Did Patch 2.0 Break Project CARS Even Further?

I think this might be the nail in the coffin. Project CARS forum user odytsak has uploaded a video to the game’s official forums displaying the AI in a state of utter despair, all parked on the side of the track as if a nuclear bomb has gone off and the field of drivers are desperately dialing their loved ones to plan for a post-apocalyptic lifestyle.

Duck and cover.

Project CARS shipped in a less than stellar state after an insurmountable hype train that turned a portion of the sim racing community into viral marketers. The Version 2.0 patch promised to fix major issues with the title although it seems like that effort is becoming increasingly futile. The thread dedicated to known issues with the PS4 version of the game features a list of over 100 developer-acknowledged problems, with just under 100 to add, and in eight weeks, only two of them have been fixed.  The thread dedicated to known issues with the Xbox One version of the game includes 68 developer-acknowleged problems, with around 100 to add, and only five of them have been fixed since the title’s launch. Slightly Mad Studios have become notorious for their way of handling crippling issues, chalking them up as customer preferences.

pref4Forum user Fanatest summarizes the debacle quite nicely in a lengthy forum post, drawing attention to the sad attempts at damage control where developers and figureheads blame the customer, trolls, or even haters for faults in the product than acknowledging issues displayed in the video above that clearly indicate a broken video game. I’ve chopped up his post and gotten to the important bits here:

111Threads drawing attention to the quality of the game are popping up left and right, most notably a thread started by AOD_Danneskjold, a member of Clan AOD, one of the biggest online racing leagues using Project CARS. He writes:

DannWhat’s even more disturbing is that shipping an unfinished, broken game appears to have become a trend within the industry as of late. While mainstream reviews praise these games to the point where they are obviously nothing more than third party marketers, customers are left with titles in such a dismal state that they’re being pulled from the shelves and several leaps backwards compared to previous games in the series. Driving game fans wanting an alternative to Project CARS have been treated to an equally unfinished, buggy mess in F1 2015.

1436645346627We’re at the point where it might be easier to just torrent Shift 2 Unleashed and turn it into Gran Turismo for your serious-but-not-too-serious racing fix.

58 thoughts on “Did Patch 2.0 Break Project CARS Even Further?

  1. “We’re at the point where it might be easier to just torrent Shift 2 Unleashed”

    “torrent Shift 2 Unleashed”

    Not cool.

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  2. You can buy it very cheap on Origin or Steam when it goes on sale. Got mine for less than 3 bucks in December.

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    1. What’s that model in the album? Something you’re working on?

      Which game are you planning on using it with?

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    1. You shouldn’t look at the sales, but at the user reviews.
      In example Project cars has a 77% of positive reviews on Steam.
      F1 2015 has a 77% of *negative* reviews on Steam.
      This is a good start to judge a game… a bell in your head should ring when you see a 44% difference in the positive reviews. This doesn’t depends by the overall sales. ;)

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      1. Lol I cant believe the stupidity of the mainstream, you now see Pcars and F1 2015 fans fighting over whos got the better pile of shit, meanwhile Ill be geting my “niche” on with one of the many great SIMS that are available, we are literally in a sim race “golden age”, and the plebs are to distracted by shiny things to notice or care for that matter.

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      2. Lol so now the sales are irrelevant? Just yesterday you were still using that as an argument for the games supposed success.

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      3. I will post it again and at every of your posts… 3500 reviews (about) and 30000 bakers from WMD… who can tell me that the 77% is not from WMD liers ? You are not to be trusted at all. More lies in gaming industry I did’t see.
        P.S. If you are the same guy that says about torrent, P Farts is not worth the disc space to even download it.

        Less shitty games is better to download them and only if they are acceptable to buy them, to avoid supporting crappy motherfucking liers like the assholes of PCars.

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      4. It was about pirating Shift 2, not pCARS.

        “to avoid supporting crappy motherfucking liers like the assholes of PCars.”

        Are you ok?

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      5. You seems really frustrated against them. Did they try to kill someone?

        Instead of being frustrated against them, why don’t take your frustration against someone that actually did something real bad.

        What is you opinion about Isis?

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      6. ^^ uh, ISIS has nothing to do with people trying to defend a broken game, Mr. Strawman ^^

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      7. Nope, my frustration is against them for lying and delivering and unfinished game, and for continue lying.. I would love for a change a honest answer from Ian or SMS or WMD fanatics, that will say, sorry, we screw it up, but we try our best, rather than the game is fine on my PC or the shut up idiot answers… and since I paid for this game, ( I actually have shift 1-2 cause I loved them) and P Farts, I can judge them. As for Isis (rFactor right? ) I don’t know, I saw videos of it, like it, listen great comments, but not experience by myself.

