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

[NevilleNobody]

Where I get confused though, is people complaining about the tuner experience. You can still do what you did in 2002 and grab a base car and tune away and go for joy rides or race your AI or whatever, but you can't balance a grid of street cars, tuned or not, as I explained above.

 

[TPGRacing75]

Where I get confused though, is people complaining about the tuner experience. You can still do what you did in 2002 and grab a base car and tune away and go for joy rides or race your AI or whatever, but you can't balance a grid of street cars, tuned or not, as I explained above.

Technically you can't balance a grid of race cars either. Any class with more than 1 distinct car WILL have a meta, and 90% of users will use said meta, so what's the difference?

Just look at the gluts of 911's Atenza's, G70's and Citroen GT's in daily races, depending on the track.

If a class of cars have machines of varying capabilities, a superior option will prevail. It happens in video games, it happens IRL. No amount of BOP can overcome the ability of simracers to collectively spend thousands of hours testing cars to see which is the best.

 

[Gerarghini]

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.

Man, I can only DREAM of a truly-online Gran Turismo where you can join a region/lobby for single player co-op, choose an event, start a countdown and let everyone interested join the race, and away we go.

NFS has something like this. GT's excuse for being online is poor if you can pretty much play the single player front to back without ever touching the online for career progression.

 

[Dragonwhisky]

Since Famine split this out, I've read some of you lamenting the lack of road car use in the Sport Mode weekly race cycle. While this definitely shows a lack of imagination on the part of whomever decides those events, perhaps what is written below is a small reason why.

Some of you may be unaware, SNAIL runs a Sunday event that uses cars from the below list;



Granted, we run them in stock form, where the only performance change allowed are the tires, although, in some cases, we have cars that run on the tires that came on them from the dealership.

We race them at any of the below list of tracks.



Those attending the Sunday event have the privilege of deciding which half of all 3 car and track combinations go bye bye and, we take turns, among those attending the racing each Sunday, picking which cars and/or tracks replace what went bye bye.

Perhaps some of you might be interested in helping us knock the cars off this list?



I will make the disclaimer here, we do not race road cars exclusively. We most certainly do utilize more of the road cars in GT7 than the Sport Mode Weekly races.

If racing something besides Gr.x cars online, with other people, interests you, have a look around at www.gtplanet.net/snail.

</shameless_plug>

~Dragonwhisky

P.S. The google sheet embeds may take a few moments to load. Once they do, you should be able to scroll through them and even tap/click the tabs at the bottom to investigate further.

 

[Voodoovaj]

Man, I can only DREAM of a truly-online Gran Turismo where you can join a region/lobby for single player co-op, choose an event, start a countdown and let everyone interested join the race, and away we go.

NFS has something like this. GT's excuse for being online is poor if you can pretty much play the single player front to back without ever touching the online for career progression.

GT4 had an official one make event for nearly everything. It's a nice feature to have one make custom races, but imagine co-op one make for all (or at least almost all) the cars.

And it's easy enough to do. The architecture for co-op is already there (and let's not forget that the slogan for Sophy is "Race Together"). You choose an event, choose the car, and there's 2 start buttons. One for single player and one for co-op. Co-op looks for anyone else wanting to enter and off you go. A race can start every 15 minutes. Sophy fills out the grid in addition to who ever joins. If no one joins, then it's no different than single player.

For me, the entire single player is a one and done system. There is never a reason to ever do any event more than once, other than trying to farm credits. That's why they've added the weekly event. It gives people a purpose. I'm positive they know that people are mostly playing events one time, if ever.

 

[NevilleNobody]

Technically you can't balance a grid of race cars either. Any class with more than 1 distinct car WILL have a meta, and 90% of users will use said meta, so what's the difference?

Just look at the gluts of 911's Atenza's, G70's and Citroen GT's in daily races, depending on the track.

