EA Sports WRC: General Discussion

[MagpieRacer]

Absolutely, it's just how I count it personally but I know what you (and they) mean. They're huge stages anyway so it's not as if it's not a lot of content.

Monte will have what 3 unique stages now, is that right? So like 30+km's is pretty damn good.

Around 48km to be precise.

 

[tbtstt]

Doesn't feel right to me that the Impreza S4 WRC is in the same category as the C4 WRC

Yeah, I agree. I mix up what cars I drive based on if they are fun or not but, if you want to set the fastest times, then those older cars are going to get ignored.

Given the number of cars in that class now you could easily split it into two and still have large classes or, as you say, split into three and still have enough to give you a choice.


(FYI: it is an Impreza S5 WRC: no such thing as an S4!)

 

[Shuffle]

(FYI: it is an Impreza S5 WRC: no such thing as an S4!)

This is what I meant about someone who knows a lot more than me doing the split haha, good knowledge!

 

[m355y]

Looking forward to the DLC on the 28th, some great additions car and livery wise. Makes a big difference even just getting some fresh liveries for older cars, Ogier's Fiesta and the Loeb's Xsara's for example. I think the star of the show for me though is the DS3, seems like it gets overlooked a lot but I think it's a very pretty car. The 2 new stages also look nice, always welcome to get more stages and these two look like a step up in quality too. I still prefer DR2.0 but it's nice to see the already impressive car list of WRC get bolstered even further. I still hop on the game often and this update will definitely get me playing again.

One thing that's becoming a concern with the game though, particularly if the Escort WRC is added in the Hard Chargers pack which seems to be the rumour going round, the World Rally Car 1997-2011 class is getting very bloated. That's not me saying that we don't need these cars, far from it, but perhaps it needs split up into 2 or maybe even 3 classes. Doesn't feel right to me that the Impreza S4 WRC is in the same category as the C4 WRC, I get that technically it would be possible but still. This was already an issue on 2.0, and it's becoming a bigger issue here.

The older cars (and even stuff like the Xsara) deserve their own place to shine IMO. I don't know if it's possible to have cars appearing in more than one class but if that would be possible I think splitting the class up into 3 would be better. Maybe something like '97-'00, '01-'05 and '06-'10. That would mean the Xsara in the middle class could be the powerhouse it was, whilst also still appearing in the later class to represent it's days a privateer, while the C4 also has it's place while not completely dunking on the potentially upcoming Escort and the existing Evo/Impreza S4 etc. I dunno, it's just an idea, I'm sure someone with much more rally knowledge than me could split it up better or come up with a better solution.

Yeah there’s such a difference between a car from the mid nineties and something like a C4. I felt this in Dirt Rally 2.0 as well. I’m an offline player only so it doesn’t massively bother me in terms of competitive leaderboards etc, but it I’m driving the ‘98 Impreza I’ll have to knock the difficulty level down slightly to compensate for the car being slower than others in the class. They probably should be split really, especially as the classes grow in number of cars.

I think I can finally say now that I prefer playing this to DIRT Rally 2.0 and that’s a big thing for me because DR2.0 is my favourite racing game of all time, probably. There’s still plenty DR2 does better, but not the feel of the cars on the stages and surely that’s the main thing - I went back and played Monte Carlo in DR2 and there’s no comparison, particularly between the two games on tarmac physics. One feels organic and smooth and perfectly weighted, one feels twitchy and unnatural. Admittedly that gap only really exists on asphalt but I do think EA WRC generally feels better. Also, as an offline player, the AI is much more of a challenge. In DR2 you could be really off the pace and because of the number of issues AI cars have, you’d still finish top five by the end of an event even if you were 12th in every stage. This one, you can’t do that. You have to really push yourself onto the knife-edge, and that’s fun.

 

[PJTierney]

12 new stages, six for each location.

View attachment 1422517

View attachment 1422518


I know technically it's two new long ones that then get chopped up, but given how the title counts stages, its 12 in total.

It’s about 30km of unique road, for people that want that metric. Brings the game above 700 unique km, assuming Poland/Latvia didn’t tip it over that mark already.

It’s equivalent to a single new location coming in from scratch (Central European Rally for example).

 

[SPhilli911]

(FYI: it is an Impreza S5 WRC: no such thing as an S4!)

I'm certainly not doubting you, but wonder why even in the official EA videos/articles, etc (and even Dirt Rally 2.0) it's referred to as the S4 WRC?

 

[MagpieRacer]

It’s about 30km of unique road, for people that want that metric. Brings the game above 700 unique km, assuming Poland/Latvia didn’t tip it over that mark already.

It’s equivalent to a single new location coming in from scratch (Central European Rally for example).

Poland and Latvia took it over 725km. The new stages push it to around 740km.

 

[PJTierney]

That's a lot of rally.

Then you double it with reverse layouts.

 

[MagpieRacer]

That's a lot of rally.

