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

He's got over 40k subscribers and I hope his channel continues to grow! He's gonna love the upcoming DLC...

 

And prior to the above video that he launched a few hours ago, his last AMS2 video was………….. One and a half months ago and prior to that video, a further two months ago!
I have no doubt that when V1.4 gets released it will be just like V1.3, lots of people talking and typing about it, you tubers will be talking and making videos about it and there will be a great buzz again.
That buzz builds momentum, but unless the issues and concerns myself and others have raised are at least vastly improved and show real promise, just like what happened with V1.3, within a month of the latest build releasing, you tubers and curious sim racers will again lose interest in the game and move on.
Once you cut through the excitement of new toys and new build, there’s simply nothing to do, nothing to aim for or achieve, no one to compete with, no motivation or hook to keep you coming back, nothing to keep you playing and improving your craft and the predictable, procedural and pack racing AI gets very boring very quickly.
You tubers will then stop playing and talking about it and go back to the sims that bring the views and slowly but surely no one will be playing or talking about AMS2 again and this debate will undoubtedly cycle on until 2023.

 

Better netcode and better dedi tools, right now multiplayer doesn't work well as AMS1 and this is the main cause IMO (of course).

We were used to have a lot of flexibility and customization paired with stability and working netcode, missing all the above is very difficult to have some traction, specially because AMS1 was very niche title and who moved from it to AMS2 (without being plagued by the "it is PC2 engine so it is shiFt" prejudice) was expecting at least the same base features wise which is clearly missing.

 

When I join, I don't know most of the tracks. If you are a beginner it is a bit intimidating. Some tracks are very specific to some car series and mix-matching all cars and tracks would be a nightmare challenge to drive. I'm not interesting in driving the legendary F1 2004 in Nordschleife.

Some AMS cars (and even some tracks) are "curiosities" and "one off" but it's lacking a lot of very famous motorsport cars/tracks that everyone dreams to drive. Specially if no DLCs for SPA Monza n Silverstone. I understand due to licencing some things can't be added and in the end it becomes crippling to AMS. Instead AMS tries to have a bit of everything to please everyone and focuses more on its own home market.

But the worst part IMHO is the multiplayer platform. Specialy after people mentioning AC.
This is very clear.
In AC after joining, in 10 secs famous tracks and cars pop up, even if middle of a race, you can join and do some warmup practice laps and get a setup done. Some servers have auto-kick mechanisms for crashers. Others have admins that can kick/ban crashers. People share setups in chat.

AMS is the oposite, if there is a race going with car/track that you want, you have to wait it out or spectate it. If you wanna know how long it takes you have to refresh the MP lobby and even if you join and wait, the host can change track and if you don't want that race anymore it's just wasted time. If they don't put practice or qually you won't have time to fix setup if you want to. If you crash and pit because you got trolled or you just too bad at the game but want to keep driving, go singleplayer because after pits you are a spectator again. This is so frustrating and clunky it's an infuriating experience when compared to the streamlined AC where you're more time driving and less time spectating and looking for the race.

OFC people will leave the multiplayer lobby, specially if only 2 or 3 drivers join their favorite race of choice they've made. 2 or 3 guys unless they are very even in skill, it can be a very boring race.
In the end, it's easier to go into singleplayer races to do the race you want with a decent grid wich is frustrating if you were looking for multiplayer.

IDK how all other sims work, but I've raced online a lot more times in LFS(f2p), RRRE(f2p), even if the content is a lot more limited there but I just jump in and I'm in close racing and if someone is crashing a lot on purpuse and there is an admin on they get kicked or banned and that is perfect.

I think it comes from PC2 engine. IDK if I ever tried online racing on PC2 but maybe it is the same system where people are locked out of the sessions.
IDK if in iRacing it happens all the same, maybe it is the same thing but it won't be as damaging if the population is much higher and you always find races happening.

Another big part of the online population is sucked up by the F1 titles. And it's pretty simple, even if most sims get the driving better they don't get the race rules about taking pits, flags, damage and race engineer seriously. Even in iRacing grass simulator the race experience is closer to the F1 games regarding rules and flags and having those realistic elements makes a huge difference in making all the race events more meaningful and impactful.

Other people crashing has real consequences instead of just ignore them let them log out and lets race on. Some AC servers have been getting a mod for virtual safety car and some custom series used to run that.

