Rank the YourStage Locations!

[SkyRex 417]

As YourStage is the halo-feature of DiRT 4, I thought it might be useful to collect the specific feedback in one place. So cm has it easier to grasp what specifically most people liked and what not and why.
Even after knowing almost all tiles everywhere, I still find some locations feel way more "alive" than others.

Vote for the Location, where YourStage feels most alive to you and post a comment with a 1-5 Ranking and the reasoning behind it.

[SkyRex 417]

For myself it's this:
Australia> Spain> Sweden> Wales> Michigan

Reasons for everything:
Michigan: Feels just way to repetitive. Don't know for sure but it feels like it has less Tiles as the others. Stages are also very wide except for some bits in the open fields, but the openfield-area is also very small.

Wales: Well, the bit in the Forest is great and for it alone it would even be infront of Sweden. But the Forest is scatterd all over the damn place, so that the transition-tiles become way to repetitive and you can hardly generate single-feature stages (only forest) like you easily can in Spain and Australia. The open field areas are actually the worst of all in D4 and was I ranking the fields alone, they would be dead-last here. It just feels the most generated in an obvious way. The road curves in the middle of nowwhere for no reasons. No fences, no houses nothing, just some people. This just screams "generated" at you on an unconcious level.

Sweden: No real two-areas apart from dense forest and not so dense forest. But most tiles seem to be able to appear everywhere, which makes the stages very fresh as there is less repetition, than in the others. Main problem is the lack of fast-narrow pieces, like you got on DRs Hamra stage, once over that bridge at full speed and the road that follows, and then near the end where you have to be super precise with the high snowbanks. Sections like these are missing completely, it always feels like if the roads straightens out, it also gets a smidge wider. So we end up with many Norraskogas but zero Hamras. Additionally here I would wish the most for a percentage value of surfaces. So you can easily see and therefor create stages which are more snow/more sludge.

Spain: Great. Some pieces feel overly repetitive like the left-right-left 5, but apart from that it always feels like a could-be-real-road and is a thrill to drive quick as you have to be very precise. Also enough variation between stages, full forests are possible (+15km) as well as full non-forests and even in those you feel that you drive through different micro-areas like canyons or towns.

Australia: Everything I said about spain, but this time less repetitive feeling. Here I have to listen to the Copilot the most. Even If I recognise the corner mid-corner, I need the call to setup the car perfectly for entry. And still some corners feel somewhat new everytime. Also great narrow bits in the forest and unlike Wales the open-fields feel real, cause you drive around farms, fences, bridges and gates which adds to the illusion of a real road that was built for a purpose other than rallying.

[caerphoto 323]

Pretty much agreed here.

Michigan needs much more variety in corners, and more 1s and 2s. I get that it's supposed to be fast and flowing (like a flatter version of Finland) but the sameyness of the corners and the fact that everything's brown is a shame.

Wales I'd actually put second. I love it, especially the forest bits but also the occasional part where there's forest on one side and clearing on the other. Needs more of that. The moorland areas I agree could do with some more 'stuff' - maybe patches of trees on one side, or roads through some tree patches, or past some wind turbines.

Sweden is probably my least favourite. IMO it's far too rollercoastery – intense short elevation changes. Could do with more areas where the trees are right up close to the road.

Spain I kind of waver on. Sometimes I really like it, other times I just get frustrated. Very car dependent. Love the towns :)

Australia is my favourite I think, for all the reasons SkyRex listed.

Beyond location-specific stuff, I really think each one needs perhaps 2 more 'areas'. For example Wales has moors and forest, but needs something else like maybe lakeside or town.

[Janneman60 154]

It all lacks the variaty of corners. Every stage the same corners again. Compared to dirt rally it is a very weak part of the game. Yourstage is just the same corners in a different way and as it is now dissapointing. I don't feel the need to rank something this bad.

[DoubleTen 137]

Spain is less repetitive than the others. The town parts are the best.
Suggestion, if CM doesn't want to introduce new locations: Spain is not just a sunny outback, as Wales and Australia, you can add coastal location or agrarium location, with stone walls and factories ecc ecc...OR it can be interesting changing the seasons, so you can have a summer Michigan or a cold Australia.

