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Project Cars 2 |OT| Buggy Racing At The Four Seasons

Mascot

Member
https://youtu.be/3ZV329jI6Qg

This is the most British review I've ever seen for a fucking videogame.

That was hilarious, but he talked a lot of sense. I can listen to Geordies swearing all day long - I just wish the profanity wasn't bleeped out.

WTF was going on with the hyperaggressive LoD on the Formula cars though? And how come the front wheels of the opponents kept disappearing? Crazy.
 

GHG

Member
The pit stop looked janky too. The wheels were changed without actually being removed from the car..?

Yep, you are correct lmao.

There are so many things in this game that are 'nearly'. It's still better than no pit crew at all though.
 

fresquito

Member
Yep, you are correct lmao.

There are so many things in this game that are 'nearly'. It's still better than no pit crew at all though.
Everything pitstops related needs some polishing. Sometimes the pit limiter message disappears, you quit pit limiter and throttle and get DQ because you are still within pit lane limits. Other times pit crew is not present, even though you set it to all. Or the icon goes transparent and it is very hard to recognise what's your pit.

This is how many things are at the moment. Not game breaking, but irritating. And before danowat posts his list again, I'm talking about PC version.
 

danowat

Banned
This is how many things are at the moment. Not game breaking, but irritating. And before danowat posts his list again, I'm talking about PC version.

Look, there is no need for the passive aggresiveness, the problems I am having are real, and I am not the only one.

Maybe my threshold for issues is just low, I was quite enjoying the Ginetta Jr's in career, despite the marginal improvements in pad controls, so went to do the affinity event, the Ginetta GT4 is barely drivable, so chucked AI to zero and tippy toed my way round, ok, minor issue I thought, I'll do the Ginetta GT3 invitational, spent 15mins qualifying in the wet to snatch 4th place on the grid, only for the game to demote me to 21st for some reason, ok, let's try the race from 21st on the grid, the AI is terrible, they can barely get through the first corner, ok, try something else, the British classic invitational, that might be fun, get to the 3rd corner, the track is completely flooded, my car won't go through it, but it doesn't stop the AI.

Ok, let's bin the career for the time being and spend some time in private testing trying to get the controls right, having to adjust the settings, exit out, contend with the 30s of menu lags once the game loads, load game, adjust, exit, lag, adjust, exit, lag, FFS, while adjusting I noticed that the two settings control damping and wheel weight do barely anything, both ends of the spectrum are barely any different, the sensitivity can't go low enough, bringing up the telemetry page shows that, desite a tiny movement on the stick, and a tiny movement in the "wheel bar", the car veers all over the track, it's barely better than PC1 is many respects, and in some its worse.

Maybe by threshold for issues like this is too low, but yeah, fuck this game, lifes too short to waste time scaling a wall like that, if these are minor irritations, I'm a monkies uncle..

edit : oh yeah, forgot about the blue screen crashes, how could I forget those.
 

Azzawon

Member
Had a race at Silverstone in the wet last night in career with the Ginetta GT5. Race started off fairly wet but kept on raining to the point where the entire Wellington straight was impossible to drive down due to aquaplaning. Actually had to crawl at 20mph and was still fighting to keep the car in a straight line. I would post footage but Xbox DVR hasn't managed to load it for some reason.

What fuckery is this, SMS? I know you don't do much testing, but come on.
 

danowat

Banned
Had a race at Silverstone in the wet last night in career with the Ginetta GT5. Race started off fairly wet but kept on raining to the point where the entire Wellington straight was impossible to drive down due to aquaplaning. Actually had to crawl at 20mph and was still fighting to keep the car in a straight line. I would post footage but Xbox DVR hasn't managed to load it for some reason.

What fuckery is this, SMS? I know you don't do much testing, but come on.

It's a known issue.
 

danowat

Banned
That's good to know. I'd love to know what actually causes the problem in the first place, could it be related to the fact we are constantly stuck with the Dallara DW12 setup for COTA?

It's something to do with the way the tyre model reacts with the surface water, it doesn't affect the AI because they are on a different (simplified) tyre model.

