NASCAR Heat 4

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J_Cauthen
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Re: NASCAR Heat 4

Post by J_Cauthen »

A new patch for the PS4 and XBox One versions was released yesterday. Here's what was fixed: "PS4 patch with AI ghosting fix is live. Xbox patch with career crash, excessive wheel vibration, and improved pit collision fixes is also live."

I can confirm that it did fix the force feedback vibration chattering on my Thrustmaster TX wheel, in the XBox One version. I switched over to "performance" setting in the graphics settings and did not get the chatter that I was seeing prior to the patch. OTOH, I really didn't notice a performance improvement in Performance mode, but I'll keep at it.

I had never experienced either of the other two items listed as being fixed, so I can't comment on them. This is a start though... it's already a very good game, but it does get a bit shaky in the frame rate department on the road courses, especially Mid-Ohio. I'll have to go back and check Mid-Ohio again in performance mode to see if I can spot a difference there. I'll report on that later!

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Re: NASCAR Heat 4

Post by fletcher21 »

Picked up the game for ps4, and it’s pretty fun so far. The game gives next to zero help in terms of explaining things. I have a few questions:

I started a season with my custom character. I can’t get within a second of the time they want me to hit in practice. Is it impossible to get that time without drafting someone? I qualified 40th, a little over a second off the pace.

I know nothing about setting up a stock car. Any guides or help at all for something to use for speedways, short tracks and 1.5 mile?

Will my custom characters team improve over time? I started off on normal and qualified 5th, so I started over on hard and now I’m 40th. I want a challenge, but I’m so far off the pace right now I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I believe I read somewhere on OS that there are ratings for teams, such as a 3 star team is supposed to finish around 30th. Any way for me to see this info? Sorry for all the questions.

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Re: NASCAR Heat 4

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fletcher21 wrote:I started a season with my custom character. I can’t get within a second of the time they want me to hit in practice. Is it impossible to get that time without drafting someone? I qualified 40th, a little over a second off the pace.
How do you have your AI Difficulty set? It can be Auto[Easy], Auto[Hard], or Custom. I found that the Auto[Hard] was way over my head at this point. I'm now on "Custom" at "96" (percent, I'm guessing?) and that is a perfect fit for me. I'm in my second season of the truck series and things have gotten a bit more competitive though. On some of the tracks I have to hook up with another car for drafting help to meet the practice goal. I've NEVER won a pole; 5th has been my best qualifying time. I've won one race (Las Vegas) and my next best finish was 3rd, both of which came in my second season, but it's so much fun where I'm at. I guess I'll improve enough to where I'll want to bump that Custom difficulty up towards 100, but I think it goes as high as 115?
I know nothing about setting up a stock car. Any guides or help at all for something to use for speedways, short tracks and 1.5 mile?
I know very little about the micro adjustments myself. What I do is use the Tight/Loose setup slider. If I'm on a Super Speedway, I go max right. A steeply banked track, I go two ticks back to the left from "Loose". A flatter track like New Hampshire, Martinsville, I go full "Tight" (full left). The intermediate banked speedways, I go more toward the middle... with the more heavily banked speedways running with a more loose setup.

Road courses is where I think I need some custom, micro adjustments. I go with a full or one tick to the right slider setting on road courses, but they just lack the feel I'm looking for. I've got to do some homework on this.
Will my custom characters team improve over time? I started off on normal and qualified 5th, so I started over on hard and now I’m 40th. I want a challenge, but I’m so far off the pace right now I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I believe I read somewhere on OS that there are ratings for teams, such as a 3 star team is supposed to finish around 30th. Any way for me to see this info? Sorry for all the questions.
It will to some degree on its own, but I think there are custom choices you can make with how your revenue is spent on car engineering once you start your own team. I haven't done that yet so I don't know the specifics. I'm in a higher performing 3 star team right now, but I'm consistently finishing in the top 15. In my last three races I've finished third, first, fifth, and fourteenth.

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Re: NASCAR Heat 4

Post by fletcher21 »

I appreciate the reply. How do you see that your team is a 4 star team? I'm not doing a career, I'm doing a full season with my custom character.

I figured out that in order to hit the practice goals at a track where drafting is important, that you can't seem to hit the number alone. I'm playing on custom hard setting, and I'm qualifying between 5th and 20th. I'm somehow able to blow through the field, even on hard. I just finished Martinsville (13% races) and I have 2 wins and am in 3rd in the standings. One of the races I got spun out and was in 38th, but I was able to drive through the entire field and take the lead by lap 20something. The setting above hard is impossible. The only setup I know how to do is adjust how tight or loose I am. I'm in the position where if I don't mess up, a top 10 is realistic and a win is possible. I'd prefer a bit more challenge, but maybe I'm not fully understanding the settings and "hard" has other options to it. All in all, it's FUN and I haven't experienced a racing game where you can't run the same line all race long since the world of outlaws game back on ps2. For the last 2 laps in Atlanta my tire indicator came on, and my crew chief even told me I was in danger of blowing a tire. Awesome.

