A suggestion to make custom courses more popular

  • Thread starter ProjectVRD
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ProjectVRD
ProjectVRD has an idea. Write down the frigging date because ProjectVRD actually has an idea. But it might be crap but meh, it works in my head and my mam said I was special so bear with me.

You will notice that when you go online to race against other players hardly anyone races or shares the custom race courses that they built in the Course Editor. Despite it's drawbacks of being fairly simple I do think it is a remarkable addition to the game and the very rare instance I have seen someone host one they have been very high quality. But this is still a feature that Polyphony Digital implemented in what feels like a half-hearted attempt before GT6 comes out with improvements.

So, lets not talk about the actual Course Editor itself, but maybe one way to increase it's use amongst the online community.

What if you could design your dream track and then upload it into a server. That race track would then feature in a new section of the online lobby where you can view these custom tracks. The tracks are listed in groups.

User Rating.
New additions.
Course Type.
Search by PSN ID.
Favourites

User Rating: Obviously by saying there should be a group called "User Rating" it means that online players can rate a custom track, out of 10. With a 3 decimel point number (eg. 8.747) to seperate the good tracks from the really good tracks. With thousands of people who can potentially vote those 3 decimel points would come in as being effective.

New additions: Any track that has not yet been rated by the GT5 online community is given it's own list to help it get started in building up a fanbase, if it is not a very good track then it would probably get something like 6.535 and hence fall into obscurity in the User Rating section. But the point is, until it gets it's first review rating number it will be there ready to join the main list in a temporary elevated position to be found.

Course Type: We all love different types of courses. Some prefer the Eifel style while others prefer the Tuscana road surfaces. In this section you can filter by whatever type of race course you want to have a go at.

Search by PSN ID: Is there a specific user who consistently pumps out tracks that you love? This is the place to find all his/her work in one place.

Favourites: As it says, it you have favourited somebodies race track or a specific user then those are listed here in two lists... Courses and User.


At this moment there is alot of things that can be improved, for instance the name you give your course it not shared online for whatever reason. It doesn't matter if you download the track from that users GT Home or if you share it in the lobby. That too should change so that the track name appears when people search for a room they might like, but not only the name of the custom track but also it's rating.

If people see a room with Nurburging Ring, then another room with Spa below that, then another with Top Gear Test Track... but then the fourth online room hosted by some random person with a track named "Monty's Rollercoaster - 9.586" then people are going to think... "Hey, that track has an amazing rating that rivals Spa and the Ring!" I wanna try that out. They can now either easily join the room already open or go and get that track themselves by using the group lists mentioned above!

So apart from the wall of text, what you think?!
 
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I think you referred to yourself in third person, I was so distracted. :lol:
But, while the ideas aren't bad, I don't think they would work in the current system with GT5. These things would probably work better with Forza, honestly, they're more set up to do things like that. Besides, I feel that adding more freedom in design and adding more themes would be more important and attract more attention than anything else.

Edit: The search feature is already there, and the "favorites" and "search by PSN" features are already there as much as they can be implemented given people can only post one track at a time.
 
Really? I haven't seen anything in GT5 that allows me or anyone else to look for custom tracks except the non-descript name of Eifel (track) on the room details in the main lobby. Only then you have to hope the host will accept a friend request and has set the track to online status. With the name being erradicted in the online environment any current seach implimentation is useless but I have to admit, I saw no search funtion for this.

Unless I missed something?
 
That's cool! I thought of a good idea! I add on to that! What if Yoi can draw out a track without he computer screen wig one of those electronic sketchboards (I have one) upload it on a drive, and put it on the ps3 for the track maker! Genius????
 
Simply allowing more than one course upload, letting them retain their name, and making them downloadable from PD's server would be enough for me. The current implementation of custom courses is definitely not community friendly.
 
Yeah I would definitely like a rating system and a more community friendly archive. I have a lot of fun tracks that most people really like but without a good system for sharing, there isn't much of a point. I guess having a ton of fun tracks to choose from would make some of the DLC's less valuable.
 
Basically good idea, there should be a "track pool" online where anyone can upload or download someone else's tracks, I have some nice ones and would like to see what other people have made. I like the above mentioned organizing and rating systems.
 
Amazing ideas, and I wish these really were in GT5, but do you know how many little kids play GT5? They might find a track that's extremely well put together, wreck once, and rate it bad. This would make getting good tracks credit very difficult. Other than that, great ideas 👍
 
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