Is this out of beta now?

I may be in the minority here, but as far as payments go, I would be willing to pay that fee monthly instead of yearly...if that would mean increased revenue for ISI, which would lead to more licenses and perhaps decreased production time. I wonder if ISI would consider doing a 'premium' or 'VIP' type of membership that would cost a monthly fee, but would allow access to some trivial services...maybe early content testing, and a 'VIP'-only multiplayer server? You know, just to help dredge up funding for better content for everyone, not necessarily to provide more than what is already on their plate.

 

It seems from your other posts you were thinking most/all new content would be paid, in which case I can understand the confusion. Still, when it comes to the online access being 'standard' it really is - if you pay a standard price for a game, you get lifetime access like you do with most games. The yearly subscription is a cheaper option, one ISI could have just not provided, but they chose to. You took it, presumably with some idea of your options (though perhaps not reading everything too well, since you were expecting paid DLC and hadn't read the FAQ / early information) so now you can either stick with it and pay yearly when and for as long as you want the online stuff, or for a small additional fee upgrade to lifetime. You 'missed' your chance to take the initial lifetime option, but must have had some reason for it.

And if, 6 months after you let it lapse, rF2 suddenly becomes the sim to have, you can pay for another year and use it. Seems all good to me.

 

You know... I get 70+ steady FPS in AC with 1 car... And it looks like something from 2013...

In rF2 I have never had 70 FPS with 1 car... No even on LRP, Estoril or Sepang... Ever!
rF2 is the poorest looking game I've had running on my system in relation to performance and moving of time and technology.

I understand how you feel man... I would have had second thoughts too if I had chosen the std subscribtion...
I hope ISI can change your mind by getting a move on... and get this thing moving...

 

If I hadn't have brought the lifetime package they'd be no way I'd be paying anything else,
I would check on rf2 every few builds to see if any decent progress though in hope of it getting to decent standard
Then if it got to that stage I'd upgrade to lifetime package

I originally had no idea things would go the way they have, I do have hope though.

I sound negative but I to me rf2's physics/ffb are the very best available of any sim right now, this is why I have hope.

No dig at ISI or anyone else ....this is just the way things are

 

I hope so too, but aside from the physics (for the most part) and FFB, I find this product so ungratifying and underwhelming.

Pace of development is glacial and new builds aren't showing enough progress considering the time that elapses between them. Am I expecting too much or being unreasonable?

It's nearly two years since the beta opened and I don't think this sim is where I hoped it would be. But hey, that's just me. If others are happy then great. Perhaps I'm not the target audience for this product? I just don't have the patience for this or the ability to overlook so much of what is unfinished or not implemented.

I'll keep checking back on this as I really hope rF2 gets there in the end. More than anything I'm glad I didn't buy the lifetime purchase.

 

First of all, no I don't think you're expecting too much. I think we might be expecting somewhat the same...

I don't think it's too much... There are just some things which are appalling out of order!

Like you said the physics and feedback is what keeps this alive for me... And the fact that nothing else around floats my boat either.

Where'd you have those expectations from?

I know where I got mine from, I got them from F1 2000, F1 2002, F1 Challenge 99 - 02 and rFactor all of the forementioned and especially the latter goodness equals expectations. I don't think it's out of order to have high expectations...

And we are not the only two people raising concerns, it's quite obvious.

 

My only real expectation is for a contemporary product and I don't get that feeling when I load up rF2. The breathtakingly awful UI sets the tone right off the bat.

 

It all resumes to modding scene. Ill leave here a quote on a Enduracers Modding Team reply to a commentary i´ve made on their FB:
"this is why we keep developping on rfactor1, it's not ready anywhere, can it be rF2, AC or something else."

While modding teams dont pick RF2 and work on content (not only cars/tracks but also UI´s, Showrooms, etc) we will allways be at this stage. I must remind you all that RF1 is and was so popular cause of the infinte changes you could make to it.

 

Regarding rFactor, it's correct that a patch came out in 2013 (only to fix a gamebreaker issue with Windows 8). I concluded in a previous post that the last patch which brought major feature changes to rFactor came out in January, 2007. After that there was one further patch released in late 2007 (last one before the 2013 patch), which stated:

- Security fixes for online racing
- Vastly improved game performance vs 1250

The 1255 patch also synchronizes all rFactor players - DVD & electronic.

In terms of features, rFactor was finished roughly two years after initial release (November, 2004). We are now heading towards the same timeframe with rFactor2, and as everyone can see, it's far from feature finished. As I wrote previously, I wouldn't necessarily call it "early beta" as the product is quite usable as such already, but the progress on the core game seems a lot slower than it was with rFactor, which is slightly worrying.

