Asphalt 8: Events Synopses [3 Update]

Welcome to yet another interesting blog by yours truly, and this topic is reserved for the thoughts I have of events in Asphalt 8. The other Asphalt 8: My Garage blog is just for sharing fun pictures about new cars that I own and also interesting snapshots of things that happen while racing etc, where as expressions in this blog are about my opinions on the new game modes that come out for the game from time to time, which can become quite lengthy and in depth, so I didn’t want to take up too much space in the other blog with what i’m going share with you in this one, thus the reason why this one was created separately.

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Event Synopsis – [New Matchmaking Format] – [SEP/10th/2018]

This is my thoughts on the new multiplayer match makings system; I think it’s actually good, it needs alot of work still but it is a good step. I think it should have been like that in the first place, because anyone that’s be playing multiplayer for a while in Asphalt 8 knows that the ranks essentially mean nothing now xD. No matter what car you had, because of the flawed way the system was, you was always matched up with a car that was way higher than the performance of your car, sure with the new match making system that they are trying out now, it’s still somewhat like that at times, but that’s only because it has now been released and is fairly new (hence why i said it still needs alot of work), and even so, it’s still not as lopsided as it was before (that’s how bad it was before — just the smallest change actually made a big difference xD). I acknowledge that there are some areas that need fixing just like with the old system there was loads of issues that needed fixing aswell and it was far from the best because there were a ton of cars that were rendered useless, and unless you had the fastest car in the game (a so called king), you were ALWAYS unevenly matched, unless you did some “multiplayer tune”, and even in that case they were still ultimately useless since the game still matched you up with cars that were faster as you played more and more.

The way the system is now, it’s like all cars are “multiplayer tuned”, but why it works better the way things are now is because they are actually trying to match cars up more evenly which is the best idea for a game like Asphalt 8 where people are playing competitively, or under any circumstance where people are competing, it is supposed to be fair and well balanced and based on SKILL. So matching cars based on top speed is ok, but I think they should go even further overtime, and match cars based on “overall performance” at each rank, and what they can also do, is look at cars that just don’t make sense to match-up with other cars. That’s the thing, look at cars you can match with other cars, but also look at some cars that you should never put to race with other cars, because that was a big problem with the way the system was before, the match making was just that terrible to where you would see cars put to race with other cars that were too fast. This is basic 101 stuff that should have been done from the beginning, how many of these issues made it through to the game in the first place is mind-boggling.  

I think it is taking a turn for the better now that they are looking to rectify the issues. Of course the system they are trying out now needs more work done to it, obviously, but what I would recommend for the cars with fast acceleration, and the key to remedy this situation is to match those fast acceleration cars with HIGHER ranked top speed cars like the Mercedes SLK 55 AMG Special Edition, that way those kinds of cars with the low acceleration but high top speed wouldn’t take too long to have a chance at catching up to the cars with fast acceleration, obviously you would have to measure and think about how long you would like for a certain car that has massively high Top speed to be able to catch up to the competition, which would deteremi9ng at which ranks those specific cars will be matched with other cars, but that’s all workable.

To me that would even-out the situation, and then over time, tweak that formula to get races with these types of match making (i.e cars like the Mercedes Mclaren MP4-25 being matched with cars like the Mercedes SLK 55 AMG Special Edition), a little closer. I don’t think they should give up on the new format because it has alot of great potential and I think it is actually better for the game in the long-run, especially since alot of old cars can now be played with, which makes the game alot more interesting. Don’t get me wrong for a second, they still need to work more at making the races balanced because there is still some lopsided match-making going on, but atleast it’s a start.    

I think they should just work on the new format more to make it even more balanced, because from what I see after playing multi-player for the past couple of days, there is alot of room to make the system more balanced — if this was my game all of this crap would have been done already! xD. This kind of system should have been in place from the get-go because it’s focusing on balance and fairness and the overall fun of the game. The old system had no damn balance, it was about who had the car with the most top speed, which usually was only like one car, and everybody in the race had the same damn car because of that very reason — it was not really based on skill and killed the fun of the game for anyone who didn’t have the fastest top-speed car around in the game, yet there were so many other awesome cars in the game that nobody played with because of the very awful match making, which is not good for a game with so many cars on the roster that people really want to play with in a fun way, yet still competitive.

