The Crew Beta Thoughts

[mythicalbeast]

You guys can't play it annymore? I can go on whenever I like I have put something between 8-10 hours into it. At first; HUUUGE letdown, the driving SUCKED. After they patched it yesterday it got FAR better. Still, the dodge challenger desperatilly needs a buff befor launch, because it sucks so badly, but bessides that the cars handles pretty well. And it's SO different from car to car. It's far from the most realistic ride out there, actually quite a lot like Burnout: Paradise, and I like it a lot. It really irritates me when people complain about how bad the ride is because it's "unrealistic", that drives a lot of people away from buying the game, but in reality it's FAR more fun driving in a game like The Crew or Burnout: Paradise than a game like Forza.  It's not the realism that matters, it's how the ride FEELS that matters. 

[virtualTune]

You guys can't play it annymore? I can go on whenever I like I have put something between 8-10 hours into it. At first; HUUUGE letdown, the driving SUCKED. After they patched it yesterday it got FAR better. Still, the dodge challenger desperatilly needs a buff befor launch, because it sucks so badly, but bessides that the cars handles pretty well. And it's SO different from car to car. It's far from the most realistic ride out there, actually quite a lot like Burnout: Paradise, and I like it a lot. It really irritates me when people complain about how bad the ride is because it's "unrealistic", that drives a lot of people away from buying the game, but in reality it's FAR more fun driving in a game like The Crew or Burnout: Paradise than a game like Forza.  It's not the realism that matters, it's how the ride FEELS that matters. 

ehhm about that Forza comparison. Sorry buddy, but if you just compare the driving mechanics, you are far better off with Forza. I am by no means a fan of that game, but the individual handling and detailed adjustments that can be made, create a lot of different driving styles.

I am more like you though. I too like to enjoy the sourroundings and everything besides the driviing in my games, even if I have to sacrifice some of the options like in pure racing games. Luckily, The Crew never claimed to be a pure racer though. It was always advertised as a fun, open world, MMO driving game. So, after some more play time, I am by no means dissapointed in the complete game experience. I am sure Ivory Tower will fix the bugs, the driving mechanics and other issues. It seemed as though they responded quickly to the community this time. 

 

Something else I forgot to mention in my review, was getting money is quite hard. I completed about 80% of the events in Silver or Gold, and yet I end up with around $50k at the end of that. The next substantially better car for me would be a Nissan Skyline GTR R34. But that would cost me $120k. Now I think that the rewards from events or drifting should be a bit higher. Otherwise I might actually lose interest ^^ Of course on the other hand, the game is designed to be played as an MMO and as such wants to be a long term game where players will still level up or be able to buy new cars after 100+ hours of gameplay. 

On that note though, the "pay to win"aspect comes in. You can buy cars, tuning and perks with Uplay credit aka. real money. Not a fan of that

 

As far as you being able to still play the game goes, I think my Uplay just disconnected randomly. The Beta will end in 20 Minutes though. "The Crew Closed Beta will end on Saturday, July 26, at 2PM CEST, 5AM PDT."

[Nathan]

Ill be there soon, how long is the beta for anyway? i feel like im downloading 15gb to play for an hour

[Nathan]

Nevermind.... Just saw this

[DaRk0]

Well, the game has the potential. I haven't managed to play it much since I received my key yesterday.

 

BTW, Am I missing something or is the game locked @30FPS? I checked with Nvidia Shadowplay and Fraps.

[virtualTune]

Well, the game has the potential. I haven't managed to play it much since I received my key yesterday.

 

BTW, Am I missing something or is the game locked @30FPS? I checked with Nvidia Shadowplay and Fraps.

yeah the beta is capped at 30fps. you can edit the config to 60, but you will experience some major network issues. I am really hoping they "un-capp" it for the full version! Then again, there is creative director Jonathan Morin with his infamous statement “Resolution is a number, just like framerate is a number"  ^^

[Skylercompany]

I hope they add some pretty nice cars rather than just the generic ones.

