- 10
- VisualCSharp
Like most of you, I've been playing GT5 since the day it was released. I am level 26 in A-Spec and level 24 in B-Spec. I've spent countless hours racing online (most of it with my 3-month-old son watching so he can learn about racing early in life!)
I've compiled a list of improvements I think Polyphony Digital must make to make GT5 a respectable game. I expect some folks won't agree with my takes on improving GT5; that's fine. These are one man's opinions.
Reduce or eliminate grinding
It is my opinion that grinding is the bane of modern video games. Rather than creating additional unique, interesting content, Polyphony Digital instead chose to force the player to run the same content over and over in order to attain the next level, once the player reaches the upper levels of A-Spec and B-Spec. As we all know, attaining the next level is important in GT5 because it unlocks new races and cars. Now, I am not one of those players who does not know how to race and simply wants to "beat the game." I am not one of those players who has 10 duped Red Bull X2010s and uses them solely to wreck other cars in online racing. I am an avid karter in real life and at one time tracked my BMW 135i. I purchased GT5 hoping I would quickly, if not immediately, have access to the oft-touted "1000 cars," only to discover that I must grind credits by racing the same race over and over again, use a birthday exploit or use a dupe exploit. This is not my idea of fun. I have a wife, a son and a job and I cannot justify the time it will take to grind for 100% of the game's content. GT5 is not and should not be World of Warcraft. I feel like I was misled with the advertising for this game before its release. The vast majority of players will never experience even a small fraction of the total number of cars available in GT5.
Eliminate exploits if possible
I understand that pubescent boys cannot control their testosterone. They must "win" and have the best cars no matter what, even if it means exploiting the game's design and ruining others' fun as a result. I was their age once; I understand that the level of social maturity at that point in a boy's life is generally low. Even so, Polyphony Digital must do everything in their power to curb exploits such as the birthday exploit and the dupe exploit. Yes, we all purchased the game and some claim that gives them a right to exploit. However, I also purchased the game and am finding myself dismayed that a large number of online races are now polluted with these same pubescent boys riding their duped Red Bull X2010s into the rails and into other cars. The sense of accomplishment one gets from beating the Sebastian Vettel challenge and legitimately winning their X2010 is surely reduced by the knowledge that everyone and their mother has duped several of them. Rare, expensive and hard-to-obtain cars should actually be rare, expensive and hard-to-obtain. They should require skill to obtain.
More tracks, less cars
Do we really need ten different modifications of the same base model? Or would we all rather have a new track or two? I think Polyphony Digital was misguided in how they spent their resources on this game. Accepting my assertion that most players will never experience most of the cars available, why weren't there less cars and more tracks in the initial release? In my opinion, the tracks are the foundation of the game and offer much more variety and challenge than different cars. Once one reaches a certain level of driving skill, it generally doesn't take very long to learn to drive a different car. A track, however, can take a long time to master.
I also do not subscribe to complaints that there are not enough cockpit views in the game. In my opinion, cockpit view is the worst view in the game. The field of vision is far smaller than in real life and is also unrealistically stretched, as has been demonstrated by videos on YouTube. I much prefer hood view because I can see the wheels hitting the apex, just as I would be able to in real life. My only complaint is that the rear-view mirror is missing from hood view. Use the time it would take to research and design cockpit views to instead add more tracks to the game. I believe that would be time better spent.
Overhaul online play
Replace the lobby system with matchmaking
I think the entire system should be scrapped and replaced with an advanced matchmaking system. Allow the player to select the tracks, cars, racing conditions (aids, weather, etc.), max players, etc. they are interested in and match them up with players with similar settings. Several different types of "rooms" seem to have emerged; among them are drift, drag, tune, race, clean and kart. Polyphony Digital should standardize these selections in the matchmaking system so I can select "kart" and only get games where karts are in use. For rooms like "kart," kart use should be enforced by the game server and not the host so that a room that started out as a kart room does not become a drift room. Another option would be to allow the host to change these settings on the fly and simply reset the room to the new settings.
Eliminate room names
The game interface should clearly express the room's settings. Most room names are being used to express these settings, or to indicate that the players in the room do or must smoke marijuana. Room names are unnecessary with better room info available on the room selection screen.
