Weather System and a Rant

Well, I don't know where to correctly post this, so here it goes.

It is a mix of rant with a little bit of disappointment in the middle.. so let me start:

This game, oh this game!

The developers promised 33% more weather updates in this Q1 patch. That's great! But we have a flawed system on our hands.

Let me explain:Last race on the league that I'm at (Everyday iGP), almost half of the grid have made set ups for a rainy race. The circuit was in Turkey, and we had literally hours and hours of rain on the track and made preparations for that. So, lo and behold, after all this people did that, and literally minutes (about 3 or 4 minutes) AFTER the preparation lock up, its the weather changes to "cloudy", the track magically dries in a minute flat and now all this folks, myself included, are royally f*****.

Come on... we try to preparate ourselves for having a little fun with our online pals, as it is promised on the first page of the site, and we can't have that because after all this time we still have some bad implemented stuff.

How come we make preparations for a race, qualify on wets and can't change for the race if the weather changes? Why not allow for one setup change post-quali? Since it seems we can't get a weather system that works logically why not do this? I'm not suggesting getting a whole new practice run after quali, but it could give people a chance to revert their setups instead of spending an entire race losing 3 seconds a lap or having to do an automatic pitstop to change to dry tires.

Or, I don't know, have an option were you can set an automatic tire change if the weather changes between sessions. Don't tell me this is hard to do because we can set strategy options before the race. It could be just another option: "if rain stops between qualy and race, change tire to: Soft or Hard". Simple!

Man, I'm really getting more and more frustrated with this thing. On this very season, I had a bug where 2 laps after my driver made a pitstop, he went in again, in the middle of a server lag spike and I couldn't do anything about it. Got obviously screwed over on that.

I mean, you have to devote a little bit of your daily time in this game, then it has all sorts of bad implemented stuff that really detracts from the whole experience.This screws with everybody who devotes some time to be around, and only contributes to people not wanting to renew subscriptions when the time is up. We just had a person on our league that just flat out gave up, fired all his staff and quitted the game.

Please, I ask one of the developers: answer us and try to revert this type of stuff, because its getting harder to convince ourselves that this game is worth staying around for.

Lockout is kind of annoying. I get really frustrated trying to decide what tyres to use if it's raining 5-10 minutes before lock out, because the race is still over half an hour away in which it usually stops raining.

The main thing is that for me, and for people who dedicate some daily time to this game, waiting to set up correctly to the weather and everything, usually get screwed over by this lockout.

And people who just simply set it up hours and hours before the lockout, not giving it much attention, get the edge over people who are more focused on this thing. This is what happened: people set it up much, much earlier, when it was not raining, and went away. We, who left to set up closer to the race to account for the weather, focused on the rain. 2 or 3 minutes after the lockout, it was dry again. They obviously got the edge over us, and, to speak more clearly, it doesn't make any kind of sense. You are just telling people "hey, you are stupid because you set it up for a weather and now it isn't that anymore. Now deal with it. Oh, and deal with the people who just got ahead of you too because of your bad option."

It is pretty jarring this type of stuff, and just make people lose interest in the game. 

As I said, after last race, one person just simply gave up and left the game. A person who was around the league, participated with everybody, chatted about. All because of this type of thing. Bugs, bad options throughout the game, etc.

What I really would like is some kind of response from the developers on this matter. Because I know that, at least on my league, 1 person already left and 2 or 3 are considering leaving this thing for good after all this.

Does anyone knows a direct way to contact them so they can see this?

Just to show what I said earlier, and to show more people what I read on the league forum that also motivated me to share these words. This is a direct quote, mind you:

"Ross Brawn: I am a subscriber but this game has so many little/big bugs that it takes the essention of the game away and it is not playable in a normal way. I'm quiting also. Will fire my staff and quit. Have fun people in the future and thanks for the fun in the past. /greet14 hours ago"

Ross was the manager on our league who just gave up and left. This, for me, illustrates even further what I'm trying to get the developers to understand.

