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DRIVECLUB |OT| Cloudy with a Chance of Jaw Drops

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SRTtoZ

Member
Honestly it looks like their plan is working. I've seen a ton of people say they bought the game because they didnt want to wait for the free version. I'm still not at that point yet, but I'm getting there. Hurry PLS!
 
I read there was no rubberbanding with the AI. HA that's a load of shit.

Sat at the starting line for 20 seconds. Caught up and took 3rd.

This game has some of the worst rubberbanding AI I've ever seen. I see the complaints. It's horseshit design.

Maybe on the Rookie Tour. I'm on Semi-Pro and they would lap your ass in 20 seconds.
 

VanWinkle

Member
Honestly it looks like their plan is working. I've seen a ton of people say they bought the game because they didnt want to wait for the free version. I'm still not at that point yet, but I'm getting there. Hurry PLS!

Yeah, I mean, I figured I was going to buy it anyway at some point, the PS+ upgrade price was only $50, I wanted to support the dev, and I want that free DLC. So I just went ahead and got it. Part of it was definitely the impatience, though, lol.
 

Lemondish

Member
This is a rather troubling statement, because connection limit issues are one of the few things that servers can be stress tested on prior to launch. How could they have not sorted this out with an extra year of server development time?

Perhaps they didn't expect that a game that everybody has been shitting on every chance they got would sell as well as it has been.
 

anddo0

Member
Is that in the Rookie stage? There were a few stars on that stage that I had to do a few times to finally get them. That sounds like one of them. The hardest one for me was one of the first time trials with those tight turns and narrow track.

The nice thing about the stars is that you can fulfill them later. And if it's part of a championship, you don't even need to complete the series. Nice for completionists.

Whether this is good or not, I ended up lagging back on my second go around in some races so I could complete some of the stars and challenges without that really aggressive AI messing me up. The races on the rookie stage are easy enough, I could often catch up in the last lap, though.

Thanks

I went back and beat it. The trick was to drift. I was taking the corners normally and losing a tone of time. I went from 1:53.00 to 1:47.387.
 

jaypah

Member
Really wanted to use the PS+ demo even though the game looked like a good time. I figured I would buy it eventually with the demo holding me over until then. While at work this morning I remembered that i had 70 bucks trade credit on a gamestop card. Used it online to purchase a 50 dollar PSN card then used that card to buy the PS+ upgrade and start it downloading (YOU WIN THIS TIME SONY!). Got home and it was all ready to go. I only played for a few hours so far but I love it!

The handling is way better than I thought it would be. I'm digging the weight, inertia and rumble working together, really telegraphs when things start going to shit. Graphically it's simply stunning. Sure, I could pick at it but the full end result is so cohesive and...organic? I've described it like that before but it looks so convincingly grounded. The changing lighting conditions, even just coming around a hill or tight corner, are amazing.

Evo did a great job even though the servers are fucked. I'm out, gotta play some more. I look forward to maybe joining a club with some gaffers once everything is ironed out.
 
are the servers up yet? are they stable?

55134217.jpg
 
I'm out! Just got off the phone with PlayStation support regarding a refund of this game from the PS store. They're processing the refund now.

Call me old fashioned, but I prefer that a product works as advertised on the day that I purchase it. Not when Evolution gets off their collective asses to fix it.
 
Damn hoodlums clogging up the servers and spoiling the free Driveclub for us.

iMad

I really want to just try it so I can decide whether or not to buy it @_@

i think at this point im going to get shadow of mordor....need something to binge on this weekend. im so desperate i might even resub to WoW after what? 5 years
 
I'm out! Just got off the phone with PlayStation support regarding a refund of this game from the PS store. They're processing the refund now.

Call me old fashioned, but I prefer that a product works as advertised on the day that I purchase it. Not when Evolution gets off their collective asses to fix it.

I assure you, no one at Evolution is sitting on their asses. But glad you got your money back, wouldn't have expected Sony to do that.
 
I've never seen games start with the least impressive thing. You're supposed to give a great first impression.

I guess it's good to slowly build up excitement but it's bad for the first impression and the reviews. I was also baffled by the visuals at first, but all was good when I saw the later races and lighting. Really poor choise on their part, most of the Rookie races are ugly.
 

Shadybiz

Member
Shame about the servers, but I had some fun bombing around in time trials just now, messing around with the paint job on my BMW, and just generally trying to get used to the cockpit view. The game is quite a bit of fun, and will be so much more so when the servers are up.
 
Until I see otherwise, it is what it is. It took 3 irate phonecalls to get to the right person.
Problem with this assumption is driving me nuts. What are you asking for; a livestream in Evolution's office that shows them working on this in real time?

I don't care about you getting a refund, but speaking as a person who have to handle PR work, this type of reasoning annoys me.

Note: not only on Driveclub's case
 

Hawk269

Member
The rubberbanding AI and the Bumper Car AI is getting on my nerves. I am still having fun, but it does have it's issues. Kind of wished I waited for the PS+ version now. :(
 
Problem with this assumption is driving me nuts. What are you asking for; a livestream in Evolution's office that shows them working on this in real time?

I don't care about you getting a refund, but speaking as a person who have to handle PR work, this type of reasoning annoys me.

