Re: aarava's critique of the game

26 Replies

AquaOrenji
3 years ago
@Trekari wrote:
Stop buying the product.
Oh I intend to. I stopped buying the product in 2021 when they dumbed down the career mode by taking out the tech tree (or simplifying something that didn't need to be simplified, as it were). I only bought into this one because of the promised update to handling and I needed to get the new regulations car. But am I supposed to trust this particular developer to perfect the new game engine being rumored when they haven't nailed down this one they've been working on for almost a decade? Am I supposed to trust a publisher that dgaf about the modes that made them what they are and needs to be publicly petitioned ala Madden to make even the most remedial of updates to said modes? Nah, I'm good.
Thanks for the handling model update--I'm going to milk 23 for all it's worth. And when I get tired of it, I'll go play Assetto Corsa, whose modded f1 cars are superior anyway. I'll come back when CM and EA drag their reputation out of the gutter with well-intentioned progress toward making a game they can be proud of. Or when a real developer gets the license.
DavidGG53
3 years ago
The truth is that EA has done a lot of work content wise, like story mode and a brand new mode. We can say we like it or not, but cannot deny the immense work done, content wise, in a yearly release game.
We can say it isn't well balanced, or not agree on some game design choices, but there is no way we can say they haven't done a lot, content wise.
Pretending to have also a new career, is simply not feasible.
The other truth is Aarava mainly looks at his own preference, and doesn't care about anything else. Since all he does is my team stuff, then all he looks for is my team.
But if EA chose to implement other stuff first we can't blame them.
Sorry but, I just don't like who only sees things from just one side.
Meza994
Seasoned Ace
3 years ago
@AquaOrenji All fair and right criticism but they didnt take out or simplified the tech tree one bit.. All they did was change the visual appearance of the "tech tree".

It still works (depending on the tree) that you need to do certain upgrades to unlock another branch, some starting with more branches available from the get go, some starting with only one but its basically the same as before and i wouldnt be suprised if its really exactly the same when you compare the upgrade availability directly..

BUT that doesnt make it better as pretty much all they did since 2020 was change some visuals, add 2 more starting points (midfielder and frontrunner) and very very sublte balance changes, completely disregarding valid criticism (driver stat boosts) and great suggestions from the community.. Not even starting to talk about the horrid state of F2 "careers"..
Apophis-STR
Seasoned Ace
3 years ago
@Meza994Lol don't even get me started with this "new" tech tree since 2021, it was as you mentioned simply just the same exact tree with visual overhaul to deceive people the fact that nothing was changed at all.

Worse, the current R&D UI is infinitely more counterintuitive to use than the original tree, I would be much happier if they just kept the OG tree and leave it as it is.
AquaOrenji
3 years ago
@DavidGG53 I believe I misplaced where my frustrations with the R&D truly lie. Yea it's been turned from that glorious branching tree to this uninspiring tile-esque linear progression presentation that robs me of the aesthetic feeling of accomplishment, but what I meant was when they replaced the old workflow of having to do five practice programs across the three FP's to this truncated version where you only do the three programs that they pre-assign you for discounts to upgrades that you have zero input on.

That's what I meant by simplifying what didn't need to be simplified. Stop shoehorning how I develop my car and give me back my practice programs dammit!
ImpartialCross06
Rising Traveler
3 years ago
@Meza994 @Meza994 What I hate is that they removed certain things from the old games. They used to show what your upgrades did back in the day. I'm quite certain at least that when you did a weight upgrade it would say you reduced the weight of the car by x amount, increased downforce by x percentage and so on. (I don't remember which game they removed this)

Now we have very little information on where the car is and how big an upgrade actually is. In certain teams it's much better to upgrade the drag rather than downforce because the drag upgrades give you a bigger increase for the same price or vice versa for other teams.

I also hate how they lock certain teams into terrible upgrade paths that make the car really bad to drive and basically make it underperform until fully upgraded like the Aston Martin car from last year that had a Ultimate rear downforce upgrade really early in the tree that locks you out from rear downforce upgrades and makes the car really bad to drive.

