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

Worse, the catastrophists now seem to believe that it was they who actually helped fix the issue by creating noise and posturing as sim racing martyrs for the cause. Instead of, you know, the guys on this forum who spent all that time diagnosing the differential problems and who got dunked on for daring to suggest workarounds or setup changes because "Madness Engine bad". And then created a few lazy videos of "wow AMS2 is so good now" before going back to play nothing but iRacing.

 

You guys are forgetting the guys in the middle like myself, who have been following this engine develop for over 10yrs and was finally excited to see it land in the hands of Reiza which I had full confidence in eventually getting all the bugs sorted and show us the true capabilities of the engine.

The down side is....I realize Reiza is a small team and will probably take a long time to sort things out.
One of the fallbacks was they stripped down several areas of the game and started from scratch and I think alot of users were expecting the game to start off where PC2 finished with all it's features enabled and just magically fix all the bugs over night.

I have faith it will get there and when that happens I'll regular the game more often.
ATM, I've just grown tired of beta testing and when time allows me, I prefer a game that's more matured with a well rounded selection of content covering different racing desciplines like oval, dirt and road

 

My unqualified guess is that we have a member here of a sim starting with "i".

 

In sim-Racing there are no members but only disciples of their respective gurus.

 

None are perfect, but I enjoy all of them for there certain aspects

That's why I have high hopes for this game as the engine is one of the most in-depth and can offer alot of things I'm interested in

 

Many good post here in thread with ref to OP.

Realized yesterday reading here & forum for 1.1/2 hrs that i could have been driving/testing something instead, so did that. (even drafted a too long reply with quotes).
then had second thoughts on posting.
Tried the latest challenge here #165 for a look
, Shoot, a track Ive had not even tried (long version) what a great tricky little track to learn.
Will have to come back and have some fun at this track.
Then later tried the long forgotten Sigma. Nice.

back to OP
In addition to all the posts and answer here already,
over a coffee this morning.

Diminishing Enthusiasm is a factor.
(there can be many reasons for this including life stuff/ circumstance)


caveat
This sim is big with much choice, I have not gone back to r/rf2, ac, acc, pc2, rr. etc and done more that 2 laps in them, for 2 years. I have lost enthusiasm for them. and blame ams2
Ams 2 still has me hooked for what I enjoy, when I stop for a week or 2 and come back, there's always something.
It would be nice to have a majic wand to bring back some long term sim racing friends who run leagues (rf2/ac) & tried it a year or longer ago and were put off and not tried it since.
1st, 2nd 3rd impressions have a long term negative effect if what they try does not please or enthuse.

 

I'm glad you liked it, so far it seems people have liked my track suggestions in that thread.
Imo Curvelo Long is one of the best Brazilian tracks along with Interlagos, Jacarepagua, Curitiba, and Goiania. From my experience those 5 tracks work well with a variety of car classes.

 

Participating in such a league is probably close to an ideal for many simmers - but one of the problems is that people have get to an agreement of what car to use.
The track schedule isnt so urgent(IMO).
And then there is allways the the time zone
Some years back I was a member of a US based league driving GTP cars (NR2003) 1st sunday each month.
Hehe but because of the time zone the races allways ended about 4 oclock in the morning European time.
Talking about commitment here

 

ByTheWay: I have just seen the best answer to the question in the headline above this thread.
Because I admit I can personally feel the gradual impact from the behaviour of Reiza as a company developing the racing game I have had some trust in.
Im not mentally involved enough to point fingers.
Instead I just care less and less.
Its post #962 Im refering to.
Automobilista 2 V1.3.3.0 RELEASED - Now updated to V1.3.3.1

 

Apologies if this has already been posted but mods or lack of them is the only reason i'll use sims other than AMS2.
Speaking of which, i'm sure i've recently read mods are now possible? If so, to what extent i.e. will it allow mod cars and tracks?

 

The Project CARS Modding Team has a web site with a bunch of random supercars for AMS2.

Track mods will most likely never happen.

 

First I want to preface my post by saying Reiza should make the type of sim theyre passionate about. We can discuss why its not as popular among a wider audience, but maybe they dont want to make a sim that is a commercial succes by any means. Which imo is something we should respect in this day and age.
Its up to all of us simracers if we actually want to play their content or not.

On the other hand this might not be a very popular post here, but its my opinion so who cares...

One of the main things thats keeping me into AMS2 atm is the performance in VR.
Sure the driving physics and FFB are good, Id say theyre different than, but up to par to the "All Mighty RF2"... Imo better than iRacing and AC, and Id say better than ACC in some aspects but they have such a different approach I dont even want to compare them.
But VR is where this game really stands out for me. I have ACC running decently in VR and RF2 as well, but honestly they dont even come close.

I had a bit of a break from AMS2 for quite a while, partly because I was out of the country for work but Ive also been sinking some more hours into RF2 and ACC. Which I feel will help me make a good comparison.
RF2 mostly got me because of the LeMans 24H, but for ACC that means mostly LFM, which brings me to the first reason I think AMS2 isnt as popular. I know this is being worked on but Online is very important for commercial succes in this day and age.
The problem with the online component is that its probably not solved by just implementing a good ranking system or even an LFM kind of 3rd party website. Even an iRacing type of system might work right now imo.

