When you ask a simple question on the Official ACC forums........

[Isaac Chavira]

Official ACC Forums:

You get overactive moderators...................

I asked if we could get skinning abilities. Simple question, no malice, no curse words, no sarcasm. Then you get your thread locked.

I had no idea a moderator could speak for a company.

 

[magzire86]

Don't think your allowed to request stuff, AFAIK.

 

[Chris]

It's most likely just a case of not being within the rules of the forum or that particular sub-forum. It's probably okay within the general chit chat threads and things of that nature.

Probably nothing you said or the attitude or anything like that. I wouldn't take it personally

As for whether or not custom skins will be a thing, I have absolutely no clue. It would be awesome though! Especially for leagues to be able to run your own personalised liveries

 

[Isaac Chavira]

I only asked because they said that would be possible I believe in the second interview. I think Paul was the one who asked him too. I just want it to be possible because if I get a red jacket, and run a US server I want to allow custom teams and skins. And actually mail out REAL trophies.

 

[Jivesauce]

I only asked because they said that would be possible I believe in the second interview. I think Paul was the one who asked him too. I just want it to be possible because if I get a red jacket, and run a US server I want to allow custom teams and skins. And actually mail out REAL trophies.

Is it possible you are mixing this up with the Automobilista 2 interview? I don't recall Kunos ever being open to this possibility, but I could be wrong!

Edit: Ok I found what you were remembering. It is discussed at roughly 11:40 of this interview. He says you will not be able to create fully custom liveries/grids, but that they wanted to make a customization tool where you can create custom liveries from existing sponsors from the various cars and share it with other people. This was over a year ago and obviously it doesn't look like even that tool ever materialized, but maybe they will offer it later.

 

[Isaac Chavira]

Oh I see now. Well it would be cool if they did that.

 

[tlsmikey]

Compared to the first title they do seem to be much more sensitive. Not sure if it’s the pressure or constant complaining but I’ve seen a few snarky remarks from devs.

 

[Gevatter]

Official ACC Forums:

You get overactive moderators...................

I asked if we could get skinning abilities. Simple question, no malice, no curse words, no sarcasm. Then you get your thread locked.

I had no idea a moderator could speak for a company.

Firstly, a thread title in CAPS LOCK and the opening sentence going "Can we please for the love of Christ skin our cars for use on private servers?" won't endear you to anyone.

Secondly, the devs are also the moderators in the official forum. So yes, they speak for the company.

Thirdly, and going by past instances this is the reason for the closed thread, you may have not notices this in the subforum you posted in:

 

[Asterix]

Compared to the first title they do seem to be much more sensitive. Not sure if it’s the pressure or constant complaining but I’ve seen a few snarky remarks from devs.

I think they have their hands tied by Blancpain and the licence.

 

[dud]

When we were discussing whether modding would be supported, possible, allowed or whatever I didn't imagine we would get into a fight for just trying to skin the cars.

 

[Albert McSaltens]

yes they said you will have some sort of livery editor and team

 

[Dirk Steffen]

Regarding the OT issue:
I have seen a very heavy handed approach to moderation on the official forum as of recently.
I simply followed the news and technical discussions about ACC on the official forums since release of v1.0 and realized that more and more threads I would click on where genuine questions were asked were all locked.

It had gotten so bad that I counted locked vs open threads on page one and over the course of several days page one threads displayed had more than 30 % of threads locked - THIRTY % !

I found this strange, especially as this was the ACC General Discussion area so I opened a thread, politely mentioning the situation and asking about it. It took a few snarky comments from users and of course within a short time that thread too was locked.

I simply stopped to bother taking part in any constructive communication now on the official forum - it seems entirely pointless. The only thing I am still doing there is reporting bugs with log files and screen shots if applicable.

I understand that the devs (who must be insanely busy, hunting after those tight deadlines) are the only ones moderating, hence their fuse is EXTREMELY short especially when dealing with impatient users who are constantly complaining and bringing up the same questions over and over but sorry, this is not good communication to simply cut off the rope.