Note: not only on Driveclub's case

How about regular updates instead of going a whole working day before addressing the issue. Or what about this, and just go with me on this one for a beat. The product actually works as advertised. This bullshit mentality of fixing things in post is a blight on the industry, and no amount of PR speak excuses this. Evolution & Sony should have known better... It amazes me how quick some gamers are to defend behaviour like this, while rallying around other mostly trivial shit.
 

stormplyr

Member
Im about 4 hours in, and I'm enjoying the hell out of this game. I don't want to put the controller down. I like that the game is a challenge for me, basically an amateur at driving games. It feels to me like every car handles a bit different which I really like, and the cars feel heavy. Some of the point deductions for collisions kind of sucks, but it doesn't really bother me. The graphics are great although I'm not as blown away as I thought I'd be. The game has some really gorgeous tracks and time of day changes. I'd give the game around a 8/10 at this point. If the online social challenges enhances the game even further like others have said then IMO I'd give the game a 9/10. So fun. I want to keep playing but yeah bedtime, 8am class.
 

Salvatron

Member
How about regular updates instead of going a whole working day before addressing the issue. Or what about this, and just go with me on this one for a beat. The product actually works as advertised. This bullshit mentality of fixing things in post is a blight on the industry, and no amount of PR speak excuses this. Evolution & Sony should have known better... It amazes me how quick some gamers are to defend behaviour like this, while rallying around other mostly trivial shit.

Though I'm keeping DC, I agree with you.
 

Kumubou

Member
How about regular updates instead of going a whole working day before addressing the issue. Or what about this, and just go with me on this one for a beat. The product actually works as advertised. This bullshit mentality of fixing things in post is a blight on the industry, and no amount of PR speak excuses this. Evolution & Sony should have known better... It amazes me how quick some gamers are to defend behaviour like this, while rallying around other mostly trivial shit.
Handling that type of demand in a live environment is a non-trivial problem to get right. You can try to simulate that load all you want, but weird stuff happens when hundreds of thousands of people start banging on the environment. Here's the other issue: they are probably never going to need as much capacity as they do right now -- throwing servers at it would be a waste. From a business standpoint, the usual line is to limp along initially while you try to optimize as best you can and only bring more hardware online when absolutely needed. This would be a good time to roll in a cloud environment if the infrastructure is there, but I don't think Sony has that capability yet. (Funnily enough, if throwing more servers at it would fix the issue, Xbox One's Azure support would be really useful right about now.) It's also possible that there's a structural or infrastructure issue and throwing all the capacity on Earth won't fix it (and I suspect that this is at least partially the case, given an earlier comment about how the social functions were taking more resources than expected).

I do think they should be more open about the current status, but from my experience pushing for more transparency (especially externally) leads to a ton of pushback from all sorts of sources -- it's hard.

In retrospect, they probably should have done a alpha/beta of some kind, although who knows what that would have done to the production schedule.
 

Bebpo

Banned
I read there was no rubberbanding with the AI. HA that's a load of shit.

Sat at the starting line for 20 seconds. Caught up and took 3rd.

This game has some of the worst rubberbanding AI I've ever seen. I see the complaints. It's horseshit design.

Motorstorm games had some of the worst AI so I'm not surprised about Driveclub. Then again every goddamn racer these days has terrible bullshit AI so it's not like there's better options. Makes Multiplayer with real people so much more satisfying.
 

Jimrpg

Member
I've still only played about an hour of it as I've been away from home, but I've been thinking about the game a bit.

I think Evolution found themselves in a bit of a conundrum. I think when they debuted the game last year at Gamescom, the general consensus was that it was a bit average. There was no sense of speed and the game was just uninteresting.

I think at that stage they had a choice to drop the simulation aspects and make it more arcade, effectively going back to their roots to make the game they knew how to make. The core game really feels like Motorstorm but with car models, I feel like the cars even handle like Motorstorm too. When the reviewers say the game lacks soul, I think that also means there isn't a consistent vision and there's a lack of identity. The rural locations definitely help towards that regard, but the arcade nature of the cars I think confuse the reviewers. The cars don't handle like real cars like in Forza or GT and that's where reviewers think there's a flaw, there's an even slight disconnect where the game isn't behaving how reviewers are expecting it to behave and thus not meeting expectations. One thing about gamers is we see screenshots and videos, but its different to actually playing the game ourselves. Reviewers are obviously supposed to be judging the game on its merits, but its clear that they don't always.
 

Sami+

Member
Jesus, I'm horrendously awful with this wheel. I keep swerving all over the place in actual races. I want to get good with it though. It's very clearly better than a controller, I just have to practice.

Also pressing downshift to reverse didn't work. When I hold it down the R will appear at the bottom right, but my gas pedal doesn't do anything. It's so weird.
 
It reminds me just about TES Oblivion leveling system, and I find it sad.
Why bother trying, when your enemies are always in line with you.

you mean purposefully stay in the back until the last lap and then try to overtake the AI? I don't think that's gonna work in this game. as far as I'm aware, you don't get a speed boost from being in the last place. it will probably take some time while driving in full speed, taking corner as fast as you can with no mistakes to go from last place to 1st place in 1 lap imo.
 
you mean purposefully stay in the back until the last lap and then try to overtake the AI? I don't think that's gonna work in this game. as far as I'm aware, you don't get a speed boost from being in the last place. it will probably take some time while driving in full speed, taking corner as fast as you can with no mistakes to go from last place to 1st place in 1 lap imo.

you can do that , i won the ferrari challenge (finish top 3) in the worst ferrari (all the rest locked) by driving in a poor last but keeping them in view then going full bore on the last half of lap 3. They were in two groups: gulp then gulp. At the finish area i had 2nd and 3rd ranming me from behind.

you dont get a speed boost but they all start listening to podcasts if you are running last.
 
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