The selection of cars is really broad but its scattered over so many catagories you need to run multiclass races in order to get at least some variation on the grid.
I also think the majority of the "newer" sim racers isnt that much into the whole vintage selection of cars.
I enjoy driving them but imo theres so many of them that all feel the same to me.
I loved the addition of the CART cars, even though Ive never been into CART (42yo from Europe) I love driving them. But we have what? 16 of them now? I know theyre different generations but I honestly cant tell the difference, and Im sure a lot of people cant or simply dont care.
At the same time we have only 2 group C cars. How am I ever gonna race those in an actual grid?
Same for the GT1s. Same for the GT3s and same for the P1s etc.


The second thing Im noticing now when jumping back into AMS2 is polish.
Simple things like mapping buttons on my wheel or adjusting the HUD are a nightmare.
I spent a good 30 minutes last night trying to get the mini map on my HUD but I simply cant get it to show up. I had these same problems with PC2 and honestly I can understand how these things can turn people off right away.

While turning on the lights, adjusting in car ABS or TC, engaging DRS etc I get no visual feedback from the cockpit. The MOTEC display doesnt say anything. Some cars say they have certain functions in the car selection menu but I cant seem to get it to actually work etc.
You could argue RF2 is also horrible at these things and they still have a large playerbase, but RF2 is also 100 years old and has developped a cult following in times where this wasnt as important.

After spending time in ACC, which a large portion of simracers have these days, I got used to actually working MOTEC displays, driver animations that give me feedback that Im actually adjusting "in car systems". I realise this might be impossible in the Madness engine, but at least give me a light on the dashboard...
Half the time Im just guessing if Im adjusting anything at all.
As someone who drives without a hud (also in VR) these things are really important and shouldnt be THAT hard to implement.
(I say I drive without a HUD but make an exception for the minimap in case I have to rejoin the track.)


The last thing I want to bring up is default setups.
I know everyone is super hardcore here and knows exactly what theyre doing in terms of setups, but a lot of people dont know what an anti roll bar does. Let alone how suspension geometry or differential works.
When cars need a good setup to drive properly, it puts people off.
Decent default setups would go a very long way imo.
I know theres videos and I know you can get setups from the leaderboards, but how good is a TT leaderboard setup gonna do over a 1hour race? I imagine my tyres exploding after about 20 minutes.
This is something where an improved version of the PC2 race engineer could also make a huge difference imo, at least for me.


I really appreciate this sim for what it is even though its not perfect for me.
So far Ive only put around 130h into it compared to around 500 in ACC, but pretty much all of those 130h were spent on track alone, spread out over 5 or 6 different cars. (GTs, Prototypes and open wheelers)
The ai is actually really good imo, even though their performance changes drastically from track to track, and I have been enjoying racing with them more and more. But having to restart 3 times to adjust ai level and agression gets old fast and makes me want to race real people again.
But in the end I will always come back to a game like ACC for the multiplayer component and overall polish.

 

Just about all classes are incomplete or even featuring only two or three cars. We have recently gained so many American open wheelers (which are awesome) yet GTE, GT3, GT4 etc. are very poorly represented. Group C (two cars only) could use a company of 787B, 88C-V and R91CP - simmers like them. Some classes only have one car. There's no "modern" LM prototypes like Audi, Porsche, Toyota - these are very popular. At a first glance, when looking at the existing classes and available cars one might be forgiven for thinking "arcade". AMS2 is my number one game and I've been loyal for years but I believe lots of gamers are attracted to other sims for that reason.

PS. Please don't see this as complaining. I'm just staying on subject.

 

No wonder we got a bit impatient, since new contenders in the mentioned vehicle classes where prematurely teased last year.

 

That is a really good post with good feedback.

 

I don't see it as complaining at all. The whole idea of a forum is for feedback and I think it is beneficial to post both pros and cons.

 

I don't know if the Mazda fits (we would need newer cars to compete with) but the Nissan and Toyota Group C cars would be cool, as would a Jaguar.

The Nissan GT1 is coming soon. It was in some recent beta release notes so I was surprised to see it missing from 1.3.4.0.

I go back to PC2 a lot but recently it's harder to do. Mostly due to recent AMS2 improvements. I use the Nurburgring for testing and normally just race for a few minutes if I am testing the game. However, if I make it to the straight it means I wasn't paying attention and was totally immersed lol.

I made it to the straight multiple times with both the 2002 and the '74 RSR. The replay with the 2002 was particularly enjoyable to watch.

 

The mods are a nice effort, but as usual, free MODs are typically 50-70% of the quality of the game developers; texture, modelling, physics, sound issues, etc... Plus being a massive pain to install and update in AMS2. Never been a big fan of free mods. There has been good paid ones in the past, but they are rare and usually infringe on licensing and copyright laws.

 

Yeah the mods are just ok to me. I tried them but didn't crave driving them. If there were mod tracks though I think I'd use those more.

 

For me personally, its dialling in the ai difficulty which takes ages for one track, knowing that the next track I'll have to do it all over again. Its just not worth the hassle. Until some sort of mode (career? call it what you want) comes out that has a collection of cars and tracks that have actually been dialled in and that wont be touched again by updates that screw it all up, its fundamentally an exercise in frustration for me.
Thats just me, but the question was asked