Project CARS 2 sign up is open!

  • Thread starter DrJustice
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but the first paragraph does raise a point. It could have lies like most game companies do.
Every single person in the world could be talking out their backside every time they open their mouth. But it would be a sad world if we all went around expecting that. And you don't have to trust what they are saying. Go to the forum click on SMS POSTS at the top and read. You will see proof before your very eyes that the devs are actively helping people. A perfect example being the SLi Usage thread where the PC Lead Dev is interacting with a number of forums members asking them to try different graphical settings and then posts pictures so he can try and pin point where the issue lies.
 
Every single person in the world could be talking out their backside every time they open their mouth. But it would be a sad world if we all went around expecting that. And you don't have to trust what they are saying. Go to the forum click on SMS POSTS at the top and read. You will see proof before your very eyes that the devs are actively helping people. A perfect example being the SLi Usage thread where the PC Lead Dev is interacting with a number of forums members asking them to try different graphical settings and then posts pictures so he can try and pin point where the issue lies.
Even the most interactive people have something to hide. I'm not saying they are lying to us but I don't see myself going 100% trusting them. Helping people the users in the forum is a good job on SMS part but only time will tell about what they want to do, Ian Bells comments doesn't help the situation either.
 
All of you who say this isn't about money, but is about finding the "right people" are out of your freakin minds. If it wasn't about money they wouldn't ask for money. They certainly have a list of people from WMD who fit their mold. No need to go searching for the people who want involved their right in front of you. You can get the same feedback from people without charging them to share it with you. You can weed out trolls without charging people as well, simply ban their account, and its much easier to do if they haven't payed you.

You got to hand it to SMS though, they are now making a profit off of selling betas of their game. Who would of thought that. What kills me though is that what you are doing is donating money to a multi million dollar company to make you a product you can then buy later. Yeah that makes good sense. Maybe I should donate $100 to Walmart so they can build a new store down the street for me to shop at. :rolleyes:
 
All of you who say this isn't about money, but is about finding the "right people" are out of your freakin minds. If it wasn't about money they wouldn't ask for money. They certainly have a list of people from WMD who fit their mold. No need to go searching for the people who want involved their right in front of you. You can get the same feedback from people without charging them to share it with you. You can weed out trolls without charging people as well, simply ban their account, and its much easier to do if they haven't payed you.

You got to hand it to SMS though, they are now making a profit off of selling betas of their game. Who would of thought that. What kills me though is that what you are doing is donating money to a multi million dollar company to make you a product you can then buy later. Yeah that makes good sense. Maybe I should donate $100 to Walmart so they can build a new store down the street for me to shop at. :rolleyes:
As long as you get $100 bucks worth of product at the end of it whats the problem? Many people spend $100 on a night out and only have weak piss to show for it the next day. They think it's good value for money so I'm not sure how giving $100 bucks to a game company and getting development access, a copy of the game and other goodies at the end of it is worse.
 
All of you who say this isn't about money, but is about finding the "right people" are out of your freakin minds.
I somewhat agree with this. You can say it is too weed out the trolls but it is also feels like that only the diehard fans are going to waste $100 which might sound good to get the fans opinion but, I feel like there needs to me more out there opinions from people who aren't 100% fans. A lot of "fans" are people who love the game as what it is, so I doubt most of them want them to change anything besides the things SMS has already announced.

The somewhat, is that you'll be spammed with unnecessary posts. Though, IMO. I would rather take the free route as different types of views can lead to something better.
 
All of you who say this isn't about money, but is about finding the "right people" are out of your freakin minds. If it wasn't about money they wouldn't ask for money.
The troll weeding is one thing. Then the members get something for their money (game, memorabilia, the experience and community etc.). So far it seems to work very well, BTW.

Oh, and since the jokers often only quotes the 10k Diamond package as if it were the only option: 2 days 458 rental = 2k, travel = ?k, 2 nights at a luxury hotel = 1-2k, full Michelin treat = 1k, evenings out = ?k, etc.. Even there you get something for your money. A fun package for a few well off people. An envy inducing prospect for some? Seems so.

