beach""" and the 911 RSR / C8R. Plus the long awaited "Audio" update. I wish the RSR would have an authentic engine sound. And please please please REIZA, those palm trees from PC2 are really really ugly. Please can you replace them. The ones from Forza Motorsport 7 are taller and prettier, especially the palms in the long straight.

 

Probably the best (IMO) development update post since I've owned the base game, so bear that in mind for the rest of my post. A lot of justification, explanation and reasoning about the sort of topics that we (players) benefit from ok mowing about. Priorities, licencing, delays... really appreciate these things being communicated.

The Good

Excellent, thank you for implementing this glaring oversight in SMS' games. They may only be units of my CPU's processor power, but AI drivers having some 'personality' and being recognisable is huge for my immersion; being able to have rivalries and, at least, consistency from race to race is massive to me.

To me, this is my biggest hope for the game, so this is great news. For a game that allows us to recreate racing history, this will add to my immersion no end. The gMotor method for this was so simple that I'm gutted it's such a pain for you to implement in this title, but thanks for considering it.

Content wise this is the big deal to me - it's the thing that causes me a pang of disappointment when I look at each Dev update and it feels like the class that was added the previous month with 2-3 cars is gone and forgotten. The DLC roadmap didn't give much hope for class expansion either (more about this later), so I'm happy to know this is in your thoughts. I'm happy to pay for expanded classes, just a grid with 10 Sauber C9s, when they didn't even build that many in real life, always nudges immersion a little. Some additional cars and some great generic ones like you've been filling single seater grids with would go a long way. I hope some of the ones planned are to complement the Cadillac DPi so that doesn't become a one make series. But thanks for the acknowledgement of the situation and addressing it.

So many of the Devs in sim racing at the moment have come from a modding background, it's great to see. Glad to hear you enjoy it, when software development (especially in this day and age) can often feel like a thankless process, so please know that for any negative feedback or moaning on the forum, there's a host of people who are really grateful for the game your team puts together and their passion for the project.

For the price point, this is excellent; four cars and three tracks, very good value. Well done for getting a good selection of contemporary cars in there too (even if this is the last year they will be contemporary). The tracks are a good coverage and the announcement of a three part series means I presume other PC2 based tracks like Watkins Glen, Sonoma, Texas, Indianapolis and maybe COTA will be added at some point, which will be an impressive roster if so.

I really appreciate these sorts of communications so thanks for doing this - I might even sort out a Facebook account for it! But look forward to reading more anyway.

Other improvements

Weather, gamepad support, optimisation, custom championship!!! Wow, so much to take in, can't wait to sample some of this. I really appreciate you not doing snow too - it's such a gimmick that no real series would race in such conditions, it's no doubt a huge task to implement that I'd never use.


THE BAD (it's all relative!)

Right, this is the big one to me. The Season Pass description for the USA pack reads "Pack featuring several North American cars and tracks, modern and historical". Now, I understand there'll be a mid-90s single seater in one of the other two packs, and possibly a stock car... but that description strongly implies historic tracks. One of my main hopes for AMS2 was it becoming the 'historic' game of choice, at least for 1970-2000 period (due to the tracks we already have). Now if this is the contents of the USA Sportscar pack... there's nothing for the historic racing nerd in me to be excited about at all. I know we don't know the content of the remaining two packs, but I really hope some of the tracks received historic versions (fingers crossed for a '70s Long Beach), but I guess hopes for any cars to boost the GT1 or Group C grids in these packs is out.

I know it seems stupid to complain about something in the game, but I'm genuinely disappointed to see a third of this content being devoted to oval racing. The amount of development work it will need to do this properly, with safety cars, AI and oval-specific rules is going to be huge. The alternative being the weird and somewhat pointless (IMO) versions like Gran Turismo and Project CARS implemented. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I'm going to remain cynical until I see it.

I'd really like an update on the historic track pack 'part one' that was planned. Some details about the number of circuits planned and whereabouts in the roadmap it now sits would be greatly appreciated.

