Look At What They Took From Us: Gran Turismo Online Racing Retrospective

[Famine]

I split this discussion out from the GT7 Daily Race Discussion thread, because it was interesting enough to have its own thread and was swamped by other... stuff where it was.

Anyway, the discussion continues below:

 

[Stringerbell]

I don't expect anything more - but I'll always be disappointed because I love the franchise. It's a shame to see the online go this way when you've been playing it for 20 years and it used to be so much more. It's disappointing to see them essentially have given up and thrown in the towel on something that used to show as much love put into it as the car models, the music, the atmosphere.
They've been chasing online racing since Gran Turismo 3, and were at the forefront of so much of that on the PS3. They're behind everyone now. Not a competitor out there that does it worse.

You don't see any of that love anymore, so I'll always be disappointed in how it turned out. Hard not to be.

What was the game like before? I'm a relative newbie compared to you guys so this is all I know.

I may be in the minority here but tuning holds no interest to me, but cars in real life also don't really hold any interest, I don't even know what cars are FWD, RWD or AWD unless I see it posted on here.

I play the game purely for the competition so if it's a level playing field in terms of cars it wouldn't actually matter to me if we raced the same cars every week.

That being said, I do hope they bring some tuning races back in as it seems like if you like tuning then you REALLY like it so it would be good for that player base to get something they can really get their teeth stuck into and get a huge amount of enjoyment from.


On next weeks races - I've not actually raced the 3 tracks - only done LM reverse and have picked other combo's any time Fuji and GV have been on - where do we think will have the least amount of carnage? Bit sad that's now my decision making process.

Hoping Race A has a car with some ooomph to it as could be fun

 

[Nebuc72]

What was the game like before? I'm a relative newbie compared to you guys so this is all I know.

I may be in the minority here but tuning holds no interest to me, but cars in real life also don't really hold any interest, I don't even know what cars are FWD, RWD or AWD unless I see it posted on here.

I play the game purely for the competition so if it's a level playing field in terms of cars it wouldn't actually matter to me if we raced the same cars every week.

Probably not a game you'd be that interested in to be brutally honest, maybe to do the GT Academy stuff but it was fun first and competition second. Even a time on PS3 where you could train a B-Spec (AI) driver and have them race against other players B-Spec drivers.
The competition all came from the fun, they weren't chasing anything - you had shuffle (random car) races, a lot more rotating car categories, tuning races, different limits, all sorts. Not sure if it was in 6 (shuffles weren't for some reason either) but you could also loan other players cars which made everything a much better playing field.

You'd have more events at a time, more things to do, see more tracks more often. It was just fun. It made you want to learn more about things.
There's no reason some of this can't exist alongside them using Gr. categories over and over and over, but they just don't do it.

I think it's really poor of a car game like Gran Turismo to have players that don't understand drivetrains. Not a sleight on you, but the old games would teach you that natively. You wouldn't even know you'd learnt it. Everything is so sterilised now, and there's no reason to step outside your comfort zone. Never going to learn like that.

 

[Stringerbell]

Probably not a game you'd be that interested in to be brutally honest, maybe to do the GT Academy stuff but it was fun first and competition second. Even a time on PS3 where you could train a B-Spec (AI) driver and have them race against other players B-Spec drivers.
The competition all came from the fun, they weren't chasing anything - you had shuffle (random car) races, a lot more rotating car categories, tuning races, different limits, all sorts. Not sure if it was in 6 (shuffles weren't for some reason either) but you could also loan other players cars which made everything a much better playing field.

View attachment 1555910
View attachment 1555911
View attachment 1555912

You'd have more events at a time, more things to do, see more tracks more often. It was just fun. It made you want to learn more about things.
There's no reason some of this can't exist alongside them using Gr. categories over and over and over, but they just don't do it.

View attachment 1555913

I think it's really poor of a car game like Gran Turismo to have players that don't understand drivetrains. Not a sleight on you, but the old games would teach you that natively. You wouldn't even know you'd learnt it. Everything is so sterilised now, and there's no reason to step outside your comfort zone. Never going to learn like that.

Oh wow, looks like they've really streamlined the offering and essentially taken the guts right out of it. Can see how that's frustrating for the out and out enthusiasts. But you're right, it wouldn't have been a game for me. Funnily enough my oldest/closest mate is a full blown petrol head and he played ever gran turismo and always tried to get me involved and now I'm playing it he doesn't

Do you get what you need in that respect from Iracing now?

