Co-Driver doesn't call some caps/notes since update

[PieceKeeper]

Since the update I noticed the co-driver omits to call caps every now and then (sim mode, haven't played other modes since update) or will go through notes calling out the distance but not the note itself, and sometimes nothing at all even though he rolls the road book forward.

"1 kilometer!".....note passes....."2 kilometers!".....note passes.....

Sometimes 2-3 of these in a row where he doesn't read the actual note but rolls the book forward...

Other times he won't call the cap, or will not say anything at all but the road book rolls forward.

I liked it better before when he actually did his job and gave much more input, but I have seen players saying they appreciated the update.

I would've considered putting this change behind an option (Low input co-driver/High input co-driver) because as it is right now it is definitely a regression in terms of simulation. Co-driver needs to talk.

You had it right before except for some confusing keep left/right calls at intersections that made no sense when the right call would've been turn left/right instead of "keep" however he was on top of his job as opposed to now.

[nigeldoyle3dkiwi]

Yup, I posted something similar after the update. Most times he calls the cap but sometimes he doesn't. Before the update he called it every time. Seems to be mostly when you're on sand and off track (in simulation mode).

Yup some of the calls at intersections are confusing when the road book shows one thing and the navigator says the opposite.

[PieceKeeper]

Yes! I remember seeing your thread.

The thing about intersections is that the roadbook's instructions are in french, all abbreviations are cut up french words but the interpretation of "keep" and "turn" seems either mixed up or badly prioritized by the co-driver.

SER G means "Serrer à gauche" and does mean "keep to the left" and it's a useful note for sure but the problem is that there will be spots where the roadbook means "Turn right and keep left" but co-dog only calls the keep note.

If he's going to make an executive decision on which instruction to call out, it should be the turn first and which side of the road to drive on second.

[UniOfLife87]

Originally posted by PieceKeeper:

Yes! I remember seeing your thread.

The thing about intersections is that the roadbook's instructions are in french, all abbreviations are cut up french words but the interpretation of "keep" and "turn" seems either mixed up or badly prioritized by the co-driver.

SER G means "Serrer à gauche" and does mean "keep to the left" and it's a useful note for sure but the problem is that there will be spots where the roadbook means "Turn right and keep left" but co-dog only calls the keep note.

If he's going to make an executive decision on which instruction to call out, it should be the turn first and which side of the road to drive on second.

ohhhhhh :) must be a bonified idiot if they can not translate such simple words to english

You guys should check the roadbook and km driven, if your not sure you get the correct direction there. I also noticed lot's of errors,... This was not the case in the first game ! Now they even mix up left with right or even straight forward,...

I switched to French now :)

[PieceKeeper]

Originally posted by UniOfLife87:

ohhhhhh :) must be a bonified idiot if they can not translate such simple words to english

You guys should check the roadbook and km driven, if your not sure you get the correct direction there. I also noticed lot's of errors,... This was not the case in the first game ! Now they even mix up left with right or even straight forward,...

I switched to French now :)

Well even though it's true that Dakar 18 had a clearer co-driver, the real Dakar roadbook is not translated either, there is one roadbook for every competitor. This is fine IMO as it's the real deal and this is how the actual race works.

So :
P = Piste (track)
q'P = Quitter la piste (leave track)
HP = Hors piste (off road)
DZ = Début Zone (start zone)
FZ = Fin zone (end zone)
Cx = Cailloux (rocks)
Etc.

Having regional translation of the in-game roadbook for every language would honestly be a herculean task and would inevitably result in even more erroneous interpretations.

Again, I'm not 100% sure they got the translations mixed up. But the way and the order he gives them out is confusing. When there is a note that instructs you to stay on a given side of the road when turning to an intersection, the co-dog often calls out the side of the road and assumes you'll keep an eye on the road book to know which side to turn.

So instead of saying "Turn right and keep left" which is basically valid and means Turn right at the intersection and drive on the left side of the road, he just says "keep left" and assumes you'll know to turn right. Co-dog should either call everything with the turn first, or only call the turn and leave out which side of the road you should drive on.

TLDR which way to turn at an intersection should always be called first. Off-road caps should always be called this is not even a question.


In the end I'll say sure if you speak french it's kinda easier once you pause the game and check out the lexicon, the notes make more sense but even then I think the co-driver should be way more explicit at intersections.

[PieceKeeper]

Also from what I've seen of the roadbook editor in the previews and trailers, I think a good chunk of it is auto-generated as you are placing your waypoints so assuming the level designers used that tool as well, I don't know to which extent they went back and fine-tuned some of them to make it clearer. Maybe they did, maybe not, maybe some of them.

It's hard to say.

[PieceKeeper]

"keep straight" is another one that can be annoying because it means just stay on whatever type of road you are currently on.

