Is anyone else disappointed with GT5?

[Jack002]

* Put the main menu (and a few others) into cache RAM so it doesn't take so long to get to
* Make fully adjustable transmissions fully adjustable
* Make 1 2 and 3 saves for the settings like in GT5P
* The replay player needs a rewind and a FF. Saving a replay, ASK for a filename!
* Rethink/redo the entire credit/level system!
* Put the manufacture races back in like you HAD in GT5P!
* Let us SELL cars for what we paid and not make us give them up for free.
* No 20mil limit on earnings
* No more 20mil cars! Make all the costs REASONABLE
* Think about improving the damage and physics. Lots of gaps there.
* Allow buying mods in the tune area so you can get ready for a race without having to leave the menu
* Oil changes, put a checkbox in the garage for every car and have a big 'oil change' button at the bottom.
* Make the current credits earned viewable somewhere.

 

[dominic280378]

* Put the main menu (and a few others) into cache RAM so it doesn't take so long to get to
* Make fully adjustable transmissions fully adjustable
* Make 1 2 and 3 saves for the settings like in GT5P
* The replay player needs a rewind and a FF. Saving a replay, ASK for a filename!
* Rethink/redo the entire credit/level system!
* Put the manufacture races back in like you HAD in GT5P!
* Let us SELL cars for what we paid and not make us give them up for free.
* No 20mil limit on earnings
* No more 20mil cars! Make all the costs REASONABLE
* Think about improving the damage and physics. Lots of gaps there.
* Allow buying mods in the tune area so you can get ready for a race without having to leave the menu
* Oil changes, put a checkbox in the garage for every car and have a big 'oil change' button at the bottom.
* Make the current credits earned viewable somewhere.

Good list of things that would make the game better

 

[CarreraGT]

I agree with all the points above, although I think the whole oil change is the most gimmicky feature going around and they should just get rid of it along with the car wash. It's funny to hear people refer to "oil change" as a modification

 

[stagga]

I haven't got time to read all 100 pages but I'm seeing a lot of opinions I totally agree with. PD had 5 years and a huge budget and somehow they've messed this up. What's worse it seems in some cases they didn't even bother trying.

My personal biggest grievance is the state of the standard cars and some of the old tracks. I'm a computer games artist myself and have worked on several triple AAA titles. I can say with some certainty that just ONE artist could have brought those tracks up to a much higher standard in 5 years and ONE more artist could easily have smoothed off the blocky geometry and- given that all the original reference material would be available- have up-rezzed the textures, at least smoothing out the harsh jaggy painted edges and shut lines. I don't think a rate of one car a day would be out of the question, So 700 cars in about 2 and half years then?

But instead PD just said..."nope..that'll do, just stick this old PS2 stuff in and say we have 1000 cars."

And it's probably been mentioned before but what a waste the Go Karts was! I was really looking forward to that but instead of twisty, tight proper Karting tracks we got big boring ovals- 3 of them!

What's strange is that no other game has disappointed me so much but kept me playing for so long!

 

[Ghost Rydor]

Don't know for sure, but we do know that the AI has trouble with certain spots on some tracks (like Monaco, for example). Seattle had that nasty kink near the main straight, and I can't really think of a spot where El Capitan would cause trouble, except maybe near the tunnel. It's hard to say for sure without seeing the algorithms for getting 10+ AI cars through tight sections of track.

Does the course maker allow for kinked sections?

Great tracks in that list, though. Sure would be nice to see them again in GT5.

From my experience with the course maker the tracks you can create don't have anything too difficult in them. I tried and tried to make a technical track to expose cars weaknesses but you have no control over elevation and such so you end up with a pretty weak challenge.

 

[calan_svc]

What we need is a single, simple bullet list (combine Reaperman's and Jack002's) posted all over the hallways at PD.

 

[dominic280378]

I haven't got time to read all 100 pages but I'm seeing a lot of opinions I totally agree with. PD had 5 years and a huge budget and somehow they've messed this up. What's worse it seems in some cases they didn't even bother trying.

