FM Vs GT - Discussion Thread (read the first post before you post)

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Honestly there are people who played the game for a couple of months and tossed the game. How can you take that person serious?
Excuse me, but if a couple of months aren't enough to find enjoyment with a game, I'd think it's pretty fair to get rid of it. In fact, I'd commend someone for they devotion to a game if they're trying to get into it for months, despite not really enjoying it. Especially since most games nowadays can be played to death within mere days, let alone weeks.

I'd also think that, after months of play, most people will get a pretty decent understanding of the game in question.

Personally, I'm questioning my own sanity for playing a game I didn't really enjoy for that long, just because of the thought that I surely must somewhen find that certain something that makes me love it - and I didn't find it, with or without a wheel. Let's be honest here, chances are, if you can't get into a game for months, it's not going to make 'click' after half a year of forcing yourself to playing it, so that you'll all of a sudden be enlightened and enjoy it.

I'd think that the frustration and disdain is only going to grow the more you're trying to force yourself to like something tat you don't.

Maybe I just don't have what it takes to deceive myself to that extend, who knows.
 
This. 👍 Honestly there are people who played the game for a couple of months and tossed the game. How can you take that person serious? Also there are other people who have both games but lack a proper setup to fairly make true judgment. Its a shame man, honestly both games are great. They have there positives and negatives but in the end what doesnt ?

I only played GT5 on and off for about two months before I tossed it. I think thats more than enough time to make a judgment call. Any longer is just cruel.

It all depends on what you do in game, how many features you try, and how far you got. I think in my time playing GT5 I played every kind of race (sans endurance), and tried every game mode, online, paint, tune, etc. etc.

Poping in a game, giving it an hour, doesnt count as playing a game IMO.
 
I can see myself taking someone who's played the game for a few months as being somewhat valid. They might not know every little nuance but they'll know the bulk of the good and bad in those months of playing. But I can not see myself taking anyone seriously who talks about a game (good or bad) who's not played it at all, or considers a demo at a Gamestop kiosk as 'experience'.
 
Come on guys, I don't know why you guys are feeling someway. In todays world games are constantly getting patches and updates. I will tell you 1st hand when FM3 came out it had many problems. The driver didn't even have shift animation. People where crying moaning etc, what happened Turn10 updated the game with the shift animation. I'm sure it was fixed faster than 2months but both of you can admit forza3 in the 1st 2 months is not better than Forza3 in its 6th month. This is the same case for GT5, the game is better now than it was in its 1st 2 months. All I'm saying is I love my simulation racing games ( FM GT) and I stick with them.
 
I agree with most of the flaws you pointed out of Forza but a portion of them are due to having a less powerful console.

Actually, they are pretty much identical in power.

I'd be fine with an FM4 Ultimate Collection, if they make the additional cars that haven't appeared in DLC packs become available on the Market Place at the same time. I don't mind paying a few additional bucks to be able to use all of the content long before the UC releases.

Yup, as long as we can buy the UC content on XBL, make any version of the game they want.

Sorry to hear about your liveries loading slow too. Mine haven't quite reached GT's general loading speed of anything yet.

Slow livery loading issues were solved back in December of 2009:

Forza Motorsport 3 Title Update This Week:

A new auto update cometh in time for Christmas. Sometime next week, you’ll be prompted by Xbox LIVE to update your version of Forza 3. Lots of little things on the backend getting tweaked this time, but here are some of the bigger fixes a number of you may care about:

* Adds the new custom Time Trials feature to scoreboards, allowing Turn 10 to set up unique hotlap challenges and leaderboards as we wish. In fact, look for a custom Time Trial featuring the R35 GT-R after the update is live. More info to follow below.
* Fixed slow load times for saved liveries, tuning files and layer groups in the design catalog. For those of you who were experiencing laggy performance and long waits accessing your saved content, the problem should be resolved now.
* Fixed achievements not showing up correctly when playing the game any controller port other than 1.
* Patched Time Trials leaderboard holes that allowed players to load tuning files for an advantage.
* Improved AI car shadows and fixed shadow flickering.
* Fixed audio in replay videos with manual shifting.

I can confirm that it fixed the issue for the majority of people, at least the ones that were complaining and posting in the FM.net forums. It made mine almost instant.
 
Actually, they are pretty much identical in power.

That's the first time I have heard that. I was almost certain that the PS3 has more processing power than the 360. I must admit however I'm going strictly off of what I have heard but I have heard it many times on the forums and it's never argued. Forgive me for my ignorance on the subject.
 
JDMKING13
Come on guys, I don't know why you guys are feeling someway. In todays world games are constantly getting patches and updates. I will tell you 1st hand when FM3 came out it had many problems. The driver didn't even have shift animation.


