Dirt 4

Codemasters have just confirmed Dirt 4:

Today, we’re delighted to announce that DiRT 4 will fearlessly race to PS4, Xbox One and Windows PC in June 2017. Hot on the heels of 2016’s critically and commercially successful DiRT Rally, DiRT 4 takes the passion and authenticity of off-road racing to the next level, whilst also re-introducing you all to white-knuckle truck and buggy racing in Landrush. For a flavour of what’s to come, you can take a look at our announcement trailer right here:

 

 

Motorsport by its very nature is dangerous – it says so on the back of the ticket. DiRT 4 is all about embracing that danger. It’s about the thrill, exhilaration and adrenaline that is absolutely vital to off-road racing. And more than that, it’s about loving that feeling. It’s about pushing flat out next to a sheer cliff drop. Going for the gap that’s slightly too small. Seeing how much air you can get in a truck. They call it ‘being fearless’ – and this is what we aim to inspire in DiRT 4.

 

DiRT 4 features a game-changing system called Your Stage; an innovative rally route creation tool that allows you to produce an almost-infinite number of unique stages at the press of a button. You choose your location and set the route parameters, then Your Stage does the hard work to create a unique rally stage that you can race, share with your friends, and then challenge them to beat your time. Your Stage allows experienced rally players to create longer, more technical routes, whilst newcomers can create simpler shorter routes as they hone their skills.

 

With DiRT 4, we’ve sought to combine the levels of thrill and realism from last year’s DiRT Rally with the fearless excitement, fun, and adrenaline-fuelled races previously seen in its critically acclaimed prequels DiRT 2 and DiRT 3.

 

Featuring classic rally racing that continues to build on the foundations set by the Colin McRae Rally games, the brutal, fast-paced racing from the official FIA World Rallycross Championship, the crazy battles of racing trucks and buggies, and the outrageous fun of open events in Joyride, players will face challenges from locations that span three continents. We can’t wait to tell you more of DiRT 4, so stay tuned for the road to launch – we’ve got so much to show you.

Sounds promising - I just hope it isn't quite so hardcore and frustrating as Dirt Rally. I get that people wanted the game to be as realistic to life as possible, but from what I think it lost a lot of fun. A game should be fun to play after all, and not make you rage quit after crashing out multiple times.

Oh God, so they are remaking Dirt 2

They set a new bar with Dirt Rally

And this is going be dumbed down nonsense so that kid a can race kid b online instead of  the hardcore but truly brilliant when you work it out sim that Dirt Rally is. As soon as you see the phrase "share with your friends" you know exactly what this game is going be like. Dirt 3 and Dirt 2. Not Dirt Rally. D2 was excellent, great online and fun, but awful on PC.

Sellout springs to mind, especially to the American monster drinking market, just as 2 and 3 were. I can only hope they transfer the physics from DR to this game, it felt like a giant BETA test anyway such was the lack of content.

What a shame.

Edited by chunder27, 26 January 2017 - 13:47.

Lol, have you played Dirt Rally? There is very little difference between arcade and sim, they are both super tricky.

If you are including landrush, buggies and the like, the game will be a Dirt 2 style game with large driving areas, not a tight rally sim which DR is, read between the lines fella.

It may have a rally section in it from DR, but that is not being expanded, they are just chucking other stuff in there to make console players appeased and online racing better as that is what console players want

And that is NOT a rally sim.

If they were to go with that, you would have a WRC licence, a group of year categories, far more manufacturers. But that all costs big money.  Think about it, this is going to be a bitza, not a DR type sim.

Some gameplay footage

On Steam, the first thing the devs said they were not dumbing it down, which obviously means they are!

You are 100% wrong. It has two modes: arcade and simulation (same as Dirt Rally). 

Yeah, I don't see what the problem is. I'm not a hardcore gamer (I simply don't have the time to get good at them), but I enjoy picking up and playing a variety of racing games. I don't agree with the belief that it has to be completely realistic and simulator like, otherwise it's rubbish. Everyone has different skill levels, and making the game playable for more people who may not take it so deadly serious like others evidently do can only be a good thing for game sales. If you target a game at only those who want it to be as realistic as possible, you're not going to get as many sales. Simple as.