You can weed out trolls without charging people as well, simply ban their account, and its much easier to do if they haven't payed you.
Yes, but only after an often lengthy debacle which takes the staff's and other members' time and energy, creates unrest and bad moods and so on. Then if trolls are banned, they sometimes run off to other forums and YouTube on whining and slander campaigns. It's not worth it.

You got to hand it to SMS though, they are now making a profit off of selling betas of their game
Maybe some, but not a lot. As mentioned people get stuff and it costs money to run WMD.

Maybe I should donate $100 to Walmart so they can build a new store down the street for me to shop at. :rolleyes:
Not that your analogy is very good, but: If it's voluntary, if you got to be in on the planning and building, if they included a reasonable amount of goods and services, and not least if you wanted to do so yourself - then why not ;)

Live and let live?
 
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As always, the vast majority of players has nothing to complain and is enjoying the game as intended, in silence.

Faith is a belief you have nothing substantial to base it on, that certainly is not the case here when i look at the first patches SMS has already released.

I for one i'm not satisfied with the patches for they not fix all they should have. Same is for to great amount of people having wheel support issues.

As always, the vast majority of players has nothing to complain and is enjoying the game as intended, in silence.

Thinking like this is what is killing Gran Turismo.

People are getting unhappy and frustrated, many have the game shelved waiting for fixes or their wheels to work properly... Others do not play online in normal rooms because of the lack of room policy options.

Online is worrying. And the game was just out... Certainly splitting user base (because as soon as the first alphas of PCars 2 will start to roll out on PC and consoles) won't make things better or room more populated.

I like the game (and i mean A LOT) but for the sake of it, it's very important to have things working and fixed ASAP and going with that announce was really really bad. I fear people will start to move over/away from the game.

When you move aside either because of bugs, or horrible online or wheel support, it's a failure. Even if in 3 months most things will be fixed, how many of those that had been waiting will come back? Will the online portion live up for long enough?

It's not my case but i'm pretty sure someone started setting it aside and look at PCars 2. Surely those that will "contribute" will be involved in the development, will be testing etc etc and they'll do it with the best of intentions. But i think that such a move so soon will be actually hurting PCars 1. They'll devote their time too soon to the sequel draining forces that should be used to be vocal about issues in the first game...
 
I don't understand why some people are surprised that SMS starts the work on Project cars 2.

I think that it is uncorrect to say that pcars 2 has been announced. The start of the funding is not the game release annoucement.
If you compare to Forza or GT, it was not a secret that the FM6 and GT7 development started more or less when FM5 and GT6 were released (and even before for some aspects) but annoucement comes at a later stage.

The frustration regarding basic issues Projecr Cars "1" still has after several patches is natural but Î think there would be no point in expecting SMS to work only on fixing this game. With limited revenues to forcast if they have no game in development but only DLC and patches, they would have to reduce staff, ultimately resulting in more issues to implement solutions.
 
By making people invest with money rather than just sign up, they get people to become invested emotionally as well as financially. Its a great marketing ploy.
Not only that, but people who have paid money to participate are GOING to participate. They have a vested interest to get something out of their investment.

Don't assume for one minute that pCARS 2 development wants a bunch of guys fawning over how awesome everything is. They want people who are willing to put hours in to assist, willing to provide positive and negative feedback in a constructive and mature manner. Putting a minimum €72 paywall is a good way to ensure the backers are relatively mature and interested in helping to create a good end product.

Guys who backed pCARS 1 simply to get the end game cheap won't be remotely interested in even the Bronze level backing option for pCARS 2... If you just look at what you get at the end of the day (a Steam copy of the game worth less than you backed for) then it's a bad deal. Only guys who want to participate in development and spend time testing will pick it up.
 
I don't understand why some people are surprised that SMS starts the work on Project cars 2.

