Bottomline, it (LFS) is what it is, it has been the same for many years, and is not going to change.

They don't owe anyone anything, all we have ever paid for is S2 in the state it was when we paid for it, anything on top of that is a bonus.

People can bleat on till they are blue in the face about lack of development, lack of communication, but the fact is, thats the way it is.

It boils down to like it, or lump it, play it, don't play, no one really cares if joe bloggs is bored, or wants X or Y, play it till you are bored, then go do something else, LFS is, and always will carry on the same no matter who does or doesn't play it any more.

Quote from Dac :

whatever happens i think we all agree theres so much more potential. lately ive been finding myself strangly drawn to the mods on rfactor :S

I was too for about a week ... but after that I just got tired of the poor physics, however good looking the mod was. Back to LFS

Quote from thisnameistaken :

I don't think the existing circuits have enough resolution in the corners to make that work very well.

might be
if that is the case i recon its about time to change that... there just arent enough interesting corners in lfs

Quote :

Having said that, there are some corners (FE in particular) where it feels like there's a groove at the apex that pulls you round the corner, and if you miss it you slip to the outside.

you mean in a rally dropping 1 wheel off the road and letting the sidewall brushing against the drop at the edge of the tarmac do the work way? im pretty sure the tyre model doesnt support that kind of driving

Someone posted this in the picture thread.

Quote from danowat :

Bottomline, it (LFS) is what it is, it has been the same for many years, and is not going to change.

They don't owe anyone anything, all we have ever paid for is S2 in the state it was when we paid for it, anything on top of that is a bonus.

People can bleat on till they are blue in the face about lack of development, lack of communication, but the fact is, thats the way it is.

It boils down to like it, or lump it, play it, don't play, no one really cares if joe bloggs is bored, or wants X or Y, play it till you are bored, then go do something else, LFS is, and always will carry on the same no matter who does or doesn't play it any more.

Please, enough with the 'you paid, now shut up' thing. Yes, we've all paid, and I do agree that it doesn't give us a right to ask for anything, but it doesn't mean we can't talk about things we think are wrong.

Personally, I'm merely expression my feelings about this game, and hope that eventually Scavier hear what a lot of people have been saying for a lot of time and change their weird working methods.

Quote from boosterfire :

Please, enough with the 'you paid, now shut up' thing. Yes, we've all paid, and I do agree that it doesn't give us a right to ask for anything, but it doesn't mean we can't talk about things we think are wrong.

Personally, I'm merely expression my feelings about this game, and hope that eventually Scavier hear what a lot of people have been saying for a lot of time and change their weird working methods.

I just would have thought people would have got the message after so many years, no amount of discussion will change anything, Scawen has a way of working that, while unarthodox, works very well for him, and I doubt that'll change.

Talk about it till you are all blue in the face, it ain't gonna change jack.

Quote from danowat :

I just would have thought people would have got the message after so many years, no amount of discussion will change anything, Scawen has a way of working that, while unarthodox, works very well for him, and I doubt that'll change.

Talk about it till you are all blue in the face, it ain't gonna change jack.

It might work well for him, but it's probably another thing for his finances, especially on the long term. Do you honestly think that LFS can go on forever, at this rhythm of development, and be profitable until the end of time? At some point, either people will lose interest (because it'll be so outdated on certain aspects, i.e. graphics), or it won't be profitable enough for them, which hopefully might bring them to realize that they work too slowly to keep the interest and expectation up.

Why do you think people such as Tweaker have left these boards and have 'lfs is dead' in their signatures?

whether scawen changes his way of working or not - it's irrelevant to me.
still, lfs somehow misses some motivation. lack of updates and content just are not enough to keep the consumers motivated and totally confident.

Quote from Biohazard :

whether scawen changes his way of working or not - it's irrelevant to me.
still, lfs somehow misses some motivation. lack of updates and content just are not enough to keep the consumers motivated and totally confident.

Very true.

If iRacing was free/cheaper, Scavier would be in a whole world of trouble.

I still love LFS.

For what it`s worth, I finally hit the limit with LFS a while back.

Although I`ve never been much of a racer online, I did race a lot offline, and completed so many laps while working on track textures, cockpits, and skins that I got ridiculously bored going round the same tracks and corners over and over again.