You can sort of fix this yourself with setups but it screws your teammate and means even verstappen could not perform to where the car was in the performance chart. While the mclaren car had a really good upgrade tree that seems to have any AI driver be able to drive well in that team even with bad driver ratings. (And from what I've seen in this years game so far it's exactly the same were certain teams have much more favorable upgrade trees.)

I wish we could see a performance chart for each area rather than just chassis, aero and engine as a whole. In real life the teams have to inform FIA of all the upgrades they put on the car so I think this would be fair for the game to reflect that somewhat.

Like who have the lowest weight, lowest drag profile, most downforce, best engine, best ERS and so on.

The game just lack a lot of information, just like we still don't have speed trap list, that can't be so hard to implement. All you can do is go onboard and watch every AI car to see their speed to know who's fast in the straights. I know you can see speedtrap of cars if you spectate the AI in qualifying but yeah...why not just give us a speedtrap list?

And yeah like you said the upgrade tree is still exactly the same just invisible and even harder to know how to unlock certain upgrades. I don't like the way they remove my freedom to upgrade the car how I want. If I basically want a Williams car that is really fast in the straight but bad in the corners that is really hard to achieve because you often have to upgrade a certain downforce upgrade before being able to reduce drag again.

Is that realistic maybe, is it fun not really. Some upgrades being locked because of not having the required facilities I have no problem with, but locking us into very set paths for how the car is upgraded is what I dont like.
bundesautobahn7
3 years ago
@DavidGG53 That is a very good take IMO. I've dropped the hate towards EA because it's pointless and immature, and if something needs to be called out, I do so constructively. But most people just hate because it's EA. Also: Let's not forget that EA isn't the developer, they're responsible for marketing, branding and publishing (to put it simply). Codemasters are the devs, and for all the critique they receive, we do need to remember that they have no easy job to do.

With that out of the way: Yes, Aarav's schtick is MyTeam. Others try to at least do some more variety, like Ben Daly doing things outside of MyTeam with coop and Creator Series, same with Alex Gillon, or Tom Martínez (who's doing a McLaren RTG right now). Even I got the taste for F1 World while doing also career (MyTeam and Driver Career), regular GP mode 50% races and the yearly F2 RTG. What I take exception with Aarav is that he literally scripts his careers like Vince McMahon micromanages WWE and scripts matches that need to be followed to the letter. To me, with his content, Aarav has jumped the shark.
AquaOrenji
3 years ago
@bundesautobahn7 Curious what you mean by scripting his careers. I've got my gripes with his content aplenty but it never occurred to me with any of these youtubers how they would go about manipulating the results of their races beyond gimping the difficulty--which I'm convinced Aarava in particular does as he goes out of his way to never show the difficulty screen at the start of his MyTeam playthroughs.

These days the only two I follow are Tom and Matt212--former because I find him the most legit driver without being Jarno-levels of OP and the latter because he's the most genuine, entertaining, and races the AI with the most dignity and respect.
Neomo
3 years ago
And meanwile modders repairing codies game year after year.Example
AquaOrenji
3 years ago
@Neomo Press F for our poor console brothers.
bundesautobahn7
3 years ago
@AquaOrenji If you look at his careers, you will eventually realise how scripted it feels. It's just not organic to me and others. If that hasn't changed, I dunno because ever since he used a very "problematic" thumbnail (I'm not going into details, but I called him out/scolded him for it because it involved a uniform from 1933-1945 Germany) for his Reddit section IIRC, I unsubbed him, but it wouldn't surprise me if he was still scripting his careers.
matty0blobber
3 years ago
@bundesautobahn7
Not saying he is but whats the actual harm if he is scripting them? and why does it annoy you so much?
Seems kinda pointless/sad to get so worked up about whats essentially free entertainment imo.
Take a step back and revalue whats important dude.

And before you start I don't agree with his rant because I think he's only looking out for himself regarding the lack of my team updates and content he could make from it.
I think its become a common theme recently to hate on EA but this release has been pretty poor in terms of the state the game is in bug/glitch wise, disregarding whats new on the content front.
bundesautobahn7
3 years ago
@matty0blobber I was only mentioning this here. I don't dwell on how scripted his content is, I just watch different content instead, so let's move on.

