Is the Valley car French ??

[stevenamtaan]

Was just wondering why the Valley car has such poor handling ??..
From Valley's release - for the first two weeks I basically drove everyday telling myself that this is a new environment and that the driving characteristics are vastly different to all previous envi's and will take time to adjust. Then I quit and considered uninstalling Valley through the sheer frustration that this car's handling is just soooooooo wrong. Yes , I know there will be people who will criticize this statement and thats fair enough as this is my personnal opinion.
Seeing as the Valley car resembles a 'rally type' car and being someone who has owned and driven real rally cars , many years ago , there are many serious faults here and yes I know that this is just a game and not the real thing.
1. The car is basically floating on dirt/offroad areas with very little control - frustrating ..
2. The car is sensitive to certain painted lines which cause you to lose speed .. unnecessary ..
3. The car handles poorly when in contact with grass unless perhaps a straight line .. ppffff ..
4. Poor drifting ability on asphalt .. basicically not advised ..
5. Wallrides are generally a waste of time .. virtually no control whatsoever ..

There are many other points aswell but these I find the most annoying.

Some answers for the above might be :-
1. Drive slowly on dirt/offroad to maintain ground contact.
2. Try to avoid driving on or touching painted lines.
3. Avoid grass sections unless just a straight line .
4. Do not attempt to drift on asphalt except on rare occasions.
5. Avoid maps/tracks that have wallrides/loops to avoid frustration.

So to the question of the topic - is the Valley car French ??
Did Nadeo - after boasting 5 years of development - actually study how 'rally type' cars actually handle on offroad/grass/asphalt surfaces ??
Colin McRae would be sadly disappointed ..
After several years of playing/driving TM envi's , enjoying and having fun on the different envi's , Valley is definitely the most frustrating for me and TM is a game that I prefer to have fun with rather than become frustrated with.
Yes , I will still drive the occasional Valley tracks - the envi itself looks very nice but the driving experience is not so much fun. Due to the very nice details of scenery and buildings etc , I would have expected a much more 'realistic' driving experience..

It would be good to hear how others feel in regards to these matters and to share your views aswell..

[dante979]

I bought Valley a week ago. I played a lot but as it seems I will only be "using" it in "breaks" when I'm not playing canyon which is still imho best envi (regarding car physics). So steven don't worry about Valley. We LOVE your canyon tracks keep 'em coming...

[stevenamtaan]

Thx Dante and yeah seems a similar feeling here .. ..Canyon is a gr8 envi.
Have not even made an effort as yet to build a Valley map..

[TGYoshi]

It's the disadvantage of releasing environments one by one. You either like it or not. If you dislike it you feel like you waste 20 Eur.

In my opinion Canyon is insanely boring (repetitive, looks dull), yet I love Valley.

The only criticism about valley I have is the worthless loop/wallride handling which is also terrible in Canyon. Besides that I think it's a solid environment. I disagree with the other points you've made.

[Whitestar]

I agree with you that the car is really disappointing on tarmac/asphalt. You lose ALL speed if you slide.
Not cool!

On dirt the handling is ok I think. Takes a bit getting used to but doable.

[tcq]

I agree with you that the car is really disappointing on tarmac/asphalt. You lose ALL speed if you slide.
Not cool!

*flame answer*
Oh my god, the car looses speed if I slide. Go play stadium or canyon.
*flame answer end*

TM2 is a different setting and the handling is supposed to be different between the different titles. Stadium is a slide environment, Canyon is a slide environment. So now its time for a noslide environment. So either you like it or not, but the diversity is needed. If you don't like valley, nobody forces you to play it. Problematic with the title system introduced by nadeo is that you can't decide if you want to play one environment without feeling like you got ripped off, as you paied for it already. In the past, you could decide because you were offered 3 environments (TM, TMS) to chose from. Maybe demos will arrive in time for TM2, but for now the feeling persists.