Seems simple enough but it becomes a problem at twisty intersections when "track" look like traces and "traces" look like a track.

[UniOfLife87]

I fully agree that's a big task, but they get paid for it or not ?

Also not everything is bad, how difficult is it to just drive the route yourself and check and note the errors and correct them ?!

I can even do this,... It would take like 5 seconds per error to write it down and afterwards they can rectify it. I personally think if one guy does this it takes 1-2 weeks work.

This game is out for months now,...

There is really no excuse to be honest.

I forgot to mention that even cap calls are wrong sometimes.

[PieceKeeper]

They get paid for delivering the Dakar experience in video game form. A translated road book isn't part of that and shouldn't be a priority, seeing as in 40+ years of being an international event, Sabine, Amaury or the ASO never bothered to translate the road book once. This isn't a big deal at all plus some of the most important simplifications are already in english like "Follow traces", so git gud.

In any case with a better co-driver this wouldn't be an issue.

The thing is we aren't geniuses, if you could do it, anyone could do it....and Saber could do it to.

Literally anyone could drive the route and compare the co-driver to the roadbook and correct confusing co-driver instructions one by one.

You know why they haven't? Because it's probably a partially automated system that can have varied outputs depending on how fast you're driving and how long the note is, and it's more efficient to pay man-hours to tweak the system itself than go through thousands of waypoints by hand, only to wipe out that work later when the system itself works perfect and they can crank out new races that will already have near perfect instructions instead of redoing all the manual work every single time. This isn't Dirt Rally where the longest stage takes 8 minutes and everything is curated by hand.

It's already good enough.

They updated the co-driver once, they will probably do it again. Sure it's a good idea to go through stages and note errors but they probably have already done so, and are still working on it.

Game hasn't been out for "months" it's been out for two months. We all know it has its problems, don't go around assuming it would take a couple weeks to make a feature perfect if you've never worked in software development. It's never that easy.

[UniOfLife87]

Originally posted by PieceKeeper:

They get paid for delivering the Dakar experience in video game form. A translated road book isn't part of that and shouldn't be a priority, seeing as in 40+ years of being an international event, Sabine, Amaury or the ASO never bothered to translate the road book once. This isn't a big deal at all plus some of the most important simplifications are already in english like "Follow traces", so git gud.

In any case with a better co-driver this wouldn't be an issue.

The thing is we aren't geniuses, if you could do it, anyone could do it....and Saber could do it to.

Literally anyone could drive the route and compare the co-driver to the roadbook and correct confusing co-driver instructions one by one.

You know why they haven't? Because it's probably a partially automated system that can have varied outputs depending on how fast you're driving and how long the note is, and it's more efficient to pay man-hours to tweak the system itself than go through thousands of waypoints by hand, only to wipe out that work later when the system itself works perfect and they can crank out new races that will already have near perfect instructions instead of redoing all the manual work every single time. This isn't Dirt Rally where the longest stage takes 8 minutes and everything is curated by hand.

It's already good enough.

They updated the co-driver once, they will probably do it again. Sure it's a good idea to go through stages and note errors but they probably have already done so, and are still working on it.

Game hasn't been out for "months" it's been out for two months. We all know it has its problems, don't go around assuming it would take a couple weeks to make a feature perfect if you've never worked in software development. It's never that easy.

maybe they should just get quality control before it's released, if anyone can see the problems and errors, what the hell do they do than ?!

this should have been released next year instead of like this

for me it's not such a bother but all the people that are new to this dump the game

very poor management is all what I can say

[PieceKeeper]

They definitely did QA the game, trust me you can't account for tens of thousands of setup in the PC world. If you could game on Macs the same way you could game on PC the mac would be a very easy platform to support because you can't do anything with them.

Issues that players find on release are usually already known by devs and were judged not critical. USUALLY. Like it's literally impossible that CD Projekt Red were not aware and CP2077 was broken, their ticket management software must've been absolutely overflowing with issues but someone decided that delays had been going on long enough and push it out. Players were "finding" problems that were definitely already known. That's just how it works.

In the case of Dakar it's not a total disaster. Performance issues were not as widespread as you would think reading support boards and they fixed a bunch of them a week later. I would bet they got fatal errors too but couldn't reproduce them as well. They were probably counting on widespread use to gather up more info and were not expecting that it would become game breaking for a lot of people. I've had some, but never during races. If they can't fix them on the next update they will probably introduce more detailed logging of crashes in the back end of the game so they can finally pin point it.

I work on a sports app that has a lot of users and we released a new video player for the world cup that we tested for like a month straight with 20 people using 5-6+ devices doing nothing but streaming video and beating it up. We were very confident in our release but then a million different Android devices flooded the door and it took a massive turn for the worst. Even on IOS devices we had thousands of app killing crashes we never saw before.

It's a pretty fked up business.