Automobilista 2 October 2022 Development Update

You are right about the deadlines or even the fact that maybe the content should be quite clear by now, but I disagree about :

"many people would have appreciated that with the first extension (as an apology or to keep people's interest) the study gave specific data about the content but it was not like that ."

This is just an arbitrary thing you made up.

This is the information you got when you bought the PC2 season pass ("New cars and New tracks"):


AND this:



This is the information on future rFactor 2 DLC content at the moment:

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This is the information about the future iRacing content at the moment:

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ACC announced 3 new cars DLC for 2023. Also, the GT2 pack for 2023 was leaked by Stephane Ratel. If it wasn't, you wouldn't know about it.


There is a reason future DLC info is not announced in advance and that is that the deals are not finalized.

 

This is import to remember, I feel like if Reiza was any more open about the planned content it'd end up being worse on the long run because things change and people will interpret things changing as either laziness or incompiticy. Atleast, judging by my own experiences with the simracing community.

Buying a season pass is like taking a bet on a game and should be treated as such. You're saying (specifically in AMS2's case) "I trust where this game is going and want all of the extra content that's going to come out" hence why anyone should hold off on buying a season pass until they know they really love the game and know how future releases are gonna go.

While yes, I understand the frustration and certainly don't like season passes in general, it is import to remember that it is also your choice to make. This isn't to say Reiza is perfect, I didn't buy the season pass because I was unsure of the quality of the content and I didn't want to take that risk. But in all honesty when it comes to consumer-friendliness Reiza's pass surpasses the rest from my experience, I've never seen a dev team add extra parts to an expansion with no extra cost to those who have passes.

 

My gripes with MP come from the completely different experiences drivers have due to poor prediction, lag and warps...

Lapping a single car is far from a safe experience... No other cars in sight...

The driver doing the lapping can think they made a clean pass on a lapped driver because it looks like they ran wide to let you through, no touches, no damage, and the crew chief dead quiet...

Whilst the lapped car on the other hand got punted right up the rear in the middle of the corner,and suffer enough damage to retire...

In the Formula Ultimate 2022 both cars should of been retired with the damage occurring in a 6th gear corner... Yet because of the different experiences one retires, the other finishes with zero damage...

Driving in the middle of a pack is just asking to be punted off by the poor MP code...

 

I did pay for it and am fully happy. It's a lot more content and far more relevant than a partial BTCC set of cars and tracks I cannot care less about.
RF2 is far more expensive and intricated in the way you have to own and re-own stuff you don't use just to access a server.
LFM is what revitalized a hailing sim.
Good lesson to learn for Reiza: MP is what is driving big numbers nowadays and on top of that comes the free advertising of streamers, broadcasters of leagues and so on. Period.
Whether we like them or not these are the facts.

 

I disagree with this line of thinking...

Because a serviceable MP (which AMS2 doesn't have right now) will bring in new sim racers and give a spotlight on AMS2 which it will never get by focussing on SP (which is actually serviceable now with the new AI) and thus bring in the revenue to help with future licences... It will do more than just cover costs of a new architecture and infrastructure that goes with it... I don't expect top of the line, I just expect better than rFactor 1 or GTR2 when people have 350+ pings...

A continued focus on SP will keep AMS2 where it is in relative obscurity... With the content and technically of AMS2 it's just screaming out to have driver swaps and hosting the major esports series in all sorts of tarmac racing... Sure a SP mode could save and do a 24 hour race over time, and that would appeal to a lot of people... But there's an exposure effect that having a good MP code that attracts leagues will give AMS2 that no amount of SP coding can do...

 

I love the BTCC, never miss a race and would absolutely LOVE those tracks in AMS2...

But I'm not running to rF2 to pay the same or more (when it's all finished) than what I could for a proper BTCC game to a company that hasn't proved itself and has such bad press from what it has released under it's own name... My last experience with rF2 was that terrible that it all just adds up to a huge ball of nope... I miss the ISI days when I actually enjoyed that sim...

For all it's short comings it's had a strong MP code with lots of good features like driver swaps and livery exchanges...

However you add to my above point about exposure that a good MP code can bring... That's what makes sim racing titles money... The SP experience is not a sure fire way unless you plan on adding options and features to capture the casual markets attention AND have completely licensed a high profile series like F1, WEC, etc with all the tracks... The exposure difference from leagues wanting to host races that replicate the real races and those players word of mouth from having good experiences is vastly different from having a SP experience that replicates some lower profile series and partial high profile series without all the cars and tracks...

 

I can honestly say that MP code has not been an issue for me, not ever.

 

The key thing is giving those people a reason to choose it over Iracing, ACC, R3E and Rfactor 2, and I simply don't think AMS 2 will ever be able to come up with that reason. That isn't a fault to AMS 2, but the fact that multiplayer focused simracers are over-saturated. This does not mean they're bad, but it means there are very few simracers with quality offline experiences. Iracing has a limited selection of vehicles and tracks you can race on with AI, Rfactor 2 is a pain to setup and has AI that needs work, cannot speak for ACC (GT3's are not very interesting to me) and R3E but I've not heard the best of things when it comes to AI either.

And yes, you're right if we look at the bigger picture yes having a better multiplayer system would make there be more players and yes the multiplayer should be better, not many people are saying otherwise. But single player is important to me and a lot of others, if Reiza start ignoring single player I wouldn't be very happy.

