Hmmm. I know I'm going to get panned for this, but maybe, we all should not be quite so understanding. This issue occurs every time S3 puts out a big update. It seems they never learn from previous updates. Maybe, we should be a little more critical of them in these situations. Remember, we are paying customers and as such, should expect and receive a certain level of competency in these matters. Never seem to experience connection issues after a major Assetto Corsa update, or many other games for that matter. S3 shouldn't be repeatedly congratulated for trying to fix mistakes they continually make.
That's true, but it's not the end user's problem. That's the other way to look at it. You pay your money, you expect the product to work.
I can appreciate that, as I'm a senior QA engineer for a professional Broadcast software company. But the dev's I work with, learn from their past experiences.
The problem is less programming problems, and more the very questionable design decision of enforcing always online, even for single playing. If you play offline, there is no excuse for being forced to be online nevertheless. There just is no excuse. Its not needed. I do not assess here whether or not it has advantages for the producing company. But if it has - then by putting all disadvantages on the consumer, who also does not get any additonal functionality compensating him for it. And that is something I make and keep a mental note about. If you want to play offline, you do not need to be interested in online, period. I accepted such nonsens just twice in games, The Hunter, and Raceroom. I have stayed away from quite some games over the years which were like this and which i would have been interested in, but this always-online thing kept me off. And both The Hunter and Raceroom suffer from the implicit problems of this design, not to mention they attract quite some good ammount of anti-advertisement and criticism. Its very unlikely that I will ever accept such a game model again. Jeneric is right, players should be a bit less servile and a bit less forgiving. As long as it is put in though clear but still non-offending and polite words, they - Raceroom Entertainment and Sector3 - have to live with it. Its criticism well-founded, and well deserved.
Keep plugging away sector 3. I've got 3 peripherals that don't work and I've contacted all of them and they are working on a fix. In one case he indicated that it looks like the shared memory was completely re written.
Yevgeny, I couldn't agree with you more. I have given this a lot of thought over the years as to why the whole gaming industry is into this 'always online' type of design. It is because of money. Plain and simple. And, this is crap. When I spend money on a product, it is mine. It belongs to me and I should be able to do what I like with it. But, unfortunately most software companies don't think so. They want you always connected so they build profiles for advertising, purchasing trends etc. They want you to be connected so you can easily spend more money. Buy more cars, tracks etc. And, when they build the next game, it helps them all the more. There is almost no such thing as buying a game anymore and that's it. You bought it, it's yours, no more money. The whole design of these games from day one is to give you a little and keep you spending money on it forever. I hate this and it is wrong.
I am absolutely agree with you in the part where when you buying something – it's yours and always available for you no matter what. That's why some RaceRoom's competitors have offline mode. Even if you out of connection, you can easily race alone or with AI. That's to be honest – very fair. But I disagree with you when we talk about modern design of the games. My only and the main goal was and will be is racing against people like me. That's why game must be connected with the servers. This eases the way to moderate it and fix some issues, I don't mind about commercials and banners in-game, that's the way world living. Of course, it's about money. More content = more money. And I like new content and I always up to buy, but I don't understand why it takes so much time and effort to make simple things work. And every time S3S implementing something new, something that worked before starting to have some problems. But, okay, I understand, everybody can fail, but the competitors are very strong nowadays, you don't have the right to fail like this all the time. The other thing which is bothering me is continuous teasing about RaceRoom's future content and plans, I hate this “soon”, from start it was funny, but now it's annoying. I like when people have done something and then attracting customer's attention rather than vice versa.
For sure, I totally agree. I'm merely saying that I think the software companies are thinking too much about continually making money on something after it's complete. I do 99% of my sim racing on Pcars for this reason. You can tell that they get it. I never have trouble playing offline. It just works. In fact when RR was down, I was having fun on PCars. So....In my opinion all this 'always online' stuff just gives Sector3 a bad reputation.
Thanks. Hopefully you'll manage to fix the current server issues AND prevent the future ones. Too many problems from the same source have happened since too much time. That kind of problems hurts the online community growth and so does the whole game.
Well... then sorry mate but I have to say, with an attitude like yours, I am really glad you are not my boss in my real life job...
Firstly, who said I'm the boss of anyone. The position of Senior QA Engineer, just states that I have fair amount of experience in my field. l work with dev's, not above them, in an Agile environment, where we all take responsibility for our actions. And what 'attitude'? l just feel we have paid for a game/service, which continues to fail us, every time a new update is released. Lessons should be learnt.
I guess I should check the forums more then. Lol. Being summer here I don't race at all , wish I was aware, I could have contacted the developers and been ready out of the gate.
Possibly the team always want to amaze us with huge surprises. It's better team give us small but often surprises. So this doesn't occur again. The server will keep collapsing with so huge loads. aND WE WANT AND DESERVE OFTEN UPDATES