Coincidentally I thought I would have a go at License Centre as well, mainly because I wanted to do a UI for a new idea and it reminded me it's one of the big things I personally have ideas for. To finally ditch the same basic format they've had since GT1 of doing ~60 short tests and make the whole process a lot closer to reality. No "Learn how to use the throttle, brakes, what a corner is" tests, because you would already know that from a regular driving lesson and in game if you don't, you can soon learn without a specific test. In the real world, you don't earn a race license by going round a corner under 26 seconds.
So anyway here is my mockup first, detailed explanation below if you are interested.
Early player progress
Complete progress/scrolled down
It is following roughly the process of a real world racing license (at least in the UK), minus the parts which either don't apply in a video game situation (Doing a medical) or that wouldn't be fun/practical (spending hours in a classroom and reading a 500 page guide). You'd instead start by simply going to a track day in a road car. This could probably start automatically in some way after getting your first car so its the first thing you do.
If you're already pretty competent, it would just be a few laps getting a feel for the new game, driving a circuit in your first road car with others on the track, no pressure. If you are a true beginner, it's where you'd learn the absolute basics with no fail mechanisms. Just stop when you've had enough.
Next up would be OPTIONAL tuition driving events. Whilst mandatory in the real world they absolutely must be optional in a game world so those of us who believe we're already competent enough in the driving part from past experience don't have to waste time, but they're there for those who are genuine beginners. These would be most like the old GT license tests except there would be no time goal, and instead of only putting the guidance in the pre-menu you would have an instructor in the car giving you live tips for whatever is being taught.
Then would be the MANDATORY racing rules and systems videos. GTS tried this but the two videos they included were frankly very poor. The videos should explain the different flags, the rules of racing, and actually explain with clear examples what is fair, and what isn't.
With those two short steps comes the final test, but again this is mimicking real life, not the old GT type tests. All you'd need to do is complete three clean laps of a circuit. The only requirements would be to stay on the track (instant fail if you go off), to stay on or close to the racing line above 75% and in a VERY modest time. As the UKMS website says, this would be about competence, not outright speed.
With that complete, you have your Clubman License. Whilst you only have this license, the novice yellow cross would be on the back of your car, offline and online.
Now is where it diverges massively from the old format,
NO MORE TESTS! Instead, like the real world, you get higher grade licenses via experience and performance.
The values themselves are placeholder just to give you the idea, if it was done for real you'd have to balance them all so that people can progress through the career and earn licenses without having to re-do races over and over, so the mileage requirements would have to be adjusted to match a reasonable percentage of the race tier, and make the points easily doable by only finishing a percentage of all events in top 6, not win everything three times over or something.
Sadly I highly doubt PD are going to make changes anything close to this radical, but boy do I wish they would. It's not perfect by any means and I haven't put a huge amount of thought into it, but wouldn't that be a breath of fresh air instead of doing 1000-0 stopping tests which teach you nothing practical for the 7th time?