It seems it is best to simply treat the official Kunos forum as a customer support + bug ticket report portal only and bring the actual discussion about the product elsewhere. It is a shame though :-(

Re. livery editing - some clever fellow had discovered and documented over at the official Kunos forum that indeed a livery editor is already implemented in its very rudimentary forum but so far lacks an UI and is not easily seen.
He found that you could edit certain text files with different code for different livery colors and sponsor stickers and has documented his findings - you may want to search for that if you are really interested.
In the long term though it is highly probably that a user interface for that livery editor will be implemented but I imagine that this is very, very, very low on the priority list of things to do, right after bug fixing, 2019 content (to fulfill contractual agreements), multi player features, career mode polish, pit stop features, UI improvements, VR improvements, triple screen support, possible future DLC, documentation and a possible SDK for a more accessible mod support, ... console port, ... mobile device spin offs, ...

There is easily still years in work on that long to do list for a long, active life of ACC - I have the feeling we are just at the very start of a long road of ACC (meanwhile jumping back and fore between AC + mods and ACC depending on the feeling of the day. Patience is mandatory for now I suppose.

 

[Loren Thomas]

It's one thing for them not to want wishlists asking for car or track content which is not part of the license - it's frustrating to me as a user as well to see threads asking for the Nurburgring or F1 cars when it's clearly the Blancpain sim.

However it's ridiculous when you see a thread like "Blancpain has starts behind a safety car, please add the safety car, this will help with the issues on race starts" and the only response from the devs is to instantly lock the thread. Presumably they know very well they should never have released v1.0 without the safety car (among a bunch of other missing things that are there in real life) but the silence is infuriating. At least give us a "working on it" or if there's a genuine reason something can't be implemented at the moment (e.g. UE4 limitations) then tell what that is and what the long-term plan is to remove those limitations.

ACC should be a great sim. It's got amazing potential. But they haven't even gotten the basics right at the moment, so that in actual practice, much less advanced sims look and work way better.

 

[Turk]

Firstly, a thread title in CAPS LOCK and the opening sentence going "Can we please for the love of Christ skin our cars for use on private servers?" won't endear you to anyone.

That's the real reason threads get locked. We've got two very different accounts of what happened, what the person thinks and the truth.

However it's ridiculous when you see a thread like "Blancpain has starts behind a safety car, please add the safety car, this will help with the issues on race starts" and the only response from the devs is to instantly lock the thread. Presumably they know very well they should never have released v1.0 without the safety car (among a bunch of other missing things that are there in real life) but the silence is infuriating. At least give us a "working on it" or if there's a genuine reason something can't be implemented at the moment (e.g. UE4 limitations) then tell what that is and what the long-term plan is to remove those limitations.

Safety car has been discussed on the forum at length. I think the safety car is a complete waste of time in a sim. It doesn't serve any purpose and I don't see how it's going to stop guys overtaking on the formation lap. All they need to do is automatically disqualify drivers that take advantage. Outside of the starts there's no point in a safety car because cars get removed instantly.

The safety car could effectively be a line on the ground and it would achieve the exact same thing without all the waiting around for a safety car.

 

[Loren Thomas]

Safety car has been discussed on the forum at length. I think the safety car is a complete waste of time in a sim. It doesn't serve any purpose and I don't see how it's going to stop guys overtaking on the formation lap. All they need to do is automatically disqualify drivers that take advantage. Outside of the starts there's no point in a safety car because cars get removed instantly.

I'm not saying SC will prevent people from cheating, or that a SC or FCY implementation is worthwhile other than for race starts. But Blancpain races definitely start with the formation lap behind the SC in real life, so a sim of that series should at least have that, especially when they do have an option for the full formation lap (at least in single player, although arguably it would be a big improvement over the current MP situation as well). I certainly think there should be other start options for users to choose too. But that was a real example of a thread that was locked, before any replies and with no explanation, that didn't seem to be any clear violation of the forum rules.

