How You Play Gran Turismo 7 Depends on Your Age, says Kazunori Yamauchi

[Jump_Ace]

I'm 43 now and rarely go online. Back in GTs hayday in GT4, I'd attend LAN parties hosted by GTPers and such, plus the WRS. But ever since I started a family, I just don't have the time.


Jerome

 

[Overhed]

As someone who enjoys motor racing, Sport Mode is the only playable mode in this game. The single player Chase the Rabbit nonsense is absolute garbage and honestly an embarrassment. I say that as a Gran Turismo player since the first game. The single player campaign races need to evolve.

 

[NAXEHT]

If that’s the case, it only proves they need to have more fresh content any day you log in if they want to have GT prosper and grow with the newer/younger audience.

I.E.

• Some/all of the Sport Mode races actually update daily (Y’know, like they used to in the early days of GT Sport).
• Time trails with the exact same leaderboard % reward tier format they have now, but fresh ones every day. They could build an RNG system so they don’t even need to have devs dedicating time to designing them.
• Additional log in/challenges that could give rewards like engine tickets.
• A “Daily Race X” similar to what I described in #2, but it’s just a random shuffle combination every hour/half hour.

There isn’t enough “pick up and play” features that are enticing/engaging enough to further drag players into the longer form content that they may not otherwise try. Games with a community/online aspect only thrive if they have enough players actively engaging in the ecosystem regularly, and PD hasn’t really ever done a great job at this since the online era, but it’s weird that 7 seems to be a step back from Sport when they should have so much data and experience pointing to this kind of stuff.

I read complaints on here every other day about FOMO but here you’re suggesting new time trials every day? Doesn’t that fit the FOMO bill perfectly? I don’t think that’d be good at all. Really, the two week interval we’ve had is good. Gives you the time to learn the car and combo if it’s not already known to you and also gives you the opportunity to not miss any, despite perhaps not being home with the possibility to play every day.

 

[Tired Tyres]

Given that there's no chance of the Devs devoting separate teams to the two separate parts of the game.

I've set up my PS2 on a spare TV. I'm going to play that instead of GT7. Mixing online and offline just doesn't work. El Capitan 200 miles. I'm coming.

I can log into GT7 daily, check the Legend cars and do half an hour at Le Mans.

 

[Michael88]

I'm in my mid 30's and have to admit that I don't like playing online in general, not just GT7. When I play online games, which I rarely do, I tend to play the older games because the younger and more....errm competitive audience has already left those and jumped onto newer games.

When I come home from work the last thing I want to deal with is difficult people and trying my best to be competitive. That's exactly what I already have at work every day for 8 hours straight, I rather play to relax by trying to find the perfect tune for car XYZ, or trying to find a better race line around a circuit to shave a couple .100's from my personal best, or play around with the liveries for hours, or take photos...

Additionally, what I don't like so much online is that the majority of people only play to win, disregarding everything else like simply having fun, teamwork, immersion etc. Rules are bent as much as possible, temper tantrums are thrown, grieving etc. No thanks.

 

[05XR8]

Well, ask the Geezer Club in the Multiplayer thread. I’m 51 and can’t join the main play(I think it’s open to my age group on a certain day?). The 7 & 77 ages have more in Common or rather, can relate to one another. I want my time to be my time.

 

[Nebuc72]

I agree with Kaz.I am 62 and rarely play ANY game in its online mode.I cant be doing with prepubecent halfwits screaming and ruining the experience for everyone.At my age the reaction time is a lot less than younger people,add to that my poor eyesight and arthritic hands and i am at a distinct disadvantage.That said,if the daily races etc allowed you to race your tuned cars i might be more tempted to have a bash at it.

One of this weeks races is solely for tuned up '65 mini's at Goodwood - so that sort of race is certainly there every now and then. A little while ago we also had a race at Fuji with tuned MR cars.

 

[Eggstor]

I don't like online gaming but I'm under no illusion that dumping it would make GT7 everything I want it to be, or even much closer at all. So your take is, frankly, ****.

Prove my point without admitting you proved my point.

 

[Imari]

Old players like me enjoy the single and spend lots of time in it. The younger are not patient, they are lazy to work for their cars and single player achievements.

Old players like you apparently also go straight for insulting stereotypes of how other people play.

Younger players can't even finish a race without checking Instagram or TikTok. It's society-wide mental illness I swear.

JFC.

That'd be why all the esports pros are in their fifties, right? Because they're the only ones with the focus to develop actual skill?