Hopefully you guys get some of this added back in for GT8.

 

[NevilleNobody]

Oh wow, looks like they've really streamlined the offering and essentially taken the guts right out of it.

It's actually the opposite. The game started way back when as basically a road car tuner and mod game, with a focus on Japanese cars and culture to some degree. FFWD to GT7 and it has tried to please everyone, slowly but surely, generation to generation, it has added race cars, online racing etc. GT Sport added the dailys.

So you have two camps to some degree, the guys who wan their full featured Gran Turismo from 2003 with a focus on improved AI, tuning etc, then the guys that just race exclusively online. The online racing pays the bills, generates the income that keeps the game alive, so I suspect PD has put more into this, much to the ire of the "I want to mod a FTO all week" crowd. In a nutshell, as they've added content and tried to please everyone, they've sort of neglected the hard core GT fans.

Personally, I could honestly let the road car side of the game slide, I am content with TT's and online racing. But that's just me. The core feature to me is there's no other game that let's me login on a console, be mated with 15 guys roughly my pace and be up and racing in 5 minutes, there's literally no other option. I suspect I am a core user of the game, so middle aged, busy with work/kids/life etc and really value the ease of use to get racing online. Although I have been a car/motorsport guy since I was 4, I live and breathe car culture and love watching racing of ay formulae, always have.

 

[Stringerbell]

The core feature to me is there's no other game that let's me login on a console, be mated with 15 guys roughly my pace and be up and racing in 5 minutes, there's literally no other option. I suspect I am a core user of the game, so middle aged, busy with work/kids/life etc and really value the ease of use to get racing online.

This absolutely hits the nail on the head for my exact situation as well.

The only thing I would like would be bigger grids so you are always racing someone, then they can do longer races like the Le Mans one they had with more success as that race suffered from 16 people and a few quitting and then 12 people being completely strung out over a 50 min race.

 

[Nebuc72]

It's actually the opposite. The game started way back when as basically a road car tuner and mod game, with a focus on Japanese cars and culture to some degree. FFWD to GT7 and it has tried to please everyone, slowly but surely, generation to generation, it has added race cars, online racing etc. GT Sport added the dailys.

So you have two camps to some degree, the guys who wan their full featured Gran Turismo from 2003 with a focus on improved AI, tuning etc, then the guys that just race exclusively online. The online racing pays the bills, generates the income that keeps the game alive, so I suspect PD has put more into this, much to the ire of the "I want to mod a FTO all week" crowd. In a nutshell, as they've added content and tried to please everyone, they've sort of neglected the hard core GT fans.

Personally, I could honestly let the road car side of the game slide, I am content with TT's and online racing. But that's just me. The core feature to me is there's no other game that let's me login on a console, be mated with 15 guys roughly my pace and be up and racing in 5 minutes, there's literally no other option. I suspect I am a core user of the game, so middle aged, busy with work/kids/life etc and really value the ease of use to get racing online. Although I have been a car/motorsport guy since I was 4, I live and breathe car culture and love watching racing of ay formulae, always have.

My thing with this is, do you really think they're putting more into the online? I don't think they're putting anything into the online. It's the exact same as the GT Sport formula but with less variety and with events more often being duplicated.
Not every week needs to be a tuning race but in a given month there's no reason for you to see Gr.3 and Gr.4 7/8 times - and again no reason for those events to be the whole class on the same tyres with no weather and no strategy.

They've got GT500s in there they can use (limiting it to the 90s ones) - they could limit it to the DBR9, M3 and F1 GTR - you know what I mean? The online is getting no love at all, and by not using what they already have and also not bringing in more of the old-school elements, they're just neglecting everybody.
You'd see all that in the old online.

It's all there for them, it's not like it's a case of wanting the cake and eating it too, they have the cake and let it go stale.

 

[NevilleNobody]

My thing with this is, do you really think they're putting more into the online? I don't think they're putting anything into the online. It's the exact same as the GT Sport formula but with less variety and with events more often being duplicated.
Not every week needs to be a tuning race but in a given month there's no reason for you to see Gr.3 and Gr.4 7/8 times - and again no reason for those events to be the whole class on the same tyres with no weather and no strategy.

They've got GT500s in there they can use (limiting it to the 90s ones) - they could limit it to the DBR9, M3 and F1 GTR - you know what I mean? The online is getting no love at all, and by not using what they already have and also not bringing in more of the old-school elements, they're just neglecting everybody.
You'd see all that in the old online.

