RF2 lite version steam

Actually if you listen to the average user, the common moaning on various forums is that rF2 doesn't have enough content compared to other sims. I can only imagine what these complainers would think if they would get a default install with empty content. IMO the average user is used to downloading big games by now, it's only us advanced users that are used to having the option of lite install. Sadly Steam doesn't give two options, so ISI went with the one that pleases 99% of users.

 

Ooo, style points for using the word "kerfuffle"!

 

If a user is only wanting, say the DW12 and Indianapolis, then they WOULD be on track quicker. The likelihood of either the scenario you pose or the one I have are the same, which is why I believe this argument is unfounded.. And just maybe the workshop is not popular because a)the concept is not sold well enough to the people they need for it to work(the modders) and b) until dev information is more forthcoming, quality mods will be lacking which can give the workshop, and in turn rFactor 2 and ISI, a bad name.

You are right. rF2 is a consumer product along with the other products you mentioned but lets have a look at these other products. Automobilista was born from what was more or less rF1 with plugins and graphical improvements. It also held a license to a series and sold the game on the premise of that, which made sense that those vehicles/tracks were included. The evolution of the product has been to maintain the status quo. AC is another story altogether. A product that is completely different to the original vision as a result of watering down the product to cater for the lowest common denominator, or average user. Yes, it is more popular. Yes, it is more "pretty", but is it close to accuracy in simulation. Do setup changes feel realistic(or as realistic as possible). I will leave that to peoples own opinions.

RFactor 2 in the scheme of the sim-racing genre is the hardcore product. It is not meant to be for everybody. It is why leagues like and use the product. Leagues would most likely be the largest part of your current user-base and in some cases, with modders and testers coming from some of these leagues, part of the reason for your development. It makes sense to have the system suit these users more. These are the users that will be helping the new users along the way. I know in my league of a few very helpful people that go out of their way when people have problems. I feel sorry for them when our league starts to migrate.

If testing was done internally, was testing done with only selecting partial content like most people would when using rF2. eg Stock Cars and Ovals. If you are downloading less content then it is less time until you are on track.

Exactly right Eusko. How many people would go through and try every car and every track in one sitting. In my own experience I had tried the demo with an earlier build. When I made the decision to buy I used the lite install and then installed a car and track to try. At the time I was on Australia's premier mobile network due to living in a rural location. If I was to be in that same situation today then my complete monthly data allowance would be gone before the download finished (8Gb/mth) and then the rest would probably take the rest of the month to be downloaded while shaped. Back then I would have been driving and I used to send the links to my brother to download for me. My situation has changed now due to NBN fixed wireless but there are still many in our country still relying on restrictive data limits with no other choice.(Funny thing, as I wrote this offline, the NBN in Australia was experiencing a major nationwide outage.)

As I stated in my earlier post regarding GTAV relates to DOOM as well. DOOM is a massive environment that requires all of that content. With rFactor 2 if I want to drive the Williams F2 at Sao Paolo, I don't need to have an Ice-cream truck, Jacksonville or go-karts, do I? Effectively a Lite install would work, especially if the workshop is what it is made out to be. All it takes is educating the consumer and selling the idea of the workshop to them. Especially to the modders. For the workshop to succeed, it needs to have the modders on board. Now does a modder need to have all of this content sitting in cache. Some say you don't need 2 installs for mod-dev but, it does help. You want to run a ttool test on the laptop while doing a few races on the rig. I could be making changes to something on the laptop and package up to check in game while keeping an eye on others doing testing on a server. Do I need all the content for that?

The thing is, those that moan about not enough content will never be happy with rFactor 2, never. Same as those that spruik about the latest DX version and graphic quality. Do you really believe the advanced user is only 1%. I've been in servers that have had more people in them than reported via steam numbers.
If this decision is made to suit all new users, then where do the changes stop. Will we see a dumbing down of the garage because new users find it too hard to setup a car, and find it hard to drive the default setup. Will we see a dumbing down of physics to suit the average users driving style. I doubt that ISI would do this, which makes it harder to understand why change something that worked.

Why is it not possible to have 2 options? Just a quick look at steam store and workshop with other items and they can have eg Base Package and Base Package + DLC. Now I may be wrong but I can't see the Base Package cache containing the DLC cache content as well? You could have and option for Lite which is exactly that with no automatically subscribed content. And the "Deluxe" package auto subscribed to ISI/3PA content.

