Is anyone else disappointed with GT5?

  • Thread starter allmoo
  • 2,452 comments
  • 205,422 views
...Successful companies have ideals. They have dreams. They have standards. They have someone telling them when it's time to put aside some of those qualities in order to keep their company profitable.

Surely some common sense would dictate to that "someone" that releasing an inferior or only partially realised product can, and often does, ultimately result in a complete loss in profitability?
 
I agree with what you're saying but I think that you're failing to understand the bigger picture.

The process of developing a game is a very complicated process with many interested parties. There will also be various teams within those companies with very specific goals.

At this point in time I am not aware of any game-breaking bug. ( Gamebreaking as defined by completely stopping a percentage of players from playing the game at all ). I'm not even aware of any bugs which are anywhere close to gamebreaking.
When you compare that to some of the major titles released over the past 12 months GT5 is a shining beacon of light in that most of it's bugs are low impact.

At that point Sony, and the financial teams within PD will be pressing for a return of their money. That 'Quality Assurance Failed' stamp will be replaced with an Excel spreadsheet of things to do after release. Delaying the game to fix those bugs is not likely to increase the number of sales but further delays certainly could certainly reduce them, especially if another developer announces a different, rival, game.

Even missing the Christmas release window would have hurt PD.

Successful companies have ideals. They have dreams. They have standards. They have someone telling them when it's time to put aside some of those qualities in order to keep their company profitable.

The save file size bug? That will kill eveybody's game eventually if it's not fixed.

If GT5 is a shining beacon of light then we are in for some terribly bad games in the coming years if other developers put it on a pedestal.
 
The game save issue has been resolved. The problem was only for users who had started playing in a period between two seperate patches and elected to stop game data installing to the hard drive. The cached data then became part of the game save instead.

To resolve the issue you just have to delete your game data file ( not the game save ) and ensure that the game is updated to the most recent version. Alternatively deleting your cache resolves the bug.

The second issue I have with that is that, this bug was introduced with a patch, which means that it could in no way have been accounted for at the games release.

I'm not saying it's perfect but when you compare it to the likes of other AAA tiles, Black Ops being a good example, worrying about some minor issues seems trivial.
 
Surely some common sense would dictate to that "someone" that releasing an inferior or only partially realised product can, and often does, ultimately result in a complete loss in profitability?
Xmas is the biggest time to sell a game, missing that could have cost many tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of sales imho. They did miss Xmas before I think for one of the releases, at least in Europe. Pressure to turn a blind eye to any problems must have been immense. :eek: Glad I wasn't the chap who kept saying it was not ready but who was eventually overruled. :boggled:
 
At that point Sony, and the financial teams within PD will be pressing for a return of their money. That 'Quality Assurance Failed' stamp will be replaced with an Excel spreadsheet of things to do after release. Delaying the game to fix those bugs is not likely to increase the number of sales but further delays certainly could certainly reduce them, especially if another developer announces a different, rival, game.

Even missing the Christmas release window would have hurt PD.

Successful companies have ideals. They have dreams. They have standards. They have someone telling them when it's time to put aside some of those qualities in order to keep their company profitable.
I think this is exactly right. Reality has a way of punching dreamers in the face, and it reached a point where the ideals just had to take a back seat to practicality. Delaying the game before the Christmas season would have been a real financial mistake.

It was interesting that right after they announced another delay before Christmas with a new release date, they came back and released it before that new release date. Seems very likely that there was some internal pushing and shoving going on, and the accounting team brought a gun to the development team's knife fight.
 
As much as I agree, I can't help but feel how much more time Kaz wanted.
Was he seriously going to make all 1000 cars premium?

Ya obviously, the standard vs premium leaves the game in a unfinished state. The question isn't whether he wanted to make all the cars premium, its rather was the ambitions and details of the premiums suitable for his budget,time and this gen of consoles?
 
I agree with what you're saying but I think that you're failing to understand the bigger picture.
The bigger picture? The bigger picture is always what you make it out to be. If they weren't so caught up in their bad time and resource management, they wouldn't have had to skip QA work to make the release date, not with the tiime frame they had.

The bigger picture is always about sales, I agree with that. However, if you take an even bigger picture into consideration, would releasing have arsed games let the GT franchise to the status it has today? Or would it have become just another, mediocre racing title?