My personal biggest grievance is the state of the standard cars and some of the old tracks. I'm a computer games artist myself and have worked on several triple AAA titles. I can say with some certainty that just ONE artist could have brought those tracks up to a much higher standard in 5 years and ONE more artist could easily have smoothed off the blocky geometry and- given that all the original reference material would be available- have up-rezzed the textures, at least smoothing out the harsh jaggy painted edges and shut lines. I don't think a rate of one car a day would be out of the question, So 700 cars in about 2 and half years then?

But instead PD just said..."nope..that'll do, just stick this old PS2 stuff in and say we have 1000 cars."

And it's probably been mentioned before but what a waste the Go Karts was! I was really looking forward to that but instead of twisty, tight proper Karting tracks we got big boring ovals- 3 of them!

What's strange is that no other game has disappointed me so much but kept me playing for so long!

Nice to get input from professionals. I think the fact that some parts of the game look so good high lights how poor some of it is. The way the camera pans around the cars before a race starts was used back in GT1 days to show off the then amazing models, these days it just shows off the big difference between standards and premiums
Do you think they just imported standards and tracks "as is" from PS2 materials without doing any work on them?

 

[jenoma]

At this point, with the new seasonal events, I can start to voice my disappointment, which seems to be a bit different from what I've seen in the last pages of this thread.

When I think of GT I think of a game I've bought many years ago, imported with a Dual Shock from Japan, and that gave me a lot of enjoyment and one of the main reason, at those times, to have a PSX. Since than many things has changed, game design, hardware power, developers ability, time and money involved in big project and the whole gaming market.

In this generation we have all witnessed the fall from the throne of some great Oriental developers. Square Enix is one of them, with the FFXIII semi-fiasco and the FFXIV debacle.

One think I thought PD could do right, after 6 years of development (6 years are quite a long development time, hardly seen in other titles), was to smoothly bring GT to the new generation of gaming consoles, but I was semi wrong.

In this day and age of gaming, Western developers have changed and adapted the design of their games, we are no more in the age of Lineage, with the need of constant grinding in the same spot for weeks just to raise a couple of level and some credits. Let alone a level system based on the same concept and placed in one of the best racing game ever made on console.

Grinding and Racing Simulator are two words that, in my opinion, should have never been brought together. The XP and reward table, as it has been implemented on GT5, is completely illogical and unbalanced: Endurances that pay less than a single 5 minutes race, the player than need to do the same race hundred times just to buy one expensive car, no saves for races longer than 2 hours. That scream bad game design all over the place.

The seasonal races were an attempt to fix all this: one go race for some millions credits. As bad as it sounds, they were really a welcome feature, until they decided to remain true to their first idea of gameplay and placed a group of races identical to the A-Spec, with the same horrid reward system.

I'm starting to guess if they've hired some NCsoft developer with the insane idea that the hard core gamer wants to be punished for any sort of activity done "in game". A 20 millions active subscribers of a popular Western MMO say otherwise.

The more I see where PD is going, the less I like it and I can't stop to think that GT5 is another really big missed opportunity for Sony and Yamauchi.

This is just my honest opinion, nothing more, nothing less.

 

[Destinkeys]

I guess I'll throw my laundry list down. I hope I don't miss too many and kick myself later for it. And no, I don't play it anymore. I'm waiting for patches or GT6.