I think that it is uncorrect to say that pcars 2 has been announced. The start of the funding is not the game release annoucement.
If you compare to Forza or GT, it was not a secret that the FM6 and GT7 development started more or less when FM5 and GT6 were released (and even before for some aspects) but annoucement comes at a later stage.

The frustration regarding basic issues Projecr Cars "1" still has after several patches is natural but Î think there would be no point in expecting SMS to work only on fixing this game. With limited revenues to forcast if they have no game in development but only DLC and patches, they would have to reduce staff, ultimately resulting in more issues to implement solutions.
When you reveal details of your future product (like its dirt racing) it is pretty much an announcement.

No one is surprised by the fact that they are working on it, the people who are supporting PC2 need to know that we don't care when it has it been started working but its the announcement.
 
All of you who say this isn't about money, but is about finding the "right people" are out of your freakin minds. If it wasn't about money they wouldn't ask for money. They certainly have a list of people from WMD who fit their mold. No need to go searching for the people who want involved their right in front of you. You can get the same feedback from people without charging them to share it with you. You can weed out trolls without charging people as well, simply ban their account, and its much easier to do if they haven't payed you.

You got to hand it to SMS though, they are now making a profit off of selling betas of their game. Who would of thought that. What kills me though is that what you are doing is donating money to a multi million dollar company to make you a product you can then buy later. Yeah that makes good sense. Maybe I should donate $100 to Walmart so they can build a new store down the street for me to shop at. :rolleyes:


Well said. I am obviously going to support the game and buy it if it turns out good on PS4 after the game is released. :)

I do not see any reason to give them money now just for playing alpha, beta version on PC and posting on their forums. They give some other things like wallpaper, choosing a name and also mentioning name in their credits which I obviously do not care about. I wish them luck and I am interested in finished copy only. BTW they got a great idea for game testing for free. They have pretty big team there and lots of things will be reused in Pcars2. They got good base already and just need to add to that. It is not like their building from scratch which will take them 5yrs to make the game.
 
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I don't find anything surprising about them starting work on the sequel. What I am a bit more surprised about is that they've got the begging bowl back out. Did they make no money from PCars1 then? Usually a developer invests in developing a game, and then recoups the money (plus a healthy dose of additional profit if the game is successful) from sales. SMS were crowdfunded, so in effect, they didn't have an upfront investment which needed to be recouped. Surely then all the money from sales can go towards developing the sequel. Am I being naive here? It seems like a very cynical ploy to extract the maximum amount of money possible out of people to minimise their own personal costs, so that they can keep the lion's share of profits for themselves. Maybe it was a profit share venture and the backers have now got their money back? I haven't heard of it if that is the case!

Either way, I paid top money for a broken game. I'm sure it'll be fixed eventually, but buying the game retail is as far as I'm going to support SMS. If PCars2 turns out better, then I might buy that too. But I'm certainly not prepared to pay for the same mess two times over.
 
it's a failure

You can not extrapolate your opinion and project it as the general truth about the game.

People buy it, Bandai says they have the lowest return rates in a long time, Player Numbers are stable, DLC has good sales...doesn't sound like fail to me.

I have played several online races on steam and on PS4 and while it is not as sophisticated as GT6, it works for me and allows for decent racing without much hassle. There will be improvements already in 1.5

Not everybody has severe issues and crucial ones are already fixed, with more coming in the next patches. The content updates will also be incoming regularly to keep the experience fresh.

The official forums provide so much feedback to SMS that WMD can totally move on and work on PCars 2 without affecting the patching or the road map SMS has layed out for PCars 1.

Name me one single Studio being so forthcoming with direct customer interaction and laying out the plans for the next 12 Months of this franchise. They could rightfully have left you sitting with a Bandai Namco Support Ticket as this would be the normal business practice.

I even wondered why SMS waited so long before starting with PCars 2 as it is perfectly normal to set up the next project in the finishing phase of the old one. Even PD and Turn 10 have stated that they have started work on GT7/FM6 even before GT6/FM5 was released.

When SMS is open and announces it, while setting up a troll/idiot hurdle, all hell breaks loose and no reasonable statement or listing facts can do anything about it.
 
