PACER- FINALLY- APRIL release [if all goes well]

[blackwiggle]

I got messaged that R8 games didn't want to have a clash [release wise] with Cyberpunk, hence they were holding off releasing PACER.

The very next day I got PM saying cryptically 'Something has changed' 'Can you guess'?.......I did a bit of searching and found that Cyberpunk had just announced that it was being put back 5 months to a Sept release.[I guess they want a fine tune it for PS5 release], which if rumors are true, the PS5 will now have a OCT release.

https://www.t3.com/au/news/discredit...aystation-info

SO, ATM, and ONLY dependent on the submissions and acceptance of both Sony & Microsoft, re granting a Gold Pass OK to publish on their consoles, PACER intends to now release in April. FINALLY !

That's coming from the horses mouth, although not ATM officially made public on their website of discussion forum.

Here are a few things that I know that I can reveal about PACER.

PACER will be a FULL game from the start, any DLC will be only things like craft skins, you won't be asked to buy DLC for new tracks, or anything that would grant a player a advantage over a player without that DLC as R8 deems that practice divides the players base, which because PACER will be a 'Cross-Play' game, would triple the complication of things.

Why anybody would want more tracks anyway is beyond me.
PACER will have 14 tracks, all bare one playable in both Reversed/Mirrored/Day/Night, and a combo of all 4, so basically 80+ track variations.

R8 have employed 3rd party servers, and a specialist company to take care of all game records [they know the NOT KEEPING of records up to date, and un-corrupted, defeats the purpose of a racing game, and loses players, as the challenge to better your times is pointless.

Those that asked if a DEMO version will be made available, the answer is NO.
I was told that only around 20 people actually downloaded the Formula Fusion Demo, so R8 have deemed it a waste of time.... Even though FF/ PACER has never before been released on the PS4/Xbox, R8's thinking stays the same regarding this.....Besides, SONY are apparently extremely picky on who they allow a demo version of a game to be made available at the PStore.

SAD news regarding the much loved 'Players Met' Function being made operational with PACER.
I've batted HARD to have this included, as I know WOHD/FURY on the PS3 got a LOT of the community happening, it's how a lot of us met
After many conversations, R8 could also see the value of having it working within PACER.
Well I have been told they have tried, but there is a problem with the PS4 development kit that, during testing, they can't get it to work properly, which seems to be a common problem with those few games that do have it running.

I imagine those such problems would be amplified by a order of magnitude, with a game like PACER that had Cross-Play.
It was hinted that due to this use of a 'External 3rd party server' R8 might be able to do a work around, so a 'Un-offical' as we know it, 'Players Met' function might be able to be implemented....Here's hoping.
They are working on it.

Anybody with any questions just post below.
I'll try to answer them if I can.......Fast forward to April YAY !

[eLhabib]

I'm sorry to say, but by now I am extremely disappointed and have lost all faith in this game gaining ANY traction whatsoever, ecxept for the poeple who already have been waiting for it since TWOTHOUSAND friggin FOURTEEN.
I was one of the first backers, back on their Test Pilot Programme, then on kickstarter - their communication has been horrible all the way, and they have promised being close to launch several times since 2017 (!!!) and then delayed it without communicating. Heck, even as I type this, their official website still says 'COMING 2019' - shows you how invested they are in their fanbase. It takes whoever built their (rather crappy) website less than 5 minutes to change that line to 2020.

As for 'not wanting to clash with Cyberpunk' - I call absolute BS. Not the same genre, not even close to the same public attention, plus, last 5 times they communicated something they were still headed for a 2019 release. This is just finding poor excuses at this point.

While I sincerely hope that 'Pacer' (argh, I even hate the new name) will be any good, it unfortunately won't make a difference even if it's going to be a great racing game, because R8 obviously don't know how to communicate and market their product and the genre is niche already. Only chance they have is to be free on PS+ very soon.