I'm 43 now and rarely go online. Back in GTs hayday in GT4, I'd attend LAN parties hosted by GTPers and such, plus the WRS. But ever since I started a family, I just don't have the time.

This is most of it, to be honest. The ability to commit unbroken blocks of time tends to go down as you get older, and the time that you do have tends to be allocated to things other than gaming. Gaming gets to squeeze in when there's space.

 

[adam thompson]

#Saveplayer1

 

[Wood N Fish]

I'm.. gonna count on my fingers right quick. 26! And i've dabbled in some online but i really just perfer offline races. I wish there were more of them and thati could make my own tournaments and have more options for custom races gr4 and gr3 is fun but somethimes man just wanna race some slow cars or do a historic race.

Custom races often end up too easy or with all dupIicate cars enjoy the races there are but i have driven most of them a few dozen times at this point point.

Gotta be honest here, forza motorsport 7 did custom races a lot better and i wish gt7 offered the same customization options for car classes because i wanna explore the westher effects more with many many cars.

 

[Miroku]

Even when I was 14...I hated playing online...
So I think there is a lot of younger people who also don't like Online unless you love being super competitive or your very good and actually kicking everyone's butt.

 

[danimac]

In GTS it was 7 to 70 hehe.

 

[Nielsen]

I do not fit into this statistic. I play offline but most of my sessions barely exceed 30 minutes. Roughly equivalent to the time it takes to complete the daily workout.

I should add that the online component actually appeals to me despite my jurassic age (35 years), but I generally have a hard time finding likeminded players who simply enjoy cruising around on the Nürb, but without the train formations in cars with eye-bleeding liveries modified beyond repair. Sigh, but at least it has given me an excuse to resist the PS Plus cash cow.

 

[DiabloSV]

Interesting. In several other games younger players tend to spend more time than older ones, who spend more money.

 

[TCR_Raskal]

Explains why racecraft and sportsmanship is generally lacking in Sport mode, especially compared to say iRacing. Even A+/S lobbies can still surprise me with how childish some players can be over the most minor race incidents.

I say that as a 45 year old player of both (with limited irl racing experience - 1 full season HQ racing to get my licence & 3 years part time as a co/backup driver in production cars), though Gran Turismo will always be my favourite as it's what introduced me to sim racing. GT1 & 2 deserved the title of 'the real driving simulator' in those days... "back in MY day...👴😂"

 

[MasterGT]

I honestly don’t understand how some of you guys are so vehemently against Sport mode and refuse to play it.

You quickly find out that your perception of your skills and abilities may not live up to reality. Going on-line can be a real eye-opener for some players. I have seen this in time trial contests since even before GT went on-line.

How you handle reality will affect how you deal with on-line.

 

[GTboyz]

Gee, I wonder why people are only logging in to play a couple of online races then logging off. I'm sure it's nothing to do with it being the same three races for an entire week.

Also :

-Make 3 online races that changes each week.
-Calls them Daily Races.

Only PD.

Makes sense, and not only for Gran turismo, on my 20s I played a lot of COD online, now on my late 30s I spent my gaming time on offline GT7, spiderman and open world games in general. Last weekend I downloaded Warzone 2 and I just feel old, slow and laggy 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Yeah, 29 here and already I feel exhausted just by doing 2 daily races , meanwhile I very much enjoy riding my horse, fishing, and just walking around in RDR2. Slower pace games just interests me more somehow.

 

[MasterGT]

Apparently, GT7 is the first version that has a higher percentage of older players. This could be because the veterans stuck with the series and it hasn't attracted as many new recruits.

It's too bad that the programmers made it difficult visually for us older guys. GT's lighting dynamic range has sucked since GT4 and that affects older players more.

GT Sport was good for off-line racing because it was easy to set up somewhat competitive (fun) races against the AI and they paid well for doing that. Not so much in GT7.

Players who avoid on-line point to Sport Mode as if that is all that is available. To find good custom on-line lobbies it may take some effort, but they are out there. Some are in private lobbies, some, such as Monday Night Racing, encourages public racing. With the appropriate lobby settings, our lobbies are safe and encourage good, competitive driving.

Groups that have been around for a decade or more, such as the Geezers and MNR, have endured changes in the game because there is a sense of community, friendship, and it certainly doesn't hurt that the racing is varied, competitive and fun.

But you have to make an effort to find a good group and good lobbies. If you just randomly enter custom lobbies, of course you will be disappointed. You can set up your own lobbies, to race the way you like, too. You have options.

