"Custom Races" leave a lot to be desired.

[tonystarks131]

It's come up repeatedly both in these forums and elsewhere that despite a lack of "career" races in the game, especially once the Cafe menu is finished, there is still plenty to do as the custom races allow an unlimited number of events to be run.

While technically this is correct, the custom race menu is limited - it does not allow enough customisation options and the payouts are very low compared to the pre-made races - for some insane reason payouts don't increase based on the amount of laps, and only marginally adjust with difficulty level increases.



Here we see the pre-race menu for the notorious Fisherman's Ranch rally race 30,000cr for a single lap race.



The same race recreated in the Custom menu - a paltry 4k for the same thing.



Here is the same race created in the custom menu, with the length increased to 100 laps. 100 LAPS, 300 odd minutes and payout is 124k.
If I instead choose to run the Dirt Champions race 4 times for a total of 12 minutes my earnings are more or less the same, 120k. If i run it 100 times, my payout is 3 million credits.

Next track used as an example is the Nordschliefe.



The only options I can see are Random, one make, Select by car category and Select from garage. Why can't we select rivals based on drivetrain configuration or country of origin? Selecting Random groups me with cars similar to my PP level. Why can't this also be an option for "car category"? But I digress. Selecting by car category only gives me the following options:



At least we can have some group 2 and 1 races eh?



Here, the race launch screen for the Schwarzwald League race, 1 lap of the Green Hell. 40k for 7 minutes, give or take.



To make the same amount of money in for the same race in Custom Race mode, I need to do 3 extra laps.



238K for 10 laps of the Nurburgring. About 3500cr per minute. Same amount of laps in the Schwarzwald league race, the payout is nearly doubled.
Here's where it starts getting outrageously egregious:



20 LAPS OF THE NURBURGRING, group 1 cars, professional level AI - This one will separate the men from the boys! 20 laps, 7 odd minutes a lap: nearly 2.5 hours. For 300k? Hang on...



50 laps, 336k. 30 extra laps for 36k more. UGH



200 LAPS - 355k.

Long story short, someone at Polyphony needs a smack in the mother****in mouth. This is ridiculous, outrageous behaviour.

As I have said in other posts this isn't anything to do with micro transactions because I can just grind the World races if that's my end goal. It seems to be another decision that forces people into having nothing to do after finishing the Cafe menus other than grind, because who in their right mind would do this garbage? I like doing the races, but why I can't earn a fair amount of credits for doing gruelling long distance races against Professional level AI boggles my mind.

With the right credit rewards and more options when selecting races, this would be the best mode in the game.
As it is, it's crap.

 

[Fusion]

I can't agree more and was looking at making a thread about this myself. Thanks for talking the time with all the screenshots.

The 'random' opponents is even worse than you've mentioned. I took out a Ferrari 308 just to try it out, tuned to 550PP. Picked random opponents and 3 of them ended up being Suzuki Swifts and another 3 were Abarth A112's and the like which clearly had about 150hp max. They were extremely slow off the line and at every stage, trying to get around them was dangerous. I lapped 4 of them in a 4 lap race of Maggiore west, 2.5km per lap. Here I am in a 930Kg 300hp Ferrari and they pit me against a grid of mostly low end modern warm hatches and a underpowered classic hot hatches?

There were other Ferrari 308's, but much slower than me, they seemed either not tuned at all, running stock comfort tyres or the 'professional' AI is seriously bad. I passed everyone on the first (2.5km) lap except for 1st place, who I couldn't catch for the remaining 3 laps. Corvette C7 heavily tuned. So every single opponent was way too slow except one. What is that about?!

So the default random opponents has been useless to me. I'm not sure what options GT sport had exactly but I remember the default opponent option being quite evenly matched AND they matched my selected car fairly well to some extent. Either that or it was an option to closely match your car or something? I did a custom race just the other week in GT sport to double check what my wheel settings were so I could put them in GT7. I took out a tuned MR2 and it was fun. Starting in the middle of the grid the opponents were decently challenging in well matched cars and it was fun. I feel like I need to explore how it was in GT sport some more because it's mind boggling how they messed it up so much.