Allow the room host to force a selection of cars from their garage
If there is already a way to do this that I am unaware of, please inform me. I would like to see game hosts select a car or cars from their garage and force players to subsequently select only from that list of cars. This is not to say that the other players must merely select their own car that is the same model car (but with different tunes, mods, etc.) but that they select the same car as the host's, complete with mods and tune. The Settings screen would be unavailable in this scenario. This will help keep races more about driving skill than who has the fastest car.
Allow access to the player's entire garage
Again, unless I am simply missing something, there appears to be no way to access my entire garage in online play. I only see a Recommended (system-provided) and a Favorites tab. It's annoying that I join a room, find out it's 295hp or less but I have no cars of that power in my Favorites list and have to back all the way out to the main menu to add it to my favorites. Give me access to my entire garage and this problem is solved.
Institute a system like the PP system from GT5: Prologue
The bottom line is it needs to be easier to make races more about driving skill than car selection. The PP system helped accomplish this (definitely not perfectly) by assigning a point value to a car with a certain tune. This allows players to select any car in their garage as long as the PP number is low enough. A PP system would mean equal races could be had without merely resorting to everyone racing the same car.
Exiting a game should return the player to the lobby or matchmaking screen, not the main menu
Self-explanatory.
Allow the player to return to a room he recently played in after leaving online play
This is a problem because of the "no access to my entire garage" issue. I have to leave online play completely to add a car to my favorites only to be unable to find the room I originally joined afterward. There should be either a "favorites" list for rooms or a "recently joined" list. Both of these would only present rooms that were still active.
Institute a "clean driver" ranking system
I can count on one hand the number of truly clean races I've been involved in. It seems that most players are incapable of driving a clean, hard race. This is probably a combination of lack of racing experience in real life, no or partial understanding of driving line, no awareness of racing etiquette and no real consequences for violating these rules. As a racing enthusiast and as someone who races karts, I can attest that racing a clean race is much more rewarding than smashing and fishtailing others on my way to victory. This may be related to the maturity level of GT5's average player. As a room host I should be able to choose whether I care about clean racing or not. I won't get into detail about clean driver ranking systems since other games like iRacing already have them. In my opinion, Polyphony Digital must implement a similar system or run the risk of online play being considered a joke by anyone even moderately serious about clean racing (usually the more skilled drivers).
I've compiled a list of improvements I think Polyphony Digital must make to make GT5 a respectable game. I expect some folks won't agree with my takes on improving GT5; that's fine. These are one man's opinions.
Reduce or eliminate grinding
It is my opinion that grinding is the bane of modern video games. Rather than creating additional unique, interesting content, Polyphony Digital instead chose to force the player to run the same content over and over in order to attain the next level, once the player reaches the upper levels of A-Spec and B-Spec. As we all know, attaining the next level is important in GT5 because it unlocks new races and cars. Now, I am not one of those players who does not know how to race and simply wants to "beat the game." I am not one of those players who has 10 duped Red Bull X2010s and uses them solely to wreck other cars in online racing. I am an avid karter in real life and at one time tracked my BMW 135i. I purchased GT5 hoping I would quickly, if not immediately, have access to the oft-touted "1000 cars," only to discover that I must grind credits by racing the same race over and over again, use a birthday exploit or use a dupe exploit. This is not my idea of fun. I have a wife, a son and a job and I cannot justify the time it will take to grind for 100% of the game's content. GT5 is not and should not be World of Warcraft. I feel like I was misled with the advertising for this game before its release. The vast majority of players will never experience even a small fraction of the total number of cars available in GT5.
Eliminate exploits if possible
I understand that pubescent boys cannot control their testosterone. They must "win" and have the best cars no matter what, even if it means exploiting the game's design and ruining others' fun as a result. I was their age once; I understand that the level of social maturity at that point in a boy's life is generally low. Even so, Polyphony Digital must do everything in their power to curb exploits such as the birthday exploit and the dupe exploit. Yes, we all purchased the game and some claim that gives them a right to exploit. However, I also purchased the game and am finding myself dismayed that a large number of online races are now polluted with these same pubescent boys riding their duped Red Bull X2010s into the rails and into other cars. The sense of accomplishment one gets from beating the Sebastian Vettel challenge and legitimately winning their X2010 is surely reduced by the knowledge that everyone and their mother has duped several of them. Rare, expensive and hard-to-obtain cars should actually be rare, expensive and hard-to-obtain. They should require skill to obtain.