I was kinda disappointed in the lack of content in Dirt Rally compared to other games. I mean, only three rallycross tracks? I got bored of what was available quite quickly, so I think introducing extra content is a good idea. What I'd really love is a game dedicated to all areas of off road motorsport, so obviously rallying & rallycross, but mixed together with hillclimbs, buggies, and everything in between. What about including short track dirt ovals and sprint cars? Yes please!

Edited by JHSingo, 28 January 2017 - 14:49.

You are never going to get that though, every single sport has its own fees and if you want to release a game that has lots of disciplines in it you are going to have to pay fees to all of those sports.

Codies could not pay WRC obviously as that licence has gone elsewhere and they are also competing with the rot that is Seb Loeb rally. So you are trying to compete in a tiny market with two other titles.

there are more then enough games that appeal to the casual gamer, and the ONLY reason that Codies have done this is to obviously make more money.

They realise that if they make a proper sim, that will alienate those that cannot get on with it and probably the reviewers aswell.  So they want to make games that a) appeal to more players, b) appeal to console gamers as that is sadly a far bigger market and, c) that don't cost them a fortune in hosting fees.

That sadly means a proper sim is unlikely to ever be released from big publishers, more likely smaller companies

Unless you think PCARS is a sim, or Gran Turismo of course, in which case you just don't get it!

I get the feeling DR was almost a BETA that they decided to sell really.

So many little bugs that they gave up with, still designed uterly for bloody consoles, but a very good game nontheless.

DR4 will be just that, a softened version designed to appeal to console players and gamepad users

 

They realise that if they make a proper sim, that will alienate those that cannot get on with it and probably the reviewers aswell.  So they want to make games that a) appeal to more players, b) appeal to console gamers as that is sadly a far bigger market and, c) that don't cost them a fortune in hosting fees.

 

It's funny how you say this as a bad thing.

Codemasters are, of course, a business. They exist to make games and make money out of it. Their speciality is racing games. They even pandered to sim-snobs and produced a high quality rally sim in Dirt Rally. Now they'd going to continue their excellent series in a way that will get more people to buy their games, allowing them to make more games in the future.

The hardcore sim racer has plenty of niche options out there to get their racing fix, yet they have to denigrate anything more accessible and mainstream.

And whay do you think that might be mr forum host?

Perhaps because a proper realistic sim is more immersive, offers more realism, makes you work harder, offers better reward for learning and being cautious?

I do not say thee things blithely, I know you have to make money, I am not stupid. Consoles are the only way you do that over PC's where the market for these games is miniscule and the whole player profile has moved towards free to play games with the chance a player will never give you any money.

But you CAN make money if you make sims that offer a genuine challenge, look at some of the flight sims out there, some of the more accurate FPS games with tactics and the like.

it is just that Codies have decided to dumb down a game that had immense potential and go for the short term approach, as usual.

Console users now dominate the gaming market, this is why games such as sims have to be dumbed down, to allocate the fact most players only have a pad. That affects the realism.

It's easy to program for, all machines are the same, meaning you don't have to QA so much, and in fact PCARS showed us that if you are pushy enough you can get PC users to do all your QA for you and make them pay for it.

None of these things are good long term, they are short term, like the whole world is right now. 

I think having a more arcade game is justifiable if they continued to develop/offer new content for Dirt Rally. Sadly, that doesn't look like it'll be the case. Hopefully I'll be getting a PS4 in the coming months, and I can't wait to try Dirt Rally out.

Reading the Eurogamer preview, seems to be confirmed that aside from the RX circuits, there are no real-life stages in DIRT 4. That makes me so sad. I think I'm going to stick with DIRT Rally. What a brilliant one-off title that was. 

Agreed, I will not be touching it until it is dirt cheap in a sale, whereas I was happy to buy DR as soon as it became on sale as I knoew it was attempting something more unique

Seems most software houses prefer mediocrity and sales over quality.

I understand why, I really do, but can you imagine how good that game would be if they just pushed the envelope a bit, dropped a few more cars in there, doesn't matter if they are famous or common brand names, they cost too much money.  Or just play the game, change a few things about the looks and call it a Schmoyota, or a Tinsubitsu, who cares.

But, Australia, New Zealand, Catalunya, Portugal, Ireland, all places that could easily have stages in DR.

The console gamers win, mediocrity wins over quality and of course profit is the main reason why they did this.

