B-spec. WHY!?!

  • Thread starter Thread starter gambleboyen
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I had the game day one, and rushed the career until I could unlock online access. I nearly didn't touched the career after that. Now I can run Bobby Speck to unlock the other licence tests to make the stats on my profile less troll-esque.

Though, if I happen to deviate my eyes from the thing I'm working on while Bobby's driving, I usually instantly feel the urge to make him brake later... which usually ends in a sandtrap, because he can't handle my usual braking points :lol:

I'm also trying to find a setup dumb enough to make him drift :D Trolling Bobby seems to be the main use of GT6's B-Spec.
 
B-Spec is not good when your trying to get gold stars you're unable to get yourself, because you are never going to become a better driver doing that.
I tried putting B-spec In charge of some kart races and it never did better than 2nd place. Do I really have to give detailed instructions along the way? In that case there is even less point of B-spec?
 
I tried putting B-spec In charge of some kart races and it never did better than 2nd place. Do I really have to give detailed instructions along the way? In that case there is even less point of B-spec?
I have not look at B-spec yet, and I think I will never try it because it is a waste.
 
At first I was excited but now I'm disappointed. It works like GT4 in terms of concept which would've been good if there were any endurance races that didn't go on for 24 minutes or less.

It actually makes me want to play GT5. B-Spec was its own little career and you were a crew chief controlling your drivers to be very successful and become champion. You even had 6 to control and they can team up to be endurance Champions. It was a great Crew Chief career and even had Grid Starts to make it feel like ACTUAL racing instead of GTs horrible rolling starts that are now apart B-Spec.

Real time controls are good but I feel like I have too much power instead of having my driver race.
 
Exactly. Anyone who can't see the value of B-spec for those with disabilities is probably mentally impaired.
I've never said I am mentally perfect. And yes well maybe I can see some value for those with physical disabilities, but the b-spec concept is fundamentally flawed it if is meant to be any sort of "management/simulation" way to play the game. You just play it with severely limited control. And with increased frustration.
 
I've never said I am mentally perfect. And yes well maybe I can see some value for those with physical disabilities, but the b-spec concept is fundamentally flawed it if is meant to be any sort of "management/simulation" way to play the game. You just play it with severely limited control. And with increased frustration.

It can have the opposite effect for those less fortunate than you. For that, I applaud PD.

Myself, I don't use B-spec, so there is no frustration.

I also don't complain about spacious disabled toilets with all those stainless steel rails and different sinks and taps. They serve a purpose, and that purpose is not for my enjoyment.
 
but the b-spec concept is fundamentally flawed it if is meant to be any sort of "management/simulation" way to play the game.

It isn't. It's meant to be a mode where an AI is driving for you:

"...for races you might find difficult to complete such as some of the longer endurance races, or when you just want to enjoy watching the race."

Forza 3 had something similar, I believe. I don't remember if you could control that AI though, but the function is similar: an alternative way to complete events that you find too difficult, or when you want to watch the race as a spectator.
 
What's the point of B-Spec really?
Earning money without playing? Getting gold stars you're unable to get yourself?
I just don't get it.
That's my review and feedback for B-Spec.
Your 1st post looks like you didn't even really looked into it.But i can't proove it.
But does not look like a review, just an oppinion.


Well, I guess some people will find use for it, but I don't see why this is a feature so many have been longing for.
But it's not really a managemement part is it, you're just having a virtual "you" doing your job. No management features really.
Some waited for B-spec itself, and some waited for the promise to be fullfilled.
About the management, again it looks like you did not really tried it.


I tried putting B-spec In charge of some kart races and it never did better than 2nd place. Do I really have to give detailed instructions along the way? In that case there is even less point of B-spec?
Now we see that you tried it and don't understand that B-spec is just AI not a copy of alien driving skills.

In short, it is a extra game feature, you're the one that makes the choice.
I accept that you don't like it and that you think it's a obsolete feature.
But You have to accept that there are people that will enjoy and use it.
 
B-Spec worked well in GT4 because it was unrealistic. Order your driver to go flat-out for 24 hours straight and he/she/they/it will without stopping, and the occasional spin, and you could speed-up time. In GT5 the strength and stress levels made it more realistic, but also harder because you had to keep your attention in long races and keep handing out orders every few minutes, it didn't either help that the driver was utterly incompetent even at the highest levels.

In GT6 it's become largely unnecessary for people like me and another other gamers who've had the game for a while and already completed more or less everything, because it's useful for completing the harder races, which I've already done, and can just repeat in A-Spec if necessary because I'm a far better driver than the game is, and for endurance races...which the game doesn't have (24 hours condensed in 24 minutes is not an endurace race).
 
