#BestCommunityEver - An open letter

[Voltaire1971]

Dear SCS.

Your recent Blog Post from April 27 concerning the #BestCommunityEver has made me thinking about the state of the game and the validity of that claim. Are we the Best Community Ever? This is a weird claim and I am not really sure whether that is honesty, a meaningless nicety or a bit fan service to make those with fragile self-esteem feel better about themselves. But IF we are such a great Community, then you surely have a weird approach to show us your appreciation.

Let`s take a look.

1. Traffic AI

The complaints are Legion. Trucks crawling along with 30 MPH on a 60MPH minor road. Even less, if there is any sort of turn coming up. Trucks slowing down almost to a halt just because the road gets an additional line. And the crashes at on-ramps of Interstates have become so frequent, that it is hazardous to drive on the right lane. All of this is not new and the situation does surely not improve in any meaningful way.

2. Traffic Lights

I think I don`t have to explain the phenomenon of one approaching traffic lights, that turn yellow and red just before one reaches them. But it gets worse. If one continues on green and follows the speed limit, then clearly more often than never the next traffic light will also turn red just a few meters before one can get across them. So, in fact, the game is designed in a way, to make travelling through cities more annoying and obnoxious on purpose. Maybe it is just me, but showing the middle finger to the customer is a strange way to appreciate a great community. The obvious reaction from my part is to say "F this S, I am pulling through the red light". Does anyone else do that too? Please comment below.

3. Speed Limits

Does anyone remember 2016 and good old California? When you were on an Interstate, you drove 55. If you entered the city, it was 30. Sure, there were exceptions. But these were really just exceptions. This changed not later than with Oregon. To say, that Speed Limit changes are erratic at times, is probably a nice way to describe the situation in some parts of the map. How constant changes are supposed to be fun to play is a bit beyond me. Plus a gazillion different road parts with different speed limits open the door for an equal amount of errors. I bet, if we would examine every yard of roads in ATS and make a list of roads, where the intended speed limit does not match with the actual speed limit, it would be a very long list.

I don`t know, who asked for that, but it surely was not me. And what happens, when things get annoying? One starts to ignore it. A short piece of 35 betwen two 55 sections in the middle of nowhere? No slowing down here. Plus speeding is a good way to avoid red traffic lights. The speed limit is 30? Go for 35 and you get over the next traffic light with green. Is anyone else doing that? Please comment below.

4. Weight Stations

Since distribution of weight on different axles is not a thing, Weight Stations serve no purpose besides adding some American flavor to the trucking experience. And this is absolutely fine. What is disturbing / annoying about this is the frequency with which one gets pulled in. Some time ago I started to keep track of it. And out of the coincidentally exactly 250 cases I got to a Weight Station, I got pulled in 64% of the time. And this value is pretty stable already.

Why? Why so often? What is the point of getting pulled in at least 6 out of 10 times, when Weight Stations have no actual function. Even if they had, 64% is too much. As it is, they just seem to serve the same purpose as Traffic Lights. To stall for game time by annoying the players with content, that is neither fun nor entertaining.

5. Summary

There are some additional minor issues with ATS, but the major issues got mentioned above. Pondering about the increasing (or at least not decreasing) amount of problems, that reduce the fun / entertainment, I asked myself: What am I looking for in ATS? Answer: A square map.

Which means, that I will buy Wyoming in 2021 and Montana whenever it gets released. Consequently I went to Steam and de-wishlisted Texas. Because I don`t really need it, if I have a square map. And if there is the wish to make me open my purse for anything east of the square, maybe a good way to motivate me would be to show appreciation to the allegedly Best Community Ever by addressing the major gameplay issues instead of spamming cheap (and thus worthless) compliments and useless paint jobs.

Sincerely

[TINO]

"And out of the coincidentally exactly 250 cases I got to a Weight Station, I got pulled in 64% of the time."
The setting is set at 60%. You can modify it in the def files. I play with 0%.

I don't usualy respect the red lights, I think of them as stop signs and go through them if the traffic permits.