As for the hate, it isn't a recent common theme, it's been going on for years but escalating with each day. And I don't want to make any excuses for any glitches and bugs (and I am a big defender of QA departments in gaming), but this is unfortunately a common issue with any yearly release. See e.g. COD and how glitchy the game tends to be because the Powers that Be want full compliance with the release date they gave so they can take in all of the €€€.
matty0blobber
3 years ago
@bundesautobahn7but not play testing the game with some of the most common wheels on the market to discover this massive FFB bug feels very very lazy.
I feel glancing over the issues of wheels is completely different to a bug with COD.
Its the equivilant of a standard controller not working in cod thats how glaring this is and baffling how it got missed before release.
bundesautobahn7
3 years ago
@matty0blobber We don't know what happened behind the scenes, whether they chose not to test it, nor they were basically forced to skip it because of e.g. crunch. But again, I'm just throwing this out there because we don't know what happens behind the scenes in that regard.
matty0blobber
3 years ago
@bundesautobahn7I dunno man the game gets played as its being made so i dunno how it got missed, plus its not just one brand of wheel its across the board. part of me feels like F1 games should release every 2 years not 1.
ha6hk3w77mwj
Seasoned Veteran
3 years ago
@bundesautobahn7 It doesn’t matter what hapoens behind the scenes, there is no excuse for releasing a game with this many (game breaking) bugs. They should have released it a month later when it was playable
Wuffels
3 years ago
The old way to do practice programs got a lot of critics for being repetitive and boring. Dumping down the available practice programs to 3 with program rotation and optional targets for reducing costs of parts was their answer to this critic
Meza994
Seasoned Ace
3 years ago
@ImpartialCross06 I dont remember the upgrades ever telling you what exactly they changed in terms of percentage etc. since 2017.. Might have not seen it though

I know your problems with the system, its really far from ideal.. Seeing the performance for each subarea would be nice but in theory its always just pure guesswork IRL even teams informing the FIA about upgrades doesnt give them any indication of how effective these updates are.. IMO the performance chart shouldnt even be this accurate, maybe getting more accurate after certain races and completely unknown at the start of the season (pre season testing)..