[ShouldBeThere 0]

DoubleTen said:

Spain is less repetitive than the others. The town parts are the best.
Suggestion, if CM doesn't want to introduce new locations: Spain is not just a sunny outback, as Wales and Australia, you can add coastal location or agrarium location, with stone walls and factories ecc ecc...OR it can be interesting changing the seasons, so you can have a summer Michigan or a cold Australia.

If someone figures out how to get the nefs edit tool to successfully replace pssgs inside location files. I have converted all of Michigan into glorious green lush summer. 

[BorisTheFrog 0]

For me it has to be Wales because the lighting and weather effects really do complement this location perfectly. My only reservation is that there are a huge amount of lakes dotted all over the map and never used.

Wales > Australia > Sweden > Spain > everything else the game has to offer > loading screens > watching paint dry > Michegan. 

[Dytut 89]

Wales > Spain > Australia > Michigan > Sweden for me.

Wales, the tiles feel less repetitive there and I get surprised more often. Some forest parts feel more gamey with way too much elevation changes, but overall it's quite nice and feels a lot like driving a real road. Some problems with pacenotes here and there.

Spain has some very repetitive tilesets, but the driving feel is quite nice. It flows in a good way much like rally Spain.

Australia is OK. The repetitive tiles are very noticeable, and sometimes it just feels very gamey, as in not driving down a real road (extreme camber corners and crests that just feel like they're put in there to add difficulty for example). Some variations of it can feel great, while others are just bland and irritating. Also, the pace notes can be waaay off here at times.

Michigan can be fun, but rather bland. It's all just a bunch of mostly very easy corners without any real challenges and nothing that really stands out (which I think makes it feel more repetitive). Would've helped with some more tighter sections and some more open tiles.

Sweden was the location where I thought your stage would work best, but the tiles are just way off what Sweden is about. Extremely bumpy and weird, most of it is nothing like Swedish country roads. Compare with the DR stages, where it's all about flowing through the stage at high speed and keeping the balance over the high speed bumps. In D4 it's mostly low speed rollercoaster with huge bumps and elevation changes. Very seldom do I get a Sweden stage that feels like it flows.

[LittleApple 47]

Australia is an absolute masterpeice in game. Having driven on roads exactly like this many times in my life. I think hands down winner. Only way to improve is to add more new sections. Also needs water splashes.

Spain looks great and i would rate it above Germany in Dirt rally. Only complaint is not enough highspeed sections/straights.

Wales : Ugh, like michigan has way too many repeated sections when i generate stages no matter the complexity.

Michigan: Feels like driving down a drain. Corner layout is too simple and the banks make surrounding environemnt very dull and lifeless.

Sweden: Ugh i hate this place, Way to many bumps and way too many repeated sections.

Stage generation overall: Sadly complex stages are boring because they reuse too many sections. So i never create stages more then mid way through complexity bar. Mostly i stick to the lowest points of stage complexity.

Also recommend never setting weather to be either cloudy, foggy or overcast. It kills environmental shadow visibility and makes all textures and lighting effects nulled. It's like turning the graphics settings off or dialing them back to 2002 CMR/RBR.

[caerphoto 323]

LittleApple said:

Also recommend never setting weather to be either cloudy, foggy or overcast. It kills environmental shadow visibility and makes all textures and lighting effects nulled. It's like turning the graphics settings off or dialing them back to 2002 CMR/RBR.

I dunno, Cloudy works well with the way the sun goes in and out. Looks very realistic. Overcast looks realistic too, although naturally that just means everything looks flat and dull, same as in real life.

Fog, on the other hand, doesn't look like real fog, it looks like videogame fog – completely uniform, appears as a gradual thickening rather than in clumps and clouds, and doesn't do anything to the way sound propagates.

[LittleApple 47]

caerphoto said:

LittleApple said:

Also recommend never setting weather to be either cloudy, foggy or overcast. It kills environmental shadow visibility and makes all textures and lighting effects nulled. It's like turning the graphics settings off or dialing them back to 2002 CMR/RBR.