Exactly. Anyone who can't see the value of B-spec for those with disabilities is probably mentally impaired.

So they turn B-Spec into a frantic mode where you have to constantly be pushing multiple buttons to win.

Those people must have pretty specific disabilities.
 
So they turn B-Spec into a frantic mode where you have to constantly be pushing multiple buttons to win.

Oddly, all you have to do to win most races is have a car at or near the restrictions for the race, and set it to Push the Pace.

Two button presses and one up on the D-pad.

I think I could even train my cat to do that. I don't see how it affords even people with disabilities any satisfaction at all, they're not doing anything to help the car win. It's not them winning the race, it's all the computer.

It's the Farmville of racing games: push buttons, wait, get reward. No skill involved at all.
 
I don't see how it affords even people with disabilities any satisfaction at all

I do. It lets them do (and watch) races and gives them a chance to win and complete events, get rewards etc. It's easy if you pick a good car, but so is A-spec. I gave my Bob a GT40 road car for the Nürburgring 24H and I had a blast watching him drive it like there was no tomorrow. On the final lap I set the pace to push hard and he caught 9 seconds on the leader and ended up finishing in 2nd place, 8 seconds behind.

Also, by timing the detailed inputs you can improve (or ruin) the lap times quite a bit, so it's not just a spectator sport.

You will probably always prefer to drive yourself, and so will I. But B-spec can be really entertaining, on a different level.
 
I do. It lets them do (and watch) races and gives them a chance to win and complete events, get rewards etc. It's easy if you pick a good car, but so is A-spec.

It's not easy. It's trivial.

The only way to get satisfaction is not to be aware of how easy it is. Or be deriving your satisfaction from some source that is not related to the "skill" involved to play the game.

Also, by timing the detailed inputs you can improve (or ruin) the lap times quite a bit, so it's not just a spectator sport.

But it is.

The point is that unless you intentionally cripple yourself, the vast majority of the time you don't actually have to do anything. If you're a complete novice then arguably anything you do has as much of a chance to make you lose as it does to "improve" your position (from the first that you've already got coming to you). So why would you?

Normally, racing defaults to "if you do nothing, you lose". Which is great, it gets people giving it a go because they couldn't possibly make the situation worse. In B-Spec, unless you handicap yourself then you already have the best possible result coming to you, so the only thing that can happen by you pushing buttons is you make yourself finish worse. In B Spec, if you do nothing then you probably win.

But B-spec can be really entertaining, on a different level.

Only if you're ignorant of the fact that the vast majority of the time you win by doing nothing.

It's similar to the rubber band AI in A Spec. You could drive fast, but why would you when the AI will let you win anyway? By driving fast you're actually increasing your chances of a major crash, from which even the AI's generosity can't save you. If you just drive like a grandmother, you've got a better chance of winning than if you drive hard.

I don't see why anyone should derive satisfaction from "beating" a game that is rigged to let you win. They may do so, and best of luck to them if they are. But if they're deriving their satisfaction from their feeling that their skill has helped them to win, then it's all a lie.

We have many games that just give the player free wins these days, hence the Farmville reference. It's fine, people enjoy those. But let's not pretend that the enjoyment is anything to do with any skill involved in playing, because there isn't any.

==========

I've done a lot of races in B Spec today. I spent several hours playing Heroes of the Storm with GT6 going on the other screen, and all I did was pick cars and select races while I was between HotS matches. I won all the races bar three, where I came second and just repeated with a different car.

Tell me again how this is skill related. All I did was navigate menus, the rest of the time I was playing another game entirely. There might as well have been a button that said "Click here, and in ten minutes you will be awarded completion of this race".

It was some pretty graphics to watch while I was dead though.

I initially thought like you, that it was a decent mode for drivers who for whatever reason didn't have the coordination or manual dexterity to be able to race competitively in A Spec. I thought it was a good middle ground of still needing input in order to win, but not needing to have super fine control of your thumbs. While it's not what I had expected B Spec to be, I could appreciate that something like that could be useful to a significant portion of players.

It's not true. You don't need any input to win. It's a free ride, unless you intentionally handicap yourself. These people aren't being presented with a challenge that they need to overcome, a skillset that they need to learn and utilise. It's a smoke and mirror show that attempts to praise everyone for being a winner.

I think that's a shame. I think winning isn't so sweet when you didn't earn it.

I am not and will never be part of the cupcake generation.
 
Imo b-spec is useless. I agree it could help to get access to online racing if you don't like single player but now it's hard to find player who don't have necessary licence. So this b-spec shoud be since 1.00 version. :)

B-spec would be great if it would be something like Grand Prix World. You have your own team, you work on car parts, fight for sponsors, better drivers, plan race strategy and you play season by season of some existing or fictional competition. It would be even better if you could do same things online. It's so obvious.
 