 

Don't want to get too much into this topic AGAIN, i would just add that current stage does not get even close to what i was expecting when i got the lifetime subscription at day one. However i find hypocrisy stating something like AC is a better overall product (except for the graphic, in that case .... better to not say anything). About the speed of the development, only after 6 month we will be able to give a final thought, because even their development might get a huge slow down (although i don't think so).
To those how compare rF2 to iRacing and conclude that both are improving product...c'mon...c'mon...not even comparable. Iracing has too many bad things but it's a really finished product, surely not even 70% realistic but it is somehow and although the old engine they are always trying to improve the graphic and we have a wonderful performance proportional to the visual effect which is the opposite of rF2.
To conclude i'd say that in proportion to the technology, experience of gaming world and many others things the last racing game that really gave me pleasure to play was GP4 in 2002, since then i always found myself with unfinished games or with so many lacks of features.
I cannot believe how game's at those days had a good overall package of features (AI, weather, failures, setups, graphics, mod, etc...) surely not all of them perfect but all of them pretty enjoyable specially for those time. Today we have so many games with many lacks or partial features, and this is not only about rfactor 2 (WHICH IS STILL ON BETA) but also rfactor 1 and this is where the problem comes since for some features rF2 is a copy and paste of rF1.

 

Except that they are two separate pieces of software with much different "functionality". One is set to be far more complex in so many more areas vs what the other was...so it stands to reason that the more complex one will take longer to build correctly, excluding the varied ways that software engineering can be a pain in the arse...surely that is not being unreasonable?

You want progress from what rF1 was, not just a graphic update for rF1 but relabeled as rF2 and then sold for full price. It seems ISI's vision of what rF2 will be certainly is massive progress in all areas with the way their plans sound. I just remember reading little snippets that Tim had posted sometimes. Plans for how the weather system will be, how humidity will be different around the track, heavily forested areas having higher humidity or something, the devs plans for the real road system. Not taking it as any "binding contract" stuff btw Tim XD
It is slow. Some people don't like it. Great, but nothing will change their progress speed.


Gaben certainly knows how it goes with Half-Life 3...

 

I agree that the added complexity of rFactor2 is very much part of the problem. I feel that the scope of what ISI is trying to achieve is too wide. We have rain, realroad, new tire model, flexi chassis, karts, etc, but most of these features are not working as they should yet. As a consequence of this, certain aspects of the game development are lagging behind significantly, such as the UI, which is worse in functionality than in rFactor (the multiplayer lobby especially).

With such widening of scope, there should be more devs working on the core of rF2 than rF, but there really isn't and that's one of the main issues to me. Widened product scope without adding dev resources, and the consequences will be development that appears slow.

 

I'm completely okay with that. In fact, I own both URD products (T5 and Endurance) I'd pay for good DLC as well - that's not my complaint.
I have been driving rF1 as well but I already like rF2 for what is right now. No further expectations - if there is new content or new features I'll of course be glad. It clearly is not finished, it doesn't look all too pretty. But of all that I don't take any notice anymore as soon as I'm in the cockpit. Isn't that where it counts? Plus, I can already do that along with my friends or with others around the internet.

And in a way ISI are really more modest while AC/Kunos seem to be more about boasting. I like the modest approach a lot more.

 

Yes, but no one on ISI's side said what they planned to have in place by any specific time frame, and Tim is reluctant to talk about specific features we can expect to see. There is expectation, and was prior to the beta, but if you go back and look at what we bought into - which is the sim in its current state (at the time we bought it), with work still being done on it, nothing's really happening that gives anyone any reason to turn around now and say "well, this is a failure."

But there's a tone along the lines of if it keeps taking so long to progress then it'll die, or everyone will leave it. I think that's a bit drastic... any time it's no longer the best people will go and try/use something else, and if later on all rF2's facets come together and produce the super sim everyone needs to have then people will move back - and all the people who previously bought it, either lifetime or subscription, will be able to pick it up again. All this talk about rF2 or this sim or that sim, what they've got, what they'll have... they all have what they have right now, and if/when the balance of power shifts so will user sentiment.

stonec, you talk about the scope being 'too wide', but too wide for what? For development by the current team to progress at a rate you think it should? Don't get me wrong, I've got quite a long list of things that appear to have moved nowhere since rF1 (and in some cases have disappeared since rF1, even if some comments still reside in rF2) and wish progress was faster. But a lot of the more annoying stuff, which is really a bunch of little things, are not just annoyingly still there after all this time - they're also a bunch of little things that one build might (at some point) fix. Whether that happens next month or in 3 years is anyone's guess, and if something better comes along in the meantime I'll quite possibly consider moving to it... and then when (optimistic? sure, why not... I like ISI's vision) rF2 comes back and blasts everything else out of the water I'll happily jump back in.