It wasn't that big of a deal to me. Not a game breaker, maybe lack of immersion.

Still waiting for 800 shift animations in GT.
 
That's the first time I have heard that. I was almost certain that the PS3 has more processing power than the 360. I must admit however I'm going strictly off of what I have heard but I have heard it many times on the forums and it's never argued. Forgive me for my ignorance on the subject.

I see it from developers all the time. They talk about the PS3 having more processing power (which it does), but the 360 has free AA, more power in it's graphics card, and a better pool of memory with 10mb of EDRAM, making them equal. But you know devs, they like to talk the talk.
 
If someone would've put down FM3 after two weeks or so, that'd be completely fine, only complaining about missing shift animations wouldn't be. If that was their sole reason for leaving, fine by me. If it was the sole reason, though, I guess they would've come back, either way.

Plus, the important thing is, what's it that's driving you aways from the game? If it's bugs, then yes, one can hope that they're going to be fixed. If it's decision made in regards to the game's fundamental design, that surely is not going to get fixed.

I can wait for patches until the end of time, but they'll never replace the paint chip system with a proper palette, for example. That's a design decision, and I doubt they're going to change it. They're most definitely not going to update the standard cars to premium, either, as that's probably going to be the biggesst selling point of GT6. Or they'll at least charge you some bucks for it, whatever.

And, well, how do I put this... I could've played the game for another eight months (until today), and I would've still been annoyed by the standard cars. I would still be annoyed by the way most features aren't available across the board. I would still be annoyed by the smoke pixelating my cars. I would still be annoyed by being confined to a few tracks to make the game be at its best. I would still be annoyed by the painting system. I would still be annoyed by the lousy Top Gear integration. I would still be annoyed by the utter lack of community features. I would still be annoyed by the lack of customisation for my cars. I would still be annoyed with the lack of proper mechanical damage. I would still be annoyed the grindy nature of the career mode. I would still be annoyed by B-Spec being as big a portion of the single player mode as A-Spec, while probably being on the least enjoyable features I've seen in a game recently. I would still be annoyed by the mediocre and slow AI. I would still be annoyed by stuff like museum cards and driving suits getting priority over features I would've considered more essential. I would still be annoyed by dealing with different physics online and offline, with no way to even save my setups. I would still be annoyed by the sub-par sound of 95% of the cars. I would still be annoyed by the flickering shadows. I would still be annoyed by the screen tearing (even if it has been turned down slightly).

No amount of seat time, whether with an abused DFGT, a high end T500RS or a controller would've made any of that go away, would it?

And let me get this straight, I've gone from playing A-Spec to B-Spec, to tuning, to hot lapping stock cars, hot lapping tuned cars, to taking pictures, to trying to tame the X2010, to beating the Top Gear challanges and even bothered with the rally events and karting. I've even managed to somehow stay awake while circling a Miata around Tsukuba for an hour.

I mean, really, I can tell you with a straight face that I've done basically everything humanly possible to make GT5 work for me, what more could be asked of me?

Just to make this perfectly clear, I wanted it to work for me. I wouldn't have blown as much cash on that darn game if I didn't, and neither would I have invested as much time. I didn't toss it to the side on a whim.

I have given GT5 more chances than any other game. Final Fantasy 13, which I found to be similarily disappointing, was binned less than two weaks after buying it, for example. Now, chances are, that after that much time with the game, it just doesn't appeal to me, and to me, is a bad game.

If that isn't enough first hand experience by the consideration of some, fine. Perfectly fine with me, but if that isn't acknowledged as enough experience to turn away from a game, than I don't know how much would be needed.

I see it from developers all the time. They talk about the PS3 having more processing power (which it does), but the 360 has free AA, more power in it's graphics card, and a better pool of memory with 10mb of EDRAM, making them equal. But you know devs, they like to talk the talk.
It's to my knowledge basically impossible to truly answer which system is actually more powerful, as there's no benchmarking software that would run equally well on both consoles, and thereby deliver unbiased result...

So It's all guestimating, really. I consider both consoles to be fairly close in terms of overall power. However, if I remember correctly, Sony claims the PS3 to be able to get more FLOPS than the Xbox360. Whether that's ture or just PR talk, I don't know, but it would lead me to think that the PS3 is slightly more powerful.
 
Luminis
However, if I remember correctly, Sony claims the PS3 to be able to get more FLOPS than the Xbox360. Whether that's ture or just PR talk, I don't know, but it would lead me to think that the PS3 is slightly more powerful.