I agree with OP

I have put hundreds of hours into GT4,GT5 and GT6 each and I've done about 3-4 of those as B-spec. I really don't get the appeal.
 
It's not easy. It's trivial.

The only way to get satisfaction is not to be aware of how easy it is. Or be deriving your satisfaction from some source that is not related to the "skill" involved to play the game.



But it is.

The point is that unless you intentionally cripple yourself, the vast majority of the time you don't actually have to do anything. If you're a complete novice then arguably anything you do has as much of a chance to make you lose as it does to "improve" your position (from the first that you've already got coming to you). So why would you?

Normally, racing defaults to "if you do nothing, you lose". Which is great, it gets people giving it a go because they couldn't possibly make the situation worse. In B-Spec, unless you handicap yourself then you already have the best possible result coming to you, so the only thing that can happen by you pushing buttons is you make yourself finish worse. In B Spec, if you do nothing then you probably win.



Only if you're ignorant of the fact that the vast majority of the time you win by doing nothing.

It's similar to the rubber band AI in A Spec. You could drive fast, but why would you when the AI will let you win anyway? By driving fast you're actually increasing your chances of a major crash, from which even the AI's generosity can't save you. If you just drive like a grandmother, you've got a better chance of winning than if you drive hard.

I don't see why anyone should derive satisfaction from "beating" a game that is rigged to let you win. They may do so, and best of luck to them if they are. But if they're deriving their satisfaction from their feeling that their skill has helped them to win, then it's all a lie.

We have many games that just give the player free wins these days, hence the Farmville reference. It's fine, people enjoy those. But let's not pretend that the enjoyment is anything to do with any skill involved in playing, because there isn't any.

==========

I've done a lot of races in B Spec today. I spent several hours playing Heroes of the Storm with GT6 going on the other screen, and all I did was pick cars and select races while I was between HotS matches. I won all the races bar three, where I came second and just repeated with a different car.

Tell me again how this is skill related. All I did was navigate menus, the rest of the time I was playing another game entirely. There might as well have been a button that said "Click here, and in ten minutes you will be awarded completion of this race".

It was some pretty graphics to watch while I was dead though.

I initially thought like you, that it was a decent mode for drivers who for whatever reason didn't have the coordination or manual dexterity to be able to race competitively in A Spec. I thought it was a good middle ground of still needing input in order to win, but not needing to have super fine control of your thumbs. While it's not what I had expected B Spec to be, I could appreciate that something like that could be useful to a significant portion of players.

It's not true. You don't need any input to win. It's a free ride, unless you intentionally handicap yourself. These people aren't being presented with a challenge that they need to overcome, a skillset that they need to learn and utilise. It's a smoke and mirror show that attempts to praise everyone for being a winner.

I think that's a shame. I think winning isn't so sweet when you didn't earn it.

I am not and will never be part of the cupcake generation.

You CAN make it an easy win.

You CAN make it a challenge.

What you do is your choice entirely.
 
You CAN make it an easy win.

You CAN make it a challenge.

What you do is your choice entirely.

By which logic you can make turning the PS3 on a challenge, if you mount it upside down from the ceiling of a cage of tigers. Hell, you could probably make Farmville really difficult as well, if you wanted to tack on a bunch of arbitrary rules to make it so.

It doesn't mean it's a difficult game. It just means that you're not trying as hard as you could be.

Motorsport, and racing in general, is about taking every advantage you can get short of cheating and trying to turn that into a win. A game that requires you to hamstring yourself to be difficult is not like motorsport.

It's like playing chess against a child and handicapping yourself by removing some of your pieces. It can be fun, and it can be difficult, and it's entirely not like playing real chess against an equivalent opponent.

The fact that everyone CAN win is entirely the point. It's left to the player to decide whether or not to push the "I win now" button. There's no skill or challenge in that.

Completing a challenge where you had to try your hardest to finish it is immensely rewarding. Completing a challenge where you had to restrain yourself from dominating it is...what?
 
By which logic you can make turning the PS3 on a challenge, if you mount it upside down from the ceiling of a cage of tigers. Hell, you could probably make Farmville really difficult as well, if you wanted to tack on a bunch of arbitrary rules to make it so.

It doesn't mean it's a difficult game. It just means that you're not trying as hard as you could be.

Motorsport, and racing in general, is about taking every advantage you can get short of cheating and trying to turn that into a win. A game that requires you to hamstring yourself to be difficult is not like motorsport.

It's like playing chess against a child and handicapping yourself by removing some of your pieces. It can be fun, and it can be difficult, and it's entirely not like playing real chess against an equivalent opponent.

