Does Gran Turismo 6 have a career structure that is convincing?

[Grandea GTR]

I'm not really going to vote because this question will have an obvious answer to many people.

The fact that any career enduro races don't even last an hour or longer is just plain jarring.

 

[Samus]

Christ no. Dated, dull, formulaic, un-original, boring. I could continue.

 

[kilesa4568]

A friend of mine (who's a total novice) bought GT6 after giving mine a try and he finds it quite challenging. He's only on the 2nd level of races as well. Says it all really.

Anyone with a modicum of experience with driving games will find the career stagnant and nothing more than a safe environment for learning the tracks and physics. The real challenge is the online racing.

 

[EliteBeast55]

GT5's career mode was better.

 

[Samus]

GT5's career mode was better.

Not by much, it was still the same dated formula from GT1. The only difference is it actually had proper race formats, not catch up events, and the endurance events were still there. The AI were still bad, just a different kind of bad. Oh and the licenses weren't mandatory.

 

[FoRiZon]

GT5's career mode was better.

The leveling system majorly drags down the career. Not to mention the very rigid requirements. I mean Vitz only race, Gallardo, and so on on the main career.

GT4 was way, WAY better.

 

[bread_crumbs]

I felt in GT6 everything came too easy to you. All the cars you needed were given to you in prizes. By the end of the career I had less than 20 cars in my garage. Some I bought because I was bored of driving with the same one that allowed me to win every single time.

Also, screw karts.

 

[Tornado]

GT6's career was so bizarrely logic-free that it made you take licence tests to teach you how to do things after you already had done them in actual races. It was so pointlessly linear that it forced you to purchase a specific car as soon as you booted up the game and rigidly locked you along a certain progression path in addition to the badly balanced in-game economy it retained from GT5. It had individual events so badly designed that they gave AI racers 40 second head starts spread out among a field of horribly mismatched cars, but still designed the AI to slow down to give you a better chance to win. It was touted as being a revitalization of the stagnant multiplayer affair that GT5 had (and it was... eventually), but then forced you to progress through an arbitrary amount of the above crap anyway to even access it.



No.

The leveling system majorly drags down the career.

It does for sure, but PD at least provided options that sort of let you bypass it. You were screwed as soon as you got to the final event tier regardless, in some particularly terrible game design, but the Seasonals and multiplier (and to a much lesser extent, the licence tests and multiplier) somewhat easily let you bypass a lot of the forced experience grinding simply because of how much it dumped on you. Especially once they settled into the 430/500/750 or whatever it was tiers for them, because the 430 cars generally didn't run into the level caps; so after an hour or so (about the same amount of time it took you to do licence tests in the older games) you would be sufficiently leveled that you could do any race in at least the first 4 event halls.


Not that that helps anyone who buys the game now, of course, and the game is still hopeless in how little there is to do; but how much worse GT5 is after they dropped support of it is a somewhat different issue.

 

[Johnnypenso]

It's not perfect, but I feel like it's executed better than in FM6 because you have to work for it a lot more. In FM6, they keep throwing cars and money at you at such a ridiculous rate that it really takes away from the progression of the career.

I don't play Forza so I don't know how it works there. So they have some Seasonals or something where you can unrealistically win millions of dollars in minutes racing against rubber-banding, lose-at-all-costs AI or something like that?

 

[TeamCZRRacing]

I don't play Forza so I don't know how it works there. So they have some Seasonals or something where you can unrealistically win millions of dollars in minutes racing against rubber-banding, lose-at-all-costs AI or something like that?

Well, with GT, you can easily ignore the Seasonals. With Forza, they immediately set about fixing you up with super-fast cars via gift messages, though to be fair I don't know if they're added when the gift message arrives or when you open it. However, in FM6, every time you level up, you get to spin for a prize; the best prize is always in the middle. As far as I've seen, you're guaranteed to win the best prize after you first level up; for instance, BlackPanthaa won a million credits on his first spin, whereas I won a Bugatti Veyron SS.

How do you ignore either of those? Even if I were to sell the Veyron, its sale price is still Cr. 550,000, so that would give me access to some seriously fast cars.

 

[Johnnypenso]

Well, with GT, you can easily ignore the Seasonals. With Forza, they immediately set about fixing you up with super-fast cars via gift messages, though to be fair I don't know if they're added when the gift message arrives or when you open it. However, in FM6, every time you level up, you get to spin for a prize; the best prize is always in the middle. As far as I've seen, you're guaranteed to win the best prize after you first level up; for instance, BlackPanthaa won a million credits on his first spin, whereas I won a Bugatti Veyron SS.

How do you ignore either of those? Even if I were to sell the Veyron, its sale price is still Cr. 550,000, so that would give me access to some seriously fast cars.

That's a completely different approach to GT but obviously it's personal choice as to which method one would prefer. In GT you have to deliberately not do the Seasonals and TT's to avoid the very large prizes which presents a real dilemma for many players as well, as it means they won't have as quick access to the really good (expensive) cars as quickly and won't have a full garage for online racing early on in the game, when lobbies are the most active. Alternately you could do the events and just not spend the money, but in 2015 that's something that shouldn't really be necessary IMO. The game should take care of it for you.