As it stands now, if you don't want to race GR 1, 2, 3, 4 or B, you either need to go single make or have enough similarly tuned cars in your garage and individually select them.

This is compounded by the lack of being able to save a settings template... I should be able to save a template and apply it to any track, only having to adjust laps due to track length. It's not hard, just have it be like the tuning setting sheets.

As you said, the payouts are a slap in the face. They seriously need to be increased by a factor of 10 in most instances. The short race above I mentioned netted me $1800 for 2nd place. Wow. The 50 lap 'ring race you mentioned should definitely be 10x better payout. The 10 lap, maybe 2-3x increase? How is the balance so far out? How is this so poorly thought out in general?

 

[CHEN255]

I couldn’t care less about the payouts in Custom Race mode. It’s where I go for the sheer joy of racing and in GT Sport it’s one of the main reasons I was still playing until GT7 released. Different strokes for different folks I guess but despite some flaws in this mode I think it is mostly excellent.
Edit: if true the criticisms of random opponents is completely valid. I never raced Random in GT Sport and I haven’t done any Custom Races in GT7 yet.

 

[tonystarks131]

The 'random' opponents is even worse than you've mentioned. I took out a Ferrari 308 just to try it out, tuned to 550PP. Picked random opponents and 3 of them ended up being Suzuki Swifts and another 3 were Abarth A112's and the like which clearly had about 150hp max. They were extremely slow off the line and at every stage, trying to get around them was dangerous. I lapped 4 of them in a 4 lap race of Maggiore west, 2.5km per lap. Here I am in a 930Kg 300hp Ferrari and they pit me against a grid of mostly low end modern warm hatches and a underpowered classic hot hatches?

There were other Ferrari 308's, but much slower than me, they seemed either not tuned at all, running stock comfort tyres or the 'professional' AI is seriously bad. I passed everyone on the first (2.5km) lap except for 1st place, who I couldn't catch for the remaining 3 laps. Corvette C7 heavily tuned. So every single opponent was way too slow except one. What is that about?!

I'll be honest, I made an assumption on that and I've never run a custom race with the random rivals. I will say, while I was compiling this I looked at the grid multiple times and didn't like what I saw. Samba Vans and Willys Jeeps made appearances...

It should be based on PP level. Where are all of the modified cars you see during career races? Great amounts of variety, different decals/liveries/body kits are common during career races.

Unfortunately this gives the same impression as the overall game: unfinished.

This is compounded by the lack of being able to save a settings template... I should be able to save a template and apply it to any track, only having to adjust laps due to track length. It's not hard, just have it be like the tuning setting sheets.

Fantastic idea, easy to implement but not included. This would allow creation of "championship" style races where you have the same grid for different tracks. Why can't we create a championship?

Here's hoping it's a future update.

The 50 lap 'ring race you mentioned should definitely be 10x better payout. The 10 lap, maybe 2-3x increase? How is the balance so far out? How is this so poorly thought out in general?

No idea how this wasn't seen as an issue. We didn't put any endurance races in the game: let's actively punish those who create them by paying out a pittance.

I couldn’t care less about the payouts in Custom Race mode. It’s where I go for the sheer joy of racing and in GT Sport it’s one of the main reasons I was still playing until GT7 released. Different strokes for different folks I guess but despite some flaws in this mode I think it is mostly excellent.
Edit: if true the criticisms of random opponents is completely valid. I never raced Random in GT Sport and I haven’t done any Custom Races in GT7 yet.

I find the racing itself to be good - for race cars in the categories mentioned.

Different strokes indeed, but no matter how you slice it the mode is seriously lacking.