I dunno, Cloudy works well with the way the sun goes in and out. Looks very realistic. Overcast looks realistic too, although naturally that just means everything looks flat and dull, same as in real life.

Fog, on the other hand, doesn't look like real fog, it looks like videogame fog – completely uniform, appears as a gradual thickening rather than in clumps and clouds, and doesn't do anything to the way sound propagates.

My mistake. i mean when theres 100% cloud cover over the sky the lighting and shadows go bad. Indeed its the same in real life. It is realistic but... It hides the advances of modern day 3D graphics.

[WeamDreaver 12]

1. Australia - it's my favourite too. Very organic and natural look and feel.
2. Wales - the forest sections are nice, looking quite organic. The open sections look more generated
3. Spain - Somewhat natural, but very repetitive. The village sections could be used more often during a stage or even better, combine more village sections.
4. Sweden - actually not that bad, but the bumps... see below
5. Michigan - looks very generated, but I liked some of the open parts. I remember one stage, where I could see huge mountains at the end of the map. Felt quite epic. I actually like the flow of the forest sections, but as already said, it looks too generated.

About the so called bumps in sweden. It's not bumps, but more like mini hills. Look at the pic below, this kind of "road" would be better suited for Motocross. I don't know which people could use these roads for their daily drive...
These bumps are way too exaggerated and destroy every bit of flow those stages could generate.

[carpa 303]

I completely misuderstood the question but I'll explain: I voted Michigan because I like those fast and flowing stages, and the car seems to slide more happily there (could be because I raced there with the Peugeot 208 which I find is the best car of R5s).
I also love Australia because it feels way more real than other locations and it's the one that looks less generated. Spain is great and I love how you can get very different stages. Thing is, one or two tiles tend to appear over and over again and it looks silly. Sweden is beautifully looking but I have some issues with my codriver there. Wales is my least favourite because it feels like a big step backwards from DiRT Rally (mainly because of handling)

[WhiteWagon 0]

Spain >Australia>Michigan>Wales>Sweden.

Monte and Germany were my most played in DR, I really like tarmac tracks, especially in FWD cars. Codies nails the feeling of FWD.
Hope we get tarmac DLC.
Sweden remains my least favorite, and thus, least driven.

[SkyRex 417]

Whoa , never thought Michigan might get more than Sweden... well what do ya know, tastes really seem to differ here

[Peter Mathen 61]

No vote, each location is a repetitive mess of a few corners, there are e.g. no real hairpins. I think they have not enough tiles modeled to get the feeling of a new track.  The generated tracks are mostly boring and the complexity slider does not help. 

[bogani 756]

I really do not like Wales in D4. Way too much elevation changes all the time, no real flow to the road. The moor sections are also pretty stupid and the notes always seems to lack over the blind crests. The road profile is also a mess with constant off cambers that makes the car behave like a turd. Add the constant in and out of forests, which makes it really repetitive.

Sorry Wales. I like you better in DR.

[mesa 624]

All stages are unnatural. 
For Me Wales looks like real with its environments all other looks like computer games pipeline tracks.

[Habsolute 1]

I feel that Australia felt the most authentic. Like, almost like a real place. I also like the tarmac is Spain...but I find the entire stage "feel" isn't close to DR. I'm sorry to say that, as I enjoy DiRT 4...but it's mostly for the Rally Cross section, which was nailed in DiRT 4.  I think Sweden is also pretty good...Wales was disappointing, considering in DR I thought it was the most authentic location.

Again, I enjoy DiRT 4. I think it should evolve into THE Rally Cross experience, eventually getting all locations into the game...and leave the rallying to DiRT Rally.

[SkyRex 417]

It wasn't so obvious in modern cars, but just did some driving in Sweden with Grp B and really noticed how horibly bumpy it is if you have an old suspension... Can understand you guys more with bashing Sweden, it is really barely fun in historic cars. Still like it in modern, but... this really isn't a great representation of the real event and the roads there.