• Not enough options for race requirements online
• No 'race builder' ability to customize races offline
• No AI difficulty settings
• Not enough offline race variety, poor requirements for many of these races
• Not enough filter/search options for finding lobbies
• Leaderboards and matchmaking were on the package but not in the game
• B-spec controls poorly documented
• B-spec generally inferior to GT4 (more hassle, little fun)
• Track cutting allowed
• Generally poor penalty system online/offline
• Fuel use and tire wear don't seem proper (?)
• Errors in car documentation
• No 'realistic' option for visual/mechanical damage
• Mechanical damage not allowed in a/b spec
• Not all cars can be sold
• Only one tune per car
• Not all cars can be painted
• Some(?) cars lose repaint color when traded
• No methods of organizing garage (folders maybe)
• Paint system is silly and lacks preview.
• Coursemaker tracks not able to go online
• Head tracking almost totally missing from the game
• Variable physics (?) (offline/online)
• Standard cars were not upscaled very well
• GT4 tracks not upscaled very well
• Poor shadow and smoke effects
• Menus are clumsy and take too long to load (backgrounds?)
• Logitech wheel support (especialy braking) clumsier than prologue
• Upgrade glitches when upgrading or race modding (have to do things in proper order or else parts, or their effects, vanish).
• Cars gain HP, making it hard to tune for a set number
• Standard cars lack appearance upgrades that they had in gt4
• 'Bumper cam' placement appears inconsistent from car to car (?)
• No photo mode for standard cars
• Long initial load time (bad for when the game locks up and you restart)
• Leaving online lobby doesn't take you to lobby select
• 'Facebook style' profile settings not integrated into online very well (no league/tourney tools, no avatars in lobbies, no groups even)
• Keeps forgetting that I use a custom soundtrack
• No custom soundtracks online
• Time/weather options not available on all tracks
• Let me pick tire/assist options or view requirements while online track is loading
• Many hours of entertainment lost due to poor utilization of Top Gear track (standing starts, drag races, camera angles)
• Localization of measures incomplete (kilograms, newton metres?)
• Don't even get me started on the sounds. There's little sense of savagery on even the most extreme car.
• Endurance races lack save, or ability to switch drivers (b-spec or online)
• Lack of custom decals. GT's never had/needed them before, but I ding them for it. Decal shops have become an expected feature in triple-A racing games and GT has long been the king of customization.

Some of these seem like they would be very quick fixes.

* Put the main menu (and a few others) into cache RAM so it doesn't take so long to get to
* Make fully adjustable transmissions fully adjustable
* Make 1 2 and 3 saves for the settings like in GT5P
* The replay player needs a rewind and a FF. Saving a replay, ASK for a filename!
* Rethink/redo the entire credit/level system!
* Put the manufacture races back in like you HAD in GT5P!
* Let us SELL cars for what we paid and not make us give them up for free.
* No 20mil limit on earnings
* No more 20mil cars! Make all the costs REASONABLE
* Think about improving the damage and physics. Lots of gaps there.
* Allow buying mods in the tune area so you can get ready for a race without having to leave the menu
* Oil changes, put a checkbox in the garage for every car and have a big 'oil change' button at the bottom.
* Make the current credits earned viewable somewhere.

How about the mods making this list a 'sticky', and we'll cross them off one by one as they get patched?

Shouldn't take but a decade or so...

 

[Dennisch]

I never expected that my moment would come so soon... I haven't played it for a couple of days now, and I really don't have the urge to do so. I read that the new seasonals where up, but it did nothing, I almost feel ashamed, I played the other Gt's so much it's almost unreal.

*sigh*

 

[dominic280378]

At this point, with the new seasonal events, I can start to voice my disappointment, which seems to be a bit different from what I've seen in the last pages of this thread.

When I think of GT I think of a game I've bought many years ago, imported with a Dual Shock from Japan, and that gave me a lot of enjoyment and one of the main reason, at those times, to have a PSX. Since than many things has changed, game design, hardware power, developers ability, time and money involved in big project and the whole gaming market.

In this generation we have all witnessed the fall from the throne of some great Oriental developers. Square Enix is one of them, with the FFXIII semi-fiasco and the FFXIV debacle.

One think I thought PD could do right, after 6 years of development (6 years are quite a long development time, hardly seen in other titles), was to smoothly bring GT to the new generation of gaming consoles, but I was semi wrong.

In this day and age of gaming, Western developers have changed and adapted the design of their games, we are no more in the age of Lineage, with the need of constant grinding in the same spot for weeks just to raise a couple of level and some credits. Let alone a level system based on the same concept and placed in one of the best racing game ever made on console.