It's all there for them, it's not like it's a case of wanting the cake and eating it too, they have the cake and let it go stale.

I agree they could do way more online, I guess my point is that as online has grown, it has taken resources from the development of the tuner/road car side that was once 99% of the focus back in the before times.

 

[05XR8]

The Power Pack has the online vibe of players tuning all types of cars and racing those.

The Nations N300 events from GT Sport were my favourites. Although it varied from sheeple Toyota S-FR Concept race car cup races at Tsukuba or if you don’t use a KTM X-Bow all the players using them would single you out. The N300 Nurburgring races would have all types of cars people would run experiment with.

I probably won’t return to online racing in GT7 and beyond, but I might have gotten an itch if the events were more like those past GT Sport Mode events.

 

[LeMansLambo14]

I've enjoyed both the single-player tuner aspect of GT and the classed, online aspect, and to be honest if GT is serious about their player base than neither should be neglected at all. GT7 needs a healthy mix of online and career content which both have a mix of classed race cars and PP-limit based tuner events. The power pack is a good basis of what GT8 should be like, in both online and career mode

 

[DK]

I miss just buying a cheap car for under 10k, seeing if I could "profit" from buying 10-20k worth of parts, and entering it into something like the Japanese 90s Challenge which would return about 35-40k if I won every race.

OK, so the days of a sub-10k Silvia are over unless you fancy scouring through scrapyards, but the annoying thing is that there's no "new generation" of cheap, used enthusiast cars in this game like a 320/330i, EP Civic Type R, a Fiesta ST150 or Mk2 Clio RS that you can pick to start your journey instead of the Prius Useless Goddess Aqua, Honda Fit or Mazda2.

Hell, I even miss the Fit RS that GT6 forces you to buy, at least that didn't have a CVT!

 

[Nakano219]

My thing with this is, do you really think they're putting more into the online? I don't think they're putting anything into the online. It's the exact same as the GT Sport formula but with less variety and with events more often being duplicated.
Not every week needs to be a tuning race but in a given month there's no reason for you to see Gr.3 and Gr.4 7/8 times - and again no reason for those events to be the whole class on the same tyres with no weather and no strategy.

They've got GT500s in there they can use (limiting it to the 90s ones) - they could limit it to the DBR9, M3 and F1 GTR - you know what I mean? The online is getting no love at all, and by not using what they already have and also not bringing in more of the old-school elements, they're just neglecting everybody.
You'd see all that in the old online.

It's all there for them, it's not like it's a case of wanting the cake and eating it too, they have the cake and let it go stale.

It does feel like the online offerings have been on autopilot since, honestly, when the game started. Maybe even since sometime in Sport's lifecycle, though I wasn't around then so can't comment for sure.

Other than adding Time Trials a couple of months in (and even then, that's one of the few times I think "why was that not there at launch?" is a fair criticism), have they made a single update that materially changed what is on offer in Sport Mode? I can't think of one - if pushed for a "second biggest Sport Mode change", it's either adding brake balance back in or the championship credit rewards. Which, for a mode that's been around for 4.5 years, is incredibly thin.

 

[Nebuc72]

It does feel like the online offerings have been on autopilot since, honestly, when the game started. Maybe even since sometime in Sport's lifecycle, though I wasn't around then so can't comment for sure.

Other than adding Time Trials a couple of months in (and even then, that's one of the few times I think "why was that not there at launch?" is a fair criticism), have they made a single update that materially changed what is on offer in Sport Mode? I can't think of one - if pushed for a "second biggest Sport Mode change", it's either adding brake balance back in or the championship credit rewards. Which, for a mode that's been around for 4.5 years, is incredibly thin.

I think it'd have to be the championship rewards, everything else has been catching up to where they left it in GT Sport, otherwise it's seldom been touched.
Time Trials were in Sport as well, and were 'promised' in that letter from Kaz when GT7 flubbed its launch, and even then it took some time for them to start running them (and even then another month to remember to make them pay out)!

I would love to know what they are going to do with online. I don't think what is offered in GT8 is going to align with Sport/7, solely based on how neglected it has felt, it's quite uncharacteristic of PD - at least the PD I have in my head. Any drastic change in 7 is hurting a player base that's established and settled into what they have now, but really it's not hard to please both sides here.