I somewhat agree with this. You can say it is too weed out the trolls but it is also feels like that only the diehard fans are going to waste $100 which might sound good to get the fans opinion but, I feel like there needs to me more out there opinions from people who aren't 100% fans. A lot of "fans" are people who love the game as what it is, so I doubt most of them want them to change anything besides the things SMS has already announced.

The somewhat, is that you'll be spammed with unnecessary posts. Though, IMO. I would rather take the free route as different types of views can lead to something better.
If you take away the money barrier, the forums will be filled with flame baiting trolls, and instead of getting good feedback from interested parties, moderators and developers will be wasting time weeding out the trolls who only want to whinge and cry about every little thing. If I were in Ian's shoes, I'd raise the minimum investment to be even more certain to keep the trolls out, up to say 100Euros minimum. Doing this for free would be a nightmare and is simply not an option.
 

I can read the news articles and see that SMS do roll out updates and pay some attention to their own product.

On a large scale though, has most of the bugs been solved yet?

I think not. Until pCARS as polished of a game as it should've been, I'll remain adamant with thinking it doesn't deserve this much hype and support.
 
I can read the news articles and see that SMS do roll out updates and pay some attention to their own product.

On a large scale though, has most of the bugs been solved yet?

I think not. Until pCARS as polished of a game as it should've been, I'll remain adamant with thinking it doesn't deserve this much hype and support.
You're free to do that, meanwhile we'll get back on with enjoying it ;)
 
You're free to do that, meanwhile we'll get back on with enjoying it ;)

If you want my honest opinion on the game though, I would say it's a shame it turned out this way because I've been really looking forward to this too

It'd be like the TOCA Race Driver series with 2015 graphics
 
I can read the news articles and see that SMS do roll out updates and pay some attention to their own product.

On a large scale though, has most of the bugs been solved yet?

I think not. Until pCARS as polished of a game as it should've been, I'll remain adamant with thinking it doesn't deserve this much hype and support.
Which was not what you asked or implied.

You asked if then had fixed anything yet, they have and are continuing to do so.

Given that you now acknowledge that you already knew this I can see little reason for your post apart from being flame-bait?
 
If you take away the money barrier, the forums will be filled with flame baiting trolls, and instead of getting good feedback from interested parties, moderators and developers will be wasting time weeding out the trolls who only want to whinge and cry about every little thing. If I were in Ian's shoes, I'd raise the minimum investment to be even more certain to keep the trolls out, up to say 100Euros minimum. Doing this for free would be a nightmare and is simply not an option.

Companies usually get around this issue by actually employing their own teams of testers and doing proper market research. I don't think the model has proved very successful given how many huge bugs were still present at launch - bugs which seemingly hadn't even been noticed/logged at the beta testing stage. I say successful of course talking about issues of quality - it was clearly very successful as a marketing tool, and raised a pretty reasonable amount of money.

I don't think that being invested enough in a project to put up sums of money to be involved necessarily means that you're going to be any good at giving feedback. You might have hundreds of ideas, which might be good ideas or might be bad ideas, or you might have no ideas at all. Your feedback might actually be harmful to the end result if you are so emotionally invested that you are literally incapable of having an objective view of the product. In any project environment, quality control should absolutely be a function free of stakeholder involvement, because otherwise quality simply can't be measured objectively. And you would otherwise end up creating a product which may be satisfactory for those stakeholders, but which isn't necessarily a good quality, marketable product able to achieve commercial success.

The only frame of reference we have for this operating model is PCars itself, and on the evidence of that, the model doesn't work because the end product was of poor quality and didn't deliver on its core objectives.
 
No apology needed; I'll freely admit that I've never been involved in games development so if my assumptions are wide of the mark, I'll happily defer to someone who knows more about it. I come from an IT background and I'm a professional project manager, so I'm assuming that game development (usually) follows the fairly standard model of product/software development. I'm absolutely prepared to be put right though, if I'm misunderstanding.
 
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