If they actually focused on making the game a lot more balanced, sort of like what they are doing now, multiplayer would be alot more interesting, I also think they should make a threshold that says “from now on, we will not allow any car to be matched with another car that is 10 miles-per-hour faster (just an example, this doesn’t have to be a cut off point — it should all depend on the type of car and overall performance), unless it’s by exception where we are matching a car with very slow acceleration against a car with very fast acceleration, only then in this case, will we allow the car with slow acceleration to have a 6 – 8 – 10 -16  miles-per-hour-difference to make the races overall competitive, in that situation.

There might be some issues with the way people Multiplayer-tuned for the old system, but that doesn’t matter now since they are matching cars based on speed, and as things progress, things will balance out so that no matter what car you have at what tune, it will be matched with cars that have similar overall performance, which I think is good for the game overall. I would rather everyone have fun in the game rather than going back to the old system, so whatever it is they need to do to make the game more balanced I support it. It should be ultimately skill that determines who gets the edge, not just someone in an overpowered car that is 16,000 miles faster than the competition, that’s why I like the way multiplayer is now since people can finally race with other interesting cars instead of everyone just having the same car because it’s most over-powered car, and it’s the same scenario over and over again, that sucks.

No matter what car I choose, I should be able to reply on the fact I would be matched reasonably and evenly with a car in the same class or in the same performance bracket — the way they are configuring the system now, seems to be headed in that direction, but like I said before this should have been the focus from since the start. The match-making in the game was very bad xD, and the only way to ensure you had a sort of even time in multiplayer, was if you had some over powered car for 14,000 tokens or had the absolute fastest car, AND cannot be mismatched with another vehicle that’s 1000 miles-per-hour faster because the game literally had no other cars available with such stats LOL.

To have one or two cars in the game rendering all of the other cars useless, is senseless game design, that’s why I prefer the way they are going with matching the cars as closely as possible, based on car stats (it should be “overall performance” to ensure you get things even closer) because it makes skill i.e how you play in a given situation, the factor that will really determine who does well, not because somebody has a car that is 6000 ranks above his competitors.

That’s how messed up the old multiplayer system was, in that no matter what car you selected, unless you had the fastest car in the entire game, you were almost often always matched with cars that were way faster. There is nothing wrong with the Special Editions being a little faster than most of the cars BUT atleast make sure then that when people go to race all of the other cars, that they can have a fair and balanced race without being unfairly matched with cars that are not even in the same damn class, and are infact leagues above xD. This is the real issue people need to be talking about instead of focusing on the fact that they can no longer find 1 overpowered car, or can multiplayer tune an over powered car to stay ahead of the competition by 48 football-fields anymore LMAO.

There were people who use to race with certain cars all the time, and they raced with those cars all the time because they knew most of the other cars were utterly inept, and most of the other cars were inept only because of the way the game did it’s matching of cars. I don’t think it makes sense to take issue with the way they are handling things now and not take issue with before when virtually all the cars in the game were useless, expect for the small few that were high-end cars of namely A-class and S-Class, while all the other cars were being matched ultimately with those same few cars that were way too over-powered.

There is some concerns about the new system, and I can understand why, I mean, people have adjusted to the old system and the old system was never set-up on a stable foundation to begin with, so you have people who developed certain techniques to deal with the bad flaws of the that old system rather than encouraging the change of that old flawed system, and they were set-up in a good spot after playing the game for a while — they (like myself) have most of their favorite cars, they have their plans for multiplayer and stuff, they have plenty of engines etc, so they (like me in a sense) have become accustomed to the system that was broken from since the start, because in-part that’s how people like me are, competitively we just are persistent in figuring stuff out, and finding ways to excel no matter what is thrown our way, but now the system is being fixed, it off-sets some of their ideas and stuff developed for an old, flawed system.