Seriously, the bigger picture is that GT became the best sellinng game it is today because it didn't skip on QA word, because it did prioritise quality over quantity and didn't appear to be a 'sales first game'. That's what diffentieted it from games like Need For Speed. But, as it seems, that has been lost, for one reason or another.

Most importantly, the point still stands: I can't see any trace of proper QA work and playtesting in GT5. For the life of me, I can't. They still got some stuff right, but I can't see the game being playtested.
 
Surely some common sense would dictate to that "someone" that releasing an inferior or only partially realised product can, and often does, ultimately result in a complete loss in profitability?

And more common sense (and accountants) will say "you've had 6 years and a huge budget, we need to see some return on the investment"
That's how businesses remain profitable and sadly that doesn't always mean the best games are made. The fact is they knew that anything with the GT name on it on PS3 will sell- more than 5.5 million so far- regardless of how complete it was. Kaz may have wanted to make a perfect game but to be honest I'm not sure even he knew how to do that. A lot of his ideas are outdated now or have been stolen and improved by western devs.
 
The lack of original tracks (PD scrapped El Capitan, Apricot Hill, among others) and off-road courses (Toscana, Chamonix, and Nordwand is all there is) is pretty disappointing. The lack of a save-feature goes without saying, not to mention the X1 challenge will take a few months of repetition playing with a controller to beat
 
Hi :) I got directed here from the 'has anyone stopped playing' thread...

I've stopped playing in as much as I'm not going any further in A-Spec mode. I've done everything except the
F-GT series (not doing it because the prize car is woefully inadequate for the effort required) and the enduro's
(not doing those because there's no save in the pit option). I might however do the Indy 500 to get the XJ13 :cool:

So now its playing online which is great if you find the right room, and grinding B-Spec for credits to buy cars

A-Spec mode is as has been mentioned many times, very much lacking in size :(
 
Ok, I was very disappointed of GT5 already - but now I have tried the new "Ferrari F1 Special event" - and I have decided not to "touch" GT5 for a looooooooooong while.

Not only that the "Ferrari F1 2007" is one of the worst cars I have ever driven in a computer game - but also the so called AI - it shows how bad it really is in this "special" event. I think I was wrong when I once said that that PD didn't put much afford in programming the "AI" - it must have been really, really, really hard work to make the "AI" drive sooooo stupid.
 
Since I was "kicked out" from the fatal bug tread because of my comment, let me quote myself in this one...

HuskyGT
I know this will sound childish and I myself never thought of saying it, but I´m giving Gran Turismo the rest that it needs. I´m getting an XBOX and Forza 3.

I´m tired of deffending GT5´s honor against other games, and not recieving anything but flashy cars that look cool as a wallpapers. Since the begining, and before the release, GT5 hasn´t been anything but controversy. I got the game since launch day, and there is not a single day were I haven´t been disapointed by minuscule errors and glitches. I have had it...

I do not expect perfection, but I do expect a solid game, with taken care details other than "Hands-free" buttons on steering wheels. I´m a car guy that was unfortunate to live a life were I can´t enjoy my passion. Gran Turismo was the one that made me enjoy that for the first time, but at this day, with its fifth instalment, there hasn´t been a day were I smiled when playing it.

Look at it like this... Gran Turismo 5 is like trying to eat the juiciest hamburger while sitting around three tons of human feces... No matter how you want to enjoy that burger, the rotten smell ruins the expirience...

I´m a car guy, again, and I need to satisfy that urge... Forza 3 might not be the newest or best car game there is, but I can tell you something, that game is made with passion... I know I will be able to enjoy it like I did with the first three Gran Turismos, when we were not promised perfection, and raised our hopes to the very limits. When we enjoyed the true driving simulator...

There will be a Gran Turismo 6... Until then, my friends...
-Husky

Yes. I´m very much dissapointed with GT5, but that doesn´t stop me from playing it...
 
Yes, I'm a bit disappointed, expected a lot after GT4 and 5 years of development, I love the game, but I feel it's incomplete and a lot of things just don't make any sense

I despise the XP leveling system, I'm about to embark on the long journey from 35-40 :yuck:
 
It's official, I'm done with this game.

