Endurances - why such a high level?

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ScouserInExile

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I finished the 4th Endurance (Indy500) in B-spec last night, which I think has signalled the end of the game for me. I've completed all events from beginner to extreme as well as all the Special Events I can be bothered with.

I've generally enjoyed GT5, but there is one thing about it that has really puzzled me: why do the Endurance Races start at level 25?

I understand why the leveling system was added to GT5: it (theoretically) means that users will progress through the game in a relatively rational manner - you start at the low-level events and work your way up through to the highest level ones. It basically stops the "problem" with the previous where, if you have access to a FAQ, you could plot a route to an all-conquering car or a stupid amount of money in 3-4 events (assuming you have all licences first).

However, the endurance races seem quite out of place being at the level they are at. The rewards, both in terms of cash and the prize car, seem to be much lower levels - I would say that the first couple would better suit around level 10-12 and would actually logically fit, in that the prize cars would be useful around that level.

It's also the first time where I've actually had to do some grinding, since the gap between the 4th and 5th endurances is so big.

Not sure where I'm going with this now, I just thought I'd share my thoughts and see if anyone agrees or if I'm some kind of weird mentalist...
 
I remember in GT3, where the only thing you needed to access the endurances was the IA license. This was my strategy to start a game: gold all the licenses. Get the Mazda Miata to the roadster endurance, get the F1. Win. LOL

No stupid leveling.
 
Which is, in my opinion, why the levelling was added - it stops you from getting the highest tier cars to destroy the lower tier races.
 
The game itself was put out of whack with the levelling, should only need to do each race once. However the Endurance races were not put out of whack in terms of when you unlock them. The game is easy to pass through the halls from Beginner to Extreme.

dark_ruffo
I remember in GT3, where the only thing you needed to access the endurances was the IA license. This was my strategy to start a game: gold all the licenses. Get the Mazda Miata to the roadster endurance, get the F1. Win. LOL

No stupid leveling.
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Congratulations, you found a way to ruin a game. Feel proud?

@ Scouser - Exactly.
 
Slashzor308
The game itself was put out of whack with the levelling, should only need to do each race once. However the Endurance races were not put out of whack in terms of when you unlock them. The game is easy to pass through the halls from Beginner to Extreme.
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See, I disagree with this. If you look at them in terms of the comparable non-endurance races, the first few are the equivalent of running a couple of the Pro-level races. It's actually slightly gutting to run the Indy500 and get something like 90,000 credits for doing so. Running races in pro for two and a half hours would net more cash...
 
ScouserInExile
See, I disagree with this. If you look at them in terms of the comparable non-endurance races, the first few are the equivalent of running a couple of the Pro-level races. It's actually slightly gutting to run the Indy500 and get something like 90,000 credits for doing so. Running races in pro for two and a half hours would net more cash...
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Who cares about cash? If you want cash go grind Dream Car. The exp is what counts at high level, you dont need credits for anything unless you like having a huge fake garage =/.

The reason that PD didnt give Enduro races high credit rating is because it gives a disadvantage to credit grinders that can spend certain amount of time in-game per day. Bit unfair for the working family guy, compared to the unemployed doll bludger that spends 24/7 on GT5.
 
Okay, pouint taken on the XP thing, but what about the prize cars? They're basically useless by the time you reach a high enough level to access the Endurances - especially when you consider that the vast majority of users (excluding people who post on here) will only play each event until they complete it, then move onto the next one. So, for example, winning a '69 GT40 Race Car for the Indy500 is a bit too late - it would be useful for the Historic Car series, but most people would have completed this already...
 
If you are gifted a level 23 car at level 2, there's nothing that will stop you from using it. Furthermore in GT5 most of the races don't even have restrictions. I can enter a Sauber Mercedes in a german car race, where the AI cars drive BMW 2002 and other cars in that class.

I hope they set the restrictions type of gameplay that was used in previous games, instead of the broken levelling and b-spec crap.