In 2022 I made a mock-up of the world map, where the Power Pack sits now - was an icon for "Quick Races" that rolled a random combo and started a matchmaking event every 10 minutes. You could see what the event was going to be, based on core info next to the icon (e.g. next to it it'd say Gr.3 - BoP" or "600pp - Japanese FR" to give you a little time to prepare. I think that's all we need honestly. I wouldn't even run BoP events in there now, keep that in Sport Mode and have a quick match tuner constantly cycling something.
Sport Mode I honestly think is offputting as a concept to a lot of people, because it's tucked away somewhere that makes it seem far more serious than it really is, and that hurts a casual playerbase but also sets the ones that do go there into a routine that quickly makes them uncomfortable doing anything new, doubly so because it hurts their ranking if they do. Something constantly new, easily accessible, always visible and low stakes would do wonders I reckon. And it would catch the game up to any other racing game released in the past 15 years.

 

[hyperspeed980]

I do have a lot to say on this topic and I'll try to make it as constructive as possible.

It does feel like ever since the launch of GT Sport, there has been an identity crisis at the very heart of GT that stems from the divide between the single-player content, which mostly uses road cars and allows you to tune each of them to your liking, and Sport Mode, which focuses almost exclusively on grouped cars with BoP and a fixed setup. This has also caused a rift in the game's fanbase, which has divided itself into several camps that each stick to their part of the game and never venture out of it.

None of this is helped by the fact that the game seemingly doesn't want you to actually have fun with the hundreds of cars it advises you to collect. Sure you can race them against slow-as-molasses default AI or overly aggressive Sophy if they even have suitable events for said cars (and a good handful don't), or you can pray that a PP-limited open lobby is up so you can try and build it to compete... and get blitzed by a random engine-swapped car that's 200 PP lower than it should be.

It just doesn't make sense to me, almost every update adds a handful of road cars that would be absolutely brilliant to race, and sometimes they even get cool-as-hell customisation options that reflect real-world racing variants, and then they never see any use in Sport Mode, because apparently it's much more important to cycle Gr.3 and Gr.4 twelve weeks in a row, and so nobody learns anything and nobody reaches out of their comfort zone!

Those two weeks with the AE86 and 22B tuning dailies were some of the best weeks in this game's life, you had people learning all sorts of tuning techniques and the leaderboard times constantly updating throughout the week as they put their theories to practice, and the best part is that they even convinced some people who previously didn't understand tuning about its merits! I just struggle to comprehend why PD would see that, decide it's not worth continuing, and go back to the same repetitive formula they've milked dry for the last 9 years...

To build on @Nebuc72's point above, I definitely think a quick match-type mode (like we had in GT6!) would do wonders for the replayability and variety of GT7, because despite this game having almost 600 cars now, it really doesn't feel like it most of the time. Another thing we desperately need in order to bring back that GT feeling (and you knew this was coming) is the re-introduction of Shuffle racing to open lobbies. Think about how many cars you've never driven in a GT game. Now think about how many you could've fallen in love with, had you gotten the chance to drive them in a semi-competitive race. Shuffles are the key to everything.

 

[shadow0460]

I prefer the gameplay of the earlier titles myself, but that's because I'm much better at tuning that I am driving. Not that I'm a terrible driver, but I could tune a Hot Wheels to win the Indy 500. If it's got wheels I can make it fast and reliable.
Not that GT Sport and GT7 are bad games, either. I've enjoyed my time on both.

 

[NevilleNobody]

I do have a lot to say on this topic and I'll try to make it as constructive as possible.

It does feel like ever since the launch of GT Sport, there has been an identity crisis at the very heart of GT that stems from the divide between the single-player content, which mostly uses road cars and allows you to tune each of them to your liking, and Sport Mode, which focuses almost exclusively on grouped cars with BoP and a fixed setup. This has also caused a rift in the game's fanbase, which has divided itself into several camps that each stick to their part of the game and never venture out of it.

None of this is helped by the fact that the game seemingly doesn't want you to actually have fun with the hundreds of cars it advises you to collect. Sure you can race them against slow-as-molasses default AI or overly aggressive Sophy if they even have suitable events for said cars (and a good handful don't), or you can pray that a PP-limited open lobby is up so you can try and build it to compete... and get blitzed by a random engine-swapped car that's 200 PP lower than it should be.

It just doesn't make sense to me, almost every update adds a handful of road cars that would be absolutely brilliant to race, and sometimes they even get cool-as-hell customisation options that reflect real-world racing variants, and then they never see any use in Sport Mode, because apparently it's much more important to cycle Gr.3 and Gr.4 twelve weeks in a row, and so nobody learns anything and nobody reaches out of their comfort zone!