If a class of cars have machines of varying capabilities, a superior option will prevail. It happens in video games, it happens IRL. No amount of BOP can overcome the ability of simracers to collectively spend thousands of hours testing cars to see which is the best.

With race cars there's often only a few tenths in it, with tuned road cars it can be seconds pretty easily once the magic PP trick is found or if left organic, the one car that gets a huge boost from max tuning just walks away.

 

[bliprunner]

I got bored with Sport racing a while back and switched to searching lobbies with BOP on. Skip past all the GT3’s and there’s often rooms doing BOP’ed road cars (shout out to the friendly Ukrainian group!). Stuff like Twingo racing was popular for a while and I’m sure there will be some Caterham action going on soon.

I also joined the Titans group which does regular tuning races (this weekend is 500pp road cars). A very friendly and fair group of racers.

So if people want decent road car racing, it’s out there. I just hope PD put more of it into Sport mode eventually, with all the other improvements that are often mentioned (bigger lobbies, better penalties/reporting, shuffle mode, longer races, etc etc etc)

 

[NevilleNobody]

I sometimes do the first three weekly challenges, just to force me to drive cars i'd never think of trying. Gotta tell ya, the Renault Turbo on CM and the FRS on Sm were a she load of fun and I think suitable for beginner drivers. Would make a great one make cup.

 

[Il_Conte_Sky]

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.

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There's not a single day I don't mourn the GT5-6 Online Multiplayer experience

Often I think I'm just looking at it through nostalgia glasses and I should give Sport mode one more try... but even with one of the more unique races (last one I tried was LMHs at Le Mans) I just feel disaligned with the players around me, 90% of people go full META mode with top1-2 cars, and if you dare to stand in someone's way with an off-META car people often feel entitled to just remove you off their racing line.

I already go full-tryhard mode in League racing and when GTWS Official Season rolls so I don't really feel the desire to keep 100% tryharding the rest of my time on GT7, and Sport Mode isn't really my cup of tea for that reason.

Genuinely the last time I had fun in Daily races was more than a year ago, on the wacky JGTC Suzuka race with the late 90s JGTC Gr.3 mixed up with mockup road cars, the Driver Rating was disabled and the META car (Diablo) was so horrible to drive everyone finally started trying out a bit of everything, and taking it in a more playful manner.
THAT was the closest I've ever felt to the old Online Gran Turismo experience







But then, when you look at the numbers reality hits you in the face... this very Daily C was Bottom-10 popularity of that entire year of the Sport Mode offering

What for me felt like a new height for the Mode and an example to follow for the future, it was SNOBBED by the rest of the community.
This combo never came back.
Wanna take a guess on the most popular combos?

So yeah, if you're holding your breath for Sport mode to ever improve, please don't...don't make the same mistake I did for the last couple years
I guess culture and demographics surrounding the gaming space changed enough in the last 10-15 years... People are just not interested in engaging with anything more creative than Gr.3 at Spa/RBR, and PD needs to keep its servers full to keep Sony happy. The End.



Thank you @Nebuc72 for bringing this up, seeing that at least I'm not alone on this is good

 

[Voodoovaj]

There's not a single day I don't mourn the GT5-6 Online Multiplayer experience

We need to all get a grip on reality for a while. We're looking back at online with rose coloured glasses.

I loved the lobbies too, but then GT Sport brought reliability to it. I knew when races would start. The races wouldn't restart just because one person didn't change their set-up in time. I wasn't kneecapped because on one particular track, the way to win was with some esoteric setup. And, the big one, winning meant something.

Now, it's been a decade since Gt Sport was released and, in that time, they could have done more than simply letting online die.

Co-op single player is the answer (outside private leagues). The open events already have a "suggested" PP limit, which is often still way more than what is needed to win. Add class restrictions (so people don't run Gr1 cars in Gr2 or Gr3 events), and set regular start times. Use the meeting places as a staging area so everyone get's their stuff in order, then friends can head off to the event they want. Sophy is more than capable of filling the participation gaps, so even two people can have a good time (which is also a huge problem online, where some races never start because the host is waiting for more people).