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Re: NASCAR Heat 4

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OK, so....

If by "doing a full season with my custom character" means "started my own team?" Or you mean you did like championship mode and not career? Anything you do is with a custom character, as you can't "become" an active driver. If you're in career mode, when you first sign a deal (after a few hot seats), your first hot seat is a 3 star team. Complete it, they give you a 4. Complete it, they give you a 5...but only if you meet their objectives in each. If you fail one, they give you another attempt at the same level. When you sign with the team, it shows the star rating (a literal number of stars by the name).

If you started your own team, then there's no star rating, but you just have crap equipment and are SUPPOSED to be at the back until you upgrade the car through R&D and basically pouring money into the team.

What the devs do is make the trucks/cars have less acceleration and less grip with lower teams and difficulty levels. But the top speed is roughly the same. So when you go to someplace like Daytona, you can't "fake" horsepower. You get yarded because you don't have the motor. Someplace like Martinsville will be high on acceleration out of corners, so you have no problem out-pulling CPU cars on corner exit or dive-bombing them on entry. Just stay around the inside and you can lap the field at Marty on Hard. At Daytona where it's foot-to-the-floor, you're going to not have enough speed to stay with them.

The hard option is indeed too easy, while Legend is ONLY possible if you significantly tweak the car (I made a post about this earlier so I won't re-hash it). If you run in a mid-tier team on hard, it can be competitive, but why they don't just allow you to pick a percentage like F1 2019, where I found the perfect balance for my skill level instead of 3 or 4 predetermined settings I have no idea.

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Re: NASCAR Heat 4

Post by J_Cauthen »

I tweeted Sean Wilson about what performance differences XBox One X owners should see when opting for "Performance" versus "Quality" graphics settings. His reply was "It's subtle"... I agree, very subtle, because I honestly can't tell a difference in the performance at all. I really wish they would have shot for 60 FPS on the XBox One X in performance mode, even if it meant making some graphical sacrifices to get there. This game is nice, but it would be even better at 60 FPS!

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Re: NASCAR Heat 4

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J_Cauthen wrote:I tweeted Sean Wilson about what performance differences XBox One X owners should see when opting for "Performance" versus "Quality" graphics settings. His reply was "It's subtle"... I agree, very subtle, because I honestly can't tell a difference in the performance at all. I really wish they would have shot for 60 FPS on the XBox One X in performance mode, even if it meant making some graphical sacrifices to get there. This game is nice, but it would be even better at 60 FPS!
No pun intended but Nascar Heat 4 is and always will be a graphical sacrifice as long as they use Unity. It’s even the same on the PC.

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Re: NASCAR Heat 4

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Rodster wrote:No pun intended but Nascar Heat 4 is and always will be a graphical sacrifice as long as they use Unity. It’s even the same on the PC.
I realize Unity is restricting it, but can't you scale your video card's graphics settings back enough on the PC version to achieve 60 FPS in this game? It might not look very good, but at least the action could be made to animate at 60 FPS, or so so I would think?

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Re: NASCAR Heat 4

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The game will run in 1080p. The problem is for an average looking game you have stuttering issues.

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Re: NASCAR Heat 4

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NH4 has had what looks like a permanent price drop on the UK PSN store. £19.99 for the base game, £28.99 for the Gold edition. Do any of you fine folk have a view on whether the Gold edition is worth the extra few quid? I'm particularly interested in the extra challenges but if they're all of the "starting 1st as Kyle Busch, try to win" variety, I'd be fairly happy to pass.
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Re: NASCAR Heat 4

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GB_Simo wrote:NH4 has had what looks like a permanent price drop on the UK PSN store. £19.99 for the base game, £28.99 for the Gold edition. Do any of you fine folk have a view on whether the Gold edition is worth the extra few quid? I'm particularly interested in the extra challenges but if they're all of the "starting 1st as Kyle Busch, try to win" variety, I'd be fairly happy to pass.
I wish I could speak for the Gold edition, but I'm still tooling along just fine with the standard. I still enjoy playing it occasionally, but I know I'd get so much more out of it if they'd at least figure out out to get 1080p/60 FPS graphics on an XBox One X. There are times where I'm really bothered by the framiness of it.