In general, please communicate a little sooner when things don't go to plan and keep us in the loop a bit more. It's not a problem if you don't do a monthly development blog, but it's easy to drop a line on the forum that we shouldn't expect one until the end of the following month. And content plans changing is fine, but please give us details when they do. Cheers.

I know you've addressed it already and I do think these are good choices of cars, but I do just want to labour the point... it's more classes being added and, in the DPI case, another single car class. To end on a positive though (even though my post is intended to be), I'm excited to integrate this with the GT3 and GT4 classes already in game because you've been doing a great job with multiclass AI lately. A year ago this wouldn't have excited me as much because usage scenarios would have been limited, but that's no longer the case.


CONCLUSIONS

This is one of the best dev diaries I remember, even though there's little in there for the historic fan in me. The only contemporary content that interests me is circuits and sportscars and there's plenty covered here.

More importantly though, the game itself is becoming stable and now you're starting to talk about the type of improvements that are going to be huge to my personal immersion. I'm primarily an 'offline' driver so, whilst most of the titles out there spend all their time talking about 'eSports' (yuk) features, it's great to see in each update and development update just how much effort your team is putting into old school players and improving the experience for us.

It's clear that you're listening and reacting to player feedback too, and we can't ask for much more than that (even though I do!)...

Thanks

 

Really looking forward to the US open wheelers and the North American tracks where the open wheelers race.

 

Interesting comment.
Sounds very mature.

 

Yeah adding the date/time for each LB laptime should be pretty easy.
And there is even space enough for it on the LB lists.

 

That’s one of the reasons why I prefer single player races against good AI.
They HAVE to finish the race...

 

Did you tried cleaning up your documents AMS2 folder? Didn’t hear much complaints about dd wheels especially meaning some setting in your conf should mess things up. Maybe that is why it is found funny or disagreement rather than fanboyism. I use ts-pc and karsten 3.8 file pretty happy with that.

About the fanboyism you may be right it prevents to focus real issues and constructive feedback about AMS2. And looking at the requests or bugs are mostly trivial or suggesting very little improvements. So saying for one year this sim came a long way is easy in that mind. But I would expect much further and complain the real issues why this sim is not at its deserved place rather than defending it is the best sim(correction, personally most enjoyed sim). Haters gonna hate but I’m open any logical structured opinion instead emotional whines, sincerely your sim racer.

 

Sebring
Mosspark
That'll do.

 

Not sure what DD you have but no problems with my Simucube.

 

Phenomenal dev update, I knew there was a reason I don’t play other driving sims much any more.


Seasonal foliage will be a nice visual addition to the game, but I truly hope that Reiza don’t just blindly apply it to every track and ignore that many tracks have evergreen foliage. Bathurst in PC2 triggered my foliage OCD, eucalyptus trees are evergreen and don’t turn brown unless they’re dead. Driving that track in winter looked like a bushfire had gone through it.

 

Well this should hopefully be a good update if it's almost half the size of the game itself
We've all got our faith in you and the team though because we know you'll make it worthwhile!

 

Exactly my thoughts. I don't care what filters or helpers will be there but I want raw 1:1 input as an option. Yeah, it's hard and maybe I will not use it all the time but it's about settings. Do I need faster wheel return? I can set it. Not now.

ACC has casual helper for steering but you can disable it and it's pretty cool then. Options are always fine.

 

GTE, DPi, Daytona. Only means one thing: endurance.
Wonder if this DLC will boost AMS2 popularity. We still don't have driver swaps, but Laguna Seca, Daytona, Spa, Silverstone, Nurburgring, Imola, Montreal, Hockeinheim. To me these tracks look perfect for a 2.4h series DPi and GTE. And if this isn't enough for you imagine all these races with the amazing weather system and LiveTrack 3.0 AMS2 has, which is just the icing on the cake

The second part will be about single seater heritage. Please tell me CART is included.
I also wonder if you're gonna expand the first part adding the other DPi (Mazda and Acura) and the Ferrari GTE