We know they have all the pieces...they just haven't put in the effort. Oh, but try and grind us to buy credits? That got effort 😒

 

[Lilium]

Having been here from GT1 in 98 as well, I got to say that the most fun online experience for me has been GT6, with great themed weeklies, open tuning options, and fixed tuning, curated options making people have a low stake, relaxed experience to per example, pick the Tesla "🤮" Roadster on an entry sportscar themed race.


The TT's and Weeklies utilized way more the tracklist, and felt curated, although you could still fill some repetitive car choices, it was leagues ahead.


I do see why they stick to the Gr.3/4 choice, as that's what is mostly wanted, in any racing game. Even if the game lets you curate some great experiences w/ historic machinery, most people picking up and play want that comfort, tried and test leveled playing field.
And us here, is a Gran Turismo Forum, are not the majority of the playerbase.

By us being in a forum, something that is completely dying all around the internet (and glad GTP still has that classic forum feel ), we're already dating ourselves, and showing we're a fringe of the target playerbase, being highly dedicated, and possibly also quite nostalgic.

What we have at the moment isn't bad at all. I believe it is the best pick up and compete experience in the market at the moment.

Picture yourself as either someone competitive, or casual, and in GT7:
You can turn on the game, go to the Sport tab, and you have a combo that you can enter quickly, where you know it will be leveled, as most possible as it under the BOP, racing people your level, and easily repeatable? You do not need to do some wizardry or pray to some moon deity to get the tyre pressure, or weird concepts like LSD Preloads or whatever those weird faux-engineers keep babbling about.

You show up, race, pick up places, compete and have fun. Rinse and repeat

On what we have right now, Daily A, the less serious on competition, while giving some fun combos from time to time, should be way more curated and offer more opening tuning, once a month as already proposed above, would already bridge the gap to that part of the playerbase that craves more freedom and a higher usage of the car roster.

Make it so we have to pick those CUV's added of late, tune the suspension or something, and have a crack at them this month, and on the next month, its American Classic Muscle tuning theme, on week of the month.

Daily A is the golden goose that could, but you find out that it's just a chicken that mostly puts out spoiled eggs.

 

[eran0004]

Technically you can't balance a grid of race cars either. Any class with more than 1 distinct car WILL have a meta, and 90% of users will use said meta, so what's the difference?

Just look at the gluts of 911's Atenza's, G70's and Citroen GT's in daily races, depending on the track.

If a class of cars have machines of varying capabilities, a superior option will prevail. It happens in video games, it happens IRL. No amount of BOP can overcome the ability of simracers to collectively spend thousands of hours testing cars to see which is the best.

It seems like a solution could be to limit the number of cars of any given model in a race. That way, those who want to use the META would have to wait in a queue until the grid has been filled, while those selecting less popular cars would have a much shorter wait. That should encourage people to pick other models.

 

[Nakano219]

I'm going to throw out a wild guess at something, and I know, I know, this sounds so incredibly optimistic considering.

Everyone's been taking the shorter time trial this week and inferring that it implies physics changes are incoming. What if instead it implies Sport Mode changes?

 

[Famine]

Everyone's been taking the shorter time trial this week and inferring that it implies physics changes are incoming. What if instead it implies Sport Mode changes?

That could be the case if Time Trials were set for a major change. Nothing else changing in Sport Mode would or should affect it.

However the only precedent we have for a one-week time trial is 1.49 and its major (and then immediately adjusted due to bouncing) physics change.

 

[Chevy Heavy]

That could be the case if Time Trials were set for a major change. Nothing else changing in Sport Mode would or should affect it.

However the only precedent we have for a one-week time trial is 1.49 and its major (and then immediately adjusted due to bouncing) physics change.

I may be in the minority here, but the bouncing cars were more fun than the current Sport Mode.