Grinding and Racing Simulator are two words that, in my opinion, should have never been brought together. The XP and reward table, as it has been implemented on GT5, is completely illogical and unbalanced: Endurances that pay less than a single 5 minutes race, the player than need to do the same race hundred times just to buy one expensive car, no saves for races longer than 2 hours. That scream bad game design all over the place.

The seasonal races were an attempt to fix all this: one go race for some millions credits. As bad as it sounds, they were really a welcome feature, until they decided to remain true to their first idea of gameplay and placed a group of races identical to the A-Spec, with the same horrid reward system.

I'm starting to guess if they've hired some NCsoft developer with the insane idea that the hard core gamer wants to be punished for any sort of activity done "in game". A 20 millions active subscribers of a popular Western MMO say otherwise.

The more I see where PD is going, the less I like it and I can't stop to think that GT5 is another really big missed opportunity for Sony and Yamauchi.

This is just my honest opinion, nothing more, nothing less.

Another well argued post. Some of the decisions made just seem completely illogical, making the licenses redundant by having a leveling system, the seemingly arbitrary rewards for the leveling system, the ridiculous paint system, the woeful menu design etc. are all things that could have been fixed with no more resources needed from the PS3 hardware, PD got them wrong, plain and simple.
This coupled with the facts that the game doesn't seem to be have been properly tested before release (its a really buggy piece of software) and the refusal by PD to implement realistic penalties for crashing/wall riding etc means you have a poorly designed, buggy and dated game.
The most disappointing thing is that the game has some amazing moments moments, but they are always ruined by what surrounds them.

 

[Rylan]

Snipped a lot out that isn't really relevant for me personally but some comments in green.

No AI difficulty settings - I agree but AI is notoriously hard to code in any game.Not enough offline race variety, poor requirements for many of these races - Agreed
Leaderboards and matchmaking were on the package but not in the game - Agreed. We need leagues and leaderboards and a friends only version.
Fuel use and tire wear don't seem proper (?) - Huge issue. No variation between Soft and Hard
Not all cars can be sold - Sale value should be less than purchase though
Not all cars can be painted - Yeah, livery ones which seems fair.
Paint system is silly and lacks preview. - There's a technical issue here. It would take large memory resources for you to be able to flick through each colour.
Coursemaker tracks not able to go online - That's not going to happen either otherwise they limit their DLC options
Head tracking almost totally missing from the game - There was an announcement from PD that they cannot put head tracking into GT Life and Offline due to the memory resources required. Don't expect this to happen ever.
Variable physics (?) (offline/online) - Again, this is a technical issue necessary to make netcoding easier. Don't expect a change.
Cars gain HP, making it hard to tune for a set number - Cars in real life do gain BHP as they bed in but then start to fall later on. They're aiming for a simulation so this might be necessary for their vision.
No photo mode for standard cars - Yeah, they're not going to let you zoom in on the low res textures.
Long initial load time (bad for when the game locks up and you restart) A technical issue and I think you need to give them some credit here. Either way, dont expect it to changeLeaving online lobby doesn't take you to lobby select
'Facebook style' profile settings not integrated into online very well (no league/tourney tools, no avatars in lobbies, no groups even) - Agreed
No custom soundtracks online - Mine is fine.
Time/weather options not available on all tracks - Again, this is a technical issue which is a lot of work. PD have said they'd like to implement weather and time change on all tracks but it's not a quick fix.
Let me pick tire/assist options or view requirements while online track is loading - I can sympathise with this. It's a bit annoying.
Endurance races lack save, or ability to switch drivers (b-spec or online) - I'm always torn on this one. If you could save the race it wouldnt be an endurance race but the ability to race it online with a mate taking turns would be awesome. I can't see it happening though.
Lack of custom decals. GT's never had/needed them before, but I ding them for it. Decal shops have become an expected feature in triple-A racing games and GT has long been the king of customization. - Again, technical issue. GT5 uses it's resources in other ways. To allow custom placement of decals would require a sacrifice elsewhere