The perfect "tech tree" for me would be no tech tree at all but just complete freedom of developing whatever you want, generally smaller steps not the current - getting 2-3seconds faster within one season when IRL its more like about 1 second or less.. So the upgrades should be smaller, for the AI a bit more difficult though but they should just pick random upgrades, higher chances on parts they are lacking at in comparison to others or giving then premade layouts like - more downforce for half a season, less drag, better chassis or whatever, plenty of options to go about it, making it more realistic yet IMO not less fun and its not really realistic that you have to do a DRS upgrade in order to do another front wing upgrade haha so yeah forced developments are definitely bad and there are better ways to go about it.. And dont get me started about a speedtrap chart😂
Apophis-STR
Seasoned Ace
3 years ago
@Meza994 I love the tech trees, although not perfect in terms of the actual pacing of progression in my opinion (usually development should reach diminishing return phrase at the end, but instead we make all the biggest leap there), it just looks so good and neat in terms of its presentation.
AquaOrenji
3 years ago
@Wuffels wrote:
The old way to do practice programs got a lot of critics for being repetitive and boring. Dumping down the available practice programs to 3 with program rotation and optional targets for reducing costs of parts was their answer to this critic
And look where it got us--into this never-ending spiral of persistent dumbing down of the game until we're left with the dilemma of what EA branded tshirt my avatar should wear. That's one and probably the first instance of CM being better off not listening to the ADHD sector of their player base. And another example of taking away/neutering something when a Career setting option would've sufficed.
Anonymous
3 years ago
The practice programs (lack of) are a joke now.
I always wondered why they did not put more effort into the structure of these, considering how important they always were for career progression.
Prior to sprint races, when you knew you had three FP sessions at every race, I always hoped for...
FP1 - 2x track acclimatisation style programs working on different things and allowing you to work on setups with guidance as to what to tune for the specific track. Probably without the gates, which do more harm than good.
FP2 - A proper race sim program as the main focus of the session, with more laps than are currently required and a quali sim program as secondary.
FP3 - A quali sim program as the main focus of the session, with the option on another tuning run, or smaller race sim as secondary.
AquaOrenji
3 years ago
@Anonymous wrote:
The practice programs (lack of) are a joke now.
I always wondered why they did not put more effort into the structure of these, considering how important they always were for career progression.
Prior to sprint races, when you knew you had three FP sessions at every race, I always hoped for...
FP1 - 2x track acclimatisation style programs working on different things and allowing you to work on setups with guidance as to what to tune for the specific track. Probably without the gates, which do more harm than good.
FP2 - A proper race sim program as the main focus of the session, with more laps than are currently required and a quali sim program as secondary.
FP3 - A quali sim program as the main focus of the session, with the option on another tuning run, or smaller race sim as secondary.
I used to do 100% races exclusively, so having five practice programs across three full practices was neither dull nor repetitive and certainly not boring.
P1: baseline setup, check that I can hit my apexes by tailing the AI. Come in, do Track Acc. Tweak setup and burn my harder tire so I can give it back to the factory.
P2: Tweak setup with leftover tire from p1 to prioritize tire wear. Tire and fuel saving programs. Compare tire wear setup to baseline. Give back worn tire--hopefully not the one from the tire wear program, otherwise I failed miserably.
P3: Make a hotlap setup specifically to beat Quali program. Compare three setups and pick my favorite to do Race Strat program. Bonus points if I can beat it with a used set from a previous program, because race strat should be done on race-worn tires anyway.
And that was before having to take into consideration potential weather issues, or how much I was cooking my allotted tires. There was actual strategy just in how to conduct my practices; on a particularly good weekend I could count on carrying over a set of softs or on a bad weekend I'd compromise my final day of programs with used sets. It was the drama before the drama (Full Qualifying) to ensure that the actual drama (the race) was as drama-free as possible. I'm almost getting nostalgic just thinking back on it.
But nowadays it's...
P1: Set up car. Do all three programs.
P2: Quick practice to hit whatever sub goals I didn't pass in P1
P3: Don't even bother. Check how much tire wear/component wear the game assigned in the meantime. Research whatever part got the best discount with little regard for actual car progression. Sniff some glue because that's what I imagine the cool kids must do for them to actually think practice and practice programs are better in its current state.
Now THAT'S boring and repetitive! And that's only assuming the Quali program bug gets fixed and the OSD bug gets fixed so that I can properly do the programs that have that garish, clunky, low-res heat map covering my braking points.
I seriously wish CM would stop straddling the fence on what they want this game to be. It's well established that in terms of driving, it's a simcade. Fine. But do they want to authentically represent the sport or do they want to be Project Cars 3? You can't be both.
ImpartialCross06
Rising Traveler
3 years ago
@Meza994 Yeah, thinking about it more you're right about not really knowing where other teams are in terms of performance, and that it's mostly rumors and guesswork by the media.

Yeah, for me too the development is way too quick, even on reduced it takes 2 seasons with no regulation changes for a fully developed car. Should be a bigger difference between reduced, standard and increased RND points.

I think it still would be nice to have a overview of our own car. Like weight and what areas we are strong or weak in. Your sort of have an overview with the performance chart, but it says nothing about like drag vs downforce.

Unless you go into the files and look at the cars, you have no idea where your car is strong or weak. (Or you know that it lacks in chassis as a whole, power or aerodynamics but still.)
Pekish79
3 years ago
@ImpartialCross06
If you complete all practice programs all the time, even at reduced RD, advancement is too fast. I agree
that's why I tend to have the rule of only picking one program per race if you do 23 races and maybe two programs per race if you do 16/10 races
I know they should fix the balance, but there are a lot of settings and limitations we can impose ourselves to keep it interesting; It's a single game; you don't need to max out things you do just because they exist.
I found that doing one program only starting on reduced with 16 tracks, I was barely keeping up with AI (perhaps because I had an unlucky strike of failed upgrades or maybe the combo reduced Xp/team/money/RD), so I decided that two programs probably fit better with the 16/10 tracks schedule, doing all 3 is definitely an overkill resource wise you get too much too quickly.