 

[Fusion]

I couldn’t care less about the payouts in Custom Race mode. It’s where I go for the sheer joy of racing and in GT Soort it’s one of the main reasons I was still playing until GT7 released. Different strokes for different folks I guess but despite some flaws in this mode I think it is mostly excellent.
Edit: if true your criticisms of random opponents is completely valid. I never raced Random in GT Sport and I haven’t done any Custom Races in GT7 yet.

Yes it's mainly for fun, but why can't it be both? I don't mind payouts being a bit lower, but in many instances it's 10x lower. I want fun, but the other thing I find fun is collecting, tuning and trying out new cars in these custom races. If I mostly only do custom races I'm severely limiting the credits I will have to purchase and tune new cars.

I've done about 5 custom races and picked random opponents 4 of those 5 times. Like I said I did 1 race in GT sport a couple of weeks back and loved it. In GT 7 the random opponent choices were horrible every time, usually with stupidly underpowered and stupidly over powered opponents. There is no alternative option for most car types/classed outside of single make or custom selecting from garage. As I said, that last option also highlights how annoying not being able to save a favourite settings sheet for custom races is.

 

[Samus]

I couldn’t care less about the payouts in Custom Race mode. It’s where I go for the sheer joy of racing and in GT Sport it’s one of the main reasons I was still playing until GT7 released. Different strokes for different folks I guess but despite some flaws in this mode I think it is mostly excellent.
Edit: if true the criticisms of random opponents is completely valid. I never raced Random in GT Sport and I haven’t done any Custom Races in GT7 yet.

Nobody is doubting you can have fun but where do you get the credits to buy the cars to race in custom mode in the first place though? If you want to do custom races with that lovely Ferrari currently on offer at 4 Million credits for instance, how do you get it?

That's a large part of the point being made here, people keep saying "Oh you don't have to grind, that's your choice, you can do custom races and earn credits there, or playing online, plenty of variety" etc etc, but they don't seem to realise or just ignore how poor the credit payouts are.

For someone who just wants to exclusively race a variety of cars in custom mode, earning credits to do so is going to take decades.

 

[CHEN255]

Fair enough. Your point about a saved template is on point. It’s a bit of a nuisance having to renter all the choices each time.

 

[Jack_10_9_8_7]

Good analysis on the payouts. What has annoyed me is the lack of opponent filters. They must exist in order to set up GT mode grids but we can’t use them for custom races. In GT6 we could search the dealership by upper and lower PP, drivetrain, year, etc. which would be perfect for this.

 

[TheEnd35000vr]

It’s a shame as this would absolutely be my favourite mode in the game.

Even despite the low-payouts, I’ve had fun doing 30-min enduros with cars from my Garage, seeing cars I’ve tuned racing around just gives me a kick.

Though, saying that, the AI always puts on the tyre that was fitted when you got the car. Some cars I’d tuned with Racing Hard’s were going around on Sports Softs, and it’s impossible to change that.

Sigh. So close. Hopefully the credits are increased substantially.

 

[TMSalad]

+1 for this mode being an unfinished disappointment. I'm not a great driver but find it fun to do a 10-20 lap race that is a little challenging. But the only way to do it is spending a lot of time adding all your own builds into a 20 player race and reset it up every time is ridiculous. No matter what car you pick (tuned/stock) you will still easily beat all the AI drivers in the other opponent car modes. As it's been mentioned you need to add higher PP cars and/or really power limit yours to make it fun at all.

Where are all those cars and drivers that I race against in the Circuit Races that game me some challenge??!

 

[Silverfox1984]

I've found the best way to enjoy custom races and receive a 'reward' is by tuning up regular cars and pitting them against Gr.4 cars for 15-20 lap races. From what i've seen I don't think PP of your current car affects the reward outcome (happy to be corrected if wrong). Not exactly a 'grind' tip, but it's at least given the game a bit more longevity in the absence of decent championships/events.

