I've not seen a seperate thread for these games yet, and I have a few questions for the people playing them. I kinda want to get into some of the more hardcore simulation games, like Assetto Corsa or Elite Dangerous. My questions are:
How much of the experience will I be able to get out of them? I'm probably not buying a flightstick or a racing wheel, I'll be playing them with M/K or with a gamepad. Am I missing much, or is it even worth playing them if you can't get the "full" simulation experience?
How much money will I need to spend on those games? From what I can tell Elite has microtransactions in it. Both games are around 50 bucks, so I don't really want to spend even more on them just to have a decent experience (like Star Citizen seems to be, judging from their model).
How much time will I need to invest? I guess that's especially true for Elite. Yes, I want to try them out and I want to get lost in their worlds, but I don't want to play a game that requires me playing it several hours a day. I don't want it to feel like an MMO, I want to play at my pace and still feel like I have accomplished something or that I'm learning when I'm playing. I don't have a problem with a steep learning curve, but I don't want it to be a massive time sink that I have to do every day, I don't want it to feel like grinding in an MMO, for example.
How well do these games run? Especially on AMD GPUs and with Crossfire. Both games look pretty nice, but how well are they optimized?
How good of an experience will I have playing them solo? Again, not really a problem with Assetto Corsa, but rather with Elite. Can you accomplish things and have fun playing it solo?
If there are people playing these games on the forum I'd love to hear your opinion on them. I know that both of them are critically acclaimed titles, but I don't know if they're for me or if they can be enjoyed in my situation.
I found that when I got a half decent steering wheel and pedals that driving games like FIA GTR, Race Room and Live for Speed became so much better to play. The force feedback worked really well, also the use of TrackIR was also good.
I have not played Elite Dangerous but I do enjoy flight sims as well and trying to play those on a control pad, again is possible but not a great experience.
You can compromise and use things like the Xbox 360 floating wheel and also use some flight sim rudder pedals as a brake/accelerator but the right tools for each job really do make a difference in my opinion. It's not just the feedback with decent wheels and joysticks your input is measured correctly allowing for maneuvers in proper simulation games that are not really possible with a joypad.
This works to the extent that you should put off upgrading things like Graphics cards and CPU's in favor of decent controls if you are already achieving good frame rates.
ED is not in any way a simulator. It's as arcadey of a space sim as it gets, it just has a lot of mandatory boring travel.
You don't need a stick to play ED to full potential. Feels cooler to use, but no gameplay value.
As for player interaction, the only thing you can expect from other people in open play is either piracy of griefing. No other interactions are possible, you can't transfer ships/modules/cargo/credits to other people. Well, you can jettison cargo for others to pick up, but it takes so much time to transfer any significant amount of money this way that it's easier to just earn yourself.
In general, ED is a very unfinished game, and I don't recommend getting it for at least half a year. A lot of essential stuff is missing, balance is non-existent and there are a lot of bugs.
I just looked at the /r/elitedangerous. First thread I found: http://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/2tikws . Illustrates current state of the game fairly well.
I wouldn't call Assetto Corsa a hardcore sim either yet to be honest. Handling model is nowhere near the likes of rFactor or iRacing at the moment. As said above though, to get the most out of the 'realistic' racing games you're going to need to invest in a wheel and some decent pedals.
Well I'd play Assetto Corsa with a gamepad and Elite Dangerous with mouse and keyboard. Maybe I'll buy a steering wheel later down the line for Assetto Corsa, but I'd like to know if my gamepad would get me started or if I shouldn't even bother without a proper steering wheel.
Well, that's probably for the best tbh. I'm not really great at racing games to begin with but I'd love to try something that's not arcadey as all hell. Would you say that Assetto Corsa is worth it if you're not looking for the absolutely perfect experience or simulation but just a good racing game to be played with a gamepad?
The biggest problem with the game at the moment is that there's not a lot of things to do in it and it gets very repetitive after a couple of weeks. After you discover all possibilities, there's only grind-grind-grind until next ship.
The game has a lot of stuff right, but there's too much missing. It seems that they had to hit a very arbitrary deadline behind schedule, so they packed everything that works decently into a build and called it a release.
It's not a game game that is impossible to enjoy, just remember that you'd be buying into early access.
My thoughts on it are summed up in this video, the AI is horrible and the multiplayer has too many faults for me to be bothered with it. It's not the worst racing game I've played, far from it, but it doesn't offer anything over rFactor and iRacing which are just much better games in general.
Pretty much sums up my experiences with it as well. I've just sold up all my sim racing gear to fund other projects. Possibly silly with the upcoming Project Cars release but what I played of that didn't exactly blow me away either. TBH the most fun I've had in a racing game in recent months has been Raceroom Race Experience or whatever they call it these days.