A game from 1998s BTCC called Toca2 for PS1 did a better job with dynamic weather and forced pitstop rules in it's own championship than almost every other driving game ever. Including from sims to arcades from ACs to GTs. In 98s Toca2 if you hard-crashed 3or4 times into the back of another car you would get black flaged. In 24 years driving games regressed in some areas.
But these are already contention points for the whole sim racing industry.

In AMS2 if compared directly with AC it loses in the joining races (lots of famous cars and tracks that every kid dreams of driving) and crashing but rejoining from pits after 1min, and also AC has a ton more tracks and cars (in Ultimate edition) without the mods and even then it's so old it's dirt cheap and runs on incredibly low end machines.

ACC is way heavier than AMS2 but again it's easier to join anything, besides, the focus regarding car tracks is very specific so anyone who's got ACC already knows the content already knows what they want and the MP is very focused everyone will do those races and drive those cars.
(In AMS n AC you might find cars or tracks that are driven a lot less than other content)

Content manager has addons for certain leagues like RaceEU, SimRacingSystem, World Sim Series... IDK if they are still active but they used to be at least last year. Getting ideas of car/track combos and some "sort of" online championship series for certain car groups.

IF AMS2 got on top of the multiplayer thing more people would stick around the lobby and sessions and with bigger numbers lurking for the next race more people will try to race and eventually more will join and sessions get bigger and then people try to open more sessions with diferent cars and tracks after they get bored of GT3 Monza GT3 SPA etc... but then the begginners join those races and the veterans are doing F1 Paul Richard...

But If instead everytime you try to join a race "oops Q ended" "spectate now" wait... "track changed" then you leave multiplayer lobby and never enter a session and session numbers are low and nobody is joining anything and it becomes such a sad story and ppl go try singleplayer.

Driving is fun, tracks and cars are fun, some are a lot more obscure and unknown to the majority of people but nowdays nobody is getting into sims because of the single player experience unless it's some amazing carreer mode like GT series used to have.

Sry for the long rant, it pains me to see the lobby not populated well enough. Half of the time I join multiplayer I get more frustration out of not racing and in the end the only way to do that race is in singleplayer. If singleplayer then carreer, objectives, progression becomes the most important thing.
Nobody buys AC to do singleplayer carreer, same for most other simulation titles.
Singleplayer content people flock to stuff like Forza maybe PC2 style carreer IDK... no PC game has the GT style carreer that is a market that is untouched but nobody dares to brake ground trying it... the development cost might be huge.

AMS2 is stuck in the middleground, bettween single and multiplayer compared to other sims. There is no intense focus on each side wich leaves each side without the strenght to fight off more focused offerings from other titles that might have more engaging singleplayer content or an easier time doing a lot of multiplayer races with cars and tracks a lot of people wanna race.
Physics and FFB would have had to be perfect from day 0 for this kind of approach even have a chance at capturing considerable market.

 

I agree with a lot of what you say, but I think it's a bit exaggerated. Only MP for AC? If that was the case people would probably stop making the incredible free roam tracks they do, considering MP in AC is basically Shutoko, Nordschliefe and Akina lol (not really but log on, sort by connected players and those are always at the top). I think SP is pretty significant in AC, especially with rally stages, traffic maps, etc.

AC and Forza Horizon are pretty even (the base is evenly split between 4 and 5 on PC, otherwise they would double AC). The new Forza will be a PC title and will probably give GT7 a run for their money, they just need to pay attention to the GT7 backlash and avoid something similar in their new game.

That all being said, I look forward to the upcoming improvements on the MP side and would love for the base to double. The maximum/overall count is of course important, especially to those in Europe since the peak for all sims is around 7/8pm for them. For me however, the minimum count is the most important since that typically coincides with PST evenings (it's hard to join MP lobbies at noon lol).

 

The best and only way I can sum up AMS2 in its current state from my own personal experiences over the last two years and from reading other users comments in this forum and elsewhere online, is that it’s a very strong hot lap sim, for both off line immersion and for online time trial leaderboards.

 

I absolutely never want to see them waste effort on implementing a feature to join races in the middle and drive. All it will do is allow trolls to join a lobby, crash into everyone, then leave to ruin the next lobby.