As an aside, the tilt controls are 100% better to drive with than the analog stick controls, bizarre, it doesn't exhibt the "flicking" on the steering you get with the pad, despite steering inputs being very similar (on the telemetry screen steering bar)
 

Mascot

Member
Everything pitstops related needs some polishing. Sometimes the pit limiter message disappears, you quit pit limiter and throttle and get DQ because you are still within pit lane limits. Other times pit crew is not present, even though you set it to all. Or the icon goes transparent and it is very hard to recognise what's your pit.

This is how many things are at the moment. Not game breaking, but irritating. And before danowat posts his list again, I'm talking about PC version.

Things like this are why I'm happy to wait a few months, even deep into next year, in the hope that they'll eventually be resolved. I'm sure I'd enjoy the core racing with a few personal tweaks to setups, audio and FFB, but I'm equally sure the little irritations would sour the overall experience. I only applied to refund my copy because it doesn't make sense to have it sitting there unused for several months when in all likelihood it'll be cheaper to re-buy in a few months time.

I'd have been happy if pCARS 2 was delayed until next year if it meant a more polished launch, so in effect that's what I'll be waiting for. In the meantime I'll think of the existing product as early access or an open beta where millions of users will be testing the game and reporting bugs for me.

:p

But yeah - extremely disappointed that SMS don't seem to have learnt from pCARS 1. It's like they just can't help sabotaging their own products.
 

danowat

Banned
Ooooo there's a workaround for the menu lag on the PS4.

Delete all your single player data and don't use career.

You couldn't make it up.
 

Lego Boss

Member
Look, there is no need for the passive aggresiveness, the problems I am having are real, and I am not the only one.

Maybe my threshold for issues is just low, I was quite enjoying the Ginetta Jr's in career, despite the marginal improvements in pad controls, so went to do the affinity event, the Ginetta GT4 is barely drivable, so chucked AI to zero and tippy toed my way round, ok, minor issue I thought, I'll do the Ginetta GT3 invitational, spent 15mins qualifying in the wet to snatch 4th place on the grid, only for the game to demote me to 21st for some reason, ok, let's try the race from 21st on the grid, the AI is terrible, they can barely get through the first corner, ok, try something else, the British classic invitational, that might be fun, get to the 3rd corner, the track is completely flooded, my car won't go through it, but it doesn't stop the AI.

Ok, let's bin the career for the time being and spend some time in private testing trying to get the controls right, having to adjust the settings, exit out, contend with the 30s of menu lags once the game loads, load game, adjust, exit, lag, adjust, exit, lag, FFS, while adjusting I noticed that the two settings control damping and wheel weight do barely anything, both ends of the spectrum are barely any different, the sensitivity can't go low enough, bringing up the telemetry page shows that, desite a tiny movement on the stick, and a tiny movement in the "wheel bar", the car veers all over the track, it's barely better than PC1 is many respects, and in some its worse.

Maybe by threshold for issues like this is too low, but yeah, fuck this game, lifes too short to waste time scaling a wall like that, if these are minor irritations, I'm a monkies uncle..

edit : oh yeah, forgot about the blue screen crashes, how could I forget those.

I have to agree with the sentiment about wasting time with a game which is just not worth the time or commitment. The first PCars was a mess and there is no way I'm going near this one with SMS's record of non-existent post release support.

Ian Bell has a (rightfully) poor record when it comes down to development and actually giving af about the customers of his games and if danowat is even half right in the faults that he has listed here, then this game is not worth it.
 

fresquito

Member
Things like this are why I'm happy to wait a few months, even deep into next year, in the hope that they'll eventually be resolved. I'm sure I'd enjoy the core racing with a few personal tweaks to setups, audio and FFB, but I'm equally sure the little irritations would sour the overall experience. I only applied to refund my copy because it doesn't make sense to have it sitting there unused for several months when in all likelihood it'll be cheaper to re-buy in a few months time.

I'd have been happy if pCARS 2 was delayed until next year if it meant a more polished launch, so in effect that's what I'll be waiting for. In the meantime I'll think of the existing product as early access or an open beta where millions of users will be testing the game and reporting bugs for me.

:p

But yeah - extremely disappointed that SMS don't seem to have learnt from pCARS 1. It's like they just can't help sabotaging their own products.
Sounds very logical.