 

If you can custom build them like Need for Speed that would be even better.

[virtualTune]

I hope they add some pretty nice cars rather than just the generic ones.

 

If you can custom build them like Need for Speed that would be even better.

if you look at the OP you can see some of the customization, As of right now you can't change the colours of vynils and you can't layer them. There is a huge list of rims, and on average 5 sets of body kits front bumper+side skirts + rear bumper. At higher levels you can also add a widebody. 

 

Here is the new video. This time some of the clips you see when unlocking a new area. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWnyjYEX8MU

 

I should add that this was played at the "high"preset. The frame drops at "ultra" were unbearable. 

[Ineko]

Finally got it working, and the beta ended. GG

[virtualTune]

Finally got it working, and the beta ended. GG

I'm sorry  What took you so long?

[Ineko]

I'm sorry  What took you so long?

 

Microsoft Visual C++ wasn't installing. It turns out that I had to install it manually from The Crew's support folder...

[virtualTune]

wow that sucks! Any chance you are playing SMITE? 

[Prokart2000]

Consider this a quick review ^^

 

First of all, Since I only received my beta code today, I can only reflect on about 2 hours of gameplay. 

 

Since this is a Beta, please note that all the bugs I will mention are not complaints, just observations.

 

First Impression:

The game looks a lot like Need for Speed Most Wanted. It has a similar interface, that can be accessed while driving (which I find rather stupid ^^). Anyways, the game looks nice for the most part. Sometimes the character model is more detailed, other times less. For example the clothes seem to have a poor shader, while skin looks very good. The AA is for the most part terrible, especially on diagonal lines. Round edges are smooth. I believe this is in part because the models, like background parts in the garage, or small assets in the city just have a very low poly count compared to the car models. Round edges like Exhaust pipes are sadly not round, though that is again because of the model, not the AA. I have yet to see a racing game with high poly models. On the other hand, many engines don't support that many polygons, and the required resources would probably be very high as well. 

The driving is very bad. It is very unresponsive and even when set to manual and maximum sensibility you always have to compensate for about half a second response time. After about half an hour I figured out how to turn properly, but cars still under-/oversteer far more than realistic. This makes weaving through traffic a nightmare. 

 

Performance:

At 1440p Ultra with a gtx 780 the game is barely playable. No surprises there, the game isn't optimized yet, no drivers for it and at the end of the day a single gtx 780 just isn't enough horse power to play a game at that LoD. I get around 25-33 fps at that setting. 38-45 on High, which is fine for me. I'd rather have a nicer game than some fps more (in a non-shooter). The game eats about 1.4Gb ram, which I find very surprising considering the Beta is over 15.5 GB to download. 13% CPU load. Takes about 20 seconds to get into the game upon start-up.

 

Bugs:

I will only list the major bugs that bothered me the most. First up, like with nearly every Beta, the game crashes sometimes. More frequently than others though. I'd say on average every 10 minutes. A problem that goes with that is that about 50% of the time you lose your save game. It's a beta so the savegame doesn't really matter, but it's annoying when you have to do the same mission 2 or 3 times. Next up freezes. Again something common for Betas, but just as annoying. For example, when done Tuning a car, the game will freeze (see video below). You will still see your car and an animated camera rotating around it, but you have no controls. When trying to close the game through windows, it pops up again, shows you an error and then ends. The whole process of crash to restarting the game takes nearly 5 minutes, because it takes for ever for the game to load again right after a crash/freeze. 

 

-vT

 

I will continue playing until tomorrow when the Beta unfortunately ends. If i make it substancially further through the SP, or be able to play in MP races, I'll add that to the original post. 

 

Here the Tuning video (with freeze)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7yBqbr6EYM

how do you get in the beta

[virtualTune]

how do you get in the beta

the beta ended yesterday. you had to apply for a key and get a bit lucky. 

[Prokart2000]

the beta ended yesterday. you had to apply for a key and get a bit lucky. 

damn