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      8. Are you actually looking at all his post on the forum or are you just looking at the “bad ones” on this blog?

        If you look on this blog, yeah, he looks bad, but if you look at all of his post on the forum, he’s not that bad.

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      9. “If you look on this blog, yeah, he looks bad, but if you look at all of his post on the forum, he’s not that bad.”

        Far out man are you for real,hes a fucking A class Cunt with a capital C, how the fuck he runs a business is beyond me, the fact he released three bugged to fuck out right shit games say enough,but hey 4th time lucky eh? now wipe his cum of ya chin and head back to the echo chamber to report back.

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      10. Yeah, I just said that he isn’t that bad. No need for that. God, I hope you don’t react like that in real life.

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      11. ‘Isis’?

        Really, you chose that as a point of deflection from the discussion? God damn, you are one unscrupulous punk.

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      12. Matter of fact I get banned from him, first get a warning cause I liked one of the ”bad” criticism posts (the one that says this is broken, etc.) and after when I said that this is not fair, and that I will meet him at pretendracecars he banned me. For a head of the studio, from business perspective, this is wrong.

        P.S. I wanted to love this game (as I stated many times, and I love the shift games) but failed in the hype. Too much promises, equals too much responsibilities. Failed completely.

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  3. I’m glad they are releasing patches to fix the bugs reported by the players.
    I’m also glad that the game has been released in a much more polished status that the recent games with a higher budget and history: see F1 2015 in example, but if we want to change the whole genre, see the latest Batman game.

    Project CARS is an awesome sim (personal opinion), and another personal opinion is the disappointment after reading something like: “…torrent Shift 2…”. No game game or developer deserves to be pirated, no matter if it’s good or bad, if you’re enjoying it (the reason of why you may think to “torrent” it) is enough to spend money on it. Also, SHIFT2 is at budget price nowadays, so suggesting to “torrent” it, it is a shame for the whole “simmers” community. You shouldn’t do this, neither on a amateur blog.

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    1. You must be a parody. That you continue to defend this BROKEN game in the face of all this proves it.

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      1. Yeah this guy has to be a joke. He posts about how the patches are “fixing” things in an article specifically about how the patches aren’t doing jack shit.

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      2. Plus, that ~$3 bucks or so someone got it for above, is money better spent elsewhere, like Reiza’s crowdfunding, or a burger & fries at your local fast-food joint. Spending it on SHIFT2 on PC is kinda redundant given the freedom of the “PC Master Race”.

        “You wouldn’t download a car” -> “Nigga fuck you I just dl’d 2 from here, shit is cash”

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      3. No matter guys, inviting people to pirate a game is wrong. It’s like saying let’s pirate Assetto Corsa because it’s unfinished and I don’t really want to spend money on a unfinished game. This is wrong, if you want to play a game, buy it, if you don’t like a game… don’t play it, don’t spend money on it, and don’t pirate it.

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      4. People pirate games. This is something that happens. I’d rather just acknowledge it directly than dance around one of the many perks of gaming on a PC.

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      5. The article is only about the AI (about a 44 cars racing against mixed class… something that the other games can only dream), not about the patch in general.. the huge changelog about the latest patch can be found here: http://forum.projectcarsgame.com/showthread.php?32776-Project-CARS-All-Platforms-Patch-2-0-Release-notes-OUT-NOW-on-PC-PS4

        It only includes minor AI tweaks, most of the AI modifiers will be introduced with the patch 2.5.

        I’m really glad that there’s a developer who is putting so much effort to improve this sim, because frankly the alternatives are inexistent: unfinished games or with a 80’s graphics. No, thank you, it’s 2015 and pcars is the only sim we have with a modern gfx and with a credible physics, so thank you Slightly Mad Studios.

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      6. Wait, so Rfactor 2, assetto corsa, and GSCE don’t have “credible physics?” Ok man.