The lack of new content was to me one of the main factors, as well as the limited ability to mod the game (and yes, I know modding isn`t the point, but it is a large part of keeping old games fresh). Lack of such simple things that have been in other games for a long, long time, like simple bump and specular mapping is just annoying.

The fact that now, when I couldn`t buy a single core machine even on the lowest budget, there is still no support for using multi-core processors is just silly. It`s something that needs to go in now, not any later.

Long term annoyances like those damn skyrocket barriers seem no closer to changing, and having another new car is just not any sort of improvement until major problems like that are out of the way.

I`d love to have fun again in LFS, and I did love making skins, textures etc for the community here, but I just can`t see it happening again any time soon, which to me is the sad part.

I totally agree with the picture of LFS with the smileys. This is the normal cycle-rule of every firm/product :
- Launched --> surprise!
- First years --> surprise turns into more interest --> the firm is growing up
- Middle years --> We have have reached the top of the growth curve --> stagnation
- Some years after --> The products interest fewer and fewer people --> no more growth, and even recession
- Suddenly --> Bankruptcy!

This is the standard scenario if the firm/product does not adapt to the market and the context. This is not what I wish to LFS, as it is a software that I enjoy very much.
Smaller and smaller upgrades let the firm/product waive around the deadlind of the firm's recession. While completely new upgrades make the firm/product goes into another "Surprise!" stage, throwing the deadline a couple of years away again.

To have a taste of small upgrades : look at the cars. Eventually, some model will just die (look at the Viper, sadly ), while the Corolla model have been on the market since the end of the 70's (almost 30 years) and I honestly don't know why :shrug.
However, and hopefully, while you can't improve drastically a car model because you have some requirements, LFS possesses unlimited possibilities.

Compared to other games or software, what we don't have in LFS' universe is greater than what we have already. So we can figure out easily that the improvements are non restricted.

If the devs read my post, I must precise that what I am about to say must not be taken personally. I love the work you do, and the only thing I would say is "Keep up the good work". The only thing that limits Live For Speed at the moment is its development process. The first "mistake" I would say is that there is a lack of communication between the developpers and the community.
While many racers might think the model of communication should be "devs <-/-> subscribers" (meaning that they don't belong in the same world), I prefer to think that "devs <==> subscribers". Whether we like it or not, we share a common thing, which is LFS itself. And since Live For Speed require its community to spread the word and do some publicity, the devs need us as much as we do need them. If LFS gets advertisely-autonomous, then we won't have any right to complain/state something because the devs will not need us anymore.
However, the implied threat of spreading a bad word is far more powerful than spreading a good word (people tend to like and remember negative things only ). That is why more communication between the devs and the community, in both ways (announcements and surveys), would help to get the mood better. (By the way, the lack of news seems to be the reason why people are bitter here : they search the forum looking for hope, and because there is not really, they start bitching about everyone to get their daily dose of adrenaline )

The second thing that restricts LFS is the team. Don't get me wrong, Mr Scavier, I am not saying that you do a bad job (as if I can repeat, I am satisfied everytime LFS comes up with a new patch), but your team and your way of working could acheive bigger things. For instance, increasing the team will either lead to closer releases, or more content in each release. Don't take me bad, especially Scawen, as I well know that it is very hard to manage the beginning of the fatherhood and our own company, and you can't be blamed about anything. I can feel that Live For Speed is calling us to breathe fresh air by having new people working on it, so as to expand its possibilities. But I am not worried, as I am sure that Scavier, event if it is not in their mind now, will figure out sooner or later that they need to increase the number of programmers/modellers/web-developpers and will do the right choice.

You care about your baby (LFS - as I'm sure you care a lot about your RL baby ) more than us, subscribers, will ever do, that is why I know you won't let it die or you won't let people call it dead, and make the right choices according to your sense of logic and the *free (may I need to precise that we are willing to help you avoid paying a consultant )* advices the community who appreciate your work can give you

Please keep up the good work Scavier, come up with the best patch ever for december/january, and blow our mind .

repeat
Shorlty after patches are released::lovies3d::lovies3d: :lovies3d::lovies3d::lovies3d:


Shortly before patches are released::arge::arge::arge::arge::arge::arge:

end repeat


I got my 24 pound worth. +1 million and free candy

Really unsure about this poll and what to decide.
So for now im not going to choose an option.
I think Zen321 sums up my hopes & fears.

-1 for more babies.



Sorry.

Quote from danowat :

Bottomline, it (LFS) is what it is, it has been the same for many years, and is not going to change.

