The 0.20 controversy

I've been seeing a lot of people complaining about the 0.20 update, and I mean, A LOT. This is definitely the most controversial update I've seen, and while I agree that it's not the best update ever, some people are exaggerating this a lot. I've seen people telling others to avoid updating the game at all costs, as if it was the end of the world of something, and I haven't seen this kind of behavior after any other previous update (well, I haven't really seen many big uptades myself, I'm fairly new to the forums, but I think I've seen enough to tell that this is the most controversial update in a while). So I decided to make a thread to show my thoughts on the whole thing, and explain why in my opinion people are exaggearting.

But let's actually start from all the things that are making people think this update is bad, because obviously, it was not perfect. The first "issue" is the general lack of content compared to some of the previous updates - generally all we've got was the Roamer remaster with the facelifted version, Industrial and Port merge/remaster, water physics, improved checkpoints, and square wheels. I think a lot of people might have been expecting something more, with no new car and no new map they wanted at least the pickup crawler/prerunner finished. The Roamer already had 2 stages of the remaster before, it didn't really feel needed to update it again, the map merge didn't bring as much new content as we expected, and the rest of the things were completely unexpected and might feel useless to some people, especially the square wheels. So the content in the update might feel underwhelming, but there is another thing which is a real issue - the amount of broken mods. Never before have I seen an update that broke such a massive amount of mods, personally I had to deal with over 10% of the mods I had either being completely broken or having some issues. As far as I know, there are several reasons for why they got broken:
• Unexpected changes in LUA that literally break the whole code
• Some changes in the way the game reads Jbeam files - specifically, errors that were previously ignored by the game now break the whole mod, and adding parts to a vehicle that uses the Common folder using the normal folder of the vehicle no longer seems to work
• Changes in the wheels system causing a lot of mod vehicles and custom configurations to spawn without tires, which is the least serious issue of these
And obviously the most serious issue with the update is that a lot of people can't load any map anymore, this is a really serious bug that definitely needs to get fixed as soon as possible.

Now, the amount of issues with this update might seem overwhelming, but let's defend the devs now. The little amount of content shouldn't be seen as an issue, and remasters of old maps and cars should not be treated simply like a "mod update" - almost every vehicle and map gets updates in every game update and in some hotfixes as well, a remaster should be seen more like a brand new map/vehicle based on the old one, because the amount of stuff that is being changed is huge! Look at the D-Series before the first stage of remaster and look at it now. It looks almost the same, but behaves much more realistically, has much more customization options and new variants, etc. People are underwhelmed because they don't see the amount of improvements. Now about the broken mods... The LUA issue is a big one, and I think the devs should have informed the modders BEFORE the update about all the changes, or at least mentioned all the changes in the devblog to make it easier for the modders to fix them. Hovewer, it's not as big of an issue as it seems - the best quality LUA-based mods, such as the Oldsfullsize, the Bitron B2 or the Gavril CB-40, are either already fixed or undergoing a hotfix, and in a few days everyone will be able to drive them again! The 2nd change is a bit different - it mainly affected older mods which weren't updated for a long time, and were probably made back when their "Jbeam errors" weren't errors yet and worked properly. I might be wrong, but I think this is related to the vehicle loading time improvements - and the improvements themselves are a really good thing, I already got so used to the short loading times that I probably wouldn't be able to play in an older version of the game. But I suggest that the devs should look into this issue in one of the hotfixes and make it so 1 Jbeam error doesn't break the whole file, like it was before 0.20. They should also fix the weird bug with the Common folder, unless that's not a bug and the modders are doing something wrong. About the mod cars missing tires - how is this an issue if you can put the tires on manually anyway? Most of the mods with this issue will probably get hotfixes soon that add the tires back. And if your custom configurations are missing tires, adding them back is a great opportunity to use the new system that automatically takes a screenshot of the config and sets it as the preview image, for people like me who make A LOT of configs it makes it easier to know which one is which! I really like the new wheels system btw, it makes it so much easier to find the wheels you are looking for with a proper size, and to choose fitting wheels if you know the size you need!

So in conclusion, this update is not a complete disaster that some people make it to be - remember that there hasn't been any hotfix yet, the hotfixes will likely fix both the big issue of the maps not loading AND the small issues with suspension/crash sounds or scenarios, plus they might bring us the Pickup Crawler/Prerunner. What won't get fixed in hotfixes can be fixed by the modders, and if it won't, you can always learn how to mod and fix your broken mods yourself (I sometimes do it, obviously only for private use, and when an official fix comes I use it instead of my one to support the original creator of the mod). I think people should stop discouraging other people from updating the game, because even if it's not worth updating it yet for you, it will be after all the hotfixes and fixes to the mods (some of the mods updated to 0.20 might stop working in previous updates too, and you will be missing on content if you stay before 0.20). This is just a few of my thoughts, feel free to say what you think about this in the replies. And sorry if this is too long.

 

I'm sorry if my original post sounded like complaining about the update in some places, the intention was the exact opposite, to complain about people complaining about the update, but also to try to explain their "reasoning" only to prove it mostly wrong.