I will also be VERY surprised if I get ANY of the rewards I paid for when backing the TPP and on kickstarter.
Oh, can you tell I'm pissed?
I'm pissed.

[blackwiggle]

I can't imagine your the only one that's pissed off.

Yes their communication skills verge on the autistic range and have done since day one.
How much of that you can put down to personnel changes over the years, I don't know, but it has been consistently woeful, of that there is no doubt.

They had a guy called Dan Sheridan [who is currently communications manager at nDreamsVR ] that I was told was going to be the spokesperson / marketing person for them, who I friended on the PS4, and who became a member of the Pacer AG Racing group Playstaion community I started.
But on second contact with him he said he was no longer working for them, and had left in Sept 2019.....Go figure.

As for delaying release because of clashing with Cyberpunk, well I was very surprised when I was told that, as Cyberpunk wasn't on my, or anybody else that I know gaming radar.

Since the traditional home of AG racing has been the Playstation with Wipeout, one would have logically thought that big releases on the Playstation would have been their biggest worry.
Especially clashing with FFVII remastered and The Last of Us 2, which both are undoubtedly going to be massive.
I don't know what the mind set is at R8, one can only assume it is very PC gaming centric, and because of that they haven't grasped just where Pacers biggest player base 'could' be, which again is very strange to me.

I thought FrostE could have told them that as he's a long time WO pilot and WOZONE member, as he's running/setting up the 3 Discord channels for Pacer, but he's become PC gaming centric as well it would seem, seldom much of a presence on the PS4.

What the take up of Pacer will be across 3 different platforms I hazard a guess.
Prior to the Omega pack being released I would have said it's chance of success was good, but looking at how many people play the Omega pack now, or have been regularly since as little as 2 months after it's release [ Especially when you consider what a polished product it is, especially it's VR implementation, and the fact that it was a PS+ Freebie at one stage], one would have to guess that the popularity of AG racing has dwindled dramatically.

There doesn't seem to have been a transition of a new generation of gamers taking AG racing up, most of the current WO players are still the old ones, and there numbers have dropped a lot, I rarely see anybody on my friends list playing the Omega pack, and the vast majority of the close to 140 people on my friends list are ones that have been met from playing WO.
Why that is I'm not sure.
Has it been because the Omega Pack is basically a remake of a remake and people are just tiered of it ?
I sort of suspect that having more servers for it divided the once strong online fraternity, well meant for a better playing experience [less lag etc] but it just made each of those servers look deserted, which didn't happen with HD/FURY on the PS3.
Also not having the Players Met function operational has been absolutely ruinous for WO, why that wasn't implemented I don't know, you would have thought that being a Sony game at least they could have got it working, even if others couldn't.
But then again,if you have ever seen the YouTube video of the Hackers convention where Failoverflow found how to hack the PS4 and explains how he did it, you'd know what a dogs breakfast of a OS is on the PS4 [I mean it uses USB drivers to run the internal SATA drive WTF! ] it's quite a funny video even though a lot of it is way over my head tech wise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpB49dhk2uQ

Anyway, what fate has installed for Pacer I'll guess we shall eventually find out.
I think it's different enough to gain traction and rack up decent sales, but a long term online user base is what it will really need.
If it doesn't get that it would have been a wasted effort and Pacer will slip into obscurity.

[AdHoc]

Doesn’t matter how they communicate, the final arbiter is the quality of the game itself, and looking at the following video, you just get a sense of how underwhelming it is for the people playing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j59mHGjkzQ

Looks boring as. Sorry not sorry.

[blackwiggle]

Well, at the beginning of the video they say its the Friday and the last demo to be shown, you can tell that it's been a long day and everybody just want's to go home, so it's not surprising that the presentation seems a bit underwhelming.

Plus they are playing against the A.I., and the tracks they have chosen to show the game off with are some of the easy ones.
R8 wanted to spread the track difficulty out so newbies to AG racing won't get frustrated and throw in the towel early, something that happened quite a bit with Wipeout, especially in the USA.
And not having BR's is great, as that was the biggest divider of the WO's that had BR's, either you were amazingly good at doing them or had a lousy success rate, if the latter it was very hard to win.