Everyday there is a new bug or glitch. I have never played a game with so many issues. Good lord, even EA "scum of the earth" can produce a game of better quality.

I just don't get what the hell happened to Japanese developers. They were the best, but this generation I have been hard pressed to play a good game that wasn't done by western devs.

Kaz and his retarded visions can go to hell as well. 👎
 
The game save issue has been resolved. The problem was only for users who had started playing in a period between two seperate patches and elected to stop game data installing to the hard drive. The cached data then became part of the game save instead.

To resolve the issue you just have to delete your game data file ( not the game save ) and ensure that the game is updated to the most recent version. Alternatively deleting your cache resolves the bug.

The second issue I have with that is that, this bug was introduced with a patch, which means that it could in no way have been accounted for at the games release.

I'm not saying it's perfect but when you compare it to the likes of other AAA tiles, Black Ops being a good example, worrying about some minor issues seems trivial.

Hello,
While you were working on the game, why did no one from your team tell Yamauchi that the online netcode needs to keep up with the competition? Can you fix this as soon as possible? I and many others want to play online but it takes a lof time to find a good room.

While you are at it, can you tell your colleagues to make sure the update addresses at least SOME primary problems and not waste time on b spec. You can refine it later for Yamauchi's use after you finish developing GT5 completely.

Thank you for joining the forum. Can I direct you here to find out what the community wants. Sorry for my lack of Japanese, but if you use Google Translate, you can translate from English to Japanese.

Now please get to work.
 
It's official, I'm done with this game.

Everyday there is a new bug or glitch. I have never played a game with so many issues. Good lord, even EA "scum of the earth" can produce a game of better quality.

I just don't get what the hell happened to Japanese developers. They were the best, but this generation I have been hard pressed to play a good game that wasn't done by western devs.

Kaz and his retarded visions can go to hell as well. 👎

True true, EA doing better work than PD. Says a lot about PD to be sure.

You should check out Vanquish. It's only single player but mad fun. (Developer: Platinum Games)
 
The problem with GT is that it appears mediocre in most aspects and not genre-leading anymore like past games. The reason is that the competition has improved greatly and PD has been ignoring it. The only thing in which GT5 excels and surpasses anything else is Premium car models, graphically speaking.

- Physics good, but not the best especially if we consider PC sims (which were already better when CPU were far less powerful than the PS3 Cell)
- Weather and night changes are nice, but they're available only on very few tracks
- Good (I guess) number of tracks, but could be more (GT4 had more unique tracks) or use more variations.
- Game fun for a while, but it becomes too soon a grind-work and pokemon-like collection game (like all other GTs, the problem that the most fun part in the game is the beginning when you get to upgrade your car little by little persists)
- It's nice that there are online features, but they feel inferior than other games
- There's some added car customization, but other games are better in this aspect
- Car tuning somewhat updated improved over past GT games, but still too much simple and limited
- Great number of cars, but 85% of them are PS2-gen rehashed car models with little to no improvement performed in the conversion process.
[...]
 
Seriously, the bigger picture is that GT became the best sellinng game it is today because it didn't skip on QA word, because it did prioritise quality over quantity and didn't appear to be a 'sales first game'. That's what diffentieted it from games like Need For Speed. But, as it seems, that has been lost, for one reason or another.

Most importantly, the point still stands: I can't see any trace of proper QA work and playtesting in GT5. For the life of me, I can't. They still got some stuff right, but I can't see the game being playtested.

I'm going to have to step in at thispoint, since there's been a lot of QA bashing over the last couple of pages.

I workd in the games industry for 11 years and about 8 of those were in QA departments. I've managed QA departments for publishers and worked for a good few years in Sony Europe's QA department here in Liverpool (my name is in the credits of GT1 and GT2). So I have a little bot of experience in this matter.

QA'ing GT5 will have started litteraly years ago, it's not something that's done at the last minute. As soon as there was a playable Alpha, it would have been distributed to the three teritorieds (Japan, Europe and US) and the whole process of testing will have started at that point. When the game is in Alpha, the testers will hqave been loking purely at the gameplay, as it moved towards Beta, they would have started looking for bugs as well as the gameplay side of things. Once it was heading towards the release candidate, they would have just been looking for bugs.

