User review: fundamentally broken but salvageable

I was too generous: people have been digging more and this is unsalvageable. The AI outside of race weekends is broken too, and in races lots of variables do nothing or are just bizarre. For example, tire temperature doesn't impact degradation but the other way around. Changing temp stats to anything else just changes the temp readouts, tire degradation is identical. It's just an illusion.

AI is so 100% absent that in wet races it is only scripted to pit when the track is dry. If it rains for too long AI will simply drive until the tires explode and everyone DNF. Even if they have a minute lead they won't pit. There is no AI, at all, so they can't have any dynamic race events, compound delta, meaningful strats or anything because it will expose the AI as not being programmed yet.

This game is so broken, empty and unfinished it is just smoke&mirrors behind a pretty UE facade. People are calling it a scam and I can see why. It will take a year at least to fix this. All they can do is call this a public beta and give everyone a free key to next year's game.
It seems to be a common feature with Fdev games.

I think I won't be investing in this one either, if Fdev want my money then they need to prove to me they can fix things and improve upon them.

I love racing sim's iRacing, ACC etc.
 
Frontier announced the next update will be the last significant one, thereby only actively supporting this broken release for a month or two.
Makes the 8+ years of the spaceship game seem eternal. I can't believe they released a game only to support it for 60 some odd days. That's bananas.
 
I guess the upside of being banned from the reddit sub is that you can live in blissful ignorance since nothing is ever posted on this the, presumably, official forum.
Sorry for getting back so late, I got banned from this forum too because of this topic being "toxic behavior". :ROFLMAO:
It seems to be a common feature with Fdev games.

I think I won't be investing in this one either, if Fdev want my money then they need to prove to me they can fix things and improve upon them.

I love racing sim's iRacing, ACC etc.
If you are into F1 and understand the sports fairly well you will be completely frustrated all the time with this game. It is best to see it as a simple mobile idle game with a fancy wrapper.
Makes the 8+ years of the spaceship game seem eternal. I can't believe they released a game only to support it for 60 some odd days. That's bananas.
After some rather negative media coverage and consumer feedback FD went (as with EDO) in Damage Control Mode. They now promised to fix cars being unable to unlap (but only during safety cars, so if you get stuck behind a damaged car that refuses to pit tough luck) and "improve" DRS. It is very clear they really, really don't want to do anything anymore but are only doing it to counter the negative vibes. Its currently at "overwhelmingly negative recent scores" and "mixed overall", effectively being another failure after EDO. It is wild, given how starved the F1 community is and how low the expectations were. All FD needed to do was beat the only competition they have: a $5 mobile game from half a decade ago, made by one man, without a license.

Just some, possibly even positive, food for thought: less than a year before release FD told their shareholders F1M would use Cobra Engine. What we got uses Unreal Engine. What might explain this bizarre failure is that they made a last-minute engine swap which had them scrambling to rebuild in about half a year. It would explain why so many basic features are either missing or broken, and might be a reason to believe one more year of development might actually result in a much better product.

ps. the latest update broke the weather forecasting system. Not only is its prediction of the future more error-prone than you'd expect, even its ability to predict the present and even the past seems to be... sketchy at best.
 
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Sorry for getting back so late, I got banned from this forum too because of this topic being "toxic behavior". :ROFLMAO:

If you are into F1 and understand the sports fairly well you will be completely frustrated all the time with this game. It is best to see it as a simple mobile idle game with a fancy wrapper.

After some rather negative media coverage and consumer feedback FD went (as with EDO) in Damage Control Mode. They now promised to fix cars being unable to unlap (but only during safety cars, so if you get stuck behind a damaged car that refuses to pit tough luck) and "improve" DRS. It is very clear they really, really don't want to do anything anymore but are only doing it to counter the negative vibes. Its currently at "overwhelmingly negative recent scores" and "mixed overall", effectively being another failure after EDO. It is wild, given how starved the F1 community is and how low the expectations were. All FD needed to do was beat the only competition they have: a $5 mobile game from half a decade ago, made by one man, without a license.

Just some, possibly even positive, food for thought: less than a year before release FD told their shareholders F1M would use Cobra Engine. What we got uses Unreal Engine. What might explain this bizarre failure is that they made a last-minute engine swap which had them scrambling to rebuild in about half a year. It would explain why so many basic features are either missing or broken, and might be a reason to believe one more year of development might actually result in a much better product.

ps. the latest update broke the weather forecasting system. Not only is its prediction of the future more error-prone than you'd expect, even its ability to predict the present and even the past seems to be... sketchy at best.
#FacePalm
 
Oh! Thanks for sharing! I didn’t know they’d shifted from Cobra.. oh dear.. probably suffered the same performance issues as EDO.. they really managed to screw up, oops. I recall they were intending on pushing cobra as a licensable engine..
And given they've pretty much zero experience with it such a transition isn't easy. Maybe that is why they are currently looking for experienced Unreal Engine devs to help with the game they released half a year ago: https://careers.frontier.co.uk/prog...-manager/fb8862ae-c2fd-4621-9f87-c3408cac29be

And why they said some bugs simply cannot be fixed easily as the underlying code is a mess. In a game that is supposed to be the 'solid foundation' for the next few years of annual iterations. But at the end of the day, and while I sympathize with the devs, it remains a fact that Frontier again tried to hide whatever development woes happened, knowingly sold a fundamentally broken product, tried to dismiss any criticism, and then drop support ASAP while charging full price. Only a large public ragefest got them to begrudgingly promise to fix part of the broken mess.

