Why is this game so popular?

[Nats]

Played F1 2021, AMS2, Project Cars 2, all great games, but I have never tried AC (think I got put off ages ago by lack of Championships and career) so would like to know why is this game so popular? Is it just for hot lapping?

[Moga CMDR]

Random ideas

• the base is good/great
  
• mods are a big deal for many of us
  
• its old, and people can run it easily
  
• its often dirt cheap
  
• mods are a bigger deal than i let on

As far as what its for, its for what you want. It's your sim. So go free roam if you want, or go RP somewhere. Or join a racing league, or w/e you find fun.

You don't need devs giving you yet another generic, boring career that makes no sense to play the sim. I'm sure some games have half decent ones, but erm, yeah they are mostly time sinks, filler and trash.

But if you are an achievement hunter (i am not...) there are like 700 of those. So plenty to do if you need busy work.

Also, if you opt to try the game get the Content Manager (CM). Most people don't bother with the vanilla launcher. The CM improves the experience in a variety of odd and unexpected ways (but wont get you championships or career).

[Nats]

Originally posted by Moga CMDR:

Random ideas

• the base is good/great
  
• mods are a big deal for many of us
  
• its old, and people can run it easily
  
• its often dirt cheap
  
• mods are a bigger deal than i let on

As far as what its for, its for what you want. It's your sim. So go free roam if you want, or go RP somewhere. Or join a racing league, or w/e you find fun.

You don't need devs giving you yet another generic, boring career that makes no sense to play the sim. I'm sure some games have half decent ones, but erm, yeah they are mostly time sinks, filler and trash.

But if you are an achievement hunter (i am not...) there are like 700 of those. So plenty to do if you need busy work.

Also, if you opt to try the game get the Content Manager (CM). Most people don't bother with the vanilla launcher. The CM improves the experience in a variety of odd and unexpected ways (but wont get you championships or career).

Thank you for your info there :-)

[guidofoc]

It is popular because it has good and enjoyable car physics, and you can do all sorts of different driving/racing on it thanks both to the great base content (Laser-scanned Nordschleife! Ferraris! Porsches!) and the infinite amount of mods: race modern/vintage cars, realistically drive supercars, drift, do hillclimb, rally. The moddability of the game also means if you are creative you can enjoy designing and realizing great cars/tracks/apps etc. The game engine keeps being evolved by the modding community, so that now you have night, rain, extended physics, multiplayer with AI traffic, huge virtual roads (I recommend LA Canyons and Shutoko) and i could go on. It's the game that just keeps giving. And it costs almost nothing.

[ling.speed]

Originally posted by Nats:

Is it just for hot lapping?

Organized MP is great. There is also a lot of non-racing stuff that happens. Drifting, solo or in MP is a big one. There are lots of good maps for cruising, again solo or MP. At this point we have so much variety of cars that it's a selling point in itself. (at this point i have almost 500 cars and 170 tracks, and thats hand picked, not getting every piece of garbage possible).

Also as iv'e noted in the other thread about this, AC is probably the prime pick for anyone that wants to get into simracing right now.
So while career/championship being crap is a big minus, it's not that important if you are very new. And for veteran? You make your own IRL career by driving championships online.

And ofc there are those that actually hotlap all day too :). With good tools it's not as bad as it sounds. I spend few years mostly hotlapping till i got into MP racing.


ps: I should add that with some improvements to AI in 3rd party patches, as well as having good car mod and good track mod (which AI quality depends on heavily) you can get really good races from them. And you can make custom championships with said 3rd party software too.

[Dopey Shepard]

Originally posted by Nats:

Played F1 2021, AMS2, Project Cars 2, all great games, but I have never tried AC (think I got put off ages ago by lack of Championships and career) so would like to know why is this game so popular? Is it just for hot lapping?

because it's a great game maybe? Unlike other games that usually focus on one single thing, AC is very versatile. Many cars, you have GT3, GT4, even GT2, LMP cars, even some hybrids or F1 cars while other games like F1 will usually only feature one single car type. ACC is only about GT3 cars, Iracing is hard to get into, it's too expensive, it's basically online-only experience where you can do 1 bad thing and you get banned from it and you lose so much money you spent on it

The selling point for me personally was the fact that AC has arguably the best mouse support of all the games. Well, other games don't even have any mouse support in the first place, so let's start with that. I'm a budget gamer and I'm not spending huge amount of money on a wheel to play a game like AC (that I got for like less than 3$ at 80% off in my own currency). Playing simracing on a keyboard is no-go. AC actually offers smooth mouse movement and I would say, playing the game with the mouse was one of the better experiences in gaming I've ever had, because it was just too smooth. Respectively, I can't play without ABS because mouse accelerates and brakes at 100% all the time but that is understandable.

[thief_035]

AC is a milestone. it is the reference point of the sim racing genre.
it can do whatever you can imagine and then more things you can't even imagine.
after all those years since release, it brakes it's own popularity records.
amazing.
just buy it. simple.

[Sassanid]

If you want a driving simulator that allows you to do a bit of everything, AC is still the best there is even till this day. Let's you race GT cars, F1, drift, or just go for a relaxing casual free roam drive in any car you like.

It's also still the best sim to play in VR. Crisp clear quality whereas a lot of other titles appear quite pixelated in VR.