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Having played the Beta and the Day 1 version of the game back in 2018, having seen how the driving has changed over the years, I've noticed a few things that I personally feel detract from the current driving experience of The Crew 2.
My main gripes are:
Steering rate/speed is now slower Camber steer (for lack of a better term, explained later) Monotonous Pro Settings Rally Raid / Rally Cross handling model Cars two-wheeling when turning
Steering rate relates to the steering filter the game has for keyboard and gamepad, how fast the vehicle's steering wheel can be moved.
The rate has been slowed down at some point and now many vehicles feel sluggish, some players have compared this to the feel of input lag. This is how fast the steering was in the Beta:
At 26:46(when the car is upside down, look at how fast the wheels turn side to side).
If we could have an option to change the steering rate, people who like how it is right now wouldn't have to change their driving. For those who want more of a Beta-like feel, there would be a way to do it.
Camber steer is a term I use to describe how cars have a weird push/pull effect when having two wheels on the dirt on the side of the road, on a sidewalk, or a surface that isn't flat with the road. This can also be felt when going over crests, especially in fast cars.
In the Beta going over these uneven surfaces had no effect on the car's direction.
As seen in At 51:53 and in At 22:39This made the handling more intuitive than now, where keeping the car in check is much more difficult in these situations.
Pro Settings in the Day 1 version of the game were mostly used to fine-tune a car to your preference, nowadays you must tune the majority of cars in the game the same way to get the most out of them in terms of grip and stability.
Most of the cars, regardless of the discipline, benefit from setting the front and rear camber all the way to the left and the front and rear ARB all the way to the right for the most cornering potential without any other loss. Rather, this is the only way to get optimal handling. Apart from a handful of cars that work differently, this makes the tuning monotonous.
For an arcade game that caters to a wide audience, it seems unfair to require to have knowledge on how to tune the cars to have better handling. Pro Settings should only be for fine-tuning to one's preference. It shouldn't be a free upgrade, that's what the upgrade parts are for.
Rally Raid and Rally Cross cars had a more natural response when drifting around turns on offroad surfaces like in here:
At 12:52Now the cars don't get any claw grip when drifting and it feels like driving on ice the moment the car goes a bit sideways.
While before you could be more aggressive with these cars, with the current handling model you need to drive them with much more precision and avoid drifting at all costs which feels counterintuitive for offroad vehicles. This also applies to monster trucks and rally raid bikes.
Many cars two-wheel when cornering, even on a flat surface. There's a varying degree of how much different cars two-wheel, some more than others, but they all feel exceptionally unstable and very awkward to drive because of this. The Porsche 911 Speedster, the Mercedes-AMG C63 S, and the new Touring Car Porsche 911 RSR are a few examples of cars that suffer from this issue.
On day 1, cars simply didn't two-wheel. Some had more body roll than others but they were still nice to drive.
That just about covers the main issues I have with the game right now.
I feel like the planes and boats also became less responsive at some point but I feel like the cars became considerably worse than before and many new players seem to struggle with how unintuitive the driving is.
If the driving was kept how it was on launch day, this would be hands-down the best currently active arcade racing game in my opinion, but due to how unwelcoming the driving is I find it hard to recommend to friends. When I do have a friend trying the game out, the first thing they point out is how finicky the handling is.
The driving doesn't need to be like other games, it just needs to go back to how it was before. It was still unique and so much more fun to play than now.
People have told me to change the controls settings before, and while this can improve how you interact with the vehicles, this won't affect any of the points I've covered here.
Controls are not physics/handling, they should however work together for a better experience. The Crew 2's controls and physics don't work together very well as it stands when writing this.
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