 

[abrahamx]

please dont tell me once the cafe mode is over so is "career" mode. its what I bought the game for and its only going to last a few weeks? That sucks. I was hearing what a good career mode it was going to have. I thought it was going to be unlocked at some point so one could start a career. I have no interest in payout or custom races. car collecting, liveries, or even sport mode for that matter. I only did that because it was the only thing left to do in gts. I would love a career mode where I could work my way through a season, or multiple seasons etc... I thought this was going to have that. That said I am having fun with the missions and cafe for now though.

 

[Silverfox1984]

please dont tell me once the cafe mode is over so is "career" mode. its what I bought the game for and its only going to last a few weeks? That sucks. I was hearing what a good career mode it was going to have. I thought it was going to be unlocked at some point so one could start a career. I have no interest in payout or custom races. car collecting, liveries, or even sport mode for that matter. I only did that because it was the only thing left to do in gts. I would love a career mode where I could work my way through a season, or multiple seasons etc... I thought this was going to have that. That said I am having fun with the missions and cafe for now though.

At the moment it does appear to be, and then you're left to your own devices and make your own fun, but Cafe is essentially the Career mode. 😕

 

[Akwaaba]

I've found the best way to enjoy custom races and receive a 'reward' is by tuning up regular cars and pitting them against Gr.4 cars for 15-20 lap races. From what i've seen I don't think PP of your current car affects the reward outcome (happy to be corrected if wrong). Not exactly a 'grind' tip, but it's at least given the game a bit more longevity in the absence of decent championships/events.

I think that the payout calculation is based on the Nxx from GTS. I noticed that the payout increased slightly if I used a PP399 rather than if it is PP4xx.

 

[Silverfox1984]

I think that the payout calculation is based on the Nxx from GTS. I noticed that the payout increased slightly if I used a PP399 rather than if it is PP4xx.

Cheers man. I'll make a note of that the next time I set up a CR.

 

[TMSalad]

I've found the best way to enjoy custom races and receive a 'reward' is by tuning up regular cars and pitting them against Gr.4 cars for 15-20 lap races. From what i've seen I don't think PP of your current car affects the reward outcome (happy to be corrected if wrong). Not exactly a 'grind' tip, but it's at least given the game a bit more longevity in the absence of decent championships/events.

I just tried a quick 5 lap and it's far better than any other way for a quick race. I put in a tuned 550 car and went against GR.B Class on intermediate (I already said I'm not very good ) It was a lot more competitive because how the drivers acted.

I also tried to make a custom 20 plr with my garage cars and it took me 4 minutes to add 19 cars from my garage and I was not really looking at any details. Just selecting cars with PP in a similar range. All the button presses and the garage always defaulting back to last car used is maddening!! The garage menu should just stay the way you last had it sorted. Period!

Anyway, thanks for the suggestion. I'm not as sad anymore

 

[Akwaaba]

Cheers man. I'll make a note of that the next time I set up a CR.

I was going to check if the payout calculation was based on the potential PP of the car, or what it is tuned to. I was going to look into this next time I play with CR.

I also think I found a Daytona glitch yesterday, and I posted this. But the payout is pathetic, but I was able to beat group B cars with an untuned Autobianchi over a 4 lap race. (fuel x50 and Group B only pitted once).

 

[Vspectra]

It’s also annoying you have to completely back out of the custom race menu, and then re-enter the custom race mode to change your custom settings (AI difficulty, number of cars, time of day, weather, etc.) instead of there being a quick option to adjust the settings right after exiting a race. How did they not carry over GTSport UI functionality for Custom Race despite it looking 90% the same.

 

[CodeRedR51]

You mention limited options, yet the thread is mainly about the payouts. 🤔

I actually love this mode. I just wish they would fix the AI tire issue, and then it'll be perfect.

 

[Phaceless_Ph]

Polyphony's response next month:

The fix for this can be all yours for just 19.99 on the PSN store!

 

[kraftwerkd]

I treat custom races more as a fun or skill-building exercise so the payouts are less of a concern for me, but still present in the back of my mind. Maybe 5x the current payout would feel appropriate.