Those two weeks with the AE86 and 22B tuning dailies were some of the best weeks in this game's life, you had people learning all sorts of tuning techniques and the leaderboard times constantly updating throughout the week as they put their theories to practice, and the best part is that they even convinced some people who previously didn't understand tuning about its merits! I just struggle to comprehend why PD would see that, decide it's not worth continuing, and go back to the same repetitive formula they've milked dry for the last 9 years...

To build on @Nebuc72's point above, I definitely think a quick match-type mode (like we had in GT6!) would do wonders for the replayability and variety of GT7, because despite this game having almost 600 cars now, it really doesn't feel like it most of the time. Another thing we desperately need in order to bring back that GT feeling (and you knew this was coming) is the re-introduction of Shuffle racing to open lobbies. Think about how many cars you've never driven in a GT game. Now think about how many you could've fallen in love with, had you gotten the chance to drive them in a semi-competitive race. Shuffles are the key to everything.

This is a fair take.

 

[Nakano219]

The one thing I would say, and this is more of a lament than any kind of devil's advocate attempt, is that this isn't just a GT thing but a racing sim playerbase thing in general.

Forza Motorsport's only consistently active lobbies are GT3s and touring cars. AC EVO has a bunch of weekly curated races across what content they have in that game, and the only one that ever sees even a second split is the GT3s. RaceRoom added so much cool historical content over the past year, guess what's by far their most popular? GT3s. Even iRacing - the place where competitive racing congregates, and that doesn't even have the road car side to consider - has a real problem where if you buy anything that isn't main path sports car racers, NASCAR, or lower tier formula cars there like the historic IMSA content you barely ever see a full grid for it.

At some point it does feel like the online racing community for anything that isn't GT4->GT3->prototypes collapsed in 2020.

 

[CinnamonOD]

Nowadays if you want to find a full lobby, you're going to be racing GT3s at Spa, Shuffle Racing would give a lot of life to GT7's lobbies,

That and track voting, and perhaps a higher capacity for lobbies, but seeing that they haven't increased that since GT5 Prologue, which released 18 YEARS AGO, I don't have much hope in that

 

[Greycap]

Tuning road cars to meet a criteria, and shuffle racing, both have one massive flaw in them - it's all about the car choice.

Back in GT5 was the only time I tried shuffle race and it was beyond ridiculous, in similar cars someone would be two seconds off the pace of everyone else and then fight for wins when the lottery gave them a good car. On the other hand I was in the sharp end of the lobby when it came to actual driving pace and didn't stand a chance with a 300ZX at Tsukuba against Evos and Imprezas for example. It may be nice if you don't want to win and are just killing time but from a competitive point of view it doesn't work - and never did.

And tuning cars for a PP figure for example, I don't think I need to explain that any further because everyone already knows the amount of glitches and bugs in the calculation. You either have the meta car that somehow gets an extra 100 bhp for the same PP or can forget doing well altogether. Gr3 and Gr4 are boring choices but with BoP they give everyone a sporting chance to do well, of course some cars are still faster than others but generally it depends a lot on the track and at least they're all in the same ballpark.

 

[Gerarghini]

Sometimes it feels like PD forgets that Gran Turismo 7 is still a video game, at the end of the day. The random Race A that's often times some base or tuned car is their bone towards those players, but it's very restricted in variety, so if you don't like the track or car combo, you're SOL.

I also feel like PD is just worried about fragmenting their playerbase too much to include more Daily Races. And while I think it would be cool to have dedicated races for their unused groups and categories, who knows how popular those would be?

Still, if it's anything like iRacing, they can make it work. There are plenty of casual gamers who pick up and play the game on controller with plenty of assists on, treating it like an arcade game.

There's also PD's utterly baffling decision of making online races pay out like complete garbage outside of their 1000% races. There's only so many times I'm willing to get my butt kicked and then seeing the payout at the end say 9,000 Cr. or something like that

 

[CinnamonOD]

Tuning road cars to meet a criteria, and shuffle racing, both have one massive flaw in them - it's all about the car choice.

Back in GT5 was the only time I tried shuffle race and it was beyond ridiculous, in similar cars someone would be two seconds off the pace of everyone else and then fight for wins when the lottery gave them a good car. On the other hand I was in the sharp end of the lobby when it came to actual driving pace and didn't stand a chance with a 300ZX at Tsukuba against Evos and Imprezas for example. It may be nice if you don't want to win and are just killing time but from a competitive point of view it doesn't work - and never did.