[supersobes]

About traffic signals, I agree that the yellow light phase is too short for most roads. In ATS, all the yellow lights at every intersection are the same length, which would never be done in real-life. The commonly accepted way to time yellow lights in the United States is to use a mathematical formula that considers the speed limit, the speed people actually drive (because most drivers drive faster than the speed limit), driver's average reaction time, the downhill grade of the road, and other miscellaneous hazards in the vicinity of the intersection. As a result, the yellow light timing for each intersection becomes unique based on the circumstances.

Also on the topic of traffic signals, there's one thing SCS did at signalized T intersections that has perplexed me since the day I started playing ATS. When the traffic on the main road has a green arrow to turn left onto the minor road, why does the thru traffic on on the far side of the main road still have a red light? There's no traffic that would cross their path at that point, so the thru traffic should get a green light at the same time as the left tuning traffic, and it should remain green for the entire duration of the light cycle until the minor cross street is about to get a green light. For me, this has to be the most annoying thing about the traffic signals in ATS.

---

About speed limits, I think they've actually become more realistic with time. The speed limits in California where it was 55 MPH on highways and 30 MPH on secondary roads were actually very inaccurate and unrealistic. Just like the yellow light timings, a plethora of information is considered when calculating the speed limit, so each stretch of road is going to have its own speed limit based on the conditions of the road. I also encourage you to have a poke around on Google Maps Street View, and you'll see that the speed limit fluctuations exist in real-life too. Often times, small towns, dangerous intersections, and sharp curves will warrant a lower speed limit. Another thing about a lot of the small towns in America is that a large percentage of their city budget relies on revenue generated from speeding tickets, and they typically target big trucks because they know truck drivers aren't locals and won't be as familiar with the road. With the improvements that SCS has been making to the road signage in the past few updates, I find that I have ample warning and time to slow down for speed limit changes. I just drop a gear and run the engine brake, and I'm usually good to slow enough to the lower speed limit without even needing to touch the service brake pedal. All I can say is that if you don't like the speed limit changes, you should stick to the Interstates because the speed limits are a lot more consistent on those roads, both in real-life and in ATS.

[Reignman]

4. Weight Stations

Why? Why so often? What is the point of getting pulled in at least 6 out of 10 times

I was just thinking about this myself recently. Lewiston comes to mind. There's a weigh station just north of town, and then about 10 miles later there's one just east of town and I constantly have to stop at both. I don't know how weigh stations work in real life, but don't they communicate with each other?

But what makes it unfair is, AI trucks don't have to pull in 60% of the time lol. I was in a small group of about 6 trucks cruising down the highway and I was the only one who had to pull in, and then another 5 or 6 went by while I was getting checked. If it's 60% then on average 6 out of 10 trucks should have to stop. Not that I would want slow AI trucks clogging up the weigh stations, but it would be nice if they had to stop more often instead of me.

I crunched the numbers though, and it's more profitable to pay the $700 fine than to stop. Your fuel cost is higher trying to get back up to speed, then you risk an AI car running into you when you try to merge back into traffic, and with the 20x speed increase, the time you waste, you could have been on your next delivery sooner, especially if you had to stop 3 or 4 times. So I no longer stop for them.

"And out of the coincidentally exactly 250 cases I got to a Weight Station, I got pulled in 64% of the time."
The setting is set at 60%. You can modify it in the def files. I play with 0%.

I don't usualy respect the red lights, I think of them as stop signs and go through them if the traffic permits.

Yeah that's where I'm at sometimes too. A lot of those lights in the small scenery towns don't even have traffic, so I don't even slow down for some of those red lights anymore. Coming down highway 285 through Roswell can be an absolute nightmare. I think there are like 10 stop lights in a row, so that can lead to a bad day real quick xD.

The most annoying lights are when there isn't a left hand turn lane coming from the opposite direction, but you gotta wait for the non existent left hand turn traffic anyway because there's a left hand turn in your direction. Or lights that turn green when there aren't any cars waiting for them.

[rbsanford]

Are we the Best Community Ever? This is a weird claim and I am not really sure whether that is honesty, a meaningless nicety or a bit fan service to make those with fragile self-esteem feel better about themselves. But IF we are such a great Community, then you surely have a weird approach to show us your appreciation.

The community buys the games and DLCs, plays them, gives reviews, points out bugs, gives suggestions for improvements, etc. Maybe the devs simply just want to thank their supporters for hanging on despite their games not being absolutely perfect. The big development companies aren't this friendly and in-touch with the player base, so this is a nicety, but certainly not a meaningless one.