MS made that same claim 6 years ago as well, about more flops, stating the 360 had more flops.

http://www.major-nelson.com/blogcast/mnr-5-26-05-mp3.mp3

and some of the white paper:

http://www.macusenet.com/archive/index-t-25102.html

DETAILED ANALYSIS OF PERFORMANCE SPECIFICATIONS

CPU
The Xbox 360 processor was designed to give game developers the power that
they actually need, in an easy to use form. The Cell processor has
impressive streaming floating-point power that is of limited use for games.

The majority of game code is a mixture of integer, floating-point, and
vector math, with lots of branches and random memory accesses. This code is
best handled by a general purpose CPU with a cache, branch predictor, and
vector unit.

The Cell's seven DSPs (what Sony calls SPEs) have no cache, no direct access
to memory, no branch predictor, and a different instruction set from the
PS3's
main CPU. They are not designed for or efficient at general purpose
computing. DSPs are not appropriate for game programming.

Xbox 360 has three general purpose CPU cores. The Cell processor has only
one.

Xbox 360's CPUs has vector processing power on each CPU core. Each Xbox 360
core has 128 vector registers per hardware thread, with a dot product
instruction, and a shared 1-MB L2 cache. The Cell processor's vector
processing power is mostly on the seven DSPs.

Dot products are critical to games because they are used in 3D math to
calculate vector lengths, projections, transformations, and more. The Xbox
360 CPU has a dot product instruction, where other CPUs such as Cell must
emulate dot product using multiple instructions.

Cell's streaming floating-point work is done on its seven DSP processors.
Since geometry processing is moved to the GPU, the need for streaming
floating-point work and other DSP style programming in games has dropped
dramatically.

Just like with the PS2's Emotion Engine, with its missing L2 cache, the Cell
is designed for a type of game programming that accounts for a minor
percentage of processing time.

Sony's CPU is ideal for an environment where 12.5% of the work is
general-purpose computing and 87.5% of the work is DSP calculations. That
sort of mix makes sense for video playback or networked waveform analysis,
but not for games. In fact, when analyzing real games one finds almost the
opposite distribution of general purpose computing and DSP calculation
requirements. A relatively small percentage of instructions are actually
floating point. Of those instructions which are floating-point, very few
involve processing continuous streams of numbers. Instead they are used in
tasks like AI and path-finding, which require random access to memory and
frequent branches, which the DSPs are ill-suited to.

Based on measurements of running next generation games, only ~10-30% of the
instructions executed are floating point. The remainders of the instructions
are load, store, integer, branch, etc. Even fewer of the instructions
executed are streaming floating point-probably ~5-10%. Cell is optimized for
streaming floating-point, with 87.5% of its cores good for streaming
floating-point and nothing else.

GPU
Even ignoring the bandwidth limitations the PS3's GPU is not as powerful as
the Xbox 360's GPU.

Below are the specs from Sony's press release regarding the PS3's GPU.

RSX GPU
.. 550 MHz
.. Independent vertex/pixel shaders
.. 51 billion dot products per second (total system performance)
.. 300M transistors
.. 136 "shader operations" per clock

The interesting ALU performance numbers are 51 billion dot products per
second (total system performance), 300M transistors, and more than twice as
powerful as the 6800 Ultra.

The 51 billions dot products per cycle were listed on a summary slide of
total graphics system performance and are assumed to include the Cell
processor. Sony's calculations seem to assume that the Cell can do a dot
product per cycle per DSP, despite not having a dot product instruction.

However, using Sony's claim, 7 dot products per cycle * 3.2 GHz = 22.4
billion dot products per second for the CPU. That leaves 51 - 22.4 = 28.6
billion dot products per second that are left over for the GPU. That leaves
28.6 billion dot products per second / 550 MHz = 52 GPU ALU ops per clock.

It is important to note that if the RSX ALUs are similar to the GeForce 6800
ALUs then they work on vector4s, while the Xbox 360 GPU ALUs work on
vector5s. The total programmable GPU floating point performance for the PS3
would be 52 ALU ops * 4 floats per op *2 (madd) * 550 MHz = 228.8 GFLOPS
which is less than the Xbox 360's 48 ALU ops * 5 floats per op * 2 (madd) *
500 MHz= 240 GFLOPS.

With the number of transistors being slightly larger on the Xbox 360 GPU
(330M) it's not surprising that the total programmable GFLOPs number is very
close.

The PS3 does have the additional 7 DSPs on the Cell to add more floating
point ops for graphics rendering, but the Xbox 360's three general purpose
cores with custom D3D and dot product instructions are more customized for
true graphics related calculations.

