Now that the game is not being referred too as a "Beta" anymore then I think its safe to say ISI have succeeded and failed in the past year, I've gone back and relived it in my mind and come to the conclusions below. These are personal opinions of course, you can agree or disagree...thats alright....thats what opinions are!
Pros:
Real Road Tech is amazing
Physics are top notch (especially in the Skip Barber)
Tracks are a delight to drive
Immersion of the driving is fantastic
Day/Night/Weather all great
AI has improved and is generally very good to race against
Resume From Replay is great
Cons:
Appaling use of the Modding System still not changed/ammended too in anyway, it really is bad and should've been dealt with before the Beta even came out.
Skins usage still not fully implemented, partly due to the above.
Vmods, whilst the idea is good they are fundamentally flawed.
Car models are good but not great
Bugs still remain that were there 12months ago (and now its not Beta you kinda expect them to be fixed)
UI is poor
Everything is "coming later" it seems, seems like an excuse to me.
Communication from ISI is very poor, only have to look at other Sims Companies to see how its done.
The first couple of Cons above should've been fully dealt with before the Beta even came out, whoever designed the Modding System obviously never played rF1 properly when it came to downloading files, usage of those files, editing of those files for personal use....Skins area being the main balls up. Where once it took Notepad to alter one line in a file and go play, you now need a Diploma in Mod Handling to do exactly the same thing, its an arse ache...period!
Its like ISI did'nt have a proper Road Map set in place when they first said "OK lets go with RF2", its like they dived in without researching and discussing the Pros & Cons themselves. Even the UI, I mean thats supposed to be an easy area of a game to produce yet its plain and simply poor, all they had to do was look at the great community made UIs and copy them but no....!!!
Whilst to some it may seem theres been a lack of progress in 12months I do see a bit, performance has improved dramtically since the first build, physics changes have helped along the way, AI have improved. Extra content to come out from ISI was good, Skip Barber/Lime Rock being the personal highlight plus the community made tracks have been fantastic (and in the sametime shown ISI up a bit!)
I liken ISI to a Football Team, they have their strong points but also their weak, their good areas constantly outshine the poor......they are the Arsenal of racing sims, great a few years back, have the right ideas now but generally not good enough and not where I'd expect them to be right now at this moment in time, plenty of promise for the future but theres a nagging voice that instead of saying "its coming" is actually saying "yeah good luck with that".
Overall where ISI/RF2 is good they're Great, where they're poor they're Very Poor. I thererfore give RF2s first year 6/10, I'm hoping for a remarkable improvement in 2013.