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      7. I never said that the other sims doesn’t have a credible physic. I said that despite the fact that every other racing game have their strength points, the only one I found who has all the qualities to be a modern sim is Project Cars. It’s not perfect, but it aims to return to the user everything he needs from a modern game/sim.
        Every other sim lacks of something… it can be the graphics, it can be the core features, it can be something else.
        Maybe the only one who can improve with time to reach a similar result is Assetto Corsa, but they are slowly progressing, and we don’t know how longer we have to wait to have a complete game… to not talk about the fact that they seems to be focused on the console development now.
        The others? GSCE…? Ok the gfx isn’t at the first spot when you want to evaluate a sim.. but hey do you really want me to play with a 90’s graphic in the 2015? So I’ll be better to return to play with my Amiga 500.

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    2. This is really interesting.

      You seem to have some practice with addressing the ‘general audience’ in comment sections, don’t you?

      Problem is, most of the audience here is already wise to your tactics.

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    3. Wait wtf, patch ‘2.5’? What happened to the rest of 1.x??????

      Are these people trying to piss everyone off? WTF?

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      1. Patch 1.x ? …they have been released before the 2.0 of course.. :) …here we are talking about the patches that will come.
        The patches numbering doesn’t follow exact increments, because not all of them are released (internal use), in example you have the patches: 1.3, 1.4 and 2.0.
        The next patch should be the 2.5 (or 3.0).

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      2. That’s funny, because most studio’s have the foresight to use an external patch numbering system that actually makes logical, sequential sense. Pretty sure the ‘internal’ patches your talking about are called build numbers, I really doubt the devs are saying ‘2.0’.

        I’ve yet to hear a single logical explanation for this behavior.

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      3. A patch may be not released to the public (it doesn’t pass the validation, it contains a showstopper, etc.). So to avoid confusion by having two different builds identified with the same patch number, you may skip it and increase the ID. Some other time the patches may “jump” to the next integer when they contains major changes, etc.

        The patch naming is really something that is decided by the developer, they can name it patch A,B .. or patch 1, 2.. or July Patch.. whatever. It doesn’t mean much as along there’s a progression.

        Hopes it help.

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      1. How do you know who is right?

        People that defend a game are often those who knows the most about it.

        Think about this.

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  4. James, james…. We must know who this ‘anonymous’ #1 pcars shill guy is!

    I’ve never heard such amazing levels of nonsense, it’s the most entertaining thing I’ve seen all week :)

    Thank you for providing this source of entertainment.

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  5. I was curious about Pcars, so during the weekend “I borrowed it from a friend” to see what all the fuss is about. It was version 1.5 iirc. what a mess it is, to be honest I thought PRC had gone a little over the top with it but now I honestly think James is actually spot on. I wouldn’t even describe it as unfinished or buggy, it is a bad game, period. The sounds are awful, example the MP4-12C GT3. Even the graphics are not that good unless you have a $500 gfx card. Assetto or R3E look way better, even with directx 9 shaders. The physics and handling are not worth the mention. I think it is now meaningless to even debate about it, we should leave it be and it wither by itself.

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    1. Γεια σου ρε παλικαρε!! There are malakes like me that actually paid for this shit and help those malakes to get rich…

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      1. Γεια σου Άρη! You aren’t the only one that got tricked and bought it, a lot of people did. I had also got influenced by the initial hype, seeing various posts in jalopnik and if I had a better computer at the time of release of pCars (and not the potato I had) I would have been one of those malakes ;)

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  6. We’re going to keep hearing the AI will be better in patch xx.x until finally we hear, PCars 2 will have amazing AI that do everything you want it to do. Sorry, but I don’t think the AI in this game can be fixed. It just continues to get worse no matter how they “fix” it.

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    1. Well, there’s AC that is worse.. and iRacing that doesn’t even have it.
      The main issue I see with pcars and AI is when people try to use many cars with a mixed class.
      There’s space for improvement, but if you try to run Formula A cars with the Fords and you put 50 of them in a circuit like Monaco.. then you’re asking for troubles (also there’s no sense to have a race with a such mix…).

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      1. Give me one reason why anyone should believe what a WMD shill says about project cars or any other game.

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      2. So that just excuses the a.i. to all drive off the road like mindless zombies?

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  7. I was horrified when I seen this website here – http://www.gamegrin.com/reviews/project-cars-review/ score for Project Cars, I honestly thought they was just doing click bait, but after reading it and seeing everything that has happened to Project cars since it clear they was correct, I know that site took a lot of crap from people, but seems they may be right?

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      1. Isn’t that what people are saying on here? “why have sites given this game a high score”
        now you are just linking to metacritics to the sites that said this was a good game? Yet this post proves it is not?

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