They also need to fix this ridiculous ratings distribution system that is also terrible. As long as you use a ticket and come first in a race (this can apply 2nd,and also to 3rd positions), you should win a fair amount of points (weather it’s 3 points or more) according to the top 3 positions you earned, because you used a ticket and you actually raced a whole damn lap with [often] stiff competition xD. As long as you do well in a race you should win points/ratings, the ratings system they have now, is too convoluted and not transparent enough, it should not be random, it should be based on merit, since it’s not the player’s fault who the server matched them up with, so you should not get ratings-points based on who you were match with by the server or other nonsensical factors, you should win according to how well you performed. There is alot of interesting things you can do with the ratings system, and they don’t necessarily have to even throw out all of their ideas — they can keep many of their ideas but just do some adjusting and rearranging here-and-there, but i’m just pointing out basic principles that should happen.

Event Synopsis – [Motorbikes Update] – [SEP/26st/2017]

Ok just giving my 2cents on the sate of asphalt 8’s latest update, and for me personally it is indeed one of the most crazy updates the game has seen in a while because they released bikes and it sort of freshened things up.

I am going to say that I think the play-testing of the update could have been alot better since it is probably obvious to most people by now that the bikes do have some issues, and I am wondering how any of these issues could not have ever been noticed and sorted out before the release of the update, by the people who are supposed to be testing these things before releases. The bikes wobble on the wheelie when you get a successful super-charge causing wrecks, or the bike just climbs up the wall through tunnels like it’s being sucked up by an uncontrollable magnet and it literally sticks to the wall and it is very TRICKY to get it off, or sometimes the bike just skids and slams on its side when you try to do just a basic turn and things like that — all of that is rubbish that could have been stabilized before the update released. It’s obviously not good to have these kinds of issues, bugs and glitches in the game period, yet alone in a new update that you’re trying to get people to appreciate.

So that’s petty much one of the big issues about the update, but apart from that, I liked the updates that I have seen, the bikes are generally a blast to test out and play with against others, and I think the new stunt mechanic is awesome! — it’s one of the most fun things about the bikes interms of how they feel and perform compared to cars, there have been an array of incidents occurring with cars in the game (mostly due to glitches and malfunctioning mechanics) that had been classified as “stunts” before, but it’s good to see that with the bikes they actually have real “stunt” mechanics to do actual stunts xD. Mix all of this in with the free-form skills like the standard flat-spins and back-flips and you’ve got yourself one blast of a ride.

The only other issue about the bikes is the handling. I do not know how bikes in the series have handled before in other games in the franchise, but I have played a couple of bike games, and I know the bike physics in terms of steering and handling can be better. I have played “Ducati World Racing Challenge” on the playstion 1, I have played with bikes in Test Drive: Unlimited and I have played the “Jeremy McGrath Supercross 2000” game on Nintendo 64, so I have a pretty good idea of how racing with bikes in a game can feel, and I think in Asphalt 8, the steering and feel of how the bikes handle in the game overall, can be improved. These are the known issues that can set this area of the game back and from being fully accepted or appreciated by players especially when it comes to multiplayer online competitive situations.

But in general it is very exciting to see the bikes in the game and the ideas revolving around them, it is terrific, the execution just needs to be worked on a little bit more, and hopefully over time things become even better, but the bikes are epic! — definitely one of the coolest updates to the game in a while, which actually brought something different, very much like when they released the F1 update and how that also had brought an interesting dynamic. The F1 cars did come with their own feel and events. The bikes didn’t have their own style of events per-say, but they did introduce some exciting new mechanics which really are a “game changer” :D.

I really thought it’s cool that the Supercharge mechanic is in there, because what people must realize is that the bikes can be easily knocked-down by cars and there are alot of really really fast cars in the game now, not to mention the fact that it also helps the bikes to reach their maximum top-speed. So I think the Super-charge mechanic in the game really does help alot when you are using a bike and you have to compete against others with cars, and it helps compensate for the fact that you cannot knockdown cars with bikes, and you can easily be knocked-down by cars if you are on bikes. I think the “short invincibility” you can supposedly gain from a supercharge was a good idea as well, because sure you can knock down cars in the air, but given the state of affairs, that’s like a one in a million chance, so the supercharge mechanic certainly is very helpful and advantageous to the bikes in this game when you have to compete with the cars, especially the much faster ones.