IMO there are far better solutions, namely the separation or integration of the various game modes at the discretion of the player, so they can find their own path through the game that appeals to them the most. Both Forza and GT demonstrate that you can't have a one-size-fits-all approach to the game and expect to please even close to everyone.

 

[another_jakhole]

I think the license tests are better implemented and much more structured than the rest of the game. There's so much variety in GT6 that it's hard to retain your focus on a singular portion of the game; I don't think I'm alone when I say it's the Achilles heel of the GT series whilst trying to create a game of this nature (where da bikes at???? and where the hell are the land speed record cars?!!!!!). I really want Horse Thief Mile from Willow Springs, and also, the Goodwood rally track that I admittedly don't know much about. Mainly due to some "hint" that it was going to be modeled. I think the Goodwood Estate should take the place of Top Gear's nonsense (and not just about the "incorrect" way it was implemented into GT5 [JC is such a tool, I'm glad Kaz didn't add him into the GT series]). Goodwood FoS and as many other features Lord March was able to make of that event should be captured one way or another. It's too amazing of a catch to let it slip through Kaz's and PD's fingers.

Oh, and they really need to incorporate the GT Academy finalists and winners into the series. I'd appreciate that, so I can only imagine how Nissan would think about the even greater "marketing ploy" that many of you people like to make GT Academy out to be. It was Kaz's vision to begin with,... so what if YOU think it doesn't add anything to the series. Actually, if it weren't for GT Academy and the successes many of the the GT Academy participants were able to showcase, GT wouldn't be taken as seriously as it has been these last years. Cry me a river with your, "There's a FM every other year and it's already caught up to and surpassed GT in many ways."

Yeah, well, do I have to list the features that really do matter in racing leagues? Sure, engine swaps and better, yes, better tuning aspects are major pluses to the FM series. But the wait for every GT, and even every GT Academy event (never will I be close in competing for the privilege of going to Silverstone for what THAT entails) is worth it. If you buy a video game console for the sole purpose of playing GT, then that's unfortunate. Be glad PD and Kaz had the passion and Competence? to work on supporting Logitech steering wheels after Logitech hung every one of you out to dry.

I can only imagine if Kaz, the head honcho, said to hell with "WASTING" time over these last five, six, seven years working on and continually updating full compatibility of SOOOOOO many damn steering wheels on a game for a system, or hardware, that was five years behind in times up until now, with 10 year old hardware. I soooo hope they have the ambition and loyalty to the hundreds of thousands of potential customers who won't be able to upgrade to far more expensive kits like they did almost a decade ago, beginning with GT HD. Well, does anyone know what year Logitech officially stopped supporting their steering wheels? Did they make an announcement (or give an apology, those bastards)? as I type this using a Logitech keybody. oy, what a loser, hypocrite. hahaha


And when I say "You", honestly, You people know who I'm talking about.

 

[SlipZtrEm]

Well, with GT, you can easily ignore the Seasonals.

You can also chose to skip prize spins in Forza, instead just banking them. I've banked up to thirty before, which means you could play the career and rely on nothing but the paltry race win credits.

The Affinity bonuses aren't able to be avoided, but IIRC, even the top level doesn't give you more than 7500 Cr. And you need to do roughly 400 miles in a marque to hit that, possibly more. I'll look into it tomorrow when I can load up the game, but some rough math says you'll end up with about 72,000 extra credits from sticking to the same make until hitting Affinity level 25.

With Forza, they immediately set about fixing you up with super-fast cars via gift messages, though to be fair I don't know if they're added when the gift message arrives or when you open it.

• If you don't open the message and choose to download the gift, you get nothing.
• If you're not a VIP player, you won't be sent as many gifts.
• The last gift that I redeemed was a bone-stock Acura RSX. Super-fast!
• The Forza Rewards program did provide players with (potentially) a lot of cars right from the get go. Up to something like 12-15, plus up to 25 million credits. That did require a massive amount of playtime of the games as far back as FM2, though. And in the case of the credits, owning at least 300 cars in the garage of every game since FM3. It rewarded long-time players, was optional, and as a loyalty program, is definitely something I'd appreciate PD incorporating in a similar way in the next GT, personally.

However, in FM6, every time you level up, you get to spin for a prize; the best prize is always in the middle. As far as I've seen, you're guaranteed to win the best prize after you first level up; for instance, BlackPanthaa won a million credits on his first spin, whereas I won a Bugatti Veyron SS.

How do you ignore either of those? Even if I were to sell the Veyron, its sale price is still Cr. 550,000, so that would give me access to some seriously fast cars.

You ignore them by banking the spins, as they're optional. It could be made easier to skip them – it's one of the perks of racing online, since they default to banking – but to pretend otherwise is disingenuous.

 

[TeamCZRRacing]

You ignore them by banking the spins, as they're optional. It could be made easier to skip them – it's one of the perks of racing online, since they default to banking – but to pretend otherwise is disingenuous.

I did forget about the banking thing. My bad.

 

[Pseudopod]

Is the structure convincing? Convincing you of what, that it is a GT game? Convincing you that it's how a real race driver would progress?

The structure is GT enough. It's the variety in tracks and rules used, and the opponent car selection in many of them that's bad.