The 6800 Ultra has 16 pixel pipes, 6 vertex pipes, and runs at 400 MHz.
Given the RSX's 2x better than a 6800 Ultra number and the higher frequency
of the RSX, one can roughly estimate that it will have 24 pixel shading
pipes and 4 vertex shading pipes (fewer vertex shading pipes since the Cell
DSPs will do some vertex shading). If the PS3 GPU keeps the 6800 pixel
shader pipe co-issue architecture which is hinted at in Sony's press
release, this again gives it 24 pixel pipes* 2 issued per pipe + 4 vertex
pipes = 52 dot products per clock in the GPU.

If the RSX follows the 6800 Ultra route, it will have 24 texture samplers,
but when in use they take up an ALU slot, making the PS3 GPU in practice
even less impressive. Even if it does manage to decouple texture fetching
from ALU co-issue, it won't have enough bandwidth to fetch the textures
anyways.

For shader operations per clock, Sony is most likely counting each pixel
pipe as four ALU operations (co-issued vector+scalar) and a texture
operation per pixel pipe and 4 scalar operations for each vector pipe, for a
total of 24 * (4 + 1) + (4*4) = 136 operations per cycle or 136 * 550 = 74.8
GOps per second.

Given the Xbox 360 GPU's multithreading and balanced design, you really
can't
compare the two systems in terms of shading operations per clock. However,
the Xbox 360's GPU can do 48 ALU operations (each can do a vector4 and
scalar op per clock), 16 texture fetches, 32 control flow operations, and 16
programmable vertex fetch operations with tessellation per clock for a total
of 48*2 + 16 + 32 + 16 = 160 operations per cycle or 160 * 500 = 80 GOps per second.

Overall, the automatic shader load balancing, memory export features,
programmable vertex fetching, programmable triangle tesselator, full rate
texture fetching in the vertex shader, and other "well beyond shader model
3.0" features of the Xbox 360 GPU should also contribute to overall
rendering performance.


Bandwidth
The PS3 has 22.4 GB/s of GDDR3 bandwidth and 25.6 GB/s of RDRAM bandwidth
for a total system bandwidth of 48 GB/s.

The Xbox 360 has 22.4 GB/s of GDDR3 bandwidth and a 256 GB/s of EDRAM
bandwidth for a total of 278.4 GB/s total system bandwidth.

Why does the Xbox 360 have such an extreme amount of bandwidth? Even the simplest calculations show that a large amount of bandwidth is consumed by the frame buffer. For example, with simple color rendering and Z testing at
550 MHz the frame buffer alone requires 52.8 GB/s at 8 pixels per clock. The
PS3's memory bandwidth is insufficient to maintain its GPU's peak rendering
speed, even without texture and vertex fetches.

The PS3 uses Z and color compression to try to compensate for the lack of
memory bandwidth. The problem with Z and color compression is that the
compression breaks down quickly when rendering complex next-generation 3D
scenes.

HDR, alpha-blending, and anti-aliasing require even more memory bandwidth.
This is why Xbox 360 has 256 GB/s bandwidth reserved just for the frame
buffer. This allows the Xbox 360 GPU to do Z testing, HDR, and alpha blended
color rendering with 4X MSAA at full rate and still have the entire main bus
bandwidth of 22.4 GB/s left over for textures and vertices.

CONCLUSION
When you break down the numbers, Xbox 360 has provably more performance than
PS3. Keep in mind that Sony has a track record of over promising and under
delivering on technical performance. The truth is that both systems pack a
lot of power for high definition games and entertainment.

However, hardware performance, while important, is only a third of the
puzzle. Xbox 360 is a fusion of hardware, software and services. Without the
software and services to power it, even the most powerful hardware becomes
inconsequential. Xbox 360 games-by leveraging cutting-edge hardware,
software, and services-will outperform the PlayStation 3.

That was written from the team that built the Xbox hardware.
 
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If someone would've put down FM3 after two weeks or so, that'd be completely fine, only complaining about missing shift animations wouldn't be. If that was their sole reason for leaving, fine by me. If it was the sole reason, though, I guess they would've come back, either way.

Plus, the important thing is, what's it that's driving you aways from the game? If it's bugs, then yes, one can hope that they're going to be fixed. If it's decision made in regards to the game's fundamental design, that surely is not going to get fixed.

I can wait for patches until the end of time, but they'll never replace the paint chip system with a proper palette, for example. That's a design decision, and I doubt they're going to change it. They're most definitely not going to update the standard cars to premium, either, as that's probably going to be the biggesst selling point of GT6. Or they'll at least charge you some bucks for it, whatever.