They don't owe anyone anything, all we have ever paid for is S2 in the state it was when we paid for it, anything on top of that is a bonus.

People can bleat on till they are blue in the face about lack of development, lack of communication, but the fact is, thats the way it is.

It boils down to like it, or lump it, play it, don't play, no one really cares if joe bloggs is bored, or wants X or Y, play it till you are bored, then go do something else, LFS is, and always will carry on the same no matter who does or doesn't play it any more.

Word

Saved me posting that!

Quote from boosterfire :

Another problem is that people actually stop playing between patches. You hear a lot of: "I'm waiting for the next patch to play again". That problem would mostly be avoided if patches were closer to each other, and be soothed even more if we knew how the progress was going. Scavier kind of fails at creating expectation.

I agree with this. I am not complaining about the lack of patches because I do realize how complex LFS has become and how much work it takes one guy to put new features in, but I think releasing one feature at a time rather than getting 3-4 things done in one bigger patch would work out better. People leaving between patches does seem to be an issue and I think more frequent small patches would keep them more interested than throwing a couple different features at them at once a couple times a year.

people would come and go no matter how frequently patches would be released. On the contrary, some people even would get fed up by new stuff beeing released on a more frequent basis and create simular threads like this one (or worse). In the end, its not the responsibility of the developers to take care of their community (in this particulary aspect) which is an inpossible task anyway if you'd ask me. They are doing their thing and sharing it for a small amount of money. They made it clear numerous times how development is beeing taken care of and it should be an obvious fact that with basically just three people involved at the core, development is going to be comparably slow (and much more effective compared to bigger projects if you'd ask me). I've made my point about this matter several times in the past and im bored of it somehow.... These kind of threads, regardless the intention behind it will always turn up, regardless the progress of development.

Hoping for the best and prepared for the rest.

Quote from danowat :

Bottomline, it (LFS) is what it is, it has been the same for many years, and is not going to change.

They don't owe anyone anything, all we have ever paid for is S2 in the state it was when we paid for it, anything on top of that is a bonus.

People can bleat on till they are blue in the face about lack of development, lack of communication, but the fact is, thats the way it is.

It boils down to like it, or lump it, play it, don't play, no one really cares if joe bloggs is bored, or wants X or Y, play it till you are bored, then go do something else, LFS is, and always will carry on the same no matter who does or doesn't play it any more.

This should be posted as the 2nd post in every thread like this.

Is it just me or is this thread more civilized than most other threads on this matter, though?

Quote from zeugnimod :

This should be posted as the 2nd post in every thread like this.

Is it just me or is this thread more civilized than most other threads on this matter, though?

im supprised that i actually agree with you at something. And no, you're not alone.

Quote from danowat :

Bottomline, it (LFS) is what it is, it has been the same for many years, and is not going to change.

I would argue that LFS has 'changed' over the years with lower frequency of patch releases. Maybe that's why the complaints are louder?

For the record, I rarely play LFS at the moment because of this stagnation. I'm still a huge, huge fan, but think that the development cycle needs to be sped up for it's long term survival. If the next patch doesn't have significant new content and enhancements, or there is another huge gap between patches I fear that things will really begin to drop off in terms of online server populations etc.

Let's hope it turns out OK!

Quote from farcar :

I would argue that LFS has 'changed' over the years with lower frequency of patch releases. Maybe that's why the complaints are louder?

For the record, I rarely play LFS at the moment because of this stagnation. I'm still a huge, huge fan, but think that the development cycle needs to be sped up for it's long term survival. If the next patch doesn't have significant new content and enhancements, or there is another huge gap between patches I fear that things will really begin to drop off in terms of online server populations etc.

Let's hope it turns out OK!

Im afraid that you haven't considered the expositional factor of such a project and this is why i strongly disagree with your first assumption/ statement. About the second part, regarding "online server populations", i really haven't seen any drop in that respect, at least according to my personal observation. Maybe Victor could offer a proper graph which should show about a thousand (give or take) people each day for the past couple of years (excluding major patch cycles that is). However, please read my previous comment if you haven't already and take it into consideration.

Quote from 510N3D :

Im afraid that you haven't considered the expositional factor of such a project...

Yes I have.

I was merely stating a fact; that patches have become less frequent over time. I understand that there are reasons behind this.
The fact that there are valid reasons for slower development output, doesn't solve the problem though.