 

I also strongly disagree that the peer2peer hosted lobbies in AMS2 are in any way bad. The ability to quickly change car or track or weather is a feature, not bad. It also provides you with the opportunity to try out new combinations quickly.

Multiplayer in its current state needs this (in order of need):
1. Kick option for the host in order to ban crasher and laggers.
2. One minute timer at the end of each session so that the lobby moves on automatically if the host ist AFK, and no one gets stuck forever.
3. Once or twice a week, there's a "Reiza-sanctioned race" that gets promoted on the forums and on social media, which you can sign up for; maybe divided by continents in order to help stability.
4. Ability to create a multiplayer championship, so everyone knows what's coming and no one immediately leaves after one race.
5. No lobbies that you cannot join being shown on the multiplayer page.
6. Ability to adjust starting grid.
7. Opportunity to assign a replacement host should the original host leave the server.

 

I can’t deny that in AMS2 setting up a server is so easy to do. The big problems begin with all the issues you face once in the server, which have been listed by myself and many others many many times in this thread and elsewhere.
As I type this now on a Friday night at 7pm U.K. time, there are lobbies in raceroom with 30 cars, a few lobbies with 20 - 30 car grids and a total of 220 odd players spread wonderfully across many varied scheduled lobbies. As you can see in the photo of AMS2 lobbies that I’ve just taken, total players online is practically the same as one lobby in raceroom. ( I can’t take a photo of raceroom due to me being a vr player and you don’t get a monitor mirror, but feel free to validate my numbers for yourself ).
Look at the low or no ratings required to join these AMS2 lobbies, I can only imagine the quality of racing in those lobbies.
It’s not that I disagree with you about the terrible state of ams2 online, it’s that the vast majority of the online sim racing community don’t agree with you either.
I don’t own ACC or I Racing but I imagine they are substantially larger than raceroom’s player count.
It can’t be that sim racers have got it completely wrong and are playing the wrong sims surely?

 

It's not wasted, you aren't thinking about it from a server admin perpective. Give the DS admins the ability to allow or not allow the player to join a during the middle of a race. If the lobby is password protected and someone gets disconnected, they can log back into the multiplayer race and start from the pits instead of being stuck spectating. I don't know how many times people in my league have been annoyed by this because they get disconnected during the middle of a race for some reason or another and can't continue racing.

For the admins that don't want to allow people to join during the middle of the race, they can turn OFF the feature in the settings. AC and ACC allow you to do that. It would be nice if AMS2 allowed you to do that as well. It doesn't have to be all or nothing, public lobbies can be setup either way. Give us the choice to either turn it ON or OFF.

That way if you don't like someone joining in the middle of a race, you can join a hosted lobby that doesn't allow people to join in the middle of a race. At least you'll have that choice.

 

Well the solution to that is to fix the issues that cause disconnects, not to start implementing complicated features that will inevitably be left on in open lobbies and that just enable trolling. If you disconnect from a race, your race is ruined anyway.

 

Not so easily done as the nature of the internet is based on "best effort" communication. Packet loss, erratic latency, jitter and congestion are all part of the game. People get disconnected when playing iRacing which has some of the most mature multiplayer infrastructure. So what you suggesting isn't realistic as even Reiza has to set thresholds in the game where a person is considered disconnected if a minimum threshold isn't met. That has to be done so it doesn't ruin the race for people with decent connection to the server. I'm sure nobody wants to race against a person who randomly teleports on the race track due to high latency.

Also in case you are worried about these features being left ON, perhaps Reiza can have the default setting turned OFF. Or show which online lobbies allow mid race joining and which ones don't, so folks like you that don't want others to join mid race can only select server that don't allow join. Having more options is never a bad thing, IMHO.

As a server admin, I don't find any of these configurations complicated and actually welcome more options to control. Do you happen to host a AMS2 DS?

 

8 out of 10 most popular videos in this (very good) channel is about assetto corsa...

 

He seems to really like AMS2, so hopefully as the rest of the 2022 DLC is released there will be more AMS2 videos. Historic Nurburgring and Spa in addition to the historic track layouts DLC will be fun, in addition to whatever cars they inevitably add...

 

99% of open lobbies are 5 lappers...

It is incredible how many seem to link MP only to open lobbies, when the most satisfying and incredible online experience comes from league racing (or scheduled longer races, to some degree).

While I agree the solution is to find the root cause of the disconnections, I completely disagree with the argumentation of the last part of your post.

