From Christina:
Just put this on reddit in response to an escalating thread - just trying to combat some misconceptions and shed some light about what's going behind the scenes here.
"We're not fixing FFB as it's not broken for us"
We're definitely making changes in this area - but OP is right that we had to do a lot of investigative work and talk to a lot of people to ascertain what was 'missing'. Also, as we've alluded to elsewhere - not everyone has been affected/been discontent with the FFB out of the box, so we've had to discuss about how to implement it as well (and that's still something we're trying to define). Please bear in mind that we also have a wealth of data here about people's wheels, settings, etc - so it's all a big balancing act to please as many people as possible.
In terms of the process of how we refine and change FFB; it’s something that needed key individuals in the studio to be given the time to look at in detail, whilst also trying to balance this against giving them the time to fix other issues and work on upcoming features. There's also a lot less people available to take part in this process now the game's out, as the service team is smaller than the base game team. There are demands from all areas of the company, with numerous projects going on and F1 2019 launching two months earlier than ever before. In that respect, it's something that's ended up taking us a little longer to tackle, just by sheer number of people available - and that's something we're really sorry about. Throw into the mix that we want to get it validated by pro drivers, and you can see how the weeks have gotten away from us.
And finally, just on the point of FFB: with DiRT Rally 2.0 we very much focused on simulating the effects that come through the front wheels as purely as possible, and we (and external validators) were pleased with how authentic the simulation felt in that regard. However on previous games, rather than just science, we used a little more art in some of the effects (especially with regards to the chassis effects, environmental effects, etc) - and that's the area where we've seen the most feedback.
We didn't think we were launching it 'broken' and felt we had achieved and validated a realistic representation of steering feedback when driving a rally car. The sheer volume of [negative] feedback we've had definitely took us by surprise, and it's taken us a considerable amount of time to find something that a/ tackles the feedback we've had, and b/ is still an improvement on all previous iterations of DiRT games. We're getting there, and I look forward to sharing with you in the coming weeks when these changes/options will arrive. Our car handling team have done an absolutely stellar job when it comes to DiRT, and they've been valiant in going through the more nuanced feedback we've received about how it feels.
"We're not adding clubs because there aren't enough players in this game"
Clubs is in for testing now. It's very likely Clubs will arrive in June - which we know is late, and it's disappointing because the same thing happened with DiRT 4's Clubs coming quite late post-launch - but it's a huge undertaking to get right. We have also needed to refactor the backend RaceNet system and make significant changes to the web interface as a result. However, we're seeing some brilliant retention numbers despite the lateness of this feature, and we're confident it'll be more than ready to provide infrastructure for our competitive plans later this year (as well as all your plans).
Just while we're on competitive - the next update will include human-only MP rallycross. We've always been listening, and that comes later this month in Update 1.4.
But back to the main issue raised: the new environments are made by our amazing Environment Artists and Level Design team, and the vehicles are made by our Vehicle Artists. It's a predominantly different set of skillsets that tackle the bugs. However, player satisfaction and happiness is just critical to our commercial goals as DLC.
"We're working on VR instead"
"We're not working on VR because of other fixes"
We're working with an external development company to make this. There's a VR build in the studio right now - the lion's share of work is done, and we're onto looking at comfort features.
More on that soon!
Just put this on reddit in response to an escalating thread - just trying to combat some misconceptions and shed some light about what's going behind the scenes here.
"We're not fixing FFB as it's not broken for us"
We're definitely making changes in this area - but OP is right that we had to do a lot of investigative work and talk to a lot of people to ascertain what was 'missing'. Also, as we've alluded to elsewhere - not everyone has been affected/been discontent with the FFB out of the box, so we've had to discuss about how to implement it as well (and that's still something we're trying to define). Please bear in mind that we also have a wealth of data here about people's wheels, settings, etc - so it's all a big balancing act to please as many people as possible.
In terms of the process of how we refine and change FFB; it’s something that needed key individuals in the studio to be given the time to look at in detail, whilst also trying to balance this against giving them the time to fix other issues and work on upcoming features. There's also a lot less people available to take part in this process now the game's out, as the service team is smaller than the base game team. There are demands from all areas of the company, with numerous projects going on and F1 2019 launching two months earlier than ever before. In that respect, it's something that's ended up taking us a little longer to tackle, just by sheer number of people available - and that's something we're really sorry about. Throw into the mix that we want to get it validated by pro drivers, and you can see how the weeks have gotten away from us.
And finally, just on the point of FFB: with DiRT Rally 2.0 we very much focused on simulating the effects that come through the front wheels as purely as possible, and we (and external validators) were pleased with how authentic the simulation felt in that regard. However on previous games, rather than just science, we used a little more art in some of the effects (especially with regards to the chassis effects, environmental effects, etc) - and that's the area where we've seen the most feedback.
We didn't think we were launching it 'broken' and felt we had achieved and validated a realistic representation of steering feedback when driving a rally car. The sheer volume of [negative] feedback we've had definitely took us by surprise, and it's taken us a considerable amount of time to find something that a/ tackles the feedback we've had, and b/ is still an improvement on all previous iterations of DiRT games. We're getting there, and I look forward to sharing with you in the coming weeks when these changes/options will arrive. Our car handling team have done an absolutely stellar job when it comes to DiRT, and they've been valiant in going through the more nuanced feedback we've received about how it feels.
"We're not adding clubs because there aren't enough players in this game"
Clubs is in for testing now. It's very likely Clubs will arrive in June - which we know is late, and it's disappointing because the same thing happened with DiRT 4's Clubs coming quite late post-launch - but it's a huge undertaking to get right. We have also needed to refactor the backend RaceNet system and make significant changes to the web interface as a result. However, we're seeing some brilliant retention numbers despite the lateness of this feature, and we're confident it'll be more than ready to provide infrastructure for our competitive plans later this year (as well as all your plans).
Just while we're on competitive - the next update will include human-only MP rallycross. We've always been listening, and that comes later this month in Update 1.4.
But back to the main issue raised: the new environments are made by our amazing Environment Artists and Level Design team, and the vehicles are made by our Vehicle Artists. It's a predominantly different set of skillsets that tackle the bugs. However, player satisfaction and happiness is just critical to our commercial goals as DLC.
"We're working on VR instead"
"We're not working on VR because of other fixes"
We're working with an external development company to make this. There's a VR build in the studio right now - the lion's share of work is done, and we're onto looking at comfort features.
More on that soon!