And tuning cars for a PP figure for example, I don't think I need to explain that any further because everyone already knows the amount of glitches and bugs in the calculation. You either have the meta car that somehow gets an extra 100 bhp for the same PP or can forget doing well altogether. Gr3 and Gr4 are boring choices but with BoP they give everyone a sporting chance to do well, of course some cars are still faster than others but generally it depends a lot on the track and at least they're all in the same ballpark.

Never felt that the point of shuffle racing was for it to be a sort of competitive mode, to me it felt like a "for funsies" game mode, and with boost on, it was a blast, of course you could get really bad luck with the car lottery but it was a part of it despite it being clearly a flaw (not complaining)

You could also change the lobby settings to restrict cars to certain categories, that was clearly made with competition in mind, which makes me remember when we learned the cars had categories in GT7, it meant that perhaps we could set lobbies so it only accepted cars from those categories

 

[CGT980]

I do have a lot to say on this topic and I'll try to make it as constructive as possible.

It does feel like ever since the launch of GT Sport, there has been an identity crisis at the very heart of GT that stems from the divide between the single-player content, which mostly uses road cars and allows you to tune each of them to your liking, and Sport Mode, which focuses almost exclusively on grouped cars with BoP and a fixed setup. This has also caused a rift in the game's fanbase, which has divided itself into several camps that each stick to their part of the game and never venture out of it.

That pretty much sums up my outlook on the current state of Gran Turismo. GT7 was advertised as the return to the series proper, but when you actually play the game, it feels more like a game as you've said, that's going through an identity crisis. It's as if there's an internal struggle going on within PD. On one side, you've got the people aiming to bring back the classic Gran Turismo vibes. On the other, the people pushing Gran Turismo more towards Sport Mode, and in a direction where they want the game to be taken more seriously, more appealing to the competitive side of things & sponsors alike.

I get the why & the reasoning behind it, but I don't agree with the way they're going about it. They've shifted the focus so far into online multiplayer/e-sports territory that it's left the single-player experience neglected. What once represented one of the key pillars that helped support the very foundation Gran Turismo was built upon has been completely gutted out. Being a player who craves the Simulation Mode that the early games boasted (most specifically GT4's structure), and has zero interest in online, I feel left out. It leaves me having to constantly come up with creative ways to maintain some level of interest in the game. That's not a good feeling.

I maintain there's a better way of going about it, where GT can strike that balance & greatly benefit from having both aspects of gameplay.

 

[05XR8]

Just remembered I typed this up in regards to the posts about tuned cars:

I thought the tuned cars at Route X was the beginning of that.

Lo and behold the Daily Races have that event this week.

 

[bduddy]

I do have a lot to say on this topic and I'll try to make it as constructive as possible.

It does feel like ever since the launch of GT Sport, there has been an identity crisis at the very heart of GT that stems from the divide between the single-player content, which mostly uses road cars and allows you to tune each of them to your liking, and Sport Mode, which focuses almost exclusively on grouped cars with BoP and a fixed setup. This has also caused a rift in the game's fanbase, which has divided itself into several camps that each stick to their part of the game and never venture out of it.

None of this is helped by the fact that the game seemingly doesn't want you to actually have fun with the hundreds of cars it advises you to collect. Sure you can race them against slow-as-molasses default AI or overly aggressive Sophy if they even have suitable events for said cars (and a good handful don't), or you can pray that a PP-limited open lobby is up so you can try and build it to compete... and get blitzed by a random engine-swapped car that's 200 PP lower than it should be.

It just doesn't make sense to me, almost every update adds a handful of road cars that would be absolutely brilliant to race, and sometimes they even get cool-as-hell customisation options that reflect real-world racing variants, and then they never see any use in Sport Mode, because apparently it's much more important to cycle Gr.3 and Gr.4 twelve weeks in a row, and so nobody learns anything and nobody reaches out of their comfort zone!

Those two weeks with the AE86 and 22B tuning dailies were some of the best weeks in this game's life, you had people learning all sorts of tuning techniques and the leaderboard times constantly updating throughout the week as they put their theories to practice, and the best part is that they even convinced some people who previously didn't understand tuning about its merits! I just struggle to comprehend why PD would see that, decide it's not worth continuing, and go back to the same repetitive formula they've milked dry for the last 9 years...