I still enjoy the game though. Go figure. :D
 
Well really, the only ones such as that really is the historic cup, and the FGT championship, rest you can buy easily or get from rewards before hand. FGT you need to be lvl 24 and lucky enough to get it in the UCD (although its in the OCD 24/7, most people play with net). However i agree on the Historic race cup, sorta hard unless you get lucky in the UCD.
 
Because that way Polyphony Digital can brag about how their game takes hundreds and hundreds of hours to finish, knowing full well that nobody would actually WANT to endure that torture, so I guess they get some kick out of it. Really, the endurance races are nothing more than the same old races we've been doing all along, but with the total laps raised into the hundreds. It's just like finishing some other game, but then in order to get the final trophy, you have to go back and repeat all the boss battles 1,000 times each. With no save feature.

Huge load of crap if you ask me. Other racing games finish with a bang! This one finishes with a test of your ability to endure absolute monotony. I'll happily take a fail on that one - I spent $400 on a PS3 to have fun, not torture myself.
 
Slashzor308
The game itself was put out of whack with the levelling, should only need to do each race once. However the Endurance races were not put out of whack in terms of when you unlock them. The game is easy to pass through the halls from Beginner to Extreme.



Congratulations, you found a way to ruin a game. Feel proud?

@ Scouser - Exactly.
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Ruin?

I actually made it more enjoyable. No need to run 25 Sunday cups a day to barely start the game. Grinded the upper levels for cash with the F1, bought the cars I wanted, and entered the lower levels with the cars needed.

Ruin you said?

Ruin is being stuck on level 37 Aspec as I am and without any will to run the 24h of Le Mans 5 more times to gain access to the final race. As someone said, no skill test, but monotony test.

If they game more exp to those that enter the races with lesser cars, that would be a skill test. But is best to overkill the race, so you don't have to torture yourself grinding. In the end, the reward is the same.
 
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Well said Jack.
 
Imho the endurance races are not made for grinding them through, thats what the short races are for. They give you cash and cars. Endurance is where the fun starts, a kind of endgame for the real enthusiasts.
 
ScouserInExile
Yeah, but giftung cars is mategaming, it's not part of the "flow" of the game.
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You miss my point. If they want to limit us, I think it would have been better to do it as in previous games. (Make and horsepower restrictions) Instead of a levelling system, that can be bypassed anyway if you have the right friends.
It clearly doesn't really work the way it's supposed to.

The previous games worked fine though - so why try to "fix" it?
 
Not too fond of the level system once you are at endurance races. Kind of a pain that you need to jump so many levels to be able to race the next one. Im in a major grinding process to get my last races unlocked.
 
One Endurance Race that ought to be unlocked sooner (not that I would do it solo) is the 24 hours at the 'Ring, unlocked at Lv 40. What is the point of a Lv 40 A spec race? Certainly the Exp you can gain from it (I assume you get Exp from it) is not going to do you any good at all.

What were PD thinking with that? I fail to see why it wasn't unlocked at Lv 39 to help with the stupid amount of Exp necessary for the final push from Lv 39 to Lv 40.
 
Z1-AV69
Imho the endurance races are not made for grinding them through, thats what the short races are for. They give you cash and cars. Endurance is where the fun starts, a kind of endgame for the real enthusiasts.
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This. Endurance races and FGT are by far my favourite part of the game.
 
JackC8
Because that way Polyphony Digital can brag about how their game takes hundreds and hundreds of hours to finish, knowing full well that nobody would actually WANT to endure that torture, so I guess they get some kick out of it. Really, the endurance races are nothing more than the same old races we've been doing all along, but with the total laps raised into the hundreds. It's just like finishing some other game, but then in order to get the final trophy, you have to go back and repeat all the boss battles 1,000 times each. With no save feature.

Huge load of crap if you ask me. Other racing games finish with a bang! This one finishes with a test of your ability to endure absolute monotony. I'll happily take a fail on that one - I spent $400 on a PS3 to have fun, not torture myself.
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quoted for truth
Whole endurance section is just proof of the huge lack in creativity at PD.
 