 

[Gevatter]

Safety car has been discussed on the forum at length. I think the safety car is a complete waste of time in a sim. It doesn't serve any purpose and I don't see how it's going to stop guys overtaking on the formation lap.

I'd argue that the Safety car would add some immersion, and I really like that iRacing uses one and hope that some day we'll have one in ACC. It would also help keep the pace without the need for the restrictor the player car now has on formation lap.

But that was a real example of a thread that was locked, before any replies and with no explanation, that didn't seem to be any clear violation of the forum rules.

If you open a thread to the effect of "This is missing, we need/want this", regardless if it's something that would be nice or substantial, that makes it a wishlist, and wishlists are not allowed, so they get locked. I presume the devs have a long list of stuff to implement, ranked by importance. Or do you really think the devs read a thread asking for a Safety Car and go "Why didn't we think of that?"

 

[Turk]

I get that safety car will add to immersion, I welcome that. But at the same time we have to recognise that it's pretty redundant in a simulator, it's not actually needed in the same way it is in the real world.

I think it should be on the list for sure, but maybe not at the top of the list. It doesn't really affect game play.

 

[Gevatter]

I get that safety car will add to immersion, I welcome that. But at the same time we have to recognise that it's pretty redundant in a simulator, it's not actually needed in the same way it is in the real world.

I think it should be on the list for sure, but maybe not at the top of the list. It doesn't really affect game play.

If they only use the pace car like iRacing to start the race, then yes, I agree, but should they implement it some day the way it is used in real races, that the SC comes out to collect the pack in case of a large incident, then that would even add to the gameplay, because suddenly you're back with the pack (or the pack is back with you). Of course this could also be solved with a virtual SC instead of a physical one, but I guess you get what I mean.

It's like AMS implemented the mid race yellow for the Statium Supertrucks that is used to collect the cars in the middle of the race to keep the close. It adds a lot imo.

 

[Turk]

If they only use the pace car like iRacing to start the race, then yes, I agree, but should they implement it some day the way it is used in real races, that the SC comes out to collect the pack in case of a large incident, then that would even add to the gameplay, because suddenly you're back with the pack (or the pack is back with you). Of course this could also be solved with a virtual SC instead of a physical one, but I guess you get what I mean.

But there's no need to do that. By the time the safety car has come out of the pits the whole mess will be cleared up. It's not like we have to bring out a recovery vehicle and protect track side marshals. 10 seconds of VSC is enough to clear a virtual track, with an actual safety car you'd spend the next two minutes sitting behind a safety car for no reason.

 

[Loren Thomas]

If you open a thread to the effect of "This is missing, we need/want this", regardless if it's something that would be nice or substantial, that makes it a wishlist, and wishlists are not allowed, so they get locked. I presume the devs have a long list of stuff to implement, ranked by importance. Or do you really think the devs read a thread asking for a Safety Car and go "Why didn't we think of that?"

Very true - and certainly from a strict interpretation of their forum rule, that is a wishlist and subject to removal - although it was just locked. Although I'd argue something like that is much more of a feature request/suggestion.

A big part of the point of my original post was that they shouldn't have just made this blanket "no wishlists" policy. If they said something like "no requests for cars, tracks, modding" or whatever else they just reasonably can't do, that would make sense. The current rule treats genuine suggestions that could improve the sim the same as completely unreasonable wishes.

The other thing is the complete silence when it comes to their responses - which just leads to more complaining, because users think they're being ignored. Much more helpful would be to have a pinned list of features with some response like: "working on it", "maybe in the future", etc., or "not happening and here's why". That way they'd get fewer threads on the same topic, and if too many of the things a user is looking for in a sim are in the latter category, they'll know to go elsewhere. I recall seeing such a list for iRacing at some point, although I don't know whether staff or users put that together.