About the traffic lights: sure, they can be annoying and can slow down travel, but that's how they are in real life. Sometimes you get lucky though and get a good string of green lights. And there's absolutely no evidence to suggest that SCS intentionally makes city driving frustrating to irritate the player. For one thing, this would make absolutely no sense; they want people to like the game, recommend it, and for more people to buy the game based off of those recommendations, like pretty much every other company in the world. If they give "the middle finger to the customer" they shoot themselves in the foot. For another, the cities in ATS are often very detailed, and obviously a lot of work was put in to make cities realistic and lively. Why would they go through all the effort to intentionally create a bad experience?

As for the weigh stations, check out this short guide. Based off of this information, if anything, we don't get called into weigh stations enough. A ~60% rate is fine by me, since I don't like being stopped a lot either, but hey, that's trucking. Besides, you can always ignore weigh stations; the only penalty you'll get in the game is a small fine.

[55sixxx]

Imo, the worst of all is the AI... Which could stand for Artificial Ignorance instead of Artificial Intelligence. In both games the AI is the worst part of it, i can't even begin to count how many times i saw crashes at off-ramps in ATS, drivers stopping almost completely to make a turn, driving way below the speed limit in the left lane, slamming the brakes in the most random time and places... Also, in Iberia, SCS did something with the AI that made them even more annoying... 10 trips out of 10, i see myself blocked behind two trucks with both going at the same speed and not letting anyone get through (aka elephant race).

[supersobes]

The most annoying lights are when there isn't a left hand turn lane coming from the opposite direction, but you gotta wait for the non existent left hand turn traffic anyway because there's a left hand turn in your direction.

This is exactly what I was trying to describe! I really wonder why SCS made it this way. What is the point of making traffic wait when there isn't traffic crossing their lanes. In traffic engineering, you never want traffic stopped for longer than it has to be, so this is exactly opposite of how traffic signals would be setup in the real world. They even fixed this in ETS2 already, but not in ATS.

[YahirLeyva]

The weight station that is the most annoying is the one at the north of Salt Lake City, between Logan and Ogden, where cars suddenly stops and makes you crash against them. There are another issues in Colorado, for example in Lamar cars disappear in cross roads. Another issues both games has are the tolls, specially now with Iberia, what's the point on have 10 lanes to pay if just are used 2, what's the point on make special car lanes if cars drive over the truck' lanes.

I'm not even talking about why Andorra or Perpignan aren't part of the map, there's a huge hole in that zone that can be fixed with two important cities, or the fact that they decided to ignore Galician and Arabian languages in road signs, SCS makes weird decisions some times.

Returning to ATS, SCS should really listen us, is impossible play it with that AI driving so awful and light signals being unrealistic. Paintjobs are ok, but we need those things fixed first.

[Xaagon]

There's some good constructive criticism here. I agree on most of the points except the speed limits.

1. It seems that the AI was better in the past... right after they made it so the AI would react to your turn signals. Unfortunately, it now does weird stuff like having oncoming traffic stop when you're trying to turn left where you would've had a lot more room if they would have kept going. Also, the highway traffic in the game acts very unrealistic at present because the AI doesn't know how to merge or move to the left lane to allow other traffic to merge.

2. Agree on all points made about the traffic lights here.

3. This I disagree with. The varying speed limits is what actually happens in the US, so I think they have it correct now.

4. I also feel like I'm always being called into the weight stations, but the AI usually gets to skip it. If the frequency I get pulled in is accurate, the AI should be pulling in a lot more too.

5. While I hope that SCS addresses these gameplay issues, I still plan on buying all states they release so long as the quality doesn't drop or the prices go up significantly. That said, I think others may have a much higher frustration level than I do. I do enjoy hearing on their blogs or livestreams that they hear us and are working on various issues. Hopefully they will fix some of these sooner than later as the OP mentioned that it's going to start affecting their sales.

[hangman005]

@supersobes I think that Intersection for the I-15 Southbound on ramp is a pretty close example of this... in fact it used to be this, Where left turning traffic had the green but their same direction thru traffic lanes had the red, and I was quite happy that that one got fixed... and then left scratching my head when none of the others did.