JackC8
Huge load of crap if you ask me. Other racing games finish with a bang! This one finishes with a test of your ability to endure absolute monotony. I'll happily take a fail on that one - I spent $400 on a PS3 to have fun, not torture myself.
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Why do I get the impression you have utterly missed the point of endurance racing?

PD finishing the game with a 24 hour Nurburgring endurance race is about the biggest bang you could ever hope for. Choose a car that will be competative for the entire race instead of something that will blow the competition away before the first corner and you have 24 hours of close racing with a real time day/night transition to drive through as well as dynamic weather.

How much bigger of a bang could you ask for?
 
Yep. There is a huge problem with the Endurance Race lvl restrictions. I posted something about this on the PSN website:

http://community.us.playstation.com/thread/3400501?tstart=0

Grinding (the repetition of races an abnormal number of times in order to gain access to the next races in a series) is a huge issue for B-spec, and much less apparent with A-spec due to the seasonal events, online races, and the generally higher XP and CR payouts for A-spec races.


Here is how I think the game should be altered in a patch, which would be VERY VERY EASY for PD to implement and would keep or make almost any level of player happy.


Let’s look at some facts:


The leveling system for players is based on a multiplier: i.e. the amount of XP to gain the next level is always 1.28 x the amount required to reach the previous level. (Proof most can disregard: lvl 1 = 500, lvl 2 = 640; 640/500 = 1.28; lvl 39 = 5919322, lvl 40 = 7576732; 7576732/5919322 = 1.28).


This naturally supposes a continuous sequence of progressively more difficult and higher XP paying races. This makes sense all the way through most of the series until you hit the Endurance series.


Beginner lvls 0-4 5 level spread

Amateur lvls 5-9 5 level spread

Professional lvls 10-14 5 level spread

Expert lvls 15-19 5 level spread

Extreme lvls 20-24 5 level spread

Endurance lvls 25-40 16 level spread


Not only do they not double up races with the same level like they did at all the previous stages, they instead begin to skip levels in the endurance series where lvls: 29, 31, 34, 36, 37, 38, and 39 are entirely missing ('the lost levels').


The leveling system works fine with all the previous series.


These lost levels are what caused people to have to repeat races an unnatural number of times that is highly inconsistent with the rest of the game. The payouts for the races remain consistent but do not take into account the growing disparity in the level requirements to access them. It feels to me like the races and their payouts were all set up along an original path and then someone decided to increase the max level from 30 to 40 and so they felt like they had to space out the level requirements for the races to fit the new final level goal, but didn't make any changes to the CR or XP payouts to compensate for the change.


The proof of a previous arrangement being manipulated without much thought: while the lvl 40 race in B-spec might give experience to any drivers that have not yet reached Class 40, both it and the lvl 40 A-spec race give huge amounts of XP that cannot be added to the player's levels since he has already maxed out at level 40. This is proof that originally that lvl 40 race was set at a lower level before being arbitrarily raised without much thought to match a final level 40 trophy goal.



No one below level 26 will notice anything wrong with the current system, but once you begin the endurance races, you will likely start to notice a problem, but by the end of the Indy 500 you will definitely become very aware.


The Change that Should be Made:

The Endurance series races should be listed as levels 25 through 29 (5 level spread, with duplicated levels like other series have) or at least 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34 (9 level spread).


This way people would be able to access all the races more readily, which is not something unreasonable to ask for; and PD could keep everything else the same. This would allow everyone who grinded for platinum to still maintain their ‘superiority’ and yet allow access to the prize cars, level 24 tickets, money, etc to those who just want to race the races once or twice each. So people could complete the Endurance Series, but they would still not be at level 40.