To build on @Nebuc72's point above, I definitely think a quick match-type mode (like we had in GT6!) would do wonders for the replayability and variety of GT7, because despite this game having almost 600 cars now, it really doesn't feel like it most of the time. Another thing we desperately need in order to bring back that GT feeling (and you knew this was coming) is the re-introduction of Shuffle racing to open lobbies. Think about how many cars you've never driven in a GT game. Now think about how many you could've fallen in love with, had you gotten the chance to drive them in a semi-competitive race. Shuffles are the key to everything.

Unfortunately, the trend line of pretty much every racing sim these days shows that the bulk of the audience prefers to stick with safe, familiar combos, or in more specific terms, GT3s at Spa and Monza over and over and over and over again. Presumably (and I believe data on qualifying times shows this too), the people still investing time into GT7 online play years after launch are cut from the same cloth.
I agree with you that a game like GT7 should be an opportunity to bring tuning and road cars into online play in a way that no other game does well, to mix the heritage of GT with the capabilities of its modern iteration, but it seems like whoever is responsible for deciding the direction of Sport Mode prefers to play it safe and avoid doing anything that would disturb the safe, comfortable audience and the Youtubers who prefer combos they don't have to practice and tune, and hurt their precious "engagement" numbers.

 

[Chevy Heavy]

I guess I'll throw my 2 cents into this discussion. Having played every Gran Turismo game since the beginning I feel I'm familiar with the evolution of the game. What drew me in was the fact that you could buy and upgrade everyday cars (albeit mostly JDM) to win races to buy better cars. The early games didn't feature online racing so a proper career mode was implemented.

As the game progressed more cars, tracks and race modes were added. The graphics and handling of the cars improved. Online time trials and lobbies followed. While there were always race cars, the focus was more on street cars. GT Sport was the game that really focused more on proper race cars at the expense of the career mode which really pissed off the GT purists. They had to revamp the single player portion to somewhat rectify this. PD felt their introduction of online daily races would be enough to satiate the player base.

Now here is my problem with Sport mode. Early on these races were actually daily. Meaning everyday you had 3 new races to choose from, different cars on different tracks. I loved this strategy and looked forward to the new races each day. Then at some point, for some unknown reason, PD felt in their infinite wisdom that the races should remain the same all week. So that's what we have been stuck ever since. Now if you are an Esports nerd or streamer you're happy that you can race GR3 and Gr4 cars all the time. But I feel they've abandoned people like myself that enjoy variety.

Now people spend more time try harding in setting qualifying times because they know they will be using them all week. Which also leads to the majority of people using the meta car to remain competitive. This was never a problem in the early days of GT Sport and it was much more fun. I've all but given up on daily races for this reason. It's just become too stale. Now I get my racing fix in online lobbies. And I look for races with street cars just like the early days of Gran Turismo. It's just more fun, to each his own.

Sorry for the unabridged answer.

 

[NevilleNobody]

Responses above highlight two issues.

1) the mass audience clearly wants stale GT3 racing, and for PD/Sony, they need to chase users and participation or the game dies, it is what it is.

2) street cars are extremely tricky, untuned there's huge gaps in performance and once you allow tuning it becomes a matter of who can find the secret sauce to trick the PP system or without a PP limit we'd all converge to the same car tuned the same way, it's inherently hard to balance a grid.

 

[Voodoovaj]

That pretty much sums up my outlook on the current state of Gran Turismo. GT7 was advertised as the return to the series proper, but when you actually play the game, it feels more like a game as you've said, that's going through an identity crisis. It's as if there's an internal struggle going on within PD. On one side, you've got the people aiming to bring back the classic Gran Turismo vibes. On the other, the people pushing Gran Turismo more towards Sport Mode, and in a direction where they want the game to be taken more seriously, more appealing to the competitive side of things & sponsors alike.

I get the why & the reasoning behind it, but I don't agree with the way they're going about it. They've shifted the focus so far into online multiplayer/e-sports territory that it's left the single-player experience neglected. What once represented one of the key pillars that helped support the very foundation Gran Turismo was built upon has been completely gutted out. Being a player who craves the Simulation Mode that the early games boasted (most specifically GT4's structure), and has zero interest in online, I feel left out. It leaves me having to constantly come up with creative ways to maintain some level of interest in the game. That's not a good feeling.

I maintain there's a better way of going about it, where GT can strike that balance & greatly benefit from having both aspects of gameplay.