* Put the main menu (and a few others) into cache RAM so it doesn't take so long to get to - What should they dump from RAM to make this possible? I'd rather have slow performance in the menu than in the race.
* Make fully adjustable transmissions fully adjustable - Agreed
* Make 1 2 and 3 saves for the settings like in GT5P
* The replay player needs a rewind and a FF. Saving a replay, ASK for a filename! - Yes, yes, yes. I want to see the last lap of a 2 hour Le Mans we did last week but I'm not watching the whole lot.
* No more 20mil cars! Make all the costs REASONABLE - Hmmn. Some cars do cost a lot of money.
* Allow buying mods in the tune area so you can get ready for a race without having to leave the menu - I like this. Would resolve a lot of menu based complaints.
* Oil changes, put a checkbox in the garage for every car and have a big 'oil change' button at the bottom. Lot of calculations to be run here...Not sure.

 

[stagga]

Nice to get input from professionals. I think the fact that some parts of the game look so good high lights how poor some of it is. The way the camera pans around the cars before a race starts was used back in GT1 days to show off the then amazing models, these days it just shows off the big difference between standards and premiums
Do you think they just imported standards and tracks "as is" from PS2 materials without doing any work on them?

I agree totally. Some of the new tracks look stunning (well Madrid at least!) and the premium cars are second to none. But yes, I think they really have imported some of the old tracks wholesale or with the most minor tweaks.

For example if you check the water in Monaco harbour it's a stationary texture and different from the water shader in the updated High Speed Ring. The buildings in Monaco are still just flat textured boxes where a little bit of extrusion on a few of the trackside buildings could have brought the place to life! For an example on how to do that properly look no further than F1 2010 or ironically- Madrid, Tokyo or London in GT5!
The same goes for the 3d animated crowd in the new tracks and the flat alpha sprites in the old ones- they could have easily replaced those with the new versions but chose not to.

Cruciform trees have no place at the trackside in a modern racing game! They've been doing this since GT1 but everyone else moved on 5 or more years ago. The worst part for me is that section on Deep Forest (or Trail Mountain?) where they've tried to be artistic with the overhanging trees but just used the same model about 20 times so it just looks like placeholder geometry. It's not just lazy it's incredibly poor art direction.

The really strange thing is if they decided they weren't going to bother improving the old tracks why not, as many have suggested, put ALL the old tracks in the game and not make us race Grand Valley and Cape Ring a hundred times?

 

[Tornado]

Not all cars can be sold - Sale value should be less than purchase though

Only for new road cars. Used cars shouldn't go down in value when purchased, nor should (most of) the race cars.

Not all cars can be painted - Yeah, livery ones which seems fair.

No. There are plain-jane road cars that cannot be painted, like the Corvette C1.

Paint system is silly and lacks preview. - There's a technical issue here. It would take large memory resources for you to be able to flick through each colour.

This is untrue. All that would need to be done is a Confirm - Yes/No pop up after you paint the car. If you select No, it reverts back to the way it was. It already keeps the previous color in system memory until you exit GT Auto, so it literally would require no major changes.

Coursemaker tracks not able to go online - That's not going to happen either otherwise they limit their DLC options

It was promised in the packaging just as the leaderboards were.

No photo mode for standard cars - Yeah, they're not going to let you zoom in on the low res textures.

It doesn't matter. There is no justifiable reason for PD to lock 80% of the cars out of one of the game modes just because PD are sheepish with how bad they look. Any cover-up they were hoping to accomplish went out the window when those pictures of the standard Hommel Berlinette started circulating on videogame sites less than a week after the game came out.

No custom soundtracks online - Mine is fine.

How?







Otherwise it seems like a fair enough assessment of those points.

 

[dominic280378]

I agree totally. Some of the new tracks look stunning (well Madrid at least!) and the premium cars are second to none. But yes, I think they really have imported some of the old tracks wholesale or with the most minor tweaks.