On the SMS learning thing... I wouldn't word it that way. One can deduce that it's the same all over again and it's not. The base game in PC1, albeit fun and exciting and exilaration, was fundamentally flawed/broken. This time around it's not like that. I would go as far as saying the game is in an overall better place at launch than PC1 was after all the patching.

Still, the game needs more cooking, it's pretty obvious.

Today I tried setup changes for the first time and I was greatly surprised by how effective the changes are. A few degrees change in the camber was noticeable right away in the car behaviour. Doing setups should be easier now if every small change makes a difference. On the other hand, making setups should be harder because the same reasons (if you don't know what you are doing).

I also noticed that I don't understand a thing of the differential section. Seems like I will be using the engie quite often xD
 

Mascot

Member
I have to agree with the sentiment about wasting time with a game which is just not worth the time or commitment. The first PCars was a mess and there is no way I'm going near this one with SMS's record of non-existent post release support.

Ian Bell has a (rightfully) poor record when it comes down to development and actually giving af about the customers of his games and if danowat is even half right in the faults that he has listed here, then this game is not worth it.

Ref the bolded, the post-release support for pCARS 2 was phenomenal. There was, what, a year of monthly patches, improvements and additional content. So no matter what criticism SMS deserves, post-release support isn't one of them.

I believe they also wanted more patches for the Shift games but EA blocked those (and fucked up the original games by insisting on last-minute changes).
 

xrnzaaas

Member
I'll end my time with the borrowed copy with something positive. I really enjoyed this Vintage Lotus classic Monza invitational - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8Mcbv6qXNs

What's funny is that you can spot at least four bugs in this single video:
- Glitchy tires at the countdown to the race. I had this many times (also while driving), but from what I can tell it's only a visual bug.
- Broken windshield from the "previous" race.
- Wet AI having an atomic start.
- Crashfest in the first corner. It happens 9 out of 10 times and it's really up to being lucky and avoiding crashing into someone or finding yourself on the AI's radar. ;)

photomode is the prefect mode to see how ugly this game really is on a og ps4.. Its really hard to take a good picture with all the jagged edges

AC on the PS4 and XBOX looks better then PCars 2

I have to agree with that. I took a few pics in the photo mode, but then I looked at them more closely in the capture gallery and deleted all of them. I'm not sure if the game is uglier than AC, but it's not a looker for sure.
 

Makikou

Member
The thing that still boggles me the most is that people wanted to believe that SMS would actually ship something that wasn't full of bugs & issues.

Otherwise it seems like a decent hotlap sim, I enjoy the FFB more than on AC as AC is too dampened and nothing comes through it (T300RS/CSWV2.5)
 
Things like this are why I'm happy to wait a few months, even deep into next year, in the hope that they'll eventually be resolved. I'm sure I'd enjoy the core racing with a few personal tweaks to setups, audio and FFB, but I'm equally sure the little irritations would sour the overall experience. I only applied to refund my copy because it doesn't make sense to have it sitting there unused for several months when in all likelihood it'll be cheaper to re-buy in a few months time.

I'd have been happy if pCARS 2 was delayed until next year if it meant a more polished launch, so in effect that's what I'll be waiting for. In the meantime I'll think of the existing product as early access or an open beta where millions of users will be testing the game and reporting bugs for me.

:p

But yeah - extremely disappointed that SMS don't seem to have learnt from pCARS 1. It's like they just can't help sabotaging their own products.

I don´t want to play the defense force card, but i don´t understand (or can´t relate as well) the issues some racing enthusiasts are having with this game.

There are annoying bugs, but i guess when the bugs are easily fixable i just don´t really care about them.

I can´t overlook how good it is on the things that actually matter. For every turd car (Formula A) there´s about 10 sublime ones, better than what´s out there in any sim.

The Caterham 620 is just absurd, i did a couple of races online yesterday and it was the most fun i´ve had in a racing game in a long time.

What works well in this game works a step above everything else (and i do love AC), so i´m glad they released because i wouldn´t want to wait until January or so for some bug fixes.

All i say is give it a try, the racing itself is good, this feels a lot like GT5 - the game had hundreds of bugs but we enjoyed anyway because there was a lot of good stuff in it.
 

Mascot

Member
I don´t want to play the defense force card, but i don´t understand (or can´t relate as well) the issues some racing enthusiasts are having with this game.