One thing I will commend here in this thread and the forum in general, is the civility of replies apart from the odd strange one(Jim, I myself am partial to Iced Vovos). We can all get our points across and be subjective without resorting to verbal attacks. Can you see the Steam discussion threads being this civil in a major change?

 

I dislike the idea of forcing us to migrate to Steam.

I have steam already installed on a slow hard disk, with Automobilista, I had bought a small solid state disc especially for RF2 (shorter loading time).

I strongly dislike the option of full ISI content under Steam I won't be able to use my solid state disc.

Due to the very poor skins packed with original ISI content (C6R, BT20, Howston, etc.) and the limitations of virtual drives, I have repackaged most of the ISI content I use with better skins found on forums.

So with steam, I'll have all the ISI content I don't use, plus double the ISI content I use and repackaged, running on my slow disk (long load times).

As the trend currently running on this forum of censorship, erase my thread because it is not 100 % fan of steam, arguing it is divisive or something else you find convenient.

An unhappy customer.

Cheers.

 

Hey Lgel you should consider checking out a freeware steam tool called (imaginatively) steamtool. This will allow you to make a link of any game folder in your steam library to another location. Basically you'd install rF2 via steam. Then fire up steamtool and make and point it at rF2 in your steam directory and a "storage" directory on your SSD. The files will be transferred to the SSD and a link from the SSD location created in the steam installation. Steam will think the program is in its default location on your HDD, but everything will actually be loading off the fast SSD. I use it all the time and it works 100% as advertised on the tin.

 

Thanks I may try the program, but it won't avoid unwanted content on my HD, nor duplicated content.

Cheers.

 

Why not just make a new steam library in a new location (new drive?). Steam has this option without extra tools.

 

The "unwanted" content is only 10 GB after you unsubscribe from all ISI items, it's still rather light.

 

Are you kidding?

As you say it is rather light only 10 GB, for instance the whole Open Office suite is 315 MB.

I am an IT manager, I would have fired a guy who had distributed 10 GB of unwanted data on the thousands of workstations we were running, as simple as that.

Those 10 GB will be scanned by the antivirus software again and again, and be backed up if not explicitly excluded.

Great job ISI, it could have been worse, rejoice, may be we have been saved of 1 TB of unwanted stuff.

Cheers.

 

Why is 10gb unwanted? If a new user bought rFactor 2... why would they want it completely empty? I think they would probably need some cars and tracks to play with? rFactor 2 has cars from most categories and eras, and tracks that kind of match. Get out of the mindset that ISI is just catering from the users that already have the game... think of those coming in fresh! They buy it, it downloads cars and tracks to play on without extra hassle, queue the fun!

 

Yeah, I'm saying 10 GB is light these days. GTA V is a 60 GB install and a Dirt Rally patch released few months ago was 10 GB(!) I repeat, a patch alone, and that was distributed to all users automatically.

 

Going through my Steam Wish list out of the 16 games there are only two below 10gb, the next highest is 20gb and then upwards and beyond, 10gb these days is relatively small change as I and others have stated many times.

I think the issue here is those of us that have been used to monitoring our own installs since 2012 (!) are used to doing just that, having full control over what we install & download without being forced to initially have "everything". That in itself is quite a change and from all the comments I've seen the majority of those "upset" have already had RF2 for a while, very few are newcomers.

So yeah, maybe ISI got it right with their way and that's fine with me - it is their product after all which some people tend to forget. Steam Workshop is obviously a bit rubbish with some respects (I've found) but that's not the fault of ISI at all, I only hope Steam improve that area and maybe that will aid the user experience the future and make the whole thing a bit better.

 

You are welcome to disagree with me, you live in a rich country and your internet connection is both cheap and has a big bandwidth, if you need a new disk, it's peanuts...

Not everyone is as lucky as you are.

If other gaming companies do worse than ISI, it is not an excuse for ISI to do sloppy work and waste my connection and hard disk space, I just don't play the other games you mention.

Do you know that some users down under exhaust their data allowance for a whole month of their internet connection only by downloading the "lite version"?

What a feat, they should rejoice, they would need 6 months of their data allowance to play GTA...

Cheers.

 

ISI can't cater to every person in every country and have special allowances for some and not others, no other game devs do that. If people can't download a game because it's too big then they can't download the game...that's not ISIs fault.