Now, all the problems with the gameplay side of things will have been highlighted a long time ago, probably years ago, in this case. But it's up to the developer and the producer at the publisher to decide which of the gameplay issues they actually want to "fix". The reaon why I put fix in inverted commas there is because they may disagree that the issue is an issue in the first place. Which is where the frustration of working in QA comes in. A lot of gameplay issues that are pointed out are ignored by the developer, because they are making the game they want to make and have it playing the way they want it to play.

A lot of the problems highlighted here are bad design, really, not bugs or gameplay issues. They don't prevent you from playing the game, they just make it less fun to do so. These problems have been deliberately left in there, because that's the way PD want the game to be.

So, what I'm saying is that it's PD's fault, not QA.

There are a couple of bugs in there, but not that many. I imagine these were found but waived on the proviso that they get fixed in future patches.
 
^This is a very important point, and one which sheds a different light on PD. So far, most people gave them the benefit of the doubt that all the shortcomings in GT5 are there because of a lack of QA. Having read your post, these people as well as I have to assume that PD made all these decisions (except the few bugs) deliberately, which makes the whole situation even less understandable than it already is.

Given that GT5 Prologue had a proper game structure and ensured people that GT5 would be a major hit, it is the more of a letdown to see it with such an unbalanced gameplay, even more so when they made all of the decisions on purpose. How out of touch must they be with the world?

EDIT:
That said, I found GT-PSP to be disappointing on a similar level. Interestingly, it already showed a comparable level of artificial lengthening of gameplay (only 4 manufacturers every 2 gaming days), something which also can be witnessed in GT5. It seems this actually is the way they are going with Gran Turismo, and if that turns out to be the case, our conjoint ways end right here.
 
Last edited:
A lot of the problems highlighted here are bad design, really, not bugs or gameplay issues. They don't prevent you from playing the game, they just make it less fun to do so. These problems have been deliberately left in there, because that's the way PD want the game to be.

So, what I'm saying is that it's PD's fault, not QA.

There are a couple of bugs in there, but not that many. I imagine these were found but waived on the proviso that they get fixed in future patches.

I've said it before, looking at the limited number of A-spec events, the mis-matched prize cars, the crazy money paying seasonals that showed up, the non-functioning car wash and chassis restore, the inconsistent factors (tire wear, fuel loads) between online and offline modes, the lack of leaderboards and PP system, it's pretty clear that many features were pulled from this game, possibly very late in the development process for reasons we just don't know. Perhaps there were massive QA issues, maybe they just ran out of time and the entire game wasn't working as it should, maybe the AI wasn't working properly on certain tracks (which are strangely missing from A-spec events). Who knows. But I'm guessing PD were just simply behind the 8 ball, massively behind schedule an were given a ultimatum deadline by Sony that the game HAD to be on store shelves by holiday season, 2010. Hopefully the continuing patches will turn GT5 into the game it really should have been in the first place.
 
So, what I'm saying is that it's PD's fault, not QA.

Quite an interesting read. Personally, I feel that it doesn't make PD look any better, though.
It's one thing to miss out on something because you ran out of time (due to bad resource management or whatever), but ignoring problems at hand feels just... So much worse :indiff:

I personally don't really like to believe that they're just ignoring all that stuff, but.. Well, I guess this doesn't bode well for the future of GT :crazy:
 
For those that are expecting major changes to the game through updates may be disappointed. Yes, they can hopefully fix any bugs, but major changes to the gameplay will be out of the question imho. The core game is set, whatever decisions they made with regards to number and variety of races, AI, points system, whatever, may not be able to be changed. This is not a PC game were all the game is installed onto the HD, and a whole new game could be a download, replacing what was initially installed. It does install some information onto the HD, but a lot of it runs from the BR disc.