The fact that everyone CAN win is entirely the point. It's left to the player to decide whether or not to push the "I win now" button. There's no skill or challenge in that.

Completing a challenge where you had to try your hardest to finish it is immensely rewarding. Completing a challenge where you had to restrain yourself from dominating it is...what?

By which logic you can claim that playing any game on any other setting than the very easiest is to not try as hard as you could to win.

But by all means, if you by principle refuse to have any other experience than the very easiest, then be my guest. It doesn't mean that it's impossible or unreasonable to play the game in a way that makes it a more rewarding and exciting experience.
 
I don't see how it affords even people with disabilities any satisfaction at all, they're not doing anything to help the car win. It's not them winning the race, it's all the computer.

I suppose you must be completely void of empathy.
 
By which logic you can claim that playing any game on any other setting than the very easiest is to not try as hard as you could to win.

Nope. The point of settings is to suit the challenge to the skill of the player. Different settings are different challenges to be met.

Gran Turismo doesn't have difficulty settings, as I'm sure you're aware. There is only one setting to B Spec. Anything else is you arbitrarily tying your hands behind your back.

What you're talking about with settings is the equivalent of finding a better opponent when you're playing chess, and that's valid. It's only fun if you're playing against an opponent that you have a reasonable chance of beating, and has a reasonable chance of beating you, in a fair competition.

There's only one opponent in game though, and you can't modify it's behaviour. So you're actually talking about handicapping yourself as I said before.

There's a difference between finding a more difficult opponent and crippling yourself. You don't seem to recognise that.

But by all means, if you by principle refuse to have any other experience than the very easiest, then be my guest. It doesn't mean that it's impossible or unreasonable to play the game in a way that makes it a more rewarding and exciting experience.

I on principle object to playing a game that hands me a victory. It's why I've completed the bare minimum of A Spec races as well.

I have no desire to be required to limit myself in order to have a competitive race. I want to improve my skills, whatever skills may be necessary for the mode in question, not find out how much I have to hobble myself in order to be equivalent to some half-witted computer.

It means that yes, for many people it is impossible to play the game in a way that makes it a rewarding experience. That's the problem. If the reward you're after is the satisfaction of beating your opponent with your skill, then that's not available outside of ignorance about how the system works.

It may be more exciting racing, but that's not what I was talking about. I was talking about the lack of satisfaction of winning a race that has been handed to you. It's possible to have all sorts of fun playing games against weaker opposition, and it can be quite exciting if you get your handicap right, but you're never going to get the same feeling of satisfaction that you would have from beating a quality opponent on equal terms.

That's a big part of racing to some people, given that racing in the pure sense is all about comparing your skill and speed directly against your opponent.

I'll ask again:

Completing a challenge where you had to restrain yourself from dominating it is...what?
 
Nope. The point of settings is to suit the challenge to the skill of the player. Different settings are different challenges to be met.

Gran Turismo doesn't have difficulty settings, as I'm sure you're aware. There is only one setting to B Spec. Anything else is you arbitrarily tying your hands behind your back.

What you're talking about with settings is the equivalent of finding a better opponent when you're playing chess, and that's valid. It's only fun if you're playing against an opponent that you have a reasonable chance of beating, and has a reasonable chance of beating you, in a fair competition.

There's only one opponent in game though, and you can't modify it's behaviour. So you're actually talking about handicapping yourself as I said before.

There's a difference between finding a more difficult opponent and crippling yourself. You don't seem to recognise that.



I on principle object to playing a game that hands me a victory. It's why I've completed the bare minimum of A Spec races as well.

I have no desire to be required to limit myself in order to have a competitive race. I want to improve my skills, whatever skills may be necessary for the mode in question, not find out how much I have to hobble myself in order to be equivalent to some half-witted computer.

It means that yes, for many people it is impossible to play the game in a way that makes it a rewarding experience. That's the problem. If the reward you're after is the satisfaction of beating your opponent with your skill, then that's not available outside of ignorance about how the system works.

It may be more exciting racing, but that's not what I was talking about. I was talking about the lack of satisfaction of winning a race that has been handed to you. It's possible to have all sorts of fun playing games against weaker opposition, and it can be quite exciting if you get your handicap right, but you're never going to get the same feeling of satisfaction that you would have from beating a quality opponent on equal terms.

That's a big part of racing to some people, given that racing in the pure sense is all about comparing your skill and speed directly against your opponent.

I'll ask again:

Completing a challenge where you had to restrain yourself from dominating it is...what?

The only difference between difficulty levels provided by the game and difficulty levels provided by yourself is that the former is provided by the developer and the latter by yourself. Other than that there is no difference.
 
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