And, well, how do I put this... I could've played the game for another eight months (until today), and I would've still been annoyed by the standard cars. I would still be annoyed by the way most features aren't available across the board. I would still be annoyed by the smoke pixelating my cars. I would still be annoyed by being confined to a few tracks to make the game be at its best. I would still be annoyed by the painting system. I would still be annoyed by the lousy Top Gear integration. I would still be annoyed by the utter lack of community features. I would still be annoyed by the lack of customisation for my cars. I would still be annoyed with the lack of proper mechanical damage. I would still be annoyed the grindy nature of the career mode. I would still be annoyed by B-Spec being as big a portion of the single player mode as A-Spec, while probably being on the least enjoyable features I've seen in a game recently. I would still be annoyed by the mediocre and slow AI. I would still be annoyed by stuff like museum cards and driving suits getting priority over features I would've considered more essential. I would still be annoyed by dealing with different physics online and offline, with no way to even save my setups. I would still be annoyed by the sub-par sound of 95% of the cars. I would still be annoyed by the flickering shadows. I would still be annoyed by the screen tearing (even if it has been turned down slightly).

No amount of seat time, whether with an abused DFGT, a high end T500RS or a controller would've made any of that go away, would it?

And let me get this straight, I've gone from playing A-Spec to B-Spec, to tuning, to hot lapping stock cars, hot lapping tuned cars, to taking pictures, to trying to tame the X2010, to beating the Top Gear challanges and even bothered with the rally events and karting. I've even managed to somehow stay awake while circling a Miata around Tsukuba for an hour.

I mean, really, I can tell you with a straight face that I've done basically everything humanly possible to make GT5 work for me, what more could be asked of me?

Just to make this perfectly clear, I wanted it to work for me. I wouldn't have blown as much cash on that darn game if I didn't, and neither would I have invested as much time. I didn't toss it to the side on a whim.

I have given GT5 more chances than any other game. Final Fantasy 13, which I found to be similarily disappointing, was binned less than two weaks after buying it, for example. Now, chances are, that after that much time with the game, it just doesn't appeal to me, and to me, is a bad game.

If that isn't enough first hand experience by the consideration of some, fine. Perfectly fine with me, but if that isn't acknowledged as enough experience to turn away from a game, than I don't know how much would be needed.

13143225756638vq.gif
 
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If someone would've put down FM3 after two weeks or so, that'd be completely fine, only complaining about missing shift animations wouldn't be. If that was their sole reason for leaving, fine by me. If it was the sole reason, though, I guess they would've come back, either way.

Plus, the important thing is, what's it that's driving you aways from the game? If it's bugs, then yes, one can hope that they're going to be fixed. If it's decision made in regards to the game's fundamental design, that surely is not going to get fixed.

I can wait for patches until the end of time, but they'll never replace the paint chip system with a proper palette, for example. That's a design decision, and I doubt they're going to change it. They're most definitely not going to update the standard cars to premium, either, as that's probably going to be the biggesst selling point of GT6. Or they'll at least charge you some bucks for it, whatever.

And, well, how do I put this... I could've played the game for another eight months (until today), and I would've still been annoyed by the standard cars. I would still be annoyed by the way most features aren't available across the board. I would still be annoyed by the smoke pixelating my cars. I would still be annoyed by being confined to a few tracks to make the game be at its best. I would still be annoyed by the painting system. I would still be annoyed by the lousy Top Gear integration. I would still be annoyed by the utter lack of community features. I would still be annoyed by the lack of customisation for my cars. I would still be annoyed with the lack of proper mechanical damage. I would still be annoyed the grindy nature of the career mode. I would still be annoyed by B-Spec being as big a portion of the single player mode as A-Spec, while probably being on the least enjoyable features I've seen in a game recently. I would still be annoyed by the mediocre and slow AI. I would still be annoyed by stuff like museum cards and driving suits getting priority over features I would've considered more essential. I would still be annoyed by dealing with different physics online and offline, with no way to even save my setups. I would still be annoyed by the sub-par sound of 95% of the cars. I would still be annoyed by the flickering shadows. I would still be annoyed by the screen tearing (even if it has been turned down slightly).

No amount of seat time, whether with an abused DFGT, a high end T500RS or a controller would've made any of that go away, would it?

And let me get this straight, I've gone from playing A-Spec to B-Spec, to tuning, to hot lapping stock cars, hot lapping tuned cars, to taking pictures, to trying to tame the X2010, to beating the Top Gear challanges and even bothered with the rally events and karting. I've even managed to somehow stay awake while circling a Miata around Tsukuba for an hour.

I mean, really, I can tell you with a straight face that I've done basically everything humanly possible to make GT5 work for me, what more could be asked of me?