There are annoying bugs, but i guess when the bugs are easily fixable i just don´t really care about them.

I can´t overlook how good it is on the things that actually matter. For every turd car (Formula A) there´s about 10 sublime ones, better than what´s out there in any sim.

The Caterham 620 is just absurd, i did a couple of races online yesterday and it was the most fun i´ve had in a racing game in a long time.

What works well in this game works a step above everything else (and i do love AC), so i´m glad they released because i wouldn´t want to wait until January or so for some bug fixes.

All i say is give it a try, the racing itself is good, this feels a lot like GT5 - the game had hundreds of bugs but we enjoyed anyway because there was a lot of good stuff in it.

All of the good things will still be there in six month's time. Hopefully there will be fewer of the bad things too. I've other sims to occupy my time until then, so waiting seems to be the prudent decision. I'm in no particular rush. I'd rather enjoy pCARS 2 when it's in better shape. Picking it up cheaper will just be a nice bonus.
 

op_ivy

Fallen Xbot (cannot continue gaining levels in this class)
Look, there is no need for the passive aggresiveness, the problems I am having are real, and I am not the only one.

Maybe my threshold for issues is just low, I was quite enjoying the Ginetta Jr's in career, despite the marginal improvements in pad controls, so went to do the affinity event, the Ginetta GT4 is barely drivable, so chucked AI to zero and tippy toed my way round, ok, minor issue I thought, I'll do the Ginetta GT3 invitational, spent 15mins qualifying in the wet to snatch 4th place on the grid, only for the game to demote me to 21st for some reason, ok, let's try the race from 21st on the grid, the AI is terrible, they can barely get through the first corner, ok, try something else, the British classic invitational, that might be fun, get to the 3rd corner, the track is completely flooded, my car won't go through it, but it doesn't stop the AI.

Ok, let's bin the career for the time being and spend some time in private testing trying to get the controls right, having to adjust the settings, exit out, contend with the 30s of menu lags once the game loads, load game, adjust, exit, lag, adjust, exit, lag, FFS, while adjusting I noticed that the two settings control damping and wheel weight do barely anything, both ends of the spectrum are barely any different, the sensitivity can't go low enough, bringing up the telemetry page shows that, desite a tiny movement on the stick, and a tiny movement in the "wheel bar", the car veers all over the track, it's barely better than PC1 is many respects, and in some its worse.

Maybe by threshold for issues like this is too low, but yeah, fuck this game, lifes too short to waste time scaling a wall like that, if these are minor irritations, I'm a monkies uncle..

edit : oh yeah, forgot about the blue screen crashes, how could I forget those.

Ah, so it's not just me. Finished my ginetta junior and upgraded to that and just Can t keep it around any corner with any reasonable amount of speed. I'll Google for some set up advice before cheesing it or dropping it all together.

Someone else mentioned earlier and I too would like a list of cars to avoid.

  • ginetta gt4
 

Gestault

Member
Do people have a sense of how the competitive rating system is panning out for multiplayer? So much of what I've seen has focused on the broken components, but I'm wondering how the actual social scene around it (and the game's tracking of it) is coming together.
 

FrankCanada97

Roughly the size of a baaaaaarge
Do people have a sense of how the competitive rating system is panning out for multiplayer? So much of what I've seen has focused on the broken components, but I'm wondering how the actual social scene around it (and the game's tracking of it) is coming together.
It seems to be working fine. There are two ratings. A letter grade for safety (U being the lowest) and a number for performance (100 being the lowest). Everyone starts at U1500. A host can set a room requiring a minimum safety or performance rating. The performance rating seems to work similar to ELO. Causing collisions and getting penalties affects your safety rating. All the games I have joined have players being generally well behaved.

Of course, since everyone starts at the same rating, it's going to take a few days to sort out everyone's ideal rating.
 

Gestault

Member
It seems to be working fine. There are two ratings. A letter grade for safety (U being the lowest) and a number for performance (100 being the lowest). Everyone starts at U1500. A host can set a room requiring a minimum safety or performance rating. The performance rating seems to work similar to ELO. Causing collisions and getting penalties affects your safety rating. All the games I have joined have players being generally well behaved.