For example if you check the water in Monaco harbour it's a stationary texture and different from the water shader in the updated High Speed Ring. The buildings in Monaco are still just flat textured boxes where a little bit of extrusion on a few of the trackside buildings could have brought the place to life! For an example on how to do that properly look no further than F1 2010 or ironically- Madrid, Tokyo or London in GT5!
The same goes for the 3d animated crowd in the new tracks and the flat alpha sprites in the old ones- they could have easily replaced those with the new versions but chose not to.

Cruciform trees have no place at the trackside in a modern racing game! They've been doing this since GT1 but everyone else moved on 5 or more years ago. The worst part for me is that section on Deep Forest (or Trail Mountain?) where they've tried to be artistic with the overhanging trees but just used the same model about 20 times so it just looks like placeholder geometry. It's not just lazy it's incredibly poor art direction.

The really strange thing is if they decided they weren't going to bother improving the old tracks why not, as many have suggested, put ALL the old tracks in the game and not make us race Grand Valley and Cape Ring a hundred times?

Thanks for the input, great to get a professionals view. I think Laguna Seca suffers from not being updated too, the sand and kerbs look like flat textures put on polygons making the track and not real surfaces. I've been trying to figure out what exactly happened when they were making the game.

I just think they had no clear vision of what they wanted from GT5 and PD seems really, really hesitant to change. Its almost like they are still working on GT1, polishing a bit here, chiseling off a bit there, whereas with GT5 they really needed to start from scratch instead of using 10 or 12 year old design philosophy.
Its a real shame, as I said earlier, I love some of the game, its one of the few games that has moments that take your breath away, its just that they you have to dig through a lot of dross to find them.

 

[Rylan]

It was promised in the packaging just as the leaderboards were.

Perhaps the UK packaging is different but mine is pretty sparse. It doesnt say anything about making your own tracks and going online.

Either way, would you accept that, like me, you'd be willing to play for a DLC premium quality track? They'd be mad to allow endless possibilities online. I agree with your sentiment but I would understand if they withdrew from this.

It doesn't matter. There is no justifiable reason for PD to lock 80% of the cars out of one of the game modes just because PD are sheepish with how bad they look.

Oh, I agree, especially when you can zoom in on them in a replay. Still.

No custom soundtracks online - Mine is fine.

How?

Right, by this I am assuming that the OP was saying he cannot play custom music when he races online. if that's not correct then forgive me.

But my custom soundtracks play fine when I'm online. I know this because I put Feeders' Buck Rogers ( you know, to make it a real GT game? ) into my song list and had to excuse myself from 2hr long race after 5 minutes just because it played Buck Rogers exclusively.

Thats the real issue with online music. It plays everything you have on your PS3 and nothing else. Can you imagine my surprise when Jingle Bells started playing whilst Im driving round Monaco just because I didn't take my Christmas album off the PS3? I'd rather GT5 automatically detected playlists called GT5BGM and GT5RACE and played the music accordingly. I also want the opton to mix my own music in with the tracks on the disc.

 

[Killinator]

I'd rather GT5 automatically detected playlists called GT5BGM and GT5RACE and played the music accordingly. I also want the opton to mix my own music in with the tracks on the disc.

Could you not just create 2 separate playlists and fill them with the music/songs you want for BGM and race?

My custom soundtrack doesn't work online, your situation would appear to run against the norm.

 

[Tornado]

Perhaps the UK packaging is different but mine is pretty sparse. It doesnt say anything about making your own tracks and going online.

It is in the manual. At least the U.S. manual.

But my custom soundtracks play fine when I'm online.

This confuses me. Its never worked for me, and you are honestly the first person that I've heard say that it works.

Thats the real issue with online music. It plays everything you have on your PS3 and nothing else. Can you imagine my surprise when Jingle Bells started playing whilst Im driving round Monaco just because I didn't take my Christmas album off the PS3? I'd rather GT5 automatically detected playlists called GT5BGM and GT5RACE and played the music accordingly.