[stevenamtaan]

Firstly thx for your views

It's the disadvantage of releasing environments one by one. You either like it or not. If you dislike it you feel like you waste 20 Eur.

In my opinion Canyon is insanely boring (repetitive, looks dull), yet I love Valley.

The only criticism about valley I have is the worthless loop/wallride handling which is also terrible in Canyon. Besides that I think it's a solid environment. I disagree with the other points you've made.

I am not dissappointed and don't feel as though i've wasted money for Valley as there are many driving characteristics that I do like in this envi . It is the driving/handling in my 5 points that I found annoying and could have been better. Yes there are many who dislike Canyon and perhaps prefer Valley . We all have our own preferences in these choices. In regards to both Canyon and Valley , I would have hoped Nadeo could have learnt something (from Canyon) in that there are many players/builders who love the excitement of wallrides/loops and could have made the traction and handling far better as this is a major fun part of driving in TM.
Btw - will be interesting if you feel the same about Valley in a year or two (insanely boring and repetative) ??

I agree with you that the car is really disappointing on tarmac/asphalt. You lose ALL speed if you slide.
Not cool!!

On dirt the handling is ok I think. Takes a bit getting used to but doable.

Yes , the asphalt surface can bring annoyances depending on track styles - feels sometimes like hitting the surface and then an abrupt "jack-knife".. wtf just happened there kinda feeeling.. and the offroad/dirt is doable but does lead to many errors.

TM2 is a different setting and the handling is supposed to be different between the different titles. Stadium is a slide environment, Canyon is a slide environment. So now its time for a noslide environment. So either you like it or not, but the diversity is needed. If you don't like valley, nobody forces you to play it. Problematic with the title system introduced by nadeo is that you can't decide if you want to play one environment without feeling like you got ripped off, as you paied for it already. In the past, you could decide because you were offered 3 environments (TM, TMS) to chose from. Maybe demos will arrive in time for TM2, but for now the feeling persists.

Firsly ,i've purchased every TM title/envi available and am not dissappointed whatsoever with these purchases.
You say Stadium and Canyon to be slide envi's .I totally disagree with that as it solely depends on the track you drive. I would say that drifting in Canyon was more so than for Stadium but then you're saying Valley is a noslide envi and diversity is needed.
Does not diversity mean/bring many varying styles - drift - no drift - tech - fullspeed - etc . For me , Canyon offers a far greater diversity than Valley. As i've said above there are many driving characteristics in Valley which are great. In this envi there are very few instances where a brake/reverse is needed and it is more concerned with acceleration and de-acceleration and the timing of these actions.. but thx for your views.

[Demented]

Stadium is a slide environment, Canyon is a slide environment. So now its time for a noslide environment.

Well sure, but if Valley is a Rally environment then I think it should be more "drift" or "slide" friendly. (Even More than the others).
I love Valley but the handling feels really off to me too. Should be able to drift on tarmac without loosing much speed. Slightly turning on dirt shouldn't feel like it responds quicker than on pavement and causes loss of control. The car whips around too easy on dirt. Dirt should be respond slower to turning on.
I can get use to these things though and will continue to play Valley, but I've had some friends and family give it a go and after just a few frustrating seconds they put it down and want nothing to do with it. It's a bummer because it really is a beautiful environment and fun to drive in but the learning curve is huge and I fear it will turn people away rather than bring more people into the game.
Problem is, now that the game is released Nadeo can't really change the physics because people have already begun making tracks. If they did rework the physics people in general might like it better but they would have to release another (not backwards compatible) version of the env.

[stevenamtaan]

Stadium is a slide environment, Canyon is a slide environment. So now its time for a noslide environment.

Well sure, but if Valley is a Rally environment then I think it should be more "drift" or "slide" friendly. (Even More than the others).
I love Valley but the handling feels really off to me too. Should be able to drift on tarmac without loosing much speed. Slightly turning on dirt shouldn't feel like it responds quicker than on pavement and causes loss of control. The car whips around too easy on dirt. Dirt should be respond slower to turning on.