Of course, since everyone starts at the same rating, it's going to take a few days to sort out everyone's ideal rating.

Right right. Even vanilla matchmaking has that acclimation period. I'm glad the hoppers have the filter options.

I ran into some occational issues in PC1 where I'd be doing time trials, and I'd be center-track on a straightaway, and the game would give me an off-track penalty and void that lap. This would be a session where I was never more than one wheel into the candy-stripes. It never gave me any problems other than the inconvenience. My fear is always something like that giving me a "scarlet letter," lol.
 

Megasoum

Banned
Fuck it, I'm going back to my F1 2017 career until they finish the PC2 development.


Man... What a grim fucking world we live in when you turn to a Cody F1 game to find stability and polish...
 

GHG

Member
Fuck it, I'm going back to my F1 2017 career until they finish the PC2 development.


Man... What a grim fucking world we live in when you turn to a Cody F1 game to find stability and polish...

To be fair codemasters have improved in that respect during the last few years.

Maybe SMS will eventually get the message.
 

Megasoum

Banned
To be fair codemasters have improved in that respect during the last few years.

Maybe SMS will eventually get the message.

For sure but I still had to wait like 2 weeks before they fixed the game breaking engine reliability issue in career mode before I could start mine lol.


Also, this is officially the craziest bug I've seen in a game... (And I've been working in game QA for 10 years...). Like seriously, WTF??? It's happening to me too and I thought it was an issue with the new drivers I installed at the same time as the game.

http://forum.projectcarsgame.com/showthread.php?52946-GPU-LED-ISSUE
 
@Mascot thanks again for that link to that interview. Im treating myself to 20 min a day, and im losing it at bell yelling over the internet telling the guy how to drive.
 

xrnzaaas

Member
Ah, so it's not just me. Finished my ginetta junior and upgraded to that and just Can t keep it around any corner with any reasonable amount of speed. I'll Google for some set up advice before cheesing it or dropping it all together.

Someone else mentioned earlier and I too would like a list of cars to avoid.

  • ginetta gt4

Ginetta GT4 becomes much easier with assists. I couldn't complete a single lap in that Cadwell park affinity event (authentic is my default setting) but when I turned on stability control and traction control to low I managed to finish the entire race without losing control even once. Obviously it's not exactly the best solution to make it easy for yourself with assists, but it's not an inpenetrable obstacle if for example you want to finish all Ginetta events and you're stuck with this one.
 
I doubt my thoughts will be too original based on other's comments I've seen online, but while I love the ambitiousness of this game, at the moment it's just too unrefined.

The game is called Project Cars, and it's pretty awesome the roster of cars and tracks in the game. It doesnt pigeonhole you into one specific genre, which is fantastic, but "forcing" you to play in unrealistic conditions in career mode to basically "show off" new features is pretty ridiculous. I'm sorry, but Formula cars in a race in the snow? Come on. Keep that in custom stuff so if people want to race an Indycar in snow on a Kart track they can, but keep career mode realistic. Cars dont race on snow unless its a rally for a reason.

Some quality of life changes could be made that many other recent racing games seem to do them a lot better. It's great that we can pull up a menu while racing to request a pit stop and tire change, but add to that. Make it like F1 2016 and 2017 where you can request intervals between cars, weather reports, etc. It's nice, but clunky. Plus saving setups for the different cars and tracks is just cumbersome.

That being said, I do think there's a great game there. It might take a bunch of patches, and while I've already played 10 hours, I'll still put in a lot of time in this game before it's really good. I just wish SMS would have taken some cues from other games and added their own touch on them.
 

xrnzaaas

Member
The game is called Project Cars, and it's pretty awesome the roster of cars and tracks in the game. It doesnt pigeonhole you into one specific genre, which is fantastic, but "forcing" you to play in unrealistic conditions in career mode to basically "show off" new features is pretty ridiculous. I'm sorry, but Formula cars in a race in the snow? Come on. Keep that in custom stuff so if people want to race an Indycar in snow on a Kart track they can, but keep career mode realistic. Cars dont race on snow unless its a rally for a reason.