 

[Luksz92]

We login and do 1-2 races before exiting because there's nothing else to do Kaz 🤣

 

[Quakebass]

Younger players can't even finish a race without checking Instagram or TikTok. It's society-wide mental illness I swear.


This is the basis of my hot take above. Gen Z kids and younger these days consume content at an unimaginable rate. Things that aren't fresh and new simply don't matter. Everything has to be on constant rotation. I call it the Call of Duty problem - where are we dropping in to waste time, because we surely aren't absorbing anything from it. Games are tools to waste time, not experiences to be appreciated.

At some point the main single player campaign will come to a close. There is no downside to having online connectivity features that allow people to further engage with the game, particularly that gets players competing and interacting with each other. It’s also what makes post-launch content and support far more fruitful and valid.

It’s all that more effective when any given day you have something different you can try/enter and compete in if you want.

The current format leaves players that only pop in now and then for a few hours (likely on weekends when there’s the most free time) to face people that put more time in perfecting laps/quali since as early as Monday. If you want to grow a games community and fan base you need to cater to long-time hardcore players and short-term/infrequent newbies. Stuff like daily time trial leaderboards with rewards is a great way to cater to both groups by giving them fairly equal footing, and doesn’t really have a downside.

Maybe it's got more to do with age and maturity rather than generation but I distinctly remember absorbing myself into games with relatively limited content when I was in middle and high school, dedicating myself to these games until completion. I could walk you through the stories of the games I played because they effected me like I was reading a novel. Nobody can do that with modernn CoD et al anymore because nobody bothers playing it.

The same thing has happened with digital content and streaming music. Kids don't own anything these days and they don't want to. They want to own nothing but have access to everything. Nobody listens to albums anymore, forcing me to root through all these libraries, while they just hit play and call it good enough. As long as noise is happening they're distracted enough from real life to get by for another day. Meanwhile I'm out here re-buying old disc versions I used to have, re-buying old consoles, CDs, vinyls, etc.

Some of this modern lifestyle really sucks and PD's data aligns with that.

I don’t see what any of this has to do with or even necessarily refutes the idea I put out that having more regular community-based activities would benefit both the young “attention deficited” players and older long-form players. It was already more frequent in the last game for the first ~year or so.

I read complaints on here every other day about FOMO but here you’re suggesting new time trials every day? Doesn’t that fit the FOMO bill perfectly? I don’t think that’d be good at all. Really, the two week interval we’ve had is good. Gives you the time to learn the car and combo if it’s not already known to you and also gives you the opportunity to not miss any, despite perhaps not being home with the possibility to play every day.

Is it really FOMO if it’s just an optional daily thing you can do to get credits, especially as just an alternative (and IMO better) way to gain credits than repetitive offline grinding? The daily ticket roulette and dealership cycles are awful and lock players out of content artificially, daily time trials would simply be an additive play method that wouldn’t cost you unique rewards if you simply decide to not play for any stretch of time.

We could even keep the 2 week trials for increased rewards, and dailies will simply just be new short-term plug-and-play pickup competitive fun.

 

[Livermush23]

I am 34 years old and still have no intrest in online other than play with friends, most off the time i play single player only and drive the cars i enjoy driving😊

35 and at this point I play almost exclusively online (and exclusively Gr. 4.

I will say that for online mode, it's about progression, so changing up the tracks daily would be annoying because just as you're getting good at a track, you have to relearn another. I'd still like more options though, including a permanent Gr. 4 one.

Also, for extra data, what views does everyone use? I use helmet cam and I really hate that turning game info off means I don't have access to the radar =(

 

[XSRacing111]

You quickly find out that your perception of your skills and abilities may not live up to reality. Going on-line can be a real eye-opener for some players. I have seen this in time trial contests since even before GT went on-line.

How you handle reality will affect how you deal with on-line.

But that’s not the case for me. I do the time trials and I get gold most of the time (meaning I’m in the top 3%-5% of the fastest racers in the entire world). I only raced in 50 races in sport mode just to get the trophy. Out of the 50 online races I participated in, I won 20 of them. My “lack of skills” is not MY reason for avoiding sport mode because I don’t envy the 3-8 thousand players that are better than me. It’s because I PREFER offline. That and most of my online experiences (dating back to the PS3 era) were negative (either cheaters or outright toxic individuals) which was a big turn off for me.
I understand everyone’s online experiences are different. All I’m saying is mine were bad and I’d rather play single player all by myself because when I was playing sport mode, from rank E all the way to A+, the players I’d encounter would be better off playing Fortnite or Destruction Derby.

