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Exactly how can people keep saying GT5 is a simulator? Other games don't let you do this with no penalty. S2U has no grip at all on grass & gravel drags you to an almost stop (you're also quite likely to roll & total the car)
F12010 gives you penalties as well as the natural physical limitations of grass & gravel.
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Penalties were immensely unpopular in GT4 and GT5
, because they were flawed, sometimes catastrophically so. Perhaps they were removed until PD could "perfect" them. Same with damage, which debuted in GT2, disappeared and isn't much different in GT5.
Also, you can set the "grip reduction" to real in Arcade, "GT Life" Practice and online. Some A-Spec races, Licences and Special Events use the more realistic setting, although I'd appreciate the ability to do this for all events - same goes for SRF and other forced aids in certain events.
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In my opinion GT1 was more of a simulator than GT5
- The only barriers to racing any given event were having the correct licence and the money to afford a car that meets the entry requirements. This simulates real life.
- Races had limitations simulating real life.
- Qualifying
GT5
- Arbitrary limitation on what races you can enter based on 'level' - WTF what is that simulating?
- Arbitrary limitation on what cars you can buy (or even browse) based on level - again what is this simulating?
- Almost no limitation on vehicles / power / tyres to 'races' - Where's the real world analog this is simulating?
- $20m cap on earnings - ??
- Reluctant & poorly implemented damage - it's still incredibly 'arcadey'
In every respect other than handling & graphics GT5 is becoming
less realistic and that breaks the immersion for me.
All of these limitations are arcade style mechanisms and are indicative of the direction PD are moving with GT.
I accept that it is unlikely that any patch for GT5 will fix the core game design, but I really don't want to see GT6 become even more of an arcade game with great driving physics
I think you're being overly specific as to what a simulator should and shouldn't do. That's fine, you have your idea of what a simulator is (Shift 2 is not my idea, and nor is F1 2010 - I recently had an argument with someone about the planned "politics simulation" in F1 2011, too... not in
my simulator) and when presented with GT5 it is somewhat lacking as compared with your definition.
I'll demonstrate with the help of your list:
GT1
- The requirements were vague and it was still too easy to annihilate the competition. This does not simulate real-life closed-category racing. Where do you draw the line?
- I think you need to expand on this, lest I start making assumptions.
- Absolutely no excuse for this being missing / part-implemented in almost every game since.
GT5
- The level represents experience. You may well have the correct licence, but you won't necessarily get the "drive" without the right experience. I.e. signatures, placing in a series etc.
- This is not that realistic for the road, although it applies to motorcycles in real life, however the above point still applies. I knew a guy who considered himself lucky to be racing in a GT1 Corvette after only racing Radical SR3s for a couple of years prior, for example.
- Open class racing. However, I would appreciate at least "guidelines" for the race, i.e. rather than having to race to see what tyres the competition are using etc.
- Probably part of the (multiply-redundant) save-game "protection" to prevent the use of 100%, 5000 trillion credit saves from being distributed, completely bypassing the game. Not an issue for me, but I can understand the developers being annoyed that (some) people don't actually play the game they've slaved over.
- It's a compromise. I imagine they want to do it properly, but the only way on current hardware (and PD's development bias) is to approximate. The reactions to their initial efforts were very negative, so they toned it right down. Damage of components is something that is also difficult to do and most other games only do it arbitrarily, or statistically, which is not simulation by my definition.
Of course, many of these simulation elements are hindrances, tedious (e.g. politics simulator in F1 2011) or unavoidable in real life. This is a game, so these needn't necessarily apply.
It all comes down to
options, for me. Give us the option to qualify, to get more money / XP for seeking out close racing with optional restrictions, to set our level of realism in the physics, damage etc. The appeal of GT has always been that you can play it the way you want (look at the arguments that rage on here about how different people choose to play), to various degrees in each installment, and adding options will broaden that capability dramatically to make GT5 a much better game for vastly more people.
Not everyone can drive to the letter like Vettel can lap after lap, and not everyone wants to race at all. Adding flexibility in the "difficulty" elements would help everyone fine tune the game to fit them. Many people will just want to play it and not fiddle with settings, so the defaults will always be tailored to the so-called "lowest common denominator" and those that do care will be inclined to play around to their heart's content anyway. The trouble comes in balancing, documenting and streamlining all of this, and the developers will still want to "show off" the things they're proud of - which is another issue altogether. Sometimes it might be hard for them to see the wood for the trees, and they may actually forget what makes their game so much fun in the first place (Rage is a good example where id were focusing on the "wrong" things in the promotional material.)
The key point to remember is that whilst Gran Turismo bills itself as "The Real Driving Simulator" it's more about the cars (
We Love Cars) than it is the racing, hence the graphics etc. If you want "racing", you know there are other titles, but that's not to say GT will, could or should never improve that aspect.
A final note: the online racing feels like proper racing to me, and whilst that's obviously not for everyone and has its own flaws, it does show that PD do "get it". For the single-player, the future is all about
options.
I understand wanting to make the game better, but sometimes. WOW.