If it ended up going nowhere and I moved permanently to something else - well ok, that happens, I've spent more on games I've spent a lot less time in than I already have rF2.

And yeah, the GUI looks 'dated' or whatever - but it's a driving sim GUI. I spend very little time looking at it.

*Something to keep in mind: every time someone complains about something in rF2, that's someone that, despite its flaws, is playing rF2. That's why they're complaining. Very few people who give up on it are going to come in here and talk about it. So it's not all doom and gloom.

 

Not normal then I get between 45 and 70 FPS and now with 3 screens.
If I go to one screen I go to at least 100 FPS.
Your hardware may be goodbye, I do not know ...

 

He has ATI. Before I changed to NVidia I had poor performance too, but even then I felt I got my £60 worth (lifetime subscription, all ISI content free auto update forever and multiplayer) as nothing else feels as good which is the most important. It's like the gift that keeps giving, sure only a little bit at a time. If you don't like having to keep paying and you want to be able to race online with sort of realistic tyre wear and a road surface that can change, I really don't see many choices. As far as I'm aware no other title can offer that at this stage, even in an un-optimised state with poor UI and bugs, can it? Seems to me most that are complaining are the people who didn't think lifetime subscription was the sensible option, when clearly if you looked at the longevity of rF1 it was/is well worth it. If this is beta then that other thing ought to be called "prologue-beta". I'd love more development faster but I really want ISI to still exist in 5 years, and I think they are entitled to decide how that is done.

 

300+ pounds for a sim is a bit steep in my opinion... That's basically the price for me, if I want to drive it at an acceptable level... All because of ISI's incompetence....

 

You don't get better performance with lower settings?

 

I only just read this thread but it answered my question about what happens when my online expires in a few months.

I got the standard version, I can't remember why and looking at the moment I don't see that there is an upgrade path to the lifetime version so I guess from here on in it is a yearly fee. To get me to the same $$ value as the lifetime version will take me nearly four years from now. At $85 I don't see this as a bad price for a sim because I am a sim guy.

Having said that I won't be renewing because rf2 has not been working for me. MP is laggy, probably because as I found out in the GPU thread that my ATI really does suck with rf2 and even if I swapped out my 6970 for my 7970 in my other machine I wouldn't likely see any difference.

So I only use RF2 for the odd blat around in single player and that is part of the problem and why I won't be renewing my online. rf2 has not hit primetime yet, it's not out of beta or evolved enough that I can get any MP fun from it, I can only check out the updates and see how the progress is going.

I know it's been said that the yearly subscription guys are paying for the new content but I can still download it all and use it all on my PC in single player. So I am not paying for it but I still get 100% access to it.

The price is not bad but I believe the decision to make people pay so that they can access the server browser is not a good one, people are paying for the one part of the sim that ISI doesn't contribute to, i.e. access to other peoples servers.

I don't feel it's easy to write this as I am a fan of ISI but soon I will be locked out of part of the service and there is just no justification for me to renew it right now. I certainly hope to in the near future though.

BTW, I recently got AC, it looks extremely modable and I expect there to be a lot of content. While rf2 struggles badly on my 6970 AC is running triple screen with 3 renders and I am getting 60-60fps with mostly high settings and HDR. Yes, they will have DLC but for additional high quality content. If you don't want it stay with the modders. Looks like they will come to the party there as well and you still get MP access all the time for the life of the product.

It's just one area where I think very strongly that it should be part of the base price of a game. If you need more $$ put the price up but don't charge for the very part of the service that you are not providing yourself.

 

Metalnwood - At least somebody agrees with my original post in that access to the MP should be part of the base game. However, as the sim community is pretty small compared to other gaming genres the potential for mass earnings (Ala Call of Duty) just isn't there. Therefore, to enable the developers to continue work and be paid for it I suppose this is what its for.

However, I feel that at present, the "pay or be cut off" business plan is doomed. I would rather ISI get modders to become licensed so that they can provide paid content for RF2 and then take a cut of the modders profit (Much like Valve do on the Steam Market, Valve take a percentage of every model sold on the market) . I know this will raise a few eyebrows but at least both parties would benefit keeping the core game open to all. Win Win IMO.

View attachment 11256

This would not only allow Modders to earn as they develop and would allow ISI to provide quality control AND to make profit from modders.

Just an idea.