The Mass audience for Sport Mode wants the GR4 and GR3 cars...that's it, and it's one of the reasons I stopped with Sport Mode despite being a huge fan. It has devolved into weekly cup races where you have to find out which Meta car you need to be competitive. But I get it, this is the baseline for competitive play, but we are not all in it to dream of a Nissan contract (or whatever is on offer now).

95% of players are not looking to become a pro driver. I want to have fun and play with other people.

For years I have been saying that they need to add a co-op mode to the single player so that, rather than going to the servers, I could play with others through the already curated events. Yes, they need more curating (like limits on what is allowed in a Sunday Cup) but that isn't so difficult. They added the "meeting place" which, to me, looks like a precursor to co-op single player. We, who are spending time in the custom races, have seen that Sophy can be as much fun as playing a person, so events with only a handful of real people could easily be filled out with Sophy. It would be the best of both worlds without too much effort.

Then, when you go to the world map, you can see where your friends are playing and go from event to event.

It would serve both worlds.

 

[CGT980]

Unfortunately, the trend line of pretty much every racing sim these days shows that the bulk of the audience prefers to stick with safe, familiar combos, or in more specific terms, GT3s at Spa and Monza over and over and over and over again. Presumably (and I believe data on qualifying times shows this too), the people still investing time into GT7 online play years after launch are cut from the same cloth. I agree with you that a game like GT7 should be an opportunity to bring tuning and road cars into online play in a way that no other game does well, to mix the heritage of GT with the capabilities of its modern iteration, but it seems like whoever is responsible for deciding the direction of Sport Mode prefers to play it safe and avoid doing anything that would disturb the safe, comfortable audience and the Youtubers who prefer combos they don't have to practice and tune, and hurt their precious "engagement" numbers.

If that's what the bulk of the online gameplay consists of, then I guess I'm not missing much. With all the cars and all the different categories to choose from, you'd think be more variety.

That's doesn't sound enticing. Rather, it reeks of a style of gameplay that is one-dimensional. With no variety, it would become monotonous. I'd grow bored of it rather quickly.

I guess I'll throw my 2 cents into this discussion. Having played every Gran Turismo game since the beginning I feel I'm familiar with the evolution of the game. What drew me in was the fact that you could buy and upgrade everyday cars (albeit mostly JDM) to win races to buy better cars. The early games didn't feature online racing so a proper career mode was implemented.

Same here, part of the allure Gran Turismo had back in the day was being able to utilize everyday cars. You had cars from all kinds of different classes to choose from, including your daily drivers. That's something that made GT stand out as unique compared to what else was offered at the time. I LOVED that you could take those cars, be able to tune them to your heart's content, and compete in races with them.

I might not play online, but it is nonetheless disheartening reading the comments that the online gameplay is specifically tailored towards a certain genre. It's one of the reasons I don't particularly bother with online. People are too conditioned to focus on the competitive side of gaming they've forgotten how to have fun.

 

[benjoi84]

From an entirely selfish point of view, I only got into Online Multiplayer (in general) around 2016, when internet infrastructure around where I live was up to the task.

I got back into Gran Turismo because of the advent of GT Sport, the legacy of what the online modes were, and what I had been missing out on.

At the time, I never thought that repeated race car combos would be a problem, but after this many years I'm left ruing the numerous cars and tracks which we never got to try out in a proper competitive environment.

 

[TPGRacing75]

The one thing I would say, and this is more of a lament than any kind of devil's advocate attempt, is that this isn't just a GT thing but a racing sim playerbase thing in general.

Forza Motorsport's only consistently active lobbies are GT3s and touring cars. AC EVO has a bunch of weekly curated races across what content they have in that game, and the only one that ever sees even a second split is the GT3s. RaceRoom added so much cool historical content over the past year, guess what's by far their most popular? GT3s. Even iRacing - the place where competitive racing congregates, and that doesn't even have the road car side to consider - has a real problem where if you buy anything that isn't main path sports car racers, NASCAR, or lower tier formula cars there like the historic IMSA content you barely ever see a full grid for it.

At some point it does feel like the online racing community for anything that isn't GT4->GT3->prototypes collapsed in 2020.

Basically what I'm getting from this discussion is, to make the ultimate online racing game, you only need to include 1 car and 3 tracks:

-A single GT3

And for tracks
-Spa
-Monza
-and Nords

No need to model any other tracks, 'cause nobody gonna race them, and no use modeling anymore than a single GT3 car because everyone will simply drive whatever the meta is, rendering all other choices superfluous

Seems simple enough!