 

If and once they ever sort out multiplayer, hopefully then they can expand into esports and finally be looked at as a serious and proper sim.
I totally agree with you about your multiplayer statement and how people especially on here think it’s the least important element of a sim and limited to public lobbies chasing ratings, mainly because all they want to do is hot lap all day with different weather and take a screenshot of it and put it on Facebook and Twitter.
Multiplayer is the absolute base for success and long life!
From fancying a quick race with friends or in public rated lobbies that you can trust for a good race, or a scheduled rated race, special events, you tubers racing with their communities where you make more friends and set up branch off lobbies from there.
Then once that base is established be a top brand for E sports where the aliens and pro’s race and who sim racers look up to and want to emulate and will want to race in the same sims and save up for the same equipment as them etc.
All of these things combined with stable servers give the sim long life, large player bases and revenue streams from the sales it generates. Just ask the ever ageing sims iracing, raceroom, rf2, ac and potentially when it’s older ACC too.
All of the above listed online features, not a single one of them is provided by AMS2 and it’s not a coincidence as to why it’s not competing with the above listed sims that do offer all / most of those features.
Currently all AMS2 does is attract hotlappers and the project cars 2 online lobbies of death wreckers and it’s why no one is talking about this sim or taking it seriously.
The reasons I get so frustrated with this game is that in the time that I play it and hot lap with it to fiddle with set ups, I really really enjoy it! But once I’ve got my setup dialled in, there’s literally nothing left for me to do and that’s the really frustrating part. I can either choose between the very dead and very broken on line features or the very very predictable and procedural AI. This sim could and should be an absolute must own all round beast of a sim!
But just like the rest of the community, I lose interest in it, because there is nothing to do or achieve post hot lapping and tuning a set up and being amazed by the graphics.

 

i love xcom2 and civ5. i play them only in SP. why should i care how popular they are?
im not a funboy or a share holder. im just a single player
why should i care if AMS2 is popular or not if i only want to race the AI? AI is always there, full numbers, always ready to race me any way i want, wherever i want.
renato says reiza is OK financially and i know the game will continue to update and develope even if it not gain any more popularity.
personally i am in this thread and talking about popularity because i want to find more people in multiplayer.
you?

BTW and because some people think that youtube will raise popularity, in reiza's official YT channel last video uploaded 8 (eight) MONTHS AGO...! and i should expect from the "youtube influencers" to promote AMS2?

PS: three days ago a studio called "gummy bear" (they describe themselfs as "a Romanian-based studio comprised of a few folks, keeping each other honest while we make dumb video games") released their first ever game on steam the "bear and breakfast". in three days 10 proffesional critics (including the very popular game spot, the guardian, polygon, rock paper shotgun) wrote full reviews about it.
now guess which racing sim has not even one proffessional critic review more than 2 years after release... (source: metacritic.com)

 

I almost feel like that's a good thing, especially if the next update is going to blow everyone's minds. When it finally starts to get more attention it will hopefully fare much better against the competition than it does now.

I can completely understand how they are currently operating. Imagine finding a solution to the sticky diff issue and some underlying tire bugs after your title had been out for over a year? You could ignore it, rush out your promised DLC and move on (let's see what Grid Legends does, that game has an abysmal player base but they promised 4 major DLCs...). Let's be happy they chose to fix it, probably at the expense of delaying the marketing push.

Would you want to market something you just found out was flawed? Especially when you have content that has been fixed receiving glowing reviews? No, you probably want to double-down on rolling out those fixes to everything, which takes time.

Then you can start the marketing push, as you will be doing so from a much more confident position. Of course people will complain, that's normal. They are really close to the point where the complaints get drowned out by compliments so maybe there are some MP fixes incoming?

If people are having crashes in MP due to netcode, that had to be exposed during oval beta testing, along with the current AI issues people keep complaining about. I'd imagine those issues could be missed in normal road course racing but due to the nature of oval racing those issues might now be deemed unacceptable and (if we're lucky) will have fixes in-place before originally planned.

 

Let the title be finished first. Having all online buzz created with promotion when the product is unfinished is just a wasted effort.

We all remember what happened to Cyberpunk 2077 and it's now difficult for CDPR to undo the damage. Let's let Reiza play the long term game and reap the fruits when AMS2 is ready.