Whether or not the game’s focus is on online gameplay or not is fairly important when considering the significance (or not) of its player base even venturing into that online territory, let alone retention (which is beside the point anyway). Unlike other racing games, this isn’t an online mode that’s just tagged on to an otherwise stand-alone game, but rather the other way around – they did after all name the game GT Sport and not GT 7 to mark that distinction.
GT Sport’s campaign can be 100%’d very quickly indeed.
If that's the approach you wish to take (I was being far kinder to GTS in this regard) then they missed the brief even more.
GTS has no higher a longer term on-line participation rate (as a percentage) than any other racing title with an on-line component (and yes I have looked at the numbers a lot). The average across titles is 5 to 10%, GTS sits currently at 6%, which could lead one to conclude that the move to an on-line focus for GTS did nothing to increase the percentage of participants over the industry average.
Your first point is obviously correct, if a little daft; it’s like saying most Call Of Duty WWII players are ‘gamers first’ and not soldiers.
Not what I am saying, I'm making the distinction between those gamers who focus on racing titles or FRP titles first and foremost, over gamers in general who also buy and play racing titles and FPS, etc.
These are the gamers first (I'm sure you are well aware that the majority of those participating in this thread fall firmly into the sim-racer or racing gamer first category, while those who post on our equivalent boards for Battlefield or COD or Overwatch are likely to be FPS gamers first.
Do you, for example, imagine that many people here at GTP have yet to have buy a first car or have not played enough to get gifted ten cars, or watched the two videos required to go online?
I would be willing to guess that for each of those the percentage is in the high 90% here at GTP, I don;t even come close to focusing on GTS as a title, yet those were done and dusted within days.
Yet when you look at the actual percentages for those who own the game, its a quite different story, with around half of owners never having achieved any of these three trophy's, Even more telling is that over 70% of owners have not even got to level 15 as a driver! Nor is this a GTS only phenomenon, but rather one that is common across the industry, its just a bit worse in that regard for racing titles. People buy games, play them for a bit, the next thing comes out and they are off.
The reality is that casual gamers abound in terms of buying
Your second point, I’m not so sure anymore; wasn’t a lot of this game developed to focus on online “sport” play based upon the massive online community built around GT6? Players & communities creating their own leagues & championships, with BoP, penalties etc.
It was, my point is that all of that work has not increased the percentage of participants over those racing titles that are seen as being off-line first.
This is something I actually talked about around the time of the betas (IIRC) and it may be that PD and Sony were not aiming to increase the percentage of owners who play on-line for any length of time, but rather rely on a large user base giving them enough people at the average percentage for the industry.
I’m not sure that this is the best analogy. Prestiging is something that just naturally occurs whilst playing the game, more akin to GT Sport’s Emerald driver rank than competitive play participation – I’ll grant you that some players choose not to Prestige though, but I’m not sure what that means in the context of this discussion, it sounds like you’re just saying that online shooters are more popular with casual audiences than sim-oriented racing games?
I'm saying that the structure of on-line shooters appeals to a wider audience than that of racing titles, even when the odds of consistently being the 'overall winner' of an on-line' match/race are not much different.
PD provided a good set of tools for match-making (but still quite basic in comparison to what is available in other gaming genre's - the racing genre is well behind the rest of the market in this regard), but did nothing to make up for the fact that unless players are given these 'micro-wins' then the appeal for all but a small percentage is very, very low.
Oh and I think you will find that taking part in 20 or more races is very much something "that just naturally occurs whilst playing the game", looking at Emerald rank is not the same as it includes off-line as well as on-line play. You can't rank up and prestige in COD off-line.
Wouldn’t a better comparison be CoD WWII player base that has completed a season of rank play – if only 20% prestige I imagine that figure must be far lower.
To prestige takes an average of 27 to 30 hours of gameplay in COD WW2 (average for players scoring around 1,500 per match - which is on the higher side), to take part in 21 on-line races in GTS's Sport mode most certainly doesn't. The average race duration in GTS is 18 minutes (two 15 minute daily races and one 25 minute one, an average of 18 minutes per race), I have no idea how long people spend in qualifying (and we know some don't bother), but even if we are very generous and say its the same duration as the race, that's an average of 36 minutes per race, or 12 hour and 36 minutes in total.
As such its easier in terms of time invested to get to 21 races in GTS than it is to prestige in COD WW2, yet over three times the people do so in WW2. As such the racing genre is doing something wrong in terms of retaining people on-line.
I got frustrated with it at first... as others have said: it's not the same as playing against the AI and winning 99/100 races which you get used to! Even after about 30 or 40 races I got fed up, moved in to low B and thought 'I'm never going to win a race, what's the point" then I had a eureka moment... I don't
need to win races, just enjoy the battle and the occasional podium or win
I came 11th in a race at Yama yesterday but enjoyed it immensely. Started 14th, gained a few positions, lost a position, gained one back and had a great 3 car battle for the last 3 laps. That's all I need and it's ****ing addictive!
And for the 6% that is what we want, its the other 94% that don't find it enough.
Now you may well be (and PD / Sony too) happy for it to stay at that level, but if they are interested in getting higher levels of long term engagement on-line fro buyers then its clearly not enough.