Then you double it with reverse layouts.

It is a lot. Accounting for all variations the total is over 3000km. Which is pretty insane.

 

[tbtstt]

I'm certainly not doubting you, but wonder why even in the official EA videos/articles, etc (and even Dirt Rally 2.0) it's referred to as the S4 WRC?

Right. I apologise in advance as, in order to answer this, I am going to have to waffle on for a bit, but you did ask...

There was long standing confusion about the nomenclature used by Prodrive for the Subaru WRC program, specifically relating to the earlier cars.

Prodrive used an internal "S" designation for their all Subaru rally cars from the outset, but it was only from the very late 90's when those designations started getting widespread use in the public domain. At that point it was known that the 1999 season car (WRC99) was referred to by Prodrive as the S5 WRC. Subsequent cars were assigned sequential numbers...

WRC2000 - Impreza S6 WRC (also known as the P2000)
WRC2001 - Impreza S7 WRC
WRC2002 - Impreza S8 WRC
WRC2003 - Impreza S9 WRC
WRC2004 - Impreza S10 WRC
WRC2005 - Impreza S11 WRC
WRC2006 - Impreza S12 WRC
WRC2007 - Impreza S12b WRC
WRC2008 - Impreza S14 WRC

...the confusion came with the earlier WRCars (i.e. 1997 and 1998). In the absence of anything concrete from Prodrive - and applying the logic that each successive car has gone up by one - the presumption was the 1998 WRCar was S4 and the 1997 car S3. With Prodrive being very tight lipped about anything Subaru WRC this mistake was adopted by the internet and with sites like eWRC using it you had privateer car owners repeating the error.

When Codemasters licensed the 1998 Impreza WRC for Dirt Rally 2.0 I presume that they approached Subaru (sorry, SUBARU before PJ corrects me! ) with "S4", having been told that by the owner of the car they scanned for the game. Subaru of Japan wouldn't have known any better as the "S" was a Prodrive thing, so the car was licensed for DR2.0 as "Impreza S4".

It was around this time when more archive Prodrive material was becoming public and it became apparent that S4 wasn't right. At this point several ex-Prodrive guys were happy to speak about it and it turned out that they had mentioned the mistake in various corners of the internet over the years, but no one had listened.

They confirmed that the WRC97, WRC98 and WRC99 cars were all referred to internally as S5. Although the car had evolved across those three seasons, the internal nomenclature had remained unchanged. It was only with the WRC2000 (which was a complete ground up redesign) that a new "S" number was assigned.

It was also confirmed at that point, that Prodrive had applied an "S" designation to their earlier Subaru rally programs:

S1 - Group A Legacy
S2 - Group N Legacy
S3 - Group A Impreza

There is ton of evidence to support this available now, as the vast majority of Prodrive parts in the part manuals for the Impreza WRCars are in the format SX-xxx-xxx; these clearly show Group A parts with a S1 or S3 prefix, while all WRCar parts are S5 or higher. In my own travels I have now seen Prodrive cage ID's on 1997, 1998 and 1999 cars: they all have an S5 prefix.

The correct information has (pleasingly) found its way around the interweb and to a lot of sites, including eWRC, who have updated their records accordingly.

That leaves one question: where is the S4? Turns out there wasn't one: Prodrive skipped 4 and none of the ex-Prodrive folks know why.

 

[SPhilli911]

Right. I apologise in advance as, in order to answer this, I am going to have to waffle on for a bit, but you did ask...

There was long standing confusion about the nomenclature used by Prodrive for the Subaru WRC program, specifically relating to the earlier cars.

Prodrive used an internal "S" designation for their all Subaru rally cars from the outset, but it was only from the very late 90's when those designations started getting widespread use in the public domain. At that point it was known that the 1999 season car (WRC99) was referred to by Prodrive as the S5 WRC. Subsequent cars were assigned sequential numbers...

WRC2000 - Impreza S6 WRC (also known as the P2000)
WRC2001 - Impreza S7 WRC
WRC2002 - Impreza S8 WRC
WRC2003 - Impreza S9 WRC
WRC2004 - Impreza S10 WRC
WRC2005 - Impreza S11 WRC
WRC2006 - Impreza S12 WRC
WRC2007 - Impreza S12b WRC
WRC2008 - Impreza S14 WRC

...the confusion came with the earlier WRCars (i.e. 1997 and 1998). In the absence of anything concrete from Prodrive - and applying the logic that each successive car has gone up by one - the presumption was the 1998 WRCar was S4 and the 1997 car S3. With Prodrive being very tight lipped about anything Subaru WRC this mistake was adopted by the internet and with sites like eWRC using it you had privateer car owners repeating the error.

When Codemasters licensed the 1998 Impreza WRC for Dirt Rally 2.0 I presume that they approached Subaru (sorry, SUBARU before PJ corrects me! ) with "S4", having been told that by the owner of the car they scanned for the game. Subaru of Japan wouldn't have known any better as the "S" was a Prodrive thing, so the car was licensed for DR2.0 as "Impreza S4".