There are a lot of things Reiza could've done differently that'd make them more successful. But I think a lot of those things end up taking away why I find AMS 2 so unique. Why I choose to keep it installed while Iracing remains unpaid and rFactor 2 is not installed. I may be in the minority here, but there needs ro be atleast one modern simracer with a great offline experience (and I'd rather not have to pay a subscription for it). AMS 2 has the best offline experience I've played since Nr2003 and I know the game has the potential to even surpass Nr2003. I see so much potential and in the end who can blame me for really wanting the game to meet that potential in a aspect that's been fairly neglected the past decade.

 

I'm not saying it's time to stop SP support... I am saying however for SP to get to a "great" standard AMS2's MP needs to be able to compete with those other titles in order for the exposure and revenue to come AMS2's way... Without that exposure and revenue I highly doubt that development of SP will reach a level where it could scratch a codemasters career experience...

I'm on the same front with iRacing and rF2... And I've spent far more time offline than online in AMS2... With the latest improvements though the AI is at a point where Reiza needs to switch to focussing on the MP experience to a level of competence that it's attractive to leagues... Not cease SP improvements but switch focus to MP so that the exposure and revenue is there to improve both to the level that this title deserves...

Sim racing is a small niche within gaming and the reason why the MP market is saturated is because that's where the money is for high levels of simulation within racing... AMS2 compounds that by having lots of smaller niche series and very few full grids from high level series and a lack of tracks to replicate entire seasons...

Unless they can snag the WEC licence with all cars and tracks SP even with an experience that comes close to scratching a codemasters career will not be enough to get the exposure that AMS2 deserves and can achieve with a MP experience that forces leagues to choose it... And having a WEC licence without the ability to simulate that online would be a complete waste in a majority of sim racers eyes... Thus creating more negative word of mouth than the positives of having the ability to save mid race of a 24hr of Le Mans and complete that race over a month...

 

I see it in the context of overpromising and underdelivering on DLC whereas it has been the opposite with the base game as a lot of nice new content and featues have been added for free as well as a lot of work on fixing the original limitations of the game.

It is a fact that 2.5 years after launch, the Season Pack has still not returned the early buyers more value than simply buying the individual elements separately at full price on release nor do we know exactly what it will include or when. Add to that, prices have been reduced during sale periods so it really made no economic sense to buy it at the beginning.

Perhaps it could be similar to supporting your favourite sports team - you renew your season ticket automatically without knowing the calendar, the rival teams or even your own team roster because you are emotionally as well as economically invested in the team. If the team makes a cup final, the bonus s a number of free matches. A casual supporter will pefer to wait till the fixtures list is announced or merely buy tickets match by match.

Continuing the sporting analogy, I understand that Reiza have focused on rebuilding their stadium before signing new players. Games like Project Cars or even Race Room have pursued the opposite strategy with lots of shiny red herrings to distract from the lack of game improvements.

 

Btw, since MP is a returning topic I am quite surprised there isn't enough hipe for those lines:

 

That is great news and hopefully it proves right and available soon, but the list of MP improvements that would be pretty urgent to make it a compelling proposition is quite a bit longer though.

• Sessions blocked
• People kicked in between Q-P-R
• De-Sync and DQ of players at the start of the race
• Rolling starts affected by the above and other general shortcomings like the possibility for drivers P1 to launch at any speed and in any position they want
• Replay/Broadcasting features missing
• Replays from different players showing different events

All of the above are not minor issues for people who look for high level MP..
Hopefully the prediction code improvement proves to be the cornerstone of a leap for the sim in MP, but to me it seems there is a lot to fight against still.

 

So according to you, Reiza has been finalizing the agreement with the brands for 2 and a half years... believe what you want, it seems to me that smoke was sold to us. I think that is more than enough time to have finalized those agreements.
All this sounds to me like you are defending the indefensible and that you are speculating about what you think has happened. Nobody from the studio has confirmed your theory.
on the other hand, it doesn't do much good to have your season pass announced so soon and that so much time later we continue with so many unknowns.
At the current rate, by the time all of the season pass content has been released, people may have gotten tired of waiting and it won't do any good.
In the meantime, we continue to receive free content, which is fine. But I don't think it's a higher priority to launch a car that no one has asked for with so many things pending.
Reiza's fanboys may see it well, but those of us who simply love the sims are having a hard time understanding certain movements

 

I think Reiza "fanboys" can see that Reiza has to care about all customers with finite resources. Those who got the Season Pass and those who didn't if we want the player base to expand. Otherwise Season Pass owners may remain on their own on this platform.
Hard not to see the point.

 

I for one am pleasently surprised by the addition of the GTP Corvette and will choose this car again and again over some GT3 cars which every sim offers.

 

But... Racin USA Part 3 includes Indianapolis, which was added only after the deal with IndyCar was struck somewhere in September-October 2022.

 

Maybe I'm a "Fanboy" but I bought in to AMS2 as a prerelease and now have over 800 hours of enjoyment from it. I have almost a 50/50 split between on and off line racing.

I'm not saying that there aren't things I would love to see added or changed, but at the moment I'm just enjoying the content and the racing.

 

People can like something without being fanboys.

 

The Brazilian legends is very obvious thought, it mentions GP cars from Brazilian champions, that woulda mean the most famous cars from Fittipaldi (the lotus or copersucar), Piquet (the Brabham), Senna Mclaren and maybe his lotus too.

but the rest yeah they left vague I'll agree with you.

hopefully the roadmap comes to make things more clear, we have an vague idea of what to come though, its not like Grid, or Forza season passes, that doesn't even give you a vague idea of what's coming (and yes I know they are not sims, I'm only making a comparison of their season passes).

 

When the Formula Retro Gen 3 came out about one year ago, there was already a screenshot of a car model that looked like the Brabham of 83 (with the wedge form). The blue car in the picture below.