Working for Slightly Mad Studios sounds chaotic if things like this can happen with updates being released earlier than initially on schedule.
Accidents happen, sure. Certainly not to this magnitude, and with the regularity that SMS has performed them in.
But moreover, how do you, as a consumer, trust a studio who has bald-face lied from the big man who runs the company (and ultimately, is the loudest member of staff the public will know) and hasn't really released what is now public information about one of the DLC packs that was released early, like they managed to put the genie back in the bottle? Even though it's searchable, really it screams of a developer that isn't doing its homework, and treating things as reactive instead of proactive.
Really, I was going to write a post about how my experiences with the game have taken a nosedive as I've played deeper into the ranks, but this saga has really summed up this game as a whole: some actual promise with the ideas being presented, but failed by SMS completely in so many regards that it makes you wonder how much they were actually listening to the community. Evidently not, considering they didn't even do this title one solid thing and make it the spin off it very much deserves to be.
But, those experiences probably deserve to be looked at in looser form:
- It seems strange to me that so much of this game's progression is tied up within XP gains and Driver Level, and how money is really only handed out with the gaining of Driver sub-levels, and not in conjunction with winning races. It really just leads (at least, in my experience) to feeling like you're not going anywhere when it comes to money, and basically have to wait until you complete enough events. It's mitigated somewhat by upgrades, but still...it really kneecaps the game, especially in later events where they want you to experiment with other vehicles in restricted events, and have an open ended event list to try, but the reality is you're wondering if you need to scrimp and save in order to afford the next car in the next class up. This doesn't seem like a great way to present an open ended structure.
- The class balancing in the later race category is still horrific, maybe even more so now that it's kind of obvious that SMS needed a place to shove some of the more niche vehicles (the Falcon Supercar, the Fusion NASCAR, and the OMSE Supercar Lite are the best examples) into the main classes. Why? Why couldn't they have been placed into their own classes, like what was done in Can-Am with the 917/30? It just...boggles my mind to see one of the good things about PCARS 2 do a complete 180 the other way and have absolutely horrific class balancing on the high end that makes not a damn lick of sense.
- It also amazes me to see how bad the PCARS 3 handling model is, and it's especially hilarious to see the one time SMS *
needed* to hit pad handling out of the park, it still sucks as badly as has for literal years by this point. It's really apparent in the higher speed cars, in my experience, and it makes me wonder if the Madness engine simply does not have any capability whatsoever to actually present good, decent handling with a pad, ultimately the form of controller that 90% of people are going to be playing the game on, especially in a game like PCARS 3 where it's obvious they actually want to court people who don't play sim racers religiously on a wheel. At what point does the development staff get it through their thick heads that this isn't how cars operate in the slightest, and we can't even really change it at a minute setting level like in the previous two games to make it somewhat bearable?
It's really quite interesting to compare this game with DiRT 5, other then the really easy comparison points between the two. It's obvious that both games have decent ideas, and ideas I'd be in favor for, especially in a world where sim racers bitch, moan and cry whenever things aren't catered directly to them, and instead catered to everyone else that doesn't have a sim rig set up or whatever. However, whereas DiRT 5 is simply a rather aimless racing game who's focus on style and flash over any actual substance, especially on the gameplay side, PCARS 3 is a game who's ideas are sound, and could be well executed, but have been sunk by one bad decision that snowballs into an avalanche of effects, and once you play the game for an extended period of time, even more of the typical problems with regards to gameplay, and design, come into play.
Hell, DiRT 5 at least knows it isn't DiRT Rally 3, and Codemasters communicated that crystal clear before the game's launch. SMS didn't even have the guts to do that, lying to people's faces about the sim-worthyness of PCARS 3 instead, even when people were pointing out rather quickly that the pitlanes were walled off. Like...how? How do you do something like that and not think it won't backfire on you?
Wish there was all PCars 3 new content as PCars 2 DLC
