For me, as a single player player, this game needs one thing only. A CAREER MODE. Builders Cup is objectively poor (EVERYONE who mentions it agrees with this - i've not seen ONE comment saying otherwise in 7 months).
Due to GaaS we're "given" the holed out career mode two hours a week (if you do the practice laps) or 1 hour (if you just do the 8 races [I'm including Featured Tour and Open Tour events averaging across 4 weeks). Actually we're getting 4/5 of an hour a week for this "tour".
48 minutes per week is pitiful in my opinion (when there's no substantial career mode to start with). If there was a substantial career mode, it would be different (to me atleast)
Unfortunately, this is now the "normal" (see GT7, FH4, FH5 etc...) so it is not at all FM23's issue alone, it's nearly all driving games under the current game structures (EA WRC being the 2023 exception that proves the rule).
@PJTierney Please tell your colleagues EVERY SINGLE DAY not to go down this route in any EA driving game 🙏
Imagine getting the next game in the FFVII trilogy 48 minutes per week. Or even Elder Scrolls 6 and Starfield! If this strategy isn't viable for them, why do people believe it's different for a driving game?
Peesumably the stats are saying to the game bosses that people "prefer" playing 60 minutes per week, but IF YOU ONLY GIVE PEOPLE 60 minutes content, they will only ever play 60 minutes. So you're inventing your own stats by what you give the gamer?
Sorry for the rant!
I'm just tired of holed out games being released and this game is no different.
Even if I'm not someone who wants to play career mode anymore, I get that it's pretty weak as it currently is, but I think if you look at the trend it's not really something you can really count on them "fixing" at this point, at least not for the foreseeable future... Which means you will probably have to make a bit of your own fun in Free Play.
I used to do this some older games like Pro Race Driver when we didn't have multiplayer, I would basically make my own championship with the AI and track the championship points in an Excel spreadsheet. It's a little inconvenient, but not hard and you can sorta play "content creator" yourself.
Basically, imagine Esaki asked you to create a series to be added to the game. Make up a theme, choose a list of cars to select from, choose tracks and conditions and lap counts, and run that to see how it turns out. I find it pretty fun to find cars that make fun rivals, whether it's for their history or just because of their performance.
Alternatively, think of real life racing you enjoyed watching, and make some tweaks to it that couldn't happen in real life because of safety/budget/politics, like racing F1 at the Nordschleife after 1976 or bringing V8 Supercars to American tracks.
The varied car list and the ability to upgrade them yourself, and the variety of circuits available allow you to flex your creative side, and even if it would be nice to have tools like custom championships and such you can still work with it. I would really hope they could add in custom championships at some point though, but given that they even disappeared from the Horizon series to me kinda dulls hope on that front.
You could also try looking for some organized multiplayer that works with your schedule, which is where I think games like this truly shine. You can bring a lot of people with varied experiences/backgrounds/interests/skill levels together for interesting and creative series (even though most people just drive ****ing GT3 cars all the time). Most series put together about an hour worth of racing each week, and it gives you something to do some testing/practicing for and often you will be able to find some people to race/practice with on other nights of the week.
Someone around here could even make an official GTPlanet Forza series...
Now, I do agree the career mode should be improved, in particular with more varied races instead of the same simple formula repeated over and over again. But please don't ask them to force us to play the game that way by locking content behind it, because there's already so many other things to do in the game that many of us would rather do instead.
Quoted for emphasis. The career mode is bad but having more prizes locked behind career mode won't make it better in any way.
Beyond the obvious things to fix in this game, some small things I would like to see
- Tags that show over other cars or leader board show what current tire is selected
I think this should be an option in the lobby settings, not something that is always on or in personal HUD settings.
It is obviously useful information, but sometimes having that information can make the races a bit processional as everyone just moves out of the way when they see the car behind is on faster tires, or patiently follows when they know the person in front is on a different strategy and will have to stop soon. The mystery of what your opponents are using is an interesting dynamic during a race, and I wouldn't want to lose that all the time.
It would be interesting to have on the results screen at least, so after the race is over you can see what people did but it leaves it a mystery during the race.
I hope someday T10 can allow you to change cars in a championship in the career mode. For example: The series of events that are based on car type (as well as the class based ones), each race you complete in a series should let you change cars after finishing a race, so it doesn't get tedious having to drive the same car over and over until you've completed said series. T10 had this for FM7, and it saddened me when they took it out to "build a bond" with singular cars you chose. I want to bond with ALL of my cars like in Horizon, not with a selected few.
I also really, REALLY hope T10 can bring back Open Track Day for online. That feature was the best where you could even make little cash in it! Heck, it will even be a great place to level up your favorite cars and learn different tracks as well!
Yeah I think you are locked to the car because they wanted you to feel the progression of earning CP and upgrading the car from race to race to feel how the car evolves. Even though they have done away with the car level grinding, the career is still structured like that so I kinda don't see them changing it.
The Open Track Day things would have been great to help ease the pain of grinding in early days, but they still would be a decent addition now I suppose, but I'm not sure the game has the playerbase to keep adding more and more public multiplayer options in for. I suppose adding some more might bring more players back, but will it be enough to offset diluting the pool? There are a lot of people who refuse to do multiplayer and I don't think Open Track Days would convince them to finally make the switch since, from my experience in FM7, they are just as... "unclean" as regular public lobby races can be.
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