How should PD handle Career Mode in GT7

  • Thread starter Alterlight
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Sure, 2x wear and fuel can be OK, maybe 3x at a push, but they took it to extreme levels in GTS with some of the events I saw. This IS still meant to be a simulator.

If people don't fancy longer races then they can do what many other devs do now, let people choose the race length themselves. 100% down to 10%, with prize money reduced to match of course.

That's what it's all about these days, choice. If people want to run through career mode with no races more than 5 laps and no wear, give them the option. If other people want their races to be 10 laps / 20 minutes minimum, up to several hours long, with fuel and tyre wear, let them as well.
While a choice option is really nice and I do enjoy it. I know some events would lose quite a bit of identity if their Lap count is just the same as everyone else based on players choice.

Take GT4s, European, American and Japanese Championships. What separates Europeans from the other 2 aside from requiring a higher license is that the races are that of a longer distance. Its more than just races in Europe with European cars. It leads to a ground where 1 will be sacrificed for the others. Sometimes things can be too consistent. If you make them too samey you risk career being a boring predictable check-list like GRID Autosport (which while I love, Career was such a drag I only beat it on the Switch due to portability), Forza 6 and GRID 2019

I like the idea of a lot of variety in the events in Multiple ways, Cars restricted, Tyre restriction, Distance and would like it expanded upon with higher races requiring Pit Stops or going beyond and Pit Strategy with multiple Tyres being used and I don't sacrificing a bit of realism by upping the F & T wear to make interesting races happen without having to make them endurance races.

Hell if we get NOS back a NOS only series would be fun to do
 
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Yeah, but these are professional developers. This is literally their job, to come up with a game that is fun. That this is difficult is assumed, because if it was easy then everyone would have done it already. Expecting a game that is fantastically engaging long term for all players is probably unreasonable, but they can almost certainly do better with the engagement of the single player aspect than they have in the past.

Their previous solution was "more content", which was well received in 2004 with GT4 but not so much in 2013 with GT6. I think they're going to need to step it up for GT7, regardless of how hard a problem it might be. A giant list of races is going to go down like a ton of bricks.
They have to do more with the content they have instead of sitting on their arses and doing the same old thing. GT is all about car culture so it must showcase a wide variety of events such as missions, sprint racing, endurance racing, drifting, rally, gymkhana and time attack. Themed events are also important to keep the players entertained.
And you'd encourage them to stay still due to it being hard instead of making an effort to do that?
What? No! That's not what I was suggesting at all!
 
If people don't fancy longer races then they can do what many other devs do now, let people choose the race length themselves. 100% down to 10%, with prize money reduced to match of course.

That's what it's all about these days, choice. If people want to run through career mode with no races more than 5 laps and no wear, give them the option. If other people want their races to be 10 laps / 20 minutes minimum, up to several hours long, with fuel and tyre wear, let them as well.
One of the best things about FM7 was the race length option.

Standard was about 5 minutes, your standard GT 3-lap sprint.
Long was about 20 minutes, 7-13 laps on most tracks and a good length for a casual race where you don't have to be passing multiple cars per lap to fight your way through the field.
Extra long was like an hour.

I ran most of my races on Long, because that was the best fit for how I like to race. But the option to just change it whenever was amazing too. Races that I didn't like and just wanted to power through I could put on standard. Sometimes I'd make the finale of a championship extra long just for the drama. And the rewards seemed to scale pretty accurately for time spent.

GT7 should absolutely steal this feature. It's great.
While a choice option is really nice and I do enjoy it. I know some events would lose quite a bit of identity if their Lap count is just the same as everyone else based on players choice.

Take GT4s, European, American and Japanese Championships. What separates Europeans from the other 2 aside from requiring a higher license is that the races are that of a longer distance. Its more than just races in Europe with European cars. It leads to a ground where 1 will be sacrificed for the others. Sometimes things can be too consistent. If you make them too samey you risk career being a boring predictable check-list like GRID Autosport (which while I love, Career was such a drag I only beat it on the Switch due to portability), Forza 6 and GRID 2019

I like the idea of a lot of variety in the events in Multiple ways, Cars restricted, Tyre restriction, Distance and would like it expanded upon with higher races requiring Pit Stops or going beyond and Pit Strategy with multiple Tyres being used and I don't sacrificing a bit of realism by upping the F & T wear to make interesting races happen without having to make them endurance races.

Hell if we get NOS back a NOS only series would be fun to do
I think you can have variety in championships while still giving players freedom to influence race lengths. For example, EU/US/JP championships might be 5/3/3 laps on Standard race length, but 60/36/36 on Extra Long. That's still fine, the championships get to keep an identity and the player gets to keep some control over how much time they want to invest in an individual race. This even works with endurance races, Standard/Long/Extra Long races could be 1/2/4 hours depending on player choice.

Race length should be one of the factors that gets used to make races distinct, but as long as you're also using other factors as well I don't think you need to lock down race length to the point that the player loses all choice. It's not that the game wouldn't work with fixed race lengths, it's just that I think it adds almost as much in terms of player freedom as adjustable AI. Adapting the AI to suit the player's needs is a critical part of making racing fun, and I think adapting the race length to something that suits the player's available time, skill and desires is almost as important even though it's relatively uncommon in racing games.
 
Sure, 2x wear and fuel can be OK, maybe 3x at a push, but they took it to extreme levels in GTS with some of the events I saw. This IS still meant to be a simulator.

If people don't fancy longer races then they can do what many other devs do now, let people choose the race length themselves. 100% down to 10%, with prize money reduced to match of course.

That's what it's all about these days, choice. If people want to run through career mode with no races more than 5 laps and no wear, give them the option. If other people want their races to be 10 laps / 20 minutes minimum, up to several hours long, with fuel and tyre wear, let them as well.
You can force pit stops in shorter races by forcing softer, faster wearing compounds that last fewer laps and maybe having a max fuel limit for how much you can have in the tank. You could get a similar result from that if it were planned well without fudging the tyre wear and fuel economy.

More options is usually good thing, although too many options can become a time sink. I do waste a lot of time choosing which beer to have next in some places.
 
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Ive pre-ordered GT7 and really cant wait for release day.I hope the AI in career mode can offer`exciting`races,but the racing in some of the videos looks a little sedate, like parade laps.No real excitement.
Just my opinion,i realise they are just trailers,maybe not final builds so not wishing to start any arguments. 👍
 
One thing I do want to see in career is Mandatory Pit Stops for higher tier races.

They tried doing that in GT3 and GT4 with longer races and tyre wear but it can easily be exploited by just using Harder Tyres and never pitting.

I've seen GT Sport have races where you are required to use certain sets of tyres per race, forcing you into a pit stop. I'd love to see that for difficult Championshops in career, adding a layer of strategy
I think there's even an unused setting for races where they could've straight-up required a number of pit stops.
 
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