It was around this time when more archive Prodrive material was becoming public and it became apparent that S4 wasn't right. At this point several ex-Prodrive guys were happy to speak about it and it turned out that they had mentioned the mistake in various corners of the internet over the years, but no one had listened.

They confirmed that the WRC97, WRC98 and WRC99 cars were all referred to internally as S5. Although the car had evolved across those three seasons, the internal nomenclature had remained unchanged. It was only with the WRC2000 (which was a complete ground up redesign) that a new "S" number was assigned.

It was also confirmed at that point, that Prodrive had applied an "S" designation to their earlier Subaru rally programs:

S1 - Group A Legacy
S2 - Group N Legacy
S3 - Group A Impreza

There is ton of evidence to support this available now, as the vast majority of Prodrive parts in the part manuals for the Impreza WRCars are in the format SX-xxx-xxx; these clearly show Group A parts with a S1 or S3 prefix, while all WRCar parts are S5 or higher. In my own travels I have now seen Prodrive cage ID's on 1997, 1998 and 1999 cars: they all have an S5 prefix.

The correct information has (pleasingly) found its way around the interweb and to a lot of sites, including eWRC, who have updated their records accordingly.

That leaves one question: where is the S4? Turns out there wasn't one: Prodrive skipped 4 and none of the ex-Prodrive folks know why.

You went above and beyond, thank you for the clarification! I was trying to find more information in a quick internet search, but I had not come across anything useful to help understand. I've seen both S4 and S5 referring to 1997-99 cars before, always just assumed they were different variants of the Impreza during that period and didn't occur to me that S4 is incorrect.

 

[PJTierney]

Oh no, he's on about the 22B again...

 

[tbtstt]

I've seen both S4 and S5 referring to 1997-99 cars before, always just assumed they were different variants of the Impreza during that period and didn't occur to me that S4 is incorrect.

It didn't to me either! I was referring to the 1998 car as S4 for a number of years. It was only when I really started learning about the early Impreza WRCars that it was clear something didn't add up. Luckily there were a few ex-Prodrive guys who were willing to speak about it, so the confusion could be cleared up.

It isn't as widespread an error as the Audi S1/E2 thing but, even though many sites have been updated, there are still a lot using S3 in the wrong place and the non-existent S4.

Oh no, he's on about the 22B again...

Don't get me started: don't think I won't post another Impreza monologue today...

 

[PJTierney]

I know how to push your buttons

 

[Adam Barber]

Can't imagine the Sebastien Loeb Rally Evo game still has licensing rights to his name, been a while. That said, aside from his own game, I don't remember seeing his name in any non-official WRC game, aside from Gran Turismo 5).

So Le Maestros will be out in just over a week, seems like a good time to speculate on the Hard Chargers pack.

The presence of the S1600 206 in the first pack indicates that the in-game files showing that and the Escort WRC could be accurate. So my guess for car no.1 is Ford Escort WRC '98. I thought, who could qualify as a 'Hard Charger' to enable that addition, well, Juha Kankkunen of course, we already have the Delta and his legendary 205 T16, so the Escort makes sense here as we can't have the classic Toyotas.

Car no.2 following on from that, I predict will be the Peugeot 307cc WRC. Another World Rally Car, but again, one that fits the bill with it's driver being the fearsome Marcus Gronholm. We have the 206, the 2006- Focus, 2008- Impreza, so we're just missing his iconic 307cc.

Car no.3, whilst this car and driver never won the titles, he has the most starts of any WRC driver in history, was a fearsome competitor, with an aggressive driving style. Jari-Matti Latvala. What car of his would we see? Another addition to the new 2012-2016 class and his Ford Fiesta RS WRC from 2012. This would also be a returning car from Dirt Rally 1.

Car no.4. Stepping back from the modern era to one of the most iconic hard charging cars in rally history and one of the most iconic rally drivers. The 1992 Audi Quattro A1 as driven by the legendary Michele Mouton to P2 in the 1982 World Rally Championship.

Car no.5. Unsure on this entry as there are a few blue and yellow cars already, but Petter Solberg for me fits the bill, and almost all of his cars are already in the game, C4, Xsara, Polo R5, 2001 Impreza, 2008 Impreza, mk1 Focus WRC etc. However his championship winning car is notably absent, and is a firm favourite. So my guess is the Subaru Impreza WRC2003.

Car no.6. Last but not least, no conversation about hard charging rally drivers is complete without mentioning Tommi Makinen. We already have the Delta, Galant, Evo 6, Impreza WRC2001, so what are we missing? His iconic, championship winning, 1996 Group A Mitsubishi Lancer Evo III of course.

A bit late but I would also like to see the S2000 car list filled out with the Fiesta and Fabia

 

[Cabelmania]

That's a lot of rally.

Hello, Matthew Broderick