I think the Seasonal Events are evidence of that. At first there were restrictions, but then when people where complaining about the the poor credit return on the in game events, and the OTT price of some of the in game cars, they made the Seasonal Events easier and profitable. They could have just altered the relative return on the in game events and the cost of some of the cars. That would be admitting that they got a major part of the games skewed wrong though, and those unable to get such an update would not be very happy. :( :rolleyes:

Like it or not, a lot of the things people are disappointed with are not bugs, they are the way the game was designed to be, as ScouserInExile has pointed out, and have been for a number of years. A major game re-design can not be done with updates I fear. :( :rolleyes:

That they are seemingly fiddling around with GT Anywhere (which few will make use of imho), leads me to think that they are happy with the design of the game and are adding the things they didn't get time to finish, but definitely want in the game. I hope I'm wrong, but time will tell I suppose. :rolleyes:




As a side note, when comparing GT5 to GT5 Prologue, it feels like they were done by different people, and the Prologue people did a better job. That game felt more of a challenge racing wise to me. I was cursing the penalty system in GT5P, but GT5 seems to have not implemented any penalty system unless online. A more intelligent penalty would have been nice, but if they can't get the racing AI right after all these years/games, I doubt the any other type of game intelligence is achievable by PD.
 
But I'm guessing PD were just simply behind the 8 ball, massively behind schedule an were given a ultimatum deadline by Sony that the game HAD to be on store shelves by holiday season, 2010. Hopefully the continuing patches will turn GT5 into the game it really should have been in the first place.

I imagine this had a lot to do with it. IMO, Sony have actually dropped the ball a touch here. From what I can tell, they basically gave PD free reign to create the game they wanted, with an eye to releasing it when they wanted. Then someone has come along and said "we've spent £xmillion funding this game for the last 5 years, what have we got to show for it?" and have then leaned on the producers, who have then turned to PD and said "get it finished, now!"

What this has meant it that it has suffered from feature creep over the last few years and PD have had to slash and burn anything that wasn't in a finished state to get the game in the box. So some features have been left on the cutting room floor and may well end up in GT6.

It's either that or there was a change in personel at Sony and the new producer took the bull by the horns and made them finish it to a new deadline, makiing some tough descisions along the way. This happened with the last console game I worked on - it was wandering allong, vastly over it's dealine (like it was 18 months overdue when I joined the developer, and I worked there for 12 months, at the end of which it was released), so the publisher brought in a new producer (who recently in charge of the development of a Call Of Duty: Black Ops) and he totally turned the project around not least by slashing the design doc in half.

For those that are expecting major changes to the game through updates may be disappointed. .

I was going to say this. A lot of the stuff that eople are saying they would exect to be in future patches involve major changes to the fundementals of the game. Which just isn't going to happen. I also can't help thinking that a lot of the stuff people are complaining about really aren't worth the effort of fixing...
 
The problem with GT is that it appears mediocre in most aspects and not genre-leading anymore like past games. The reason is that the competition has improved greatly and PD has been ignoring it. The only thing in which GT5 excels and surpasses anything else is Premium car models, graphically speaking.

- Physics good, but not the best especially if we consider PC sims (which were already better when CPU were far less powerful than the PS3 Cell)
- Weather and night changes are nice, but they're available only on very few tracks
- Good (I guess) number of tracks, but could be more (GT4 had more unique tracks) or use more variations.
- Game fun for a while, but it becomes too soon a grind-work and pokemon-like collection game (like all other GTs, the problem that the most fun part in the game is the beginning when you get to upgrade your car little by little persists)
- It's nice that there are online features, but they feel inferior than other games
- There's some added car customization, but other games are better in this aspect
- Car tuning somewhat updated improved over past GT games, but still too much simple and limited
- Great number of cars, but 85% of them are PS2-gen rehashed car models with little to no improvement performed in the conversion process.
[...]


Absolutely spot on mate, you've hit the nail right on the head there & I totally aggree.


👍
 
So the QA has been done so PD did this intentionally. They purposely made a half ass game is what I been reading now over the past few pages.

And heres something that bothers me. Since I refuse to do A- Spec grinding i been doing B-spec and i notice a few things that annoy me so much about this mode.

The fast that Bob gets so dam lazy if youl eave him for 2 laps driving by himself and then the ai catches up and pass him and then his lazy ass dont even try to fight for his position he just lets them pass then takes some ****** place like 3rd and this is very annoying in endurance races because I really dont need to do them twice and i dont have an x1 that i can just give him and not worry.

Why cant this game just have had all the gt4 bspec features where i can tell him to stay at a pace insted of me having to watch him every 20 minutes when he obviously should be winning
 

Latest Posts

Back