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Re: NASCAR Heat 4

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GB_Simo wrote:NH4 has had what looks like a permanent price drop on the UK PSN store. £19.99 for the base game, £28.99 for the Gold edition. Do any of you fine folk have a view on whether the Gold edition is worth the extra few quid? I'm particularly interested in the extra challenges but if they're all of the "starting 1st as Kyle Busch, try to win" variety, I'd be fairly happy to pass.
Don't waste your time with anything other than the standard version. Fun game, but 704 Games are the absolute effing KINGS of microtransactional extortion. This is the same company that charges hefty sums for livery upgrades, and not in just one pack. It's a drip, drip, drip of thief-f*ckery.
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Re: NASCAR Heat 4

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AI was fantastic. Incredible AI, awesome to race. New experience racing AI, and I haven't seen any other NASCAR game that felt as realistic. The AI took multiple lines, honored your position on track, and could actually be raced naturally. I could let some by and save tires early on, and "save my stuff" through a run. Later, I'd chew them up and pick them off quickly in the back half of a fuel run.

Everything ELSE about it finally killed it for me--but I got a ton of races out of it before it did. Engine is dated and aged, the dirt handling was crap, and their microtransactions are absolutely insane. Lastly, lack of triple screen support on PC and questionable wheel settings just made slogging through another couple hundred races on PC less exciting than it was when I did it on XBox.

I'll be skipping NH5, hoping iRacing adds more than just the two plate tracks for NASCAR AI in the near future.

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Re: NASCAR Heat 4

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The whole life cycle of the revitalization of Nascar Heat ultimately was a disappointment. The progress made with the AI over the 4 versions was fantastic as Terry outlines and filled a long missing void for oval stock car racing. However, the graphics, multiplayer, FFB/wheel support, etc. never really advanced much, if at all. Now that Monster Games is no longer part of the franchise, I don't hold out much hope for future releases. Oh yeah, definitely just go with the standard. Part of the reason I even paid for the Gold or whatever, was because last year the "upgrade" from the 2018 to 2019 cars/season was included around the Daytona 500. This year, it was announced literally at the last minute that they would not be providing a 2020 update. Along with a Reddit Q&A that did more to discourage me than excite, unfortunately.

https://nascarheat.com/nascar-heat-4-2020-dlc-update/
There has been a lot of discussion on our NASCAR Heat channels about the 2020 season DLC update. We have taken the decision to focus on the future of the franchise and as a result, we are unable to provide the 2020 DLC in any future NH4 updates.

We know this is a change of direction from previous years but rest assured 704Games has exciting plans for NASCAR Heat 5 and we look forward to updating you about what you can expect in the very near future.

We will be running an AMA on Reddit for an hour on Thursday (February 13th) this week at 10am (Eastern Time). If you have a question, then let us know via our social channels or via the Reddit AMA itself, and we will do our best to answer as many as we can.
https://www.reddit.com/r/704nascarheat/ ... 4_msg_ama/
Q - I suppose the obvious question is: who is developing the next NASCAR game?
As a follow-up, will we see them starting from scratch or continuing from what NASCAR Heat 4 built?

A - We have taken development in-house at 704Games and for the next game we are building on the foundations of NASCAR Heat 4. - Justin

Q - Just like to know a few things. Will heat 5 be continued off unity engine? Who’s developing heat 5 and are the physics/handling gonna be taking seriously. What’s new for career mode and enhancing the lack of presentation?

A - NH5 will be built in Unity and development has been taken in-house at 704Games. It is too early to talk about the future beyond that, but we have exciting plans… - Elliott
TCrouch wrote:.....I'll be skipping NH5, hoping iRacing adds more than just the two plate tracks for NASCAR AI in the near future.
PS - I have had such high hopes for the introduction of the Nascar AI in iracing, so that we finally have a true successor to Nascar Racing 2003, but man for the life of me I cannot figure out how to get AI sets to work yet. I know its still in the early stages, but the promise of community created realistic AI and paintjobs that the iracing AI features seem to allow for, are still far from reality. Of course, it could just be my old age and laziness, but damn it could not be more unintuitive.
Last edited by DChaps on Tue Mar 03, 2020 6:25 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: NASCAR Heat 4

Post by pk500 »

NH5 will be built off Unity -- a 15-year-old engine designed for mobile games. That's all you really need to know.
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Re: NASCAR Heat 4

Post by Rodster »

I had to laugh at the developers notes. Their DLC is 95% paint jobs. At least when I bought the season update for NH2 it included the Roval.

NH isn't a terrible game it's just that you know there are much better looking games out there like Codemaster's F1 and Rally games.

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