FIA European Truck Racing Championship

[MarkR]

Online time trials are, as I suspected, totally flawed. I noticed that the time trial settings could be changed to turn off the speed limiter, speeding penalties, off-track penalties and penalty markers.

Sure enough, a range of what should be impossible times have started to appear on the online leaderboards.

I tried turning off all the penalties for myself (on Zolder Wet as the Leaderboard was empty) and yes all penalty conditions can be ignored. That is one odd design choice and a real shame when this game actually has leaderboards where others don't.

Also, Career season 2 onward is seriously flawed, the only way I've actually managed to earn any credits is by 'retiring' from the races - then the credit reward of 200 is given. I f I complete a race the credits are shown but never awarded!

 

[MarkR]

Some good news, the devs have confirmed they are working on the career credit payment issues for the next patch.

Someone on Steam was complaining the AI trucks were faster than the player trucks so I did a little comparison video of the various transmission and clutch options. I'm all for fewer assists and more skill leading to faster player laps but it turns out in this game the manual clutch is effectively a mini turbo button such is the increase in acceleration!

 

[Paul Jeffrey]

Bigben Games and N-Racing have released their first hotfix update for the newly released FIA ETRC game.

Based on the real world FIA European Truck Racing Championship, the top level of professional truck racing, the new and rather different FIA ETCR game has been in the wild for a little while now, available on both console and PC as part of the worldwide release.

FIA ETRC: Read our 'First Impressions' article here.

Not a category of racing that usually gets much attention from sim racing developers (Automobilista aside), the choice of game and design direction is certainly a brave one from Bigben, and so far the title appears to have been received reasonably warmly from the racing game community.

In the spirit of addressing any issues reported since release back on July 18th, N-Racing and Bigben have deployed a little hotfix update to the game, details of which can be seen below:

• Weekly challenges now correctly displays your online record.
  
• Career credits are now correctly awarded when finishing first.
  
• Previous weekly challenge leader board will not be displayed if the current board is empty.
  
• Voice over playback now triggers more consistently.
  
• An issue where wheel users would experience a lack of control upon exiting the pit stop has been resolved.
  
• Simplified Chinese and Korean have been added to all platforms.

Stay tuned for more news from the game as and when it becomes available..

The FIA ETRC game is available for Xbox One, PS4 and PC now.

Check out the FIA ETRC sub forum here at RaceDepartment for all the latest news and discussion about the game.

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[rosgillies]

No VR, well, you know the rest!!

 

[MarkR]

Well umm yeah but no but...

So on the upside, the developers did respond directly to my contact with them about the career credits issue and this was 'fixed' in v1.1.

After my first v1.1 update career race (in career season 2) 2000 credits were correctly applied to my team/career account. I then updated all elements of my truck to tier 4 reliability and performance), one race win makes this possible depending on the starting state of the truck.

After race 2 the 2000 credits were also correctly applied. I then repaired the suspension for what should have been 275 credits and this happened (see credits in top right-hand corner of the screen). I'm now -995275 credits in debt. This screenshot was taken after winning race 3 and the credits did correctly reduce my dept from -997275 to -995275 so I suppose that's something.

Update: I found the answer to the credit issue, it seems the game has charged far more for the upgrades than stated on the screen (250 credits is the maximum upgrade price!). What should have been 1275 in upgrades has been charged as 1001275! Previously the game didn't allow spending credits the player didn't have so this looks like something has gone seriously wrong (pretty sure it was when I repaired the suspension that this occurred!).

I've contacted the developer again so let's see what happens! One step forward, 2 back by the look of things.

There was no update to the AI so in any case, the career remains incredibly easy to win - especially if the player uses a manual clutch as this boost performance significantly). The career credits are also too generous as one win will allow full upgrades and reliability to be purchased. More work is needed for sure as this was just a hotfix maybe we'll see more soon.

 

[rustyjabs67]

what a complete waste of money, time, energy!!!

 

[jdwohlever]

Small grammatical error

"
element of strategy into he race experience."

 

[Paul Jeffrey]

The official racing game of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship has been updated today - adding a number of small fixes to the truck racing title.

Receiving just its second patch since hitting the public domain back in July, patch 1.2 of the FIA European Truck Racing Championship game is now available to download the next time players restart their Steam / PS4 / XB1 / Switch clients.

The new update is mostly focused around adding updates and improvements to the software rather than any fundamental changes to the title, and as such the update notes aren't particularly exciting to read - although I'm sure those who regularly load up ETRC will be grateful for any small steps in the right direction, especially the move towards increasing difficulty with the re-calibrating of water tank capacity in a bid to increase the strategic use of this truck racing specific element of this ambitious new racing IP.