Just to make this perfectly clear, I wanted it to work for me. I wouldn't have blown as much cash on that darn game if I didn't, and neither would I have invested as much time. I didn't toss it to the side on a whim.

I have given GT5 more chances than any other game. Final Fantasy 13, which I found to be similarily disappointing, was binned less than two weaks after buying it, for example. Now, chances are, that after that much time with the game, it just doesn't appeal to me, and to me, is a bad game.

If that isn't enough first hand experience by the consideration of some, fine. Perfectly fine with me, but if that isn't acknowledged as enough experience to turn away from a game, than I don't know how much would be needed.


It's to my knowledge basically impossible to truly answer which system is actually more powerful, as there's no benchmarking software that would run equally well on both consoles, and thereby deliver unbiased result...

So It's all guestimating, really. I consider both consoles to be fairly close in terms of overall power. However, if I remember correctly, Sony claims the PS3 to be able to get more FLOPS than the Xbox360. Whether that's ture or just PR talk, I don't know, but it would lead me to think that the PS3 is slightly more powerful.

/thread x 10000000000000

GT5 was wonderful in many regards and less than stellar in even more. For me, is the first GT without staying power, I haven't played it since December FFS. Forza 3 I still play, bacause FOR ME, is the automotive playground that GT5 never was
 
Many games, even good games get binned. Richard Burns Rally was being binned hardcore which left the hardcore few willing to keep playing. Best rally game ever, just that many got caught out by the realism and hid themselves behind the sofa when they saw the graphics. Richard Burns Rally should of had a sequel but people weren't ready to sacrifice graphics over physics or manipulate physics heaven.
 
I have given GT5 more chances than any other game. Final Fantasy 13, which I found to be similarily disappointing, was binned less than two weaks after buying it, for example. Now, chances are, that after that much time with the game, it just doesn't appeal to me, and to me, is a bad game.
Wow, my thoughts exactly. FF13 was a cluster****, but I did try to play it for about 30 hours. The only difference is that I didn't toss GT5. I still play it from time to time. I doubt I'll touch it again when FM4 will be released though. Actually, I'm not even sure I'll play it again until then :lol:

As for the power of both consoles, they are pretty much similar, if in slightly different ways. It's just that PS3 programming is a mess (which has been the case with all Playstations by the way), whereas X360 programming is easy as pie.
 
If someone would've put down FM3 after two weeks or so, that'd be completely fine, only complaining about missing shift animations wouldn't be.....

Really good post Luminis and proof that this is all about opinion. All of us shouldn't get so wound up because others have different opinions. It's also proof that there isn't an answer to the fundamental question this thread asks.

I like you invested a great deal into GT5, bought an additional two PS3's, two more 24" screens and two more copies of the game for a triple screen setup to go alongside my Signature Edition. I had played the heck out of FM2 & 3 but was quietly smug thinking my old friend GT was going to show these young upstarts how it was done properly. After such a long wait I expected perfection, GT5P and the screens pre release only acted to increase my smugness. The disappointment I felt a few weeks after the initial wow of the game wore off is probably the greatest I have had in my 30 odd year gaming life. I still to this day can't believe after all the time and money that GT5 was not perfect in every way. More amazing was that for me it didn't even come anywhere close. If it had aspired to be perfect and just fallen short I could have forgiven it. There are areas of perfection and I have had some great moments playing but there are too many areas that are frankly woeful.

I hope PD learn from this and actually look at their competition properly and understand what gamers want and expect from a modern racing game. I do expect them to come back much stronger with GT6 and I still hope that PD can show the young upstarts what a perfect racing game is.
 
I hope PD learn from this and actually look at their competition properly and understand what gamers want and expect from a modern racing game. I do expect them to come back much stronger with GT6 and I still hope that PD can show the young upstarts what a perfect racing game is.

You actually mentioned the problem with PD here, they dont care what the competition offers, its "Kaz's Vision" you buy into.

If Forza never came along with all its glorious online mode and in-game content such as livery creator all cars customizable etc (list is huge).......... then most people would be happy with what GT5 had to offer.

I think they have damaged their reputation now, I will however buy GT6 - I was the biggest GT fan out there but it has certainly lost its way (IMO). It doesnt offer anything that makes the game fun for me, yes the physics are enjoyable but a racing game to me is more than just lapping a track with a car.

Infact I will give you another annoyance - I played GT5 the other day for the first time since like Jan / Feb this year - I noticed the PP system implemented, decided to do a seasonal event - its so awkward to set a car up to the perfect PP for the race I went into the upgrade screen to be disappointed that PP was not displayed whilst upgrading I mean come on - really PD really? I actually had to go into the individual cars tuning.