More tracks, less cars
Do we really need ten different modifications of the same base model? Or would we all rather have a new track or two? I think Polyphony Digital was misguided in how they spent their resources on this game. Accepting my assertion that most players will never experience most of the cars available, why weren't there less cars and more tracks in the initial release? In my opinion, the tracks are the foundation of the game and offer much more variety and challenge than different cars. Once one reaches a certain level of driving skill, it generally doesn't take very long to learn to drive a different car. A track, however, can take a long time to master.
I also do not subscribe to complaints that there are not enough cockpit views in the game. In my opinion, cockpit view is the worst view in the game. The field of vision is far smaller than in real life and is also unrealistically stretched, as has been demonstrated by videos on YouTube. I much prefer hood view because I can see the wheels hitting the apex, just as I would be able to in real life. My only complaint is that the rear-view mirror is missing from hood view. Use the time it would take to research and design cockpit views to instead add more tracks to the game. I believe that would be time better spent.
Overhaul online play
Replace the lobby system with matchmaking
I think the entire system should be scrapped and replaced with an advanced matchmaking system. Allow the player to select the tracks, cars, racing conditions (aids, weather, etc.), max players, etc. they are interested in and match them up with players with similar settings. Several different types of "rooms" seem to have emerged; among them are drift, drag, tune, race, clean and kart. Polyphony Digital should standardize these selections in the matchmaking system so I can select "kart" and only get games where karts are in use. For rooms like "kart," kart use should be enforced by the game server and not the host so that a room that started out as a kart room does not become a drift room. Another option would be to allow the host to change these settings on the fly and simply reset the room to the new settings.
Eliminate room names
The game interface should clearly express the room's settings. Most room names are being used to express these settings, or to indicate that the players in the room do or must smoke marijuana. Room names are unnecessary with better room info available on the room selection screen.
Allow the room host to force a selection of cars from their garage
If there is already a way to do this that I am unaware of, please inform me. I would like to see game hosts select a car or cars from their garage and force players to subsequently select only from that list of cars. This is not to say that the other players must merely select their own car that is the same model car (but with different tunes, mods, etc.) but that they select the same car as the host's, complete with mods and tune. The Settings screen would be unavailable in this scenario. This will help keep races more about driving skill than who has the fastest car.
Allow access to the player's entire garage
Again, unless I am simply missing something, there appears to be no way to access my entire garage in online play. I only see a Recommended (system-provided) and a Favorites tab. It's annoying that I join a room, find out it's 295hp or less but I have no cars of that power in my Favorites list and have to back all the way out to the main menu to add it to my favorites. Give me access to my entire garage and this problem is solved.
Institute a system like the PP system from GT5: Prologue
The bottom line is it needs to be easier to make races more about driving skill than car selection. The PP system helped accomplish this (definitely not perfectly) by assigning a point value to a car with a certain tune. This allows players to select any car in their garage as long as the PP number is low enough. A PP system would mean equal races could be had without merely resorting to everyone racing the same car.
Exiting a game should return the player to the lobby or matchmaking screen, not the main menu
Self-explanatory.
Allow the player to return to a room he recently played in after leaving online play
This is a problem because of the "no access to my entire garage" issue. I have to leave online play completely to add a car to my favorites only to be unable to find the room I originally joined afterward. There should be either a "favorites" list for rooms or a "recently joined" list. Both of these would only present rooms that were still active.
Institute a "clean driver" ranking system
I can count on one hand the number of truly clean races I've been involved in. It seems that most players are incapable of driving a clean, hard race. This is probably a combination of lack of racing experience in real life, no or partial understanding of driving line, no awareness of racing etiquette and no real consequences for violating these rules. As a racing enthusiast and as someone who races karts, I can attest that racing a clean race is much more rewarding than smashing and fishtailing others on my way to victory. This may be related to the maturity level of GT5's average player. As a room host I should be able to choose whether I care about clean racing or not. I won't get into detail about clean driver ranking systems since other games like iRacing already have them. In my opinion, Polyphony Digital must implement a similar system or run the risk of online play being considered a joke by anyone even moderately serious about clean racing (usually the more skilled drivers).