It is just really rather disappointing. Especially if you compare it with the Frontier of 2014, which delivered polished, stable products with clear and honest communication, mostly. What we have now is just EA-lite.
 
And given they've pretty much zero experience with it such a transition isn't easy. Maybe that is why they are currently looking for experienced Unreal Engine devs to help with the game they released half a year ago: https://careers.frontier.co.uk/prog...-manager/fb8862ae-c2fd-4621-9f87-c3408cac29be

And why they said some bugs simply cannot be fixed easily as the underlying code is a mess. In a game that is supposed to be the 'solid foundation' for the next few years of annual iterations. But at the end of the day, and while I sympathize with the devs, it remains a fact that Frontier again tried to hide whatever development woes happened, knowingly sold a fundamentally broken product, tried to dismiss any criticism, and then drop support ASAP while charging full price. Only a large public ragefest got them to begrudgingly promise to fix part of the broken mess.

It is just really rather disappointing. Especially if you compare it with the Frontier of 2014, which delivered polished, stable products with clear and honest communication, mostly. What we have now is just EA-lite.
Is F1 not using the Unreal engine then?
 
It is, but it was supposed to be using Cobra, Frontier's own engine. At some point they decided to switch to Unreal Engine.
Probably as they realised that updating the Cobra Engine to modern standards was going to be far too expensive. Or they just didn't have the ability.

CPR are also switching to unreal engine.

The problem is though. Unreal are going to end up with a monopoly and will be charging what they like, and this will be passed on to customers.

I just wish Fdev hadn't screwed up so much, game engines need more competition, as Unity is the only other viable one.
 
Sadly the difference with this and their other games is that this only has a shelf life of a year and then they push a totally new annual version at us so they want to work on that and forget this on , Trouble is that means that people who play this are way less likely to bother buying the next version or two . Al their other games are updated or have expansions regularly to keep them going until they drop them like they have for the original Jurassic park and Planet Coaster without a mention or a thankyou to their players
 
What we got uses Unreal Engine

Are you sure about that?

The fact they're looking UE programmers might mean they may want to migrate from Cobra to UE for next iteration of F1 Manager and not necessarily they're already using UE
Probably as they realised that updating the Cobra Engine to modern standards was going to be far too expensive

Cobra is already upgraded to modern standards.
See JWE2 (dx12 game supporting dlss, dlaa and other goodies)
 
Are you sure about that?

The fact they're looking UE programmers might mean they may want to migrate from Cobra to UE for next iteration of F1 Manager and not necessarily they're already using UE
Yes, F1M is already Unreal. Compare its file structure against other UE4 games such as Back 4 Blood or Life is Strange 2, then versus Cobra games like Planet Zoo (ED's content is weird and encrypted). There's also videos from before release showing them working in the UE4 editor.
 
Yes, F1M is already Unreal. Compare its file structure against other UE4 games such as Back 4 Blood or Life is Strange 2.

Interesting.
They were really proud about Cobra engine and the fact that all their games were using it.

I wonder if the F1 licensing terms forced them to use UE


There's also videos from before release showing them working in the UE4 editor.

I've seen some indeed, but i assumed those were from the trailer, which trailer was indeed made in UE (presumably because the company hired to do the trailer was usually working in UE and maybe their own game wasnt ready enough at the time to offer compelling trailer materials)

I still find it quite astonishing if indeed F1M22 is made in UE.
 
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Are you sure about that?

The fact they're looking UE programmers might mean they may want to migrate from Cobra to UE for next iteration of F1 Manager and not necessarily they're already using UE


Cobra is already upgraded to modern standards.
See JWE2 (dx12 game supporting dlss, dlaa and other goodies)
yea and that game had the same problems
 
Licensing wiont make any difference to what engine they use , only on the names the teams and tracks and it being realistic
 
Are you sure about that?

The fact they're looking UE programmers might mean they may want to migrate from Cobra to UE for next iteration of F1 Manager and not necessarily they're already using UE


Cobra is already upgraded to modern standards.
See JWE2 (dx12 game supporting dlss, dlaa and other goodies)
It is definitely unreal.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/F1Manager/comments/wxfus3/unreal_engine_keeps_crashing_right_after_the/
 
Interesting.
They were really proud about Cobra engine and the fact that all their games were using it.

I wonder if the F1 licensing terms forced them to use UE




I've seen some indeed, but i assumed those were from the trailer, which trailer was indeed made in UE (presumably because the company hired to do the trailer was usually working in UE and maybe their own game wasnt ready enough at the time to offer compelling trailer materials)

I still find it quite astonishing if indeed F1M22 is made in UE.
They said they would use Cobra up to the final year before release, long after the licensing contract was signed. FIA doesnt care about the tools used anyway. FD intended to use Cobra, but decided 'last minute' to switch for unknown reasons. They clearly then struggled to wrap a game around some decent UE graphics in the remaining time.
 
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