Thursday 6 August 2015

Mr. Controversial will stand by Codemasters.

No fanciful writing, no gimmicks, no building up the thing to sound professional.

Every year, the F1 game comes out and is instantly under fire for a million things, most of which aren't particularly important. Codemasters take the flak and where possible, do bits and bobs to help the situation.

F1 2014 could have been and should have been a far easier and simpler game. We all knew that F1 2014 was a filler for the move to next gen with F1 2015. Codies wanted the time to focus more of their limited resources to that. Which I totally understand and honestly, that's what they should do.

All F1 2014 needed to be, was F1 2013 with '14 cars and tracks. No new features, no new modes. Literally a copy/paste game would have been fine. F1 2013 was grand game, handling wasn't bad, graphics weren't bad, and the playability was all-round good, both on and off-line.

But for some reason, they didn't do that. They faffed around, and messed it up, the easiest game to make, and they ruined it. They introduced a new handling model specifically for the controller/pad, which basically ruined it. The steering was awful and there was an in-built traction control which provided a huge advantage over the wheel users, who had to deal without TC, with the new 2014 power units.

This lead to some leagues being separated to wheel only and pad only, which ultimately isn't what we want.

We all knew that 2015 should be better, but the 2014 debacle ruffled a lot of feathers and unfortunately, with social media and all the ways that the community can communicate with the developer, it ultimately lead to a lot of public and very visible bad publicity, slating Codemasters and their games.

After F1 2015 was delayed earlier this year, people became suspicious once again, that the game was going to be terrible and it would be 2014 ported onto next-gen. As time passed, more and more press got a hold of the game and the things they were saying were not just positive, but they were way beyond the expectations we, as a community, had. Press were hailing this as best Codies have ever done, and a real simulator, breaking away from the arcade farce of F1 2014.

The closer we got to the release date, the entire community was orgasming all over itself at how good this game was regarded to be. All the game-footage leading up to release had been good, this, surely had to be the one Codies got right.

Then it came, release date and immediately, it was the worst game ever. It hadn't been out for more than 2 hours before the community were slating it at every angle.

I played it when I got home from work and I was extremely impressed, the handling felt amazing, it looked brilliant, and most of all, it was fun! The single player was - and still is - absolutely brilliant. The A.I. fight back, properly fight back and it's glorious to see.

Then we get to multiplayer... which is where, I'm afraid, it all goes a bit south. The online is not great. There were a whole host of issues with online, which I'll not list. But what annoyed me most is that people were instantly kicking off, demanding refunds for something that had been out for less than 24 hours.

We are in an annoying era of gaming, where games don't get released when they're finished. They get released when it's convenient, and the developers could do with a cash injection. Which leaves the games to be finished via downloadable patches post-release. It's very frustrating that this has become the norm, just look at how unfinished Project CARS was, and still is to a degree, and that was in development for 4 years!

A few weeks have passed now and since release we've had a patch which seems to have fixed some of the problems, but exaggerated others. Now Twitter is exploding, calling for Codemasters to give the licence up and never to make games again. There's a poll, asking what the community wants Codies to prioritise - it's the most ridiculous list I've ever seen.

Do they think that Codemasters is run by apes? Do they think Codemasters deliberately cause these issues? Give over

The list in question includes 'More focus on fixing bugs' and 'Bring back classic cars' HOW ARE THEY EVEN COMPARABLE?!

It infuriates to no end to see this, and it angers me even more when people in an instant slag off hard work. Having been on the receiving end of such useless and cynical criticism after putting a lot of time and effort into something for it to be dismissed within seconds.

The community right now, "Oh F1 2015? Yeah it's shit." Yes, I'm sure the developers love that, the hundreds of staff members who spent months working on that game, the thousands of hours work put into that just for some little grotesque twat on the internet with a twitter account to go - "It's shit"

How do you expect Codemasters to get a break when the entire community is at war without self about what it wants?

There are 23 things on that list! How the fuck can you prioritise 23 things? Even if you picked the top 5 things on that list, the community would constantly be on your back about the other 18 you haven't touched, BECAUSE THE COMMUNITY ASKED YOU TO PRIORITISE.

I cannot express how dumb the list is and how irritating the community are in that respect. There attitude seems to be right now, "Can you make us a completely bespoke game for each of us and can you do it now and we don't want to pay any more for it, and if you don't then you're just shit"

Then again, Codemasters have got their goals in all the wrong places, they're trying to create a game for all types of players, casual gamers to hard-core league races. Which inevitably won't work, trying to balance that out is very difficult. I feel F1 2015 is the closest to a sim as it ever has been, but for some that isn't enough.

The community, especially some F1 YouTubers, are first to slate the company, saying that there is no excuses for online issues when the community would help test it for them if they asked. Really? So you'd trek yourself off to Codies HQ, and test online sessions for them, unpaid, and in your own time? And considering most companies don't do weekends it would be in the week, so you'd need time off work, to pay travel costs, and not earn money doing it? Give over.

I tell you what a lot of the problem is, Codemasters have said before they don't have an infinite budget, so they can't include a lot of the things they want to. Which is fair enough comment, things cost money at the end of the day. But Codemasters are the Official game developer of Formula 1. Video-games are big business and get to a huge audience.

In a time where Formula 1 is in crisis, dropping TV audiences and criticism from all sides. If I were at the top of the sport, and my first name was Bernie, and considering how much profit Formula 1 makes as a business, I wouldn't think anything of it to chuck a few million at Codemasters. They're representing YOUR sport. Help them do a good job.

Rant over.

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