Definitely like you say - should be more "drift" or "slide" friendly on both dirt and tarmac/aspalt surfaces.
For a newcommer to TM this could be a complete turn-off and this then affects many players.

I've not yet read anywhere as to why Nadeo 'released' Valley without a BETA. Many people/players signed up for the beta's of Stadium and Valley back in December 2012. It could have meant several adjustments for Valley to better satisfy a larger player-base and thus improve many issues.
But now Valley is released and we take what we have or not ??
Oh well - we see what's next and try to enjoy what we have ..

[tcq]

Firsly ,i've purchased every TM title/envi available and am not dissappointed whatsoever with these purchases.

This was not meant to be offending, I just wanted to point out that the critics given in this thread against valley are due to the title system introduced by Nadeo for TM2. When you bought one of the TM1 games (TM, TMS, TMU), you got plenty of environments to chose from and it was easy to see over some subjective flaws of environment X or Y by simply playing it less than the other environments. But with the title system, each environment needs to be able to capture each player thus there is a need of being easier accessible than the old TMU environments. If it will have a slightly higher entrance level this will result in bringing up either negative vibes in the community or negative mouth to mouth propaganda by players who are disappointed by the environment they bought and did not like. This could be fixed by either selling environments in packs or by providing demo versions.

You say Stadium and Canyon to be slide envi's .I totally disagree with that as it solely depends on the track you drive. I would say that drifting in Canyon was more so than for Stadium but then you're saying Valley is a noslide envi and diversity is needed.
Does not diversity mean/bring many varying styles - drift - no drift - tech - fullspeed - etc . For me , Canyon offers a far greater diversity than Valley. As i've said above there are many driving characteristics in Valley which are great. In this envi there are very few instances where a brake/reverse is needed and it is more concerned with acceleration and de-acceleration and the timing of these actions.. but thx for your views.

By the definition, Stadium and Canyon are slide environments, because as soon as there is a tight turn that you can't drive fullspeed noslide, the slide is nearly always (95%>) your choice of action as it will help you gain time. While in valley a good no slide will help you gain time (similar to all TMU environments except stadium). Therefore my talk about diversity can be seen in two ways.
1) Diversity between the TM2 environments (Slide: Stadium/Canyon, Noslide:Valley)
2) Diversity between driving characteristics in one environment (Valley: Noslide on tarmac, Slide on dirt)
The first one is to offer different gaming experiences for players which want to have either a general slide or noslide environment as a basis.
The second one is a try to catch a wider player audience by offering different driving physics inside one title (see dirt in stadium compared to tarmac) as a try to fight against the negative aspects of selling the environments titel based (see explanation above this quote).

Stadium is a slide environment, Canyon is a slide environment. So now its time for a noslide environment.

Well sure, but if Valley is a Rally environment then I think it should be more "drift" or "slide" friendly. (Even More than the others).
I love Valley but the handling feels really off to me too. Should be able to drift on tarmac without loosing much speed. Slightly turning on dirt shouldn't feel like it responds quicker than on pavement and causes loss of control. The car whips around too easy on dirt. Dirt should be respond slower to turning on.
I can get use to these things though and will continue to play Valley, but I've had some friends and family give it a go and after just a few frustrating seconds they put it down and want nothing to do with it. It's a bummer because it really is a beautiful environment and fun to drive in but the learning curve is huge and I fear it will turn people away rather than bring more people into the game.

The problem is, that this valley environment has nothing to do with normal rally-like environments (as you know them from collin mc rae or V-Rally) except just the looks. If you have a look back at TMU, rally was THE noslide environment and maybe valley tries to follow up in its steps. But for me, it definitely fails in this aspect as the noslide on tarmac is to easy, while the slide on dirt is to hard. For me, the try to combine both (slide and noslide) works not, at least not in valley. Therefore, I have to agree with your assessment.