A year in... Where are we?
Still the best track and car list in the business. Still an awesome weather and time of day/night emulation. Still a very strong contender for physics and tire accuracy, and depth of tuning options. Somewhat frustrating that the tire model can be changed without the slightest communication from the devs as to what and why they changed something so core after so late a time in the game's progression.
Still primarily a PC title. The features they had to drop to run this on a console have resulted in a title far less playable than the PC version, especially in online features and graphics. Graphic compromises I can of course understand, but the total whiffing on the online lobby system (that other console games don't suffer, so definitely not platform caused) shows a lack of concern about a fair percentage of their player base. On console, you cannot see total public rooms and players playing, you have no room titles, so each one is a crapshoot trying to find clean racing and a seemingly barren wasteland of hardly any rooms even if there ARE more.
Still disappointing to find how fragile the developers' egos are, to respond to criticism by turning their backs almost to a man on any form of communication with their player base. Patch notes are a joke, the player base is left to spend weeks trying to track down what is changed, fixed, broken or placebo. Perhaps if their first four patches didn't have such excellent notes, it might not seem so bad. But once you provide that amount of documentation, it is hard to accept any explanation why it is no longer possible. The lame excuse that it speeds up release time doesn't mean they can't provide detailed notes AFTER the release.
AI is still almost as unbalanced as ever, needing constant adjustment from track to track and weather condition to weather condition to provide consistent challenge. As are default tunes across cars. Some close to perfect OOTB, others that are nightmares without a custom tune.
For me, I find the driving experience in PC2 the best currently available (with the qualification of 'for console', I'm not familiar with PC sims) not for the physics and FFB (that's AC, for me) but for what you can do with that driving experience, with ToD and weather giving PC2 the edge over AC. But these are RACING games, with the emphasis on online racing. And here, after even a year, little is better than launch. Online bugs, disconnections, and a console lobby system currently the worst in the biz, PC2 leaves you with little to do if you cannot join an organized league.
I fear that SMS went for too much in this title, leaving themselves painted into a corner as to forward direction. AC had no weather, little ToD, so have something that is going to energize their base when added in ACC. But PC2 has all that. There is so little core that needs adding to what is already pretty much a comprehensive feature list. Livetrack, weather, ToD, PC2 has it all. But little of it functions flawlessly. Now SMS face the uphill battle of coming out with a new game that needs little but the features it already has actually working!
Me, I'd be only too happy to pay a full game price for little more than we already have but with refinements and changes that address its already War and Peace length buglist and lobby and netcode faults. But I have a doubt many will. For starters, most will need to see the reports of all the bugs fixed before they spend any more money for a title close to identical to the current one. That don't pay the bills, LOL!
So my main fear is, once again SMS will shoot for the stars, and prioritize new buggy features over fixing the ones they already have. The way forward is tough for SMS, especially in the console segment. They obviously have problems with issues that require utterly different code to the base PC version (their cloud replay limitation is a perfect illustration of this... console users need a local save option to overcome the limited console cloud size limits).
An utterly bug-free Project Cars would be a total market dominator. So little needs adding other than simple content (cars and tracks) and a redesign of the entire console lobby system. I would be only too happy for a PC2 SpecII update with even a half game price tag ($30) if it addressed the issues. But I somewhat dread what is more likely... PC3 with the same issues it currently has, with at least a year's worth of needed patches before whatever is added works properly (if at all).
If PC2 was as bad in the driving, physics and content department as GTS, I wouldn't feel so bad. But to come this close, and fail before the finish line only heightens the frustrations. We need a paradigm shift in SMS policy...
No new features unless they work 100%! No new features until the current ones work 100%! Just perfect what is so close to perfect..!