I think it's worth noting the guy that left was a subscriber with a world ranking of 21

Thanks Mac, I forgot to add that.

I've already sent PM's here to the developers, pointing to this thread. I would really like some kind of response from them about all this.

I think that's the solution.

Have it hard coded in where you can set up as late as you want for qualifying and if the conditions don't change then the tyres don't change. If they do change, then if it's Rain, put everyone on Full Wets, if it's light rain put everyone on Inters and if it's gone dry from rain or light rain, put everyone on Softs.

It shouldn't be that hard to code, the tyres we qualify on don't take any damage during qualifying, they start the race at 100% so i don't see why we can't make those changes if conditions change. I can absolutely understand not being able to change from soft to hard but a change in conditions warrants a change in tyres. Just seems a little archaic and lazy as it is.

I'm at 17 and i'll be joining him at the end of the season.

I think the devs are working on this but i can't remember what the outcome of previous discussion on this topic was.

The 'weather problem' has been the biggest topic of conversation in the Forum since the beginning, with a lot of heated debate over the months, so is something that is being seriously looked at.

Maybe the moderators can add something to the discussion?

It would be better if the developers themselves appeared here and told us what's their position on this matter.

As Jaxon has put it, I´ll be joining them leaving this game for good because of all this things. Dealing with this stuff daily take its toll.

I'm probably not going to leave for good. Just going to stop giving them money until they fix the basics. Now they've made free controls better it's a more viable option.

Hello, developers? Can you give us some attention on this?

We focussed on fixing the underlying weather system for the Q1 update, but we do need to introduce some feature similar to those you have described.

The last time we investigated this issue we concluded that so long as the weather changes were not unreasonable, then it would actually add something to the game for there to be a fairly substantial risk at the start of the race related to choosing dry or wet tyres.  We anticipated that this element of the game would allow people to take big risks for a potentially huge pay-off by selecting a starting compound that may put them far ahead of their competitors if the weather switches in their favour between lockout and the race.  However there may be too much uncertainty involved here and we can certainly work to change this if it's clearly not liked.

As I am working on the warm-up lap, this is a good time to have a serious look at this issue as it will need to tie into that somehow. So thanks for raising the issue now.

After some of the problems that arose after the Q1 update, we have been discussing changing priorities for the Q2 update and are most likely going to be focussing on really solidifying what we have currently, tidying up many parts of the system, and sorting out several minor bugs that remain. We will also be expanding our team now that we have some breathing room to do so.

Thanks for your posts. I know how it feels when games don't work as they should so I'm just as eager to get it sorted as you are.

Andrew,

Really thank you for your response and care for this "complaint".

I think I understand your original line of thinking, but with drastic weather changes most people get royally screwed over, as I pointed out. 

My criticism derives from the fact that I really like it here, trying to be as active as I can. And this is why I really hope things get looked at a little bit differently.

I fell somewhat relieved that the points that I raised are not unreasonable, and that they deserve some attention by you guys.

Thanks again for your response on this matter.

The only thing that worries me is that changes wont be made until the Q2 patch, that's a few months.

Jaxon, that's not true.  We'll be releasing the warmup lap implementation before then, and what is being discussed here will almost certainly have to be a part of that.  So it's quite likely this will be sorted much sooner than the Q2 update. I realise what I said about changing priorities for the Q2 update may have been misleading. Warmup laps is something we committed to for Q1 so will get this done asap.

That's great news then.

yeh thanks Andrew - I look forward to seeing the changes when they are implimented.

Any idea on time frame?

Andrew... As Jaxon already put it: any idea of time frame on this issue?

Last race we had the same problem again. And from that, I caught eye on another bug: on some unscheduled pit stops, if you order your driver to change tires (from soft to full wets, for example), it just ignores it against the better judgment and fit dry tires on a super wet race. 

What gives? I had this issue on this very last race, and was screwed 2 times. One on the tyre selection before the race and then when the driver didn't obey me. The other thing that we talked about that inspired me to open this thread keeps happening. Could you shed any light on the progress of this?

Thanks in advance!