Event Synopsis – [Championship Mode] – [DEC/30th/2016]

Pictures for Reference:

http://i1324.photobucket.com/albums/u615/Aggressor100/CH4-B_zpsbahps4sh.png

http://i1324.photobucket.com/albums/u615/Aggressor100/CH2-B_zpsnrsnqml7.png

http://i1324.photobucket.com/albums/u615/Aggressor100/M14A-R_zpsnen4hb2n.png

This was a fantastic event, the execution and the concept was very refreshing — at one point I even thought I was stuck since in the tokyo event, I was actually taking the longer route thinking that the shorter route was actually closed-off for some reason, only to find out that this wasn’t truly the case and the reason why I couldn’t beat the time was not really because my car was under-powered (since I more than made up for it by the skillful way i was driving) but because I was just taking the longer route mistakenly thinking the other route was closed xD. In an ideal setting, taking the longer route wouldn’t have really impacted on my progression if I had the car tuned and upgraded suitably, but ofcourse I didn’t have that luxury xD. So I had to look for the most absolutely fastest and shortest possible way to finish the challenges given my circumstances.

All-in-all, it was AWESOME! — I hadn’t really encountered any technical issues to speak of, but that’s just the case for me, I can’t say there where no issues for anyone else except to say that the event didn’t actually seem like it was “buggy” or “glitchy” at any point that i’m aware of, and trust me, i’m playing this game on a laptop that was released in 2011, so if there are any issues with the game, I would definitely be affected by them and be able to detect them without a doubt, but overall, while I was participating in the event, I had experienced 100% consistency from beginning to end as far as not encountering any major issues whether it be technical or otherwise.

It took me a while to figure out that you could in fact move on to other races without having to complete all the sub-goals of one race — as soon as you finish a race the first time, the next one unlocks and you can go right to it right away and proceed to later races until you eventually reach the main championship match. So that was just a little issue that I noticed, though this reality is actually quite evident by the fact that once you pass a stage, the first goal of the next match becomes available, unlocked and ‘selectable’ automatically anyhow, so its something that becomes obvious as you pay close attention to how the event works, so it’s not really something I would consider to be a big issue. This approach came in really handy for me especially after being “stuck” in tokyo for hours thinking I had to take the longer route, so by the time I had found out what I was doing wrong (when I finally came back to the game to make another run to get pass the stage), I had already lost valuable hours during the championship and was running short on time and basically just needed to make haste passing the main goal in all of the other championship locations after tokyo, so that I can finally reach to the Azure Coats finale and win the car xD. It’s a good thing i did that because after finishing the finale, i only had 19 hours (less than a day) to do additional goals which wasn’t much considering you had to wait about 8 hours to get a new set of 5 tires to actually be able to play any of the secondary goals to get prizes, and I just didn’t have enough time left over to be able to complete them all with such stringent time constraints and delaying factors xD. So ultimately I was just glad for the opportunity to only have to race each match once so i can get what every and anyone really wants — the car! :D.

what I also like most is the fact that you can actually go back and complete previously skipped goals even after you have won the event, which is very cool and also unique and not something you can do in any other event in the game currently, and it’s especially very advantageous to players like myself who don’t always have the tokens to spend to upgrade the car and skip the tests. Overall, I really dig the Championship concept — it was loads of fun and hopefully they just don’t try to do too much with how the championship event currently is, since how it is right now is really good.

As I mentioned briefly before, there is a long hours wait for the time it takes for the restoring of all 5 tires, which obviously isn’t ideal for anybody because it’s a game and people rather prefer to spend more time play the game when they actually get around to doing so, rather than waiting on just the “chance” to get to do so xD. But you know that’s part of the deal I guess with certain aspects of this game being also about business. These things aside, I was actually able to complete most of the events with [19] hours to spare, without spending that much credits or tokens throughout the event, so considering these factors, I would say that it was actually ample time given to complete this type of event, it’s just that nobody wants or likes to wait hours before they can start playing again, but that doesn’t actually affect your ability to complete the event — the way the championship is setup and designed, it really doesn’t take that long to complete any of the matches and individual goals, so the timing is not really an issue except for the fact that nobody likes to wait and would prefer to just play as they see fit and as they can :D.

So like I said, I wouldn’t change too much (or anything for that matter) about the Championship events — it’s actually one of my favorite events in the game and overall it was great. I agree that having shorter wait times is always good but generally my experience with the concept was commendable.