Make a playlist and point the game to it. That's what I did. I called them GT5 Race and GT5 Menu.

I also want the opton to mix my own music in with the tracks on the disc.

This would be nice. There are a few menu tracks on the disc that I enjoy hearing, and it would be nice to mix them in with the GT2 and GT4 menu music that I normally have playing.

 

[R34EVO9]

I noticed this the other night on special route 7 i think (not the long boring track with all the straights) i was watching a replay and omg it was right after u hit the s curves going into that really slow left hand hairpin and i looked up at the trees and it looked like a 1 yr old with a crayon drew it.

I cant believe some of the things pd did with this game and actually released it.

 

[Rylan]

Could you not just create 2 separate playlists and fill them with the music/songs you want for BGM and race?

My custom soundtrack doesn't work online, your situation would appear to run against the norm.

Now, this is interesting. I can't point to any playlists at all. When I click on the playlist I then have to click on a song. But the effect is the same no matter what I click on, it just plays all my songs whenever I race.

So, I could have 10 songs on my PS3, and 9 of them in one playlist. Even if I point to the playlist it will still play the 10th. But it will play them online.

Perhaps we're looking at a bug rather than feature.

 

[Killinator]

Now, this is interesting. I can't point to any playlists at all. When I click on the playlist I then have to click on a song. But the effect is the same no matter what I click on, it just plays all my songs whenever I race.

So, I could have 10 songs on my PS3, and 9 of them in one playlist. Even if I point to the playlist it will still play the 10th. But it will play them online.

Perhaps we're looking at a bug rather than feature.

That is weird, mine is the polar opposite,
It plays the playlists perfectly fine offline, but immediately plays the original soundtrack when I go online, which I figured was the case for everyone.

 

[deftonesmx17]

I'm lucky if my custom music even sticks for more than a day. I got rather sick of it defaulting back to the games soundtrack after a few races when I even had repeat on.

 

[GrandCobra]

What baffles me is how on earth did this game pass Quality Assurance? If I was the man in charge I would have stamped 'FAILED QUALITY ASSURANCE' not once, but about ten times all over the paper.

 

[Ghost Rydor]

That is weird, mine is the polar opposite,
It plays the playlists perfectly fine offline, but immediately plays the original soundtrack when I go online, which I figured was the case for everyone.

lol, I'm in the same boat!

 

[Rylan]

What baffles me is how on earth did this game pass Quality Assurance? If I was the man in charge I would have stamped 'FAILED QUALITY ASSURANCE' not once, but about ten times all over the paper.

Because bugs regarding the games music don't hold up a project this big when it's 95% working.

Be fair, this isn't exactly gamebreaking is it?

 

[Luminis]

Because bugs regarding the games music don't hold up a project this big when it's 95% working.

Be fair, this isn't exactly gamebreaking is it?

This one isn't. Actually, most of what's wrong with GT5 isn't gamebreaking. It adds up, though.
And someone going berserk with a "QA Doesn't Approve!" stamp could've prevented a lot of it

 

[jjaisli]

For all we know, that "QA Doesn't Approve" stamp came down on GT5 SEVERAL times in the weeks leading up to it's release. It may have even been the reason for it's 11th hour delay.

 

[PzR Slim]

For all we know, that "QA Doesn't Approve" stamp came down on GT5 SEVERAL times in the weeks leading up to it's release. It may have even been the reason for it's 11th hour delay.

You would have to think that some of these problems were flagged during QA but the powers that be decided that it had to be shipped. Can't imagine how big the bugs were that facilitated the 11th hour delay

 

[Rylan]

And someone going berserk with a "QA Doesn't Approve!" stamp could've prevented a lot of it

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.

 

[ShaneG]

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.

I'd have to say that the "size bomb" bug is going to be a game breaker,
unless it gets fixed, and soon.

I'm over half way to the size where it hits, and so I've stopped playing until they release a fix for it.