When you factor in that they are trying to get new, younger gamers AG racing, who don't seem to have the same attention span of say PSone Wipeout gamers, you can understand why the tracks shown have long easy to steer around track sections, it's mainly to break them in on learning the strategy needed in weapons choice, when to use them, when to use your turbo, when to use your shields etc, it's a LOT more complicated than any Wipeout game, you really have to think things through as your racing situation changes.

Then factor in that it looks like they are using the second speed class, there are two more that are a lot faster than that, it doesn't look that challenging.

When you get on the more challenging tracks at the faster speed classes, then it's a challenge for even the most experienced AG pilots [Although nobody has played against the new A.I. yet, so just how challenging they will be remains to be seen]

10 online playing against each other, that's where the challenge will be.

I'm pretty sure they intended to use a rating system, like on a FPS, so you are experience matched online, which will be good, as you won't get rank newbies finding themselves in a room where the other pilots will totally out race them, which is very off putting to a newbie in any game, and why they quickly give up.

I wouldn't really take that video of what the entirety of what Pacer is, that was just a like Bar Snack, you have a entree, main and dessert to come.

When people start posting videos of online games with a full grid, then you might change your mind

[JABBERJAW]

They should show a challenging track on the fastest speed class

[EienZero]

and looking at the following video, you just get a sense of how underwhelming it is for the people playing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j59mHGjkzQ

Looks boring as. Sorry not sorry.

Totally disagree, actually this video already confirms a lot of cool differences that I'm loving, like setting your weapons and racing settings from start and other stuff that makes it less arcadish and also more like actual racing.

I've been playing Wipeout since the first ever game, indeed I was already fan of F-Zero when it came out... I've been wishing stuff like this since then, indeed, that would match one of my all time favorite games Rock & Roll Racing in some aspects.

[eLhabib]

... one of my all time favorite games Rock & Roll Racing ...

You said the magic words. I absolutely agree - tuning racecraft to your racing style and a game system that actually requires you to let go of the accelerator on some turns is what AG racing has been missing all these years. Same here, I am a HUGE fan of wipEout since day one, and I still enjoy this style of racing (as in BallisticNG for example), but this could be something new, something even more interesting. IF they get it right, that is.

[EienZero]

yeah man, people who hasn't experienced R&R Racing back then , won't ever know who much fun that was, I always thought that if Wipeout had those simple features it would be like my perfect battle/racing game, what the heck, I'm excited for Pacer! Also the tracks designs and races matching F1 Grand Prix length it was so much needed, but I have to agree that I'm having a hard time liking the new Ships/Teams designs as much as I do with the Wipeout ones, I guess is part habit part fact that they tried to make something different, they remind me too much of a spaceship (closer to the old F-zero type of ship) and that's gonna be hard to get used to for sure. I remember reading/hearing something R8 devs said a while ago when they started working on Formula Fusion that they always wanted to do more F1-like, didn't understand back then in which aspects though, now I see things (tracks length etc apart), the ship livery colors remind me a lot to the old 90's F1 designs for example, I get it yeah, but that can't even compare to anything from WP Pulse to WP HD/Fury, those designs and colors where just perfect! I just hope the game gets some following and the opportunity to evolve in all aspects, and yeah, hopefully a better communication with us fans (I am a Gears of War & Fallout player, I know what a very active and responsive dev-fan relationship is like, although better don't talk about Bethesda Softworks now much lol), but guys, give Pacer a chance, otherwise we may see AG Racing wiped out of mainstream gaming soon and that would be pretty sad.

[blackwiggle]

I got a message from R8 people.
Because of CV-19 they need to move staff to other offices [or something to that effect]
So what might of been a April release, looks less likely.

HEY, as long as everybody is fit, and remains healthy, all good.....the game can wait.