In regards to server populations, I don't have any numbers to show. It's just that from Australia I can never seem to find decently populated local race servers.
I never used to have such problems.

Quote from farcar :

Yes I have.

I was merely stating a fact; that patches have become less frequent over time. I understand that there are reasons behind this.
The fact that there are valid reasons for slower development output, doesn't solve the problem though.

In regards to server populations, I don't have any numbers to show. It's just that from Australia I can never seem to find decently populated local race servers.
I never used to have such problems.

In case you really understood the reasons behind it you should know what to expect (wishfulness ftw) . And this is why im unable to see a problem somehow but perhaps you could try to enlighten me in that respect (once again).

About server populations once again, i think that anyone that is not living within the european time zones has got a problem, every now and then, finding a proper server to play at. But since im actually living in europe, im of course just guessing here.

Quote from 510N3D :

In case you really understood the reasons behind it you should know what to expect (wishfulness ftw) . And this is why im unable to see a problem somehow but perhaps you could try to enlighten me in that respect (once again).

So we both agree that the development cycle is slowing.
You don't see a problem with this which is cool with me. No skin off my nose.
My opinion on the other hand is that the slowing development cycle will eventually lead to a decline in this great simulator through a slower uptake, and existing racers leaving. Enlightened?

In regards to wishful thinking, the solutions to the (imho) 'problem' would be more developers or more development hours from Eric and Victor. I'm assuming Victor and Eric aren't working full time on LFS... Clearly these decisions are made by them based on their desires (do they want to spend more hours), and economic feasability (will they make more money?). They're none of my business, but being a fan, I do think about these things.

Quote from 510N3D :

About server populations once again, i think that anyone that is not living within the european time zones has got a problem, every now and then, finding a proper server to play at. But since im actually living in europe, im of course just guessing here.

I feel like I'm repeating myself here, but I will...
A couple of years ago, I had no problems finding a reasonably well populated pickup race server in Australia. In the last 6-12 months I have had lots of problems finding a reasonably well populated pickup race server in Australia.
So it's not living outside Europe I'm referring to, it's a perceived decline in numbers on Australian servers

Quote from farcar :

So we both agree that the development cycle is slowing.

No doubt about it. But both of us are only seeing it from a limited point of view. (going into detail about that soon within this reply)

Quote from farcar :

My opinion on the other hand is that the slowing development cycle will eventually lead to a decline in this great simulator through a slower uptake, and existing racers leaving. Enlightened?

Enlightened? Well slightly. "Eventually" is the keyword and i guess that anyone that once fell in love with LFS and understood its way of development will respect it, stick to it and return to it. Everyone else is just having fun (within a short period of time perhaps) or haven't got what i've just mentioned above.

Quote from farcar :

In regards to wishful thinking, the solutions to the (imho) 'problem' would be more developers or more development hours from Eric and Victor. I'm assuming Victor and Eric aren't working full time on LFS... Clearly these decisions are made by them based on their desires (do they want to spend more hours), and economic feasability (will they make more money?). They're none of my business, but being a fan, I do think about these things.

Since you're basically just assuming here (as stated) i'll partly skip that part. All i could offer are assumtions as well and according to my observations, Victor has been quite active (LFSW hotlap analyzer and several supportive forum avtivities regarding leagues and so on)

Not sure about Eric after all. Im hoping for the best and im prepared for the rest. Period(.)

Regarding Scawen, im sure he's got a handful of stuff on the "to do list" (as same as Victor and Eric i guess) and since they ain't telling us anything (for several reasons (excluding the Scirocco thingy)) they're doing, either way regarding development i guess its fair to say that assuming that they are inactive or anything in that respect is...respectless or simple down to a lack of informations. (if i made myself clear this way ^^)

Quote from farcar :

I feel like I'm repeating myself here, but I will...
A couple of years ago, I had no problems finding a reasonably well populated pickup race server in Australia. In the last 6-12 months I have had lots of problems finding a reasonably well populated pickup race server in Australia.
So it's not living outside Europe I'm referring to, it's a perceived decline in numbers on Australian servers

Alright, fair enough, i was just guessing here and not really having any evidence at hand to prove anything, either way. However, it could be a sight but certainly not a proof regarding the actual matter, right?



(Im not a fanboy (open for any (valid) inputs), i just love LFS and learned to respect it and the way it's beeing developed)