I think everyone can agree that both in A-spec and in B-spec a 24 hour race really should only have to be completed once by the average person (if they dare to do it at all). Those who want to get that lvl 35 X2010 or lvl 40 for platinum could repeat all the races they want; or more reasonably, levels 30-40 (or 35-40) could be the result of online play in A-spec or B-spec (patch 1.06?).


Please, PD, consider this minor change: you only have to alter 18 number values. Should only take one of your programmers a couple minutes to make millions of people happy and save them from hundreds of hours of repeating races (especially in B-spec: it currently takes 10 whole days of leaving a PS3 on in order to get access to The 24 hour Nurburgring after completing the 24 Hour Le Mans).
 
The people who do the X1 challenge and medal it in any fashion don't have to worry so much about the spread. Also seasonals add balance.

The leveling system as it is was made to discourage grinding, the problem is theres some really sad people in the world who view at as a problem and must grind more instead of dragging the game itself out further and enjoying it.

Since mid december I'd had alot of time to play GT5 and I'm level 33 A-Spec and 23 B-Spec, I've not grinded more then doing the same race over once or twice for the purposes of buying cars I really want or golding events I've not golded. I've never felt compelled to do a race 342524525423 times to get a free X1 (Which I earned in A-Spec special events) or to reach level 40 in the fastest possible timeframe.

Once people make elaborate posts on how it takes too long to "Level Up" it shows me the level system works perfectly fine, its the impatient people who are broken.
 
Are any of the endrance races even hard? I mean do they actually challenge you, or just test your ability to conquer boredom. I mean video games are supposed to be fun and challenging, whats the point of playing it if its boring and easy. And also, in what 24H race do you race 24H straight without partner drivers and breaks?
 
xNEVER-ONEx
Are any of the endrance races even hard? I mean do they actually challenge you, or just test your ability to conquer boredom.
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If you're not a fan of endurance racing, you won't like endurance races period. You can be competitive with a competitive car, or you can just get the fastest thing and "Get it done as quickly as possible" like all the impatient completitionists do.

I mean video games are supposed to be fun and challenging, whats the point of playing it if its boring and easy. And also, in what 24H race do you race 24H straight without partner drivers and breaks?
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Who says you can't have partner drivers, they just have to be human and nearby. Pause works fine for breaks.
 
Shinzah
If you're not a fan of endurance racing, you won't like endurance races period. You can be competitive with a competitive car, or you can just get the fastest thing and "Get it done as quickly as possible" like all the impatient completitionists do.



Who says you can't have partner drivers, they just have to be human and nearby. Pause works fine for breaks.
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I don't mind endurace races, but I play video games in breaks. I don't want to leave my PS3 running 24/7 just so I can finish a race. Why is there no save feature?
 
I will honestly agree that a save feature would be nice for people who need it and find it nessecary. I'm not worried about being a hippie or damaging my ps3, so I don't really find a use for it. I don't play a lot of games, and when I do, it'll probably be a racing game. (Or survival horror...which, can be in a racing game).

I didn't even use the save game feature in TDLM, and I've done countless 24 hour races in that with just pausing and leaving when I got bored/had other things to do. My dreamcast is still going after all these years!
 
They could have just had the cars equated to the license levels.

All the uber race cars like the LMPs and FGTs need S-Licenses.

The Exotics like the Enzos and MP4-12C need IA-Licenses and so on.

So if you complete the required license, you've earned the right to buy it.

A cool idea would be a car can be bought at anytime, but at a discount price if you got the license.
 
something to work towards? you shouldnt expect everything handed to you as soon as you load up the game
 
sumbrownkid
They could have just had the cars equated to the license levels.

All the uber race cars like the LMPs and FGTs need S-Licenses.

The Exotics like the Enzos and MP4-12C need IA-Licenses and so on.

So if you complete the required license, you've earned the right to buy it.

A cool idea would be a car can be bought at anytime, but at a discount price if you got the license.
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I have a better idea, since levels are already enforced with buying limits..make them enforced with trades as well.

No more X1 noobs on my online.
 
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