Forza make it easy for you - you can even auto upgrade to the best possible class for the race, but the Forza tuning and car class system is so straight forward and easy to adjust you wouldnt ever need to use the Auto feature unless you just want to get on track.
 
PzR Slim
I hope PD learn from this and actually look at their competition properly and understand what gamers want and expect from a modern racing game. I do expect them to come back much stronger with GT6 and I still hope that PD can show the young upstarts what a perfect racing game is.

That's one of the issues I have with this thread. It's the lack of distinction between what an individual wants (you) and what fits the needs of the majority of buyers (gamers).

Judging from both the rebalancing of gameplay PD has done and the outcry in these forums on the topic of the SLS or Expert challenge and indeed even the licence tests, "gamers" do not want a 'hard' game with slow progress. Every average Joe thinks he's an excellent driver and even more think they are an excellent racing driver. Truth is: they are not. And they get very upset if a challenge destroys their self image.

What 'they' fail to recognise is that it's exactly challenges like the Expert seasonal that teaches them how to read a track, basic driving techniques and the amount of patience required to get 'good' at the game.

I stil don't get how the very existence of standard cars makes the premium any worse. How one can not appreciate the new city tracks and/or toskana day/night cycles just because these features are missing on the rest of the tracks.

Just because PD has gone on some occasions beyond what is standard on consoles today simply doesn't count because they didn't pull of that stunt on all 1000 cars and '80' tracks? There's so much (jaggy) shadow in this game because the light on other areas is so extremely bright.
 
That's one of the issues I have with this thread. It's the lack of distinction between what an individual wants (you) and what fits the needs of the majority of buyers (gamers).

Judging from both the rebalancing of gameplay PD has done and the outcry in these forums on the topic of the SLS or Expert challenge and indeed even the licence tests, "gamers" do not want a 'hard' game with slow progress. Every average Joe thinks he's an excellent driver and even more think they are an excellent racing driver. Truth is: they are not. And they get very upset if a challenge destroys their self image.

What 'they' fail to recognise is that it's exactly challenges like the Expert seasonal that teaches them how to read a track, basic driving techniques and the amount of patience required to get 'good' at the game.

I stil don't get how the very existence of standard cars makes the premium any worse. How one can not appreciate the new city tracks and/or toskana day/night cycles just because these features are missing on the rest of the tracks.

Just because PD has gone on some occasions beyond what is standard on consoles today simply doesn't count because they didn't pull of that stunt on all 1000 cars and '80' tracks? There's so much (jaggy) shadow in this game because the light on other areas is so extremely bright.

I have no idea how what you wrote relates to my post in anyway. But carry on with your tirade, just keep me out of it ;)
 
That's one of the issues I have with this thread. It's the lack of distinction between what an individual wants (you) and what fits the needs of the majority of buyers (gamers).

Judging from both the rebalancing of gameplay PD has done and the outcry in these forums on the topic of the SLS or Expert challenge and indeed even the licence tests, "gamers" do not want a 'hard' game with slow progress. Every average Joe thinks he's an excellent driver and even more think they are an excellent racing driver. Truth is: they are not. And they get very upset if a challenge destroys their self image.

What 'they' fail to recognise is that it's exactly challenges like the Expert seasonal that teaches them how to read a track, basic driving techniques and the amount of patience required to get 'good' at the game.

I stil don't get how the very existence of standard cars makes the premium any worse. How one can not appreciate the new city tracks and/or toskana day/night cycles just because these features are missing on the rest of the tracks.

Just because PD has gone on some occasions beyond what is standard on consoles today simply doesn't count because they didn't pull of that stunt on all 1000 cars and '80' tracks? There's so much (jaggy) shadow in this game because the light on other areas is so extremely bright.

Your theory isn't valid I want a tough game - I have all licences in gold, I being a GT nut at heart love the challenge of starting with nothing and working hard to achieve something (I even hate when games like GT / Forza offer credits/cars from past garages i'd rather start from scratch).

Slow progress is great but there were not enough A-Spec races / championships. The worst part of it all was the prizes, the exclusivity in the prizes is non existant the worst of all is the licences - Golding previous GT games licences had great prize cars. To be honest thats the thrill of me golding the licences was a must as I wanted all the prize cars sitting in my garage waiting for me to start my career mode !

Standard cars dont make premium cars worse, they drag the games reputation down, GT has always been about perfection - yes the premium cars are awesome but a lot the standards are laughable - I have seen better modelling on the PS2 & OG Xbox. Good old octagon wheel arches just dont make the cut.

The weather effects on some tracks is welcomed by myself its an addition to the game it enhances it, it gives you extra to enjoy - the standard cars ruin it.

