Ive not read through the previous posts in this thread, but here's my 2 cents for what they're worth.
Firstly, the XP levelling system is a farce. It's only relevent in B-spec to give an indicator of how your driver(s) are coming along in terms of their progress. But I was so gutted when I got my first car, ran through the lisences, then went for one of the higher-end races (which I knew my car could have a shot at) only to be told that I'd have to grind XP in the lower catagories (or as I eventually did in the Seasonal events) before I could get there.
And so the game becomes, rather than an interesting romp through races of your choice, a dull XP grind up the ladder. Just like every other sodding game out there today. Hey, PD, I might well be the only person in the world that DOESN'T play Skyrim, I don't want the games I play to fall foul of levelling-up grinding as well 👎
Which leads me to my second point - the events choice. It's really not good this time around. Sure, previous games were over-burdened with events, including all the manufacturer ones - there is perhaps a reason that I've never completed a GT game 100% before. But they've cut a lot of the good events (driving missions, many of the enduros etc) and what we've been left with are a lot of niche races that require a certain car. When I got my starter car, I suddenly realised that there were really only 2 races it could enter in the whole game (disregarding the XP system for a second) - the sunday and clubman cups. Everything else, it didn't meet the criteria. Why do we need so many niche races for italian cars/lamborghinis only/ferraris only etc? Aren't they just like the manufacturer events? And all it leads to is a scenario where you buy a car for that event only, blitz it for XP, and move on leaving the car to gather dust because there's no other events it can realistically be used in. Exhibit A: The Pickup Truck cup. I rest my case 👎
Oh, and while I'm moaning about events, the Seasonal Events deserve some stick for making it incredibly easy to just break the game with EPIC amounts of money and XP, for races that are if any easier than those in the career mode anyway. Oh and also PD - it's bad enough that some tracks are really marginalised in terms of choice of races, but why on EARTH do you insist on sticking in made-up Eifel tracks into most of the Seasonal Events? Tracks with no course map, no layout to reference, so you have to guess your way around - something that's quite hard to do on a first go in high-powered cars in a tight race. There's simply no excuse, especially when there are great tracks largely gathering dust.
I mentioned above my gripe with the lack of enduros, and I'll expand on that here. First off, the XP grinding system again really hurts the enduros - I've been stuck at level 29 for seemingly years trying to grind XP to unlock the Suzuka 1000km, when I already have the car, the lisence and the skills to do the race (I won it just fine in GT4, what's changed since then?) - I probably wont be attempting the LM24hrs until the Mayan calender runs out, by this rate
And once again, PD have trimmed down, but cut the wrong races and left the wrong races behind. We've lost the 2hrs45mins sportscar enduro, a real-world race, but we've still got the pointless oval race for sportscars!? Why not replace the Infineon Sports Car Race with, say, a 3/4hr sportscar race at Spa, or Monza? Even I, as a fan of NASCAR racing, was bored to death doing the oval sportscar race in GT4, and it's almost twice as long this time! Seriously, who thought that was a good idea?! You know who you are
As well as that, we are still laboured with the utterly pointless Roadster 4 hours, which again may as well be a manufacturer event. But we've lost in the process a lot of races for a wide variety of cars. For example, stuff like the El Capitan 200, the Nurb 4hrs in GT4, the Fuji 1000km, etc. I remember people like Smallhorses going back to the El Capitan 200 again and again, as you could use so many different cars for that race, and you could get some great races out of it, as I did once in an Amuse S2000. The dream car championship field is a very competitive one in GT5, and cars like them and the GT cars (Audi R8 LMS etc) acts as the one rung below the ladder to the top-level sportscars/prototypes, why is there no races for them? All they have is the R8 LMS overkilling the field in the Nurb 4hrs.
Which leads me to a smaller gripe I have with the AI cars. In some races PD just don't have the guts to throw a field of 12/16 REALLY strong cars at you. Even in the top-level races, half the field are just there to fill the spaces. Why not go the whole hog and fill the full field with cars as strong as each other? The whole reason the field was expanded from 6 in GT4 upwards was to promote more cars to race against, but the point is lost when half the field or more are dispatched of by the first corner and you find, just like was often the case in GT4, you're racing against 1, mabye 2 at the most cars. Sometimes they get it right, like in the Dream Car Championship, where I duked it out against half the field, but here they completely ruin it by occasionally throwing in the XJR-9, which is like turning up to a flower show with a lawnmower - there's only ever going to be one winner
The AI themselves I actually think are a little bit of an improvement on GT4, but for the most part the same gripes remain. They do seem more aggressive, and will pull moves and sometimes nerf you off in their determination to get by, which I like. However, they're still too slow, which I dont mind too much as it makes the underdog victories I like pulling off more achievable. They at least now also slow down if you crash in front of them, and dont just plough straight in. So they have half a brain at least now:tup: But still improvements to be made.
The Special events have also been mishandled somewhat. They just appear for the most part to be glorified lisence tests (AMG Academy) or races. The most frustrating one of all though is the Top Gear Test Track runs. Go on, we dont have any races for top level cars on it, give us something great...oh, okay, a VW Van, a Lotus Elise on tyres so bad you can barely steer on them, and Kubelwagons. WTF?!! Your sending us racing in a WW2 military car that can barely top 50mph?!?! Oh, I'm going to enjoy doing this several hundred times, as I will have to do, due to my biggest gripe in the game...THE PENALTY SYSTEM.
Honestly, it was a bit of a joke in GT4, where you'd bounce off a wall, the game would somehow think that was giving you an advantage to your lap and put a 50mph limiter on for five seconds. This was immensely frustrating on tracks like Citta di Aria, where you can glance a wall at almost any moment. But the GT5 system is a total farce. To write off an entire lap due to clipping a wall and, erm, NOT helping my lap in any way is bad enough, but to implement a system where if you clip a wall or something near the end of the lap, it writes off your NEXT lap as well, is just atrocious. I see their reasoning, but it's really badly implemented, and it leads to the scenario where you'll end up constantly doing pointless laps because you clipped a wall somewhere and the timing monitor wrote off the lap. Imagine going off briefly early on in the lap at Nurburgring...I haven't done that myself, but I'd imagine it to be teeth-grindingly frustrating to toddle around for another 10 minutes or so on a pointless lap. It gets especially frustrating at the Top Gear Test Track, where you have to guess where PD put the out of bounds lines, and it'll sting you for tiny things - for example, I didn't realise that it will DQ you if you run out to the edge of the tarmac through the Follow Through, something which is easy to do because you have to avoid going across the red and white striped section coming into FT, because GUESS WHAT! YOU'LL GET DQED IF YOU DO THAT!
Also, on a minor point, the game does seem to be very proud of the weather/time changing mechanics, so why doesn't it throw them at us a bit more? It's bad enough that the AI are made up of Yuji Ide and Ralf Schumacher clones, but why not give us more challenge from outside elements? A thread around here mentioned mechanical problems/failures, and also more changable weather conditions. I understand they do this in the enduros, but not in the regular races. Come on PD, bring it on - we want to be pushed to the limit!
/Rant over.
That's all the gripes I have for now, and despite this I do still love GT5, in the same way I've loved all the GTs before now. However, the flaws in GT5 do seem more random and frustrating, and it's only now that my enjoyment has really been affected this much. It's as if they don't learn from previous mistakes, and insist on making them again and again.
Anyway, that's all for now. I'm heading off to XP grind a bit more 👍