The question has to remain though, why o earth did they even bother with Dirt Rally?

All we can hope now is that people work out how to mod DR?

It is important because it adds realism. What you want is something to immerse yourself, not be over in 3 minutes. That is short termism and quick relief, doesn't make you want to some back, easier and cheaper to program though of course.

From what I have seen in demos the stages are much wider, much easier and this is all about making the game more suitable for casual players, not sim players.

As I say, I do understand why they are doing this, but I feel a little left out, as DR seems almost to have been a development tool.

I have no doubt the game will be fine, I even understand why they have increased the car pool to include buggies etc.

But on the demo I saw, the track they were using was in Dirt 2 for Gods sake, so if this is just a pile of regurgitated and glammed up old stuff, they are going to suffer, as real fans see through that crap quickly.

Chunder27,

I think actually some console racing games match very well or even better with realism when compared to PC. Trick is that currently these two major console devices are pretty much standardized and they universally work similar way.

On the other hand there's part variations of personal computers so much there will be game experiences from very crap to extreme excitement. More you put money on PC, more better experience. However, it doesn't need much to have wrong component in your pc and it's hell of bottleneck. Pricewise...you can get decent driving experience with console Dirt Rally by getting console, wheel and chair for about 500 euros/dollars. You barely get with 500 euros/dollars a pc unit which runs racing games made 15 years ago..

PayasYouRace,

How important is it to have real stages in a rally game? Very few people would know or care. It's not like recognisable circuits. 

 

Quite arrogant claim. If you don't care rallying, it's your business. There are still people who think opposite.

Though by different rally seasons (wrc on this case) they have variations about what and where rally stages are driven, there are lot of classic special stages.

Some stages are legendary like circuit track's Eau Rouge. With nowadays technology it's not so challenging to make laser scanned routes even for rallying.

Edited by The Kanisteri, 03 February 2017 - 08:49.

You underestimate fans of rallying. Rally is difficult for TV to broadcast, but every rally has lot of spectators along special stages due it's fun and they can afford to follow it.

I'm all for real-life stages, but come one; apart from superspecials I doubt that more than 1% of all rally fans would spot the difference between a real-life stage and a fictional (but realistic) version. Even the real classics such as Col du Turini and Ouhninpohja only have a perhaps one or two kilometres that normally get air time. The rest of the stage remains unseen by all but the most fanatic of rally supporters.

I think the decision of not using real-life stages would be in part down to real-life stages being generally less rewarding for the gamer (and more monotonous), and in part down to financial reasons where it's probably a lot easier logistically to make something up than to spend resources on accurately portraying every bump and twist on an actual stage - in combination with the fact that 99% of gamers wouldn't spot the difference anyway and/or would prefer the more spectacular fictional version anyway.

Btw; back in the mid-90's there was a rally game that actually (claimed to have) recreated the entire RAC Rally stage by stage. This was ofcourse before technology had become good enough to give us a thoroughly realistic rally sim anyway. But still, it was pretty fun and felt a lot more realistic than anything else around at the time. If I'm not mistaken it was called Network Q RAC Rally or something to that effect.

You are really missing the point guys. Or I am not explaining it well enough.

It is not just the accuracy of the stages, that is only a minor thing.

It is the length of them. Some of stages in DR take 7 or 8 minutes to complete, that is serious concentration and very hard to memorise, so it forces you to really listen to the pacenotes and get used to reading the road, just as real rally drivers do. A stage that takes three or 4 minutes to finish can be learned like race track, which kind of misses the point.

I couldn't care less if the stage I am on is a precise copy of Sweet Lamb, as long as the corners FEEL random, are all different and do not feel like they are drawn by someone. And that is what Dirt Rally currently gives you in most cases.

If I want an arcade simulation of rallying there have been plenty.

A true simulation would not sell, as it would be too hard. A lot of people complain that DR is too hard and even after playing for a year it still frustrates the hell out of  me at times playing in fog or in rain. But it does try and be real and offer a truer simulation than any other rally game before, even than RBR.

It was not finished, had a few silly bugs and was hampered by the awful console menu physics. But I would pay full whack for DR if it offered more countries, cars and dropped everything else than IU would ever pay for Dirt 4

But I am in the vast minority

Edited by chunder27, 03 February 2017 - 12:48.