The different physics online ruin it - infact I hate the whole GT5 online experience - nothing makes me want to play it at all and in this day and age I buy more games for the online play than single player offline play.

As far as graphical issues - i'd rather have the perfect balance if the game has to run lesser FPS or 720p to iron out the issues (jaggy shadows, pixelated smoke, ugly screen tearing) then it would be better. Fair enough the only way to move forward in game development is to push the boundaries but they went too far and it has too much ugly.
 
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Judging from both the rebalancing of gameplay PD has done and the outcry in these forums on the topic of the SLS or Expert challenge and indeed even the licence tests, "gamers" do not want a 'hard' game with slow progress. Every average Joe thinks he's an excellent driver and even more think they are an excellent racing driver. Truth is: they are not. And they get very upset if a challenge destroys their self image.
The problem isn't that GT5 is a challenging game, in my opinion. B-Spec aside, there's a fistful of races that aren't a breeze to complete. The AI, for example, is awfully slow. To the point where you need to tie an arm and to your back so that you're getting challenged by them.

The only problem is when PD is tieing both arms, a leg and your trouser snake to your back to challenge you. The TG challenges are probably the best example of this. It's like playing a Final Fantasy game with level 1 charakters... It's not that it's insanely difficult, it's just that the way that the difficulty is achieved seems rather questionable.

Putting you in last place in a horrible car/car with horrible tyres and asking you to overtake the 10 (or so) guys in front in a single lap - is that a good way to make the game challenging? It seems more like someone's trying to compensate for the lack of difficulty (and pace) of the AI.


I stil don't get how the very existence of standard cars makes the premium any worse. How one can not appreciate the new city tracks and/or toskana day/night cycles just because these features are missing on the rest of the tracks.
Kevin Butler: "When they say XXX cars, I said 'Make it a thousand!"
That's the problem right there. They claim the game to have thousand cars, they write it on the back of the box as if all the cars were created equal.

PD didn't advertise the game as having '1000 cars of which 80% are dated ports from the last gen that don't have access to various features within the game'.

Also, you can not avoid standard cars, if you want to complete career mode. You can not chose to ignore them when they're ont rack with you, picked by the AI, either.

Also, I'd say that the selection of premium cars is questionable itself. If the standard cars wouldn't be present, I'd assume that that would've forced PD to have created an altered list of premium cars, so that they would be more evenly divided among the classes and manufacturers... Aside from the bias towards Japanese cars, of course.

Just because PD has gone on some occasions beyond what is standard on consoles today simply doesn't count because they didn't pull of that stunt on all 1000 cars and '80' tracks? There's so much (jaggy) shadow in this game because the light on other areas is so extremely bright.
It does count, but am I supposed to be all laughs and giggles because I have to confine myself to an even more limited amount of tracks and cars to enjoy those features? While, mind you, the bad stuff is present everywhere.

Doing good in a fistful of areas just doesn't count enough to make up for flaws that are present in all areas.
 
I have played GT5 for about 100 hours I think (don't know for sure as there's no way to know AFAIK). And I have played FM3 for more than 400 hours, 500 hours maybe.

And yes, FM3 pawns GT5, IMO.

I don't think GT5 is utter crap. I wouldn't have spent 100h on a game that I find is utter crap. But it is a bad game in the end. I love cars, "car games", and therefore was willing to spend time with GT5 to find the jewel behind the crap. And there *is* a jewel hidden behind the crap. There's just too many crap to handle in order to be able to appreciate that jewel for the game to be considered "good".
 
HBK
I have played GT5 for about 100 hours I think (don't know for sure as there's no way to know AFAIK). And I have played FM3 for more than 400 hours, 500 hours maybe.

And yes, FM3 pawns GT5, IMO.

I don't think GT5 is utter crap. I wouldn't have spent 100h on a game that I find is utter crap. But it is a bad game in the end. I love cars, "car games", and therefore was willing to spend time with GT5 to find the jewel behind the crap. And there *is* a jewel hidden behind the crap. There's just too many crap to handle in order to be able to appreciate that jewel for the game to be considered "good".

I know your pain man. And what makes it bad is you sound just like me, you really wanted the game to be more than what it is. I really was looking forward to GT5, I was hyped. Just a few days ago I moved my racing rig out of my man-cave into the living room again just to give GT5 another shot. I got everything all setup and then all the bad memories from before came back and I didn't even bother starting it up. I just played FM3 on the console I have in the livingroom and had a blast. Since I have it out there I probably will fire up GT5 just for the hell of it before I put the racing rig back in the man-cave. (No PS3 in the man-cave , just in the living room).
 
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