oh driveclub :(

Ho hum. The last patch gutted some of the driveclub features i most use or enjoy.

The "community challenges" list now only contains 20 entries which don't update very often at all (when one expires?) - and today of those there were 15 fucking drift events and a couple using locked cars (either due to club levels or paid DLC) and that left just a couple of events that I might even remotely be interested in ... but they weren't really my chop either. The early June update seems to have made some changes here. The list no longer seems hard-fixed at 20, and it seems to change a little more often. It is still fairly limited and has an over-representation of drifting (no doubt reflecting the customer base, unfortunately).

I detest drift events - they're not racing they're just wank. I worked out a couple of days ago how to get a half-ok score (turn-handbrake-release-pause-engage, the pause is the trick) to get through the "tour" but it didn't give me any more enjoyment out of it and so it isn't something I would choose to do. The locked events are kinda silly too, why even show em? (f2p hooks i guess).

The most popular challenge races are just single-lap, so they're getting boring. I don't really enjoy most of the faster cars so that pretty much rules out the rest. They seem to be focused on 'farming fame' but i got to level 50 without really trying so why bother?

Before this update I used to scroll along the list - sometimes far along - until i found something that suited my current mood and just took it, regardless of how many other people played it (it was sorted by descending popularity i think). Usually the slower cars and the shorter tracks that I've managed to memorise so far.

So this is a real bummer for me it sucks a lot of the fun out of it. At least an option to filter by event type would be a big plus, let alone by car class as well.

There have been some changes to the way challenges and time trials work too. Maybe it's just a server hiccup (hard to tell with dc) but a) you always have to set one time/score on your own before it even loads another timer up, b) with time trial events it only shows YOUR best time's ghost now - not any other ghost, c) with community time trial events it only ever seems to show your best ghost and the best overall ghost (or maybe it's the initiators lap) - no longer do you see the ghost matching the next-nearest-target time.

a) kinda makes sense and is otherwise neither here nor there and showing the slowest time ever isn't very useful although it can be funny.

b) takes most of the fun out of this game mode. Trying to beat your own time can be fun but the other ghosts just make it much much more fun. Looks like it was just the server on the night, seems it's back now although it can take a few laps to show up on the longer tracks. Hoorah!

c) Mostly the same as b) except not showing nearby times is also a pain since i'm just not that good in most cases i usually don't see the other ghost much so you can't see the driving lines taken, etc. It's not a target you can beat so it's not a target to beat, merely an indication of how shit you're doing. TBH I can't remember if it always worked like this ....

So it seems they keep gutting the features to try to get the server code working. Maybe it'll come back but since it's not been fixed after so long it's more likely that it's simply gone for good - and this may not be the end of the cuts.

I'm not that interested in online and i've given up anyway with the shitzbox penetrode sold me; one day i'll try routing through a gnu box but it's going to have to be a long wet weekend for me to get keen enough.

Of course i've got plenty of other games but i just haven't felt like playing any: driveclub is good for a couple of laps as a 'go' which sometimes ends there if i'm not feeling it or sometimes turns into an evening of engaged occupation. And if i'm useless at it it doesn't really matter i can just practice or try a different car and not get "stuck forever". Speaking of cars i've been doing some ferrari km mostly just to get the free one and because i haven't driven then much; but i really don't like the way they drive "looks like a fish, moves like a fish, steers like a cow" is apt.

Too knackered to code and the idea of tv sounds dreadful and so if it wasn't so early (19:30) i'd go to bed and read.