I understand that, and actually agree with you on most points. It's just that I also understand why they are going down the path that they are. And instead of being annoyed that the next version of the series is more "dumbed down", instead you could be pleased that they actually decided to make a step in the other direction with DR. They didn't have to do that but they did. If anything, they deserve credit for that and not criticism for going back to their roots so to speak in the new game.

Err, not sure you ever played Dirt 2 or 3 or that Godawful thing they did after.

But Dirt 4 is EXACTLY the same as those games, not anything like Dirt Rally?

Why would I credit a company that builds a fabulous sim, does very little with it other than release a few cars and track to make it console friendly, doesn't fix a multitude of bugs such as moon like jump characteristics and silly car setups and then dumps the whole idea to simply make more money?

I would credit them more and pay full price for the game if they fought for the WRC franchise, stuffed Milestone and the other WRC series up their bum, and built a proper WRC sim.  Developed it better, supported it better and went for it instead of building half a game, then throwing the towel in to make Ken Block 67

I'm all for real-life stages, but come one; apart from superspecials I doubt that more than 1% of all rally fans would spot the difference between a real-life stage and a fictional (but realistic) version. Even the real classics such as Col du Turini and Ouhninpohja only have a perhaps one or two kilometres that normally get air time. The rest of the stage remains unseen by all but the most fanatic of rally supporters.

That is true, but it is something a bit more fun about coming downhill on Sweet Lamb, through water, down a small jump, into a hairpin right, then a 180 left, before a right turn on a crest. While most people won't recognize the rest of the stage, you might know that it's the actual stage used for years. The same with the famous passing on Turini (which incidentally was start/finish in DiRT Rally, so you never got to actually cross it), or the yellow house at Ouninpohja, you just know that you can't floor it the way after that house, because the jump will be too huge.

It's those iconic things that are awesome to drive. At least it's better to say that everything is made up, than do as the WRC-series, and say it is based on real life, and when I went through the stage I drove through multiple times IRL, there wasn't a single corner correct.

Nevertheless, procedural stages on 12-13km will be interesting, and somewhat a equalizer. Also, I am fairly sure the previews and stuff haven't been with the "hardest" settings on the stage creator either. I am actually fairly optimistic for this stuff.

The reason Real Life stages are not in the game, are not because of they being less rewarding to gamers, or that it is much work for small gains. The FIA contacted Codemasters about it...

I've just been looking about and Dirt 4 is retaining the handling model from Dirt Rally. What's the problem then? It's not been dumbed down, though an easier handling mode is also available as an option.

In fact it was mentioned earlier on this thread.

You are 100% wrong. It has two modes: arcade and simulation (same as Dirt Rally). 

I've just been looking about and Dirt 4 is retaining the handling model from Dirt Rally. What's the problem then? It's not been dumbed down, though an easier handling mode is also available as an option.

 

In fact it was mentioned earlier on this thread.

I am sure you were supposed to quote someone? 

I am sure you were supposed to quote someone?

I put the quote at the bottom didn't I?

I don't think anyone is really thinking the game physics are going to be suddenly bad and dumbed down.

What some of us realise though is that if you make a game try and appeal to a wider range of fans you automatically make it less interesting to those that prefer a more focused experience.

Look at games like Gran Turismo or Forza.  Great games, great sellers, but are they sims?  Do they make you sweat? Is it really easy to crash?  Probably not so much.

My question though is why did they bother with Dirt Rally? 

But Dirt 4 is EXACTLY the same as those games, not anything like Dirt Rally?

Bold claim, when none of us have even actually played the thing yet. Here's an idea: why don't we wait to try it before throwing Codemasters under the bus?

I am sure it will keep some of the same stuff, but from what I have seen in reviews and early looks it is a clone of the Dirt series, and a console friendly expansion of Dirt Rally, which was half a game anyway.

WRC licence is done, so they cant do that anyway. But Landrush!!!  Basically means 2 mile Baja laps and the bits I saw even used an old Dirt 2 track, not very real, but great online with other people yeah?  See, console friendly.

Nothing wrong with that of course makes better business sense, but I expect only a portion of this game to be full on sim fan friendly. It will be still be fun, playable and hopefully the physics are as good, but right now the game is 80% sim, this new one looks about 50%.

Good enough for most, but not for me to buy new, wait til its cheap.