I can bet it sucks to be in your position and I'm sorry for that, but nothings gonna change, as I've said before I don't agree with ISIs decision but it is the way it is and that's that..simple.

 

Pretty rare these days, unless you're on a very cheap plan. Catering to that sort of allowance would be like trying to support a PC with 2GB of RAM. Times change, people either have to move on or stick with older stuff (like rF1). Most working people I know have multiple gigs on their phone plans; even Telstra's home broadband starts at 100gigs.

 

I appreciate the fact that you took the time to order your thoughts and provide feedback. From the different responses in this thread you can already see that not everybody has the same opinion, which makes it extra hard for us to make a choice that everybody likes. My intention of sharing those options was not to reconsider them, but to give insight into our thought process. But let me respond to your suggestions below.

Technically you can delete the cache, but you will run into some problems, which is why we do not recommend it:
a) if you subscribe to any of the ISI workshop items, the game *expects* the cache to be there to install the item (then again, as a "power user" you might not care since you wanted to delete the item anyway)
b) if you update or repair your installation, the cache will probably come back, causing a large download

That said, if we find a way to still have a full download for new users (in one single download) whilst giving "power users" the option to go with a "lite" install, we will. So far none of the suggestions offered here have satisfied both requirements (but maybe eventually some suggestion will).

I think this has been explained, that car will be released both as a Steam and a non-Steam version. Just during development we decided to only offer a single download. No, we don't have any special deal in place with Valve about this, this is our own decision. I personally, as a community member, am very glad that Michael took the time to write the blog and provide these updates.

I think those scheduled dates are interesting suggestions. In fact any concrete suggestions on how we can improve our communication helps. And, reversely, if any modder or user out there wants to have a go at writing such a blog to share their experiences, please get in touch. This forum and the blog is all about sharing, so let's try to do that together.

As someone who can look behind the scene, I can tell you that a lot of the things you mention are under active development. I'm not going to mention exactly what just now.

Having a public roadmap could help. On the other hand, I know from experience (in other, completely unrelated projects) that it is sometimes hard to explain why certain features are postponed or removed (the reason might be technical and impossible to follow without access to the code). I personally would not mind trying to share some of the things that are being worked on with the community, but it could also be everybody ends up disappointed about things that were on the roadmap but do not materialise anyway.

 

I agree with that. However, when ISI committed to Steam it basically forced them having content pre-installed, since Steam doesn't provide the option for games to have two installers (full and lite).

 

I think some of you are missing the fact that the 10GB is a cache. Content from this cache is duplicated when it is installed. It's not something that you can compare with Game A that uses 20GB for example. Game A won't be storing 2 versions of the same thing.

The cache is really a one-time thing as it won't be used much after the first install.

Thus it is inefficient and a waste of disk space.

I'm currently going through the "I need to start cleaning up space now" phase so I'm being very aware of what I'm storing on the disk.

Like I said before, option 2 is a bizarre hybrid of a one-shot cache file which is then supplemented by workshop updates. It's a fudge option.
Options 1 or 3 are better - 1 provides all content (like the vast majority of Steam games), while Option 3 provides the choice of content, albeit with the need for users to visit the workshop - but even that is strange because all ISI content is automatically selected anyway.

EDIT: 10GB by itself isn't a big issue. It's the fact that this is pretty much redundant after the first install.

 

I disagree that it is pretty much redundant after the first install as that depends entirely on what you will be doing after that. The cache is there to let you quickly unsubscribe and (re)subscribe to ISI content. If you don't want to play certain content, you can unsubscribe from it and it will be removed from the "installed" folder (which does free up space). If, at some point in the future, you do want to join a race that requires this content, the cache makes sure that you can very quickly subscribe to it and join that race.

I personally doubt that people would have liked option 1 better as that would have meant that nobody could have uninstalled any of the base content in the game. Option 3 was never a real option for us as it did not satisfy our requirement that everything needed to be in one install. Now that might change if Valve does allow us in the future to make a bundle out of the game plus a selection of workshop items, so we can download them all in one go. Right now they don't offer that though.

 

It is absolutely redundant since the content could be downloaded if the user subscribes to the item in the workshop: exactly as the rest of the content of the workshop.

Doing this fast installing exception with ISI content just in case someone is absolutely null using a racing software is quite annoying for the rest of the users that are using to dowbloading a 300MB lite installer.

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