What I would really love to see implemented is the ability to
Set tire restrictions**
Be able to choose from the "GT Pro" drivers roster (y'know, the redshirts giving you lip in the game)
Have more granularity in the car/class selection (drivetrain, country of origin, etc)
Drag racing
Multi-class racing

We know PD has those tools, they just need to make them player-facing.

 

[GTvsForza]

I think that the payout calculation is based on the Nxx from GTS. I noticed that the payout increased slightly if I used a PP399 rather than if it is PP4xx.

I think setting the opponents as Gr. 1 cars, it gives you a good chunk of money.

 

[tonystarks131]

You mention limited options, yet the thread is mainly about the payouts. 🤔

I actually love this mode. I just wish they would fix the AI tire issue, and then it'll be perfect.

Perfect? It depends on what you want out of it I suppose. The credits are a large part of the problem, and the most glaringly obvious. But fair enough.

I should be able to create races based on PP level first and foremost, but also on country of origin, drivetrain type, induction type etc.

As it stands if I want to do these things, I would have to buy every car I want to include in the race, modify them all to suit, manually select them at the start of every race. This takes a large amount of time and money, money which is hard to come by.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Perfect? It depends on what you want out of it I suppose. The credits are a large part of the problem, and the most glaringly obvious. But fair enough.

I should be able to create races based on PP level first and foremost, but also on country of origin, drivetrain type, induction type etc.

As it stands if I want to do these things, I would have to buy every car I want to include in the race, modify them all to suit, manually select them at the start of every race. This takes a large amount of time and money, money which is hard to come by.

Again, credits, credits, credits. I don't do it for the credits. I guess that's what makes it different between you and me. I do it for a good time, and I've had quite a few of those already.

 

[gsrjedi]

Payout is based on difficulty and length. If you’re in a Fiat and set to race against each category you can see the prize increase. If you’re set to random or same opponent, you’ll see the prize get smaller as the cars get faster.

Set it to an endurance race and change the time and the amount earned will be the same no matter the class.

I do wish there were more options for opponents or even random was more like around your cars PP. Doing a race in an Autobianchi and racing against Ferraris isn’t much fun.

They are the main way I’m enjoying the game right now and I wish they paid more so I wouldn’t have to constantly repeat world circuit events to earn decent money.

 

[tonystarks131]

Again, credits, credits, credits. I don't do it for the credits. I guess that's what makes it different between you and me. I do it for a good time, and I've had quite a few of those already.

A good time for me is racing hard tuned turbo street cars, or 70s FR cars from the US, or FF cars with a PP limit of 300. Variety. What a "Custom" mode should have given us.

You must use the Custom Race mode to race only against other race cars within the limited parameters for customisation we are given. Which is fine for you, but don't say it's all about the credits and the mode is almost perfect while also ignoring the issues. Everything that has already been mentioned.

It's not all about credits.

 

[CodeRedR51]

You must use the Custom Race mode to race only against other race cars

Nope.

 

[05XR8]

.

 

[Samus]

Again, credits, credits, credits. I don't do it for the credits. I guess that's what makes it different between you and me. I do it for a good time, and I've had quite a few of those already.

..and how exactly do you have a good time with a large variety of cars if you don't have enough credits to buy and upgrade cars?

Whether you want to keep pretending differently or not, most things in the game revolves around credits. You constantly keep telling people to stop moaning about credit payouts whilst providing no solution how to have fun without worrying about where credits are going to come from to do so with the cars you want.

How do you have a "good time" with the McLaren F1, for example, if you just do custom races which give you 200,000 per hour maximum? You wouldn't be able to have that "good time" for at least another....92 hours. That's just one car, there are countless others people want to have a "good time" with.

 

[AutumnalGlow]

..and how exactly do you have a good time with a large variety of cars if you don't have enough credits to buy and upgrade cars?

We keep going in circles because they don't have an answer to this outside of "patience" or "I don't mind only driving a few cars". They never do. They didn't before the nerf, they don't after.