Easy fixes.

[snowgt]

I have just driven my first endurance race, and I thought I just write down a couple of things that, in my opinion, need to be addressed in a coming update, because they are simply wrong they are currently implemented. Forgive me, if I repeat something someone else already posted here. Methinks I can't be the first to discover them.

• Why are there so many races with no car restrictions at all? It simply makes no sense to have an event with no restrictions whatsoever, when all the AI cars are Japanese production cars round about the 300hp mark. From all we've heard, PD's game philosophy is definitely not to let everyone win by entering with the X1 in such a race, but to have people make an effort to achieve something, and yet, they allow it.
  
  And quite frankly, I don't understand what people get out of it, if they win with massively overpowered cars. There's no challenge at all in that. I'm also sort of tired to read people writing on these forum how they are leading a b-spec race with their X1 by <insert number of laps>. I think there's something about the GT-series that you guys have not yet understood. But I digress ... to each his own.
  
  Anyway, the most fun I had so far (and I admittedly had loads of fun), were the seasonal events, where you have to pick either one particular car or one from a short list and sometimes drive stock or tune it just right to win. That's what really poses a challenge, because it makes for close racing. If you're leading by 10 seconds after the first lap, the rest of a race is simply boring.
  
  Easy fix: More car restrictions!
  
  
• Thankfully, before entering a race in GT Life, the game provides us with a list of the usual opponents. Which is very practical, if you're not so unlucky as to enter a race where you don't have any tire restrictions (and there's plenty of those!). When the choice of tire can make a difference of 5-10 seconds per lap between Sports Hard and Racing Soft, and you actually like to choose a car in the same category, the opponent's list becomes pretty useless, if you join the party on the wrong tires.
  
  There's an easy fix: Tire restrictions, people! You did it for ALL the races in b-spec, why not for a-spec??
  
  
• Luckily, I chose to buy all 3 types of Sports tires for the Grand Valley 300 km, which apparently was what the opposition was on, and thought I'd do some tire testing while I was at it. (I entered with a stock Skyline R33, by the way).
  
  ...only to discover that every tire has the same durability. The Skyline is a pretty easy car to drive, so I was able to lap consistently without any major errors. The Softs yielded something in the 2:08 region in their prime, dropping off to about 2:16 when they were shot. I was able to squeeze 14 laps out of them. The Medium tires were about 2 seconds slower, with the same characteristics regarding performance drop off, and were shot at...16 laps. The Hard ones were about 5 seconds slower than the softs and behaved, again, exactly the same way. 16 laps. The only reason why the Softs didn't last for 16, was probably, because they enable you to push harder into a corner where the other two compounds would just send you understeering into the gravel. So the different driving style made them fade earlier.
  
  But how on earth did they come to the decision to make the durability even for all compounds?? This makes the choice of tire completely pointless, as anything other than Softs is just a lesson in masochism. So why, PD, if you guys let us personally drive for 24 hours without saving (this would also deserve it's own bullet point), do you take away this one entertaining aspect of endurance racing that gives it a whole different dimension??
  
  And yet...it would be an easy fix. The durability for Softs seems fine, lasting about 30 minutes. Just make the Medium last 45 and the Hard ones last 60 minutes, and we'll have a strategy to work with.

Phew. I feel better now. Let me just add that I don't want this to sound like I'm whining - Gran Turismo is for me by far the best game around, which is why I feel so strongly about missed opportunities to make it better. As I think I pointed out, all of the above would be easy fixes, but would make the experience even more worthwhile.