 

[gkgamer]

Hi, I'm 42,
I play GT7 almost exclusively online, sport mode or lobbies with friends.
I'm not really fond of race cars of any category.

 

[Hdbd04]

Younger players can't even finish a race without checking Instagram or TikTok. It's society-wide mental illness I swear.

I must be the odd-one-out from the group since I don't have the accounts for both apps.

I wanted a single-player experience after playing GT Sport for 3 years. The Café books was a bit too much of a "hand-holding session" for my liking. Most of the World Circuit events past the Café books is more like a checklist or a credit-farming session in my view. I don't have that much creativity in my mind when it comes to setting up custom races.

It wasn't hard to see why I spend a majority of my time doing online races when the updated single-player events is good enough for 2 days.

(I'm about to reach my 20s)

 

[Hazel]

I'm (quick calculation) 56 and mostly play offline, though currently not really doing much in GT7.
My main reason is I'm not sure of my ability to race whilst not accidently ruining someone else's race, but am stuck at a driver level with those who don't care (or at least that is what I have observed), so I don't play online which means I can't practice my online driving...... Perhaps if GT7 had an Academy race series, competitive yes but everyone gained the same xp/credits but the real gain was to driving rating.
I like ACC because it has that driving rating system which you do offline to improve ratings to qualify for online, I know this would probably discourage a lot of GT7's playerbase as they're not serious enough to do it but it would clean up online as penalties could be harsher as people would have had to demonstrate a degree of skill/knowledge to get into online.

Currently playing World of Warships and trolling the youngsters with Anime Captains...
NFS Unbound is also looking good, mostly because it is no rules street racing so the Forza turn 1 antics are legit.

 

[D4N-D3MANN]

Excuse me sir I’m 36 and definitely not feeling that old. 🤣
I’d really like to play more online but the lack of races and payment for them really keeps me off.

Also I think that maybe the younger players only log in to see if the Lobby bugs are patched, see it’s still bugged and then go to another game that’s well maintained. So the data could be biased. 😜

Greetings D4N.

 

[MasterGT]

But that’s not the case for me. I do the time trials and I get gold most of the time (meaning I’m in the top 3%-5% of the fastest racers in the entire world). I only raced in 50 races in sport mode just to get the trophy. Out of the 50 online races I participated in, I won 20 of them. My “lack of skills” is not MY reason for avoiding sport mode because I don’t envy the 3-8 thousand players that are better than me. It’s because I PREFER offline. That and most of my online experiences (dating back to the PS3 era) were negative (either cheaters or outright toxic individuals) which was a big turn off for me.
I understand everyone’s online experiences are different. All I’m saying is mine were bad and I’d rather play single player all by myself because when I was playing sport mode, from rank E all the way to A+, the players I’d encounter would be better off playing Fortnite or Destruction Derby.

You proved my point. You already had time trial experience to know how you ranked among other players. Those who don't have that kind of exposure before they meet real humans on-line may have a different reaction.

Also, if you ever decide to search out good quality custom racing, you can find some. Your future on-line experiences don't have to repeat your past experiences. It does exist.

 

[Will Once]

I've seen similar discussions elsewhere. I've heard people saying that movies have to get to the action sooner because younger audiences expect it. Younger people are less likely to collect physical media, such as CDs and DVDs.

I've certainly noticed a difference between my tastes at age 58 compared with my 22 year old son. We both like scifi but he struggles with some of the classic movies I try to get him to watch. They are too slow for him.

I'm not saying that either point of view is right or wrong. Just different.

I think it underlines the fact that PD/Sony have to produce a game which appeals to a wide spectrum of tastes. We don't all want the same thing.

 

[Dave A]

You proved my point. You already had time trial experience to know how you ranked among other players. Those who don't have that kind of exposure before they meet real humans on-line may have a different reaction.

Also, if you ever decide to search out good quality custom racing, you can find some. Your future on-line experiences don't have to repeat your past experiences. It does exist.

I don't think preferring to play offline has any bearing on "how you handle reality". I dislike online play in general not just in racing games, I don't want to come home from work and game online, nor do I really have the time for it. I appreciate being able to hit pause, start a race when I want and not have to deal with people (immature or otherwise) when I'm trying to relax after a day dealing with people.