I agree, even though they don't have to worry about doing fully licensed series it's still a pretty silly decision to include races with snow in the career mode which is supposed to recreate professional racing. And in pro racing even a test session won't take place in snowy conditions. I hope that one of the patches will remove them and limit only to invitational events.
 

op_ivy

Fallen Xbot (cannot continue gaining levels in this class)
Ginetta GT4 becomes much easier with assists. I couldn't complete a single lap in that Cadwell park affinity event (authentic is my default setting) but when I turned on stability control and traction control to low I managed to finish the entire race without losing control even once. Obviously it's not exactly the best solution to make it easy for yourself with assists, but it's not an inpenetrable obstacle if for example you want to finish all Ginetta events and you're stuck with this one.

thank you. i'd much rather fiddle with a couple of assists then race set ups (or racing against moronic AI) to proceed.
 

Mascot

Member
@Mascot thanks again for that link to that interview. Im treating myself to 20 min a day, and im losing it at bell yelling over the internet telling the guy how to drive.
It's pure gold. Some clever TV exec should sign everyone up for a reality TV series, kind of like 'The Office' meets 'Keeping up with the Kardashians'.
 
The experience on this game also depends on which car you try.

The formula a is broken, the mclaren f1 is just wrong now.

In the other side the gt3 cars are all amazing each with particularities.

It s a testiment of how important it is to tweak each individual car. The indy is miles and miles away better than the formula a.

Gone are the days of an automated physics system that only uses a bunch of numbers.

The road cars are also impressive. It really is true what they say about the new mclaren. It feels perfect.

Im hoping they will focus on polishing the few remaining turds, so far from what i tried is like 5% of the cars only.
 
So, adjusting any controller settings, at least on my PS4, from default, completely breaks the handling.
At this point I'm starting to think you might just be cursed.

Might be a good time to search your home to see if you've got any idols laying about.

0nmTzRf.jpg
 

Gestault

Member
The experience on this game also depends on which car you try.

The formula a is broken, the mclaren f1 is just wrong now.

In the other side the gt3 cars are all amazing each with particularities.

It s a testiment of how important it is to tweak each individual car. The indy is miles and miles away better than the formula a.

Gone are the days of an automated physics system that only uses a bunch of numbers.

The road cars are also impressive. It really is true what they say about the new mclaren. It feels perfect.

Im hoping they will focus on polishing the few remaining turds, so far from what i tried is like 5% of the cars only.

I'm wondering if the consensus on certain cars (good or otherwise) is pronounced enough that it might be worth having flags for "track tested" vs "prototyped" or something along those lines, just so people would have a sense before loading up a race as they adjust over time.
 
One thing I never did in PC1 was fiddle with settings. I never really needed to. I'd create a custom race, set AI at 80, pick out my car, race, spin out (controller) restart, then go screw around with a time trial.

For PC2 I started the Ginetta Career mode, raced the first race with the AI at 60, found that too easy and bumped it up to 80. I found I couldnt keep up, so I actually went into settings, and messed around with the limited options for that car and lo and behold, they made the car easier to drive and made me trying to reach that qualifying time actually fun. I've put a lot of time into practicing, qualifying and changing settings, and it's actually enjoyable.

Now if only the could iron out that Skip To End Qualifying bug. It's pretty inexcusable that the bug is in the game in the first place. Apparently it's a known issue and carryover from PC1 as far as I could tell reading online? I'm not sitting there for 7 minutes after I qualify to wait for the round to be over. let me skip to the end, and if I lose a starting spot or two, then that's reasonable...but having the AI suddenly get 5-10 seconds faster...come on!
 

danowat

Banned
Dare I say I actually just had fun.....

The Caterham community event was actual fun, and the car actually felt like a car, and not like riding some electric eel covered in vaseline.

There is something seriously wrong with the controller settings, so I am leaving them well alone.
 

T Ghost

Member
No! There is a difference, when I hold my wheel at what looks and feels to me like a 90 degree angle, the game shows 892 for example, I don't turn it more or less just to get the exact 900 on the screen, because then it wouldn't be 90 degrees to me. Jeez.
And I did see your first post and understood you the first time.

We could go more in depth, including wheel resolution, error of measurement and so on, but let's stop this here.

Mmm, interesting. When I go to neutral and put my wheel to 90 degrees it reads 900 on mine. G920 on Xbox One S too?
 
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