You can check out the full update notes below:

GENERAL

• Updated font
• Updated localisation
• Updated gearbox setup
• The amount of water in the tank was reduced, it make the game more difficult and the water management more demanding
• Fixed seasonal reputation
• Fixed splitscreen
• Rebalanced AI: The efficiency with which the AI is using the gearbox is increased. It has now a better acceleration.

Patch for SIEJ version and Switch (all territories):

GENERAL

• Updated gearbox setup
• Fixed splitscreen
• Rebalanced AI: The efficiency with which the AI is using the gearbox is increased. It has now a better acceleration

FIA ETRC is available now on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC and Nintendo Switch.

Want to know more about the game? Ask a question of our community by posting a thread in the FIA ETRC sub forum here at RaceDepartment!

Sim Racing is AWESOME!

 

[Nico]

Is this game worth it at least on sale? I've heard it's not very good.

 

[Paul Jeffrey]

Is this game worth it at least on sale? I've heard it's not very good.

For what its worth, my 'first impressions' article can be found here (written just pre-release)

Don't forget you have a 2hr window on Steam in which to get a refund if you don't like it too.

For me, I've not fired it up since reviewing... so make of that what you will

Edit: to be fair, I'm a big fan of the real world series, so maybe my expectations were probably a little too high heading into it.

 

[Nico]

I'm trying to look for the reviews on Steam but they somehow vanished... or Steam is not working properly in my end. It has been messed up ever since they updated the Library.

 

[Patrik Marek]

What lot of people complained about as poor graphics, which I can't agree with, it can looks great at times

 

[maranello78]

For me is a great game, great physics, great graphics and funny. Every track has its own way to trace with these trucks, all models trucks are absolutely amazing modelled, just a thin line could be make better this game, one is a better replay, to view not just our truck, it could be great, view replay from another drivers, and second is a better search for online races, if they fixed it, they make this great to the top, compare with Assetto Corsa, for sure it worth every euro.

 

[Case_]

I'm trying to look for the reviews on Steam but they somehow vanished... or Steam is not working properly in my end. It has been messed up ever since they updated the Library.

No user reviews available, and all curator reviews listed are positive.
Sounds legit

 

[MarkR]

Something really strange with the reviews, when I look at the Steam Store page on my account my review with 38 likes is shown but the game itself has no user reviews??

I quite enjoyed the game as a single-player experience but the Career mode bugs with reputation and payments meant it was pointless to continue. For example, I won the ETRC championship and fully upgraded the truck but due to an error in the winning payments screen, I ended up in massive debt and was sacked by the team at the end of the season, lost reputation and couldn't access the better teams as a result. Others said the same bugs existed in the WTRC mode so I didn't try that.

The AI trucks were way too slow even on the highest difficulty last time I tried the game.

Despite all that driving the slow heavy trucks, using the unique water spray during braking and attempting to maintain momentum has some charm.

 

[slider916]

Has anyone tested it since the latest patch to see if the AI have been improved?

 

[MarkR]

I gave it a quick go in career mode:

+ As promised the AI trucks now certainly do accelerate much more quickly. Once they are up and running they give a decent race.

+ The rewards also now seem to pay ou as expected, but that is based on just 2 races.

+ The water spray braking is far more challenging with a lot less water in the tank for both quali and the race.

But there are some caveats with that:

- The recorded qualifying times for the Pro level AI at Laguna Seca (1:42-1:44) do not reflect what the AI trucks actually drive during qualifying. The AI trucks circulate the track slowly in qualifying but the times at the end of the session are far faster.
- The AI crash into each other every time at race start at Laguna Seca and cause a 40mph slow-moving train. Once they get past the start they are fine.
- In the race the same AI that reportedly ran 1:42-1.44 laps in qualifying struggle to lap at sub 1.50 for the leaders.
- The extra acceleration the AI trucks have seems to cause them a lot of trouble braking into the corkscrew, looks a lot like they solved the acceleration problem only to cause another issue.

 

[Cote Dazur]

KT engine

Is KT engine their own engine? do they have an other racing game title?
Is there any plans for that engine to support VR?

 

[Case_]

KT engine is their own engine, and they have plenty of other racing titles, including the WRC series (from WRC 5 onwards).

Don't hold your breath for VR.

 

[Ruy Horta]

Did not like it.

Could not find a wheel setting that felt right.
The AI did strange stuff like sometimes just standing still - even if that can happen in real life, there should be cautions.
Graphics look good in the wet, washed out if dry and sunny.
I did not like the new Grid either, but this was worse.

The actual idea, heavy trucks with a lot of mass and brake management was interesting, but the above together with the game engine’s known quirks made it one of my worst buys of the year. I’ve deleted the game sub 10 hours with no wish to try it ever again.

Sorry for the devs, but in the end this is not about charity.

Try at deep sale, you might like it anyway - if someone can see hints of AC it must have high potential, right?