Now this is what PD should have made the Top Gear Test Track Challenge...

I'd say closer to other challenges where Gold is reserved for beating the "ghost". Silver and Bronze would be used for getting within certain distances.

Because lets face it, you don't get a bronze medal for winning.
 
This is the kind of stuff I thought they were going to do. I mean they even introduce the stig in the cut scene before you start the top gear events......... only to never see him again.

so disappointing.

Lol, that's true! wtf?!
 
yeah, and those "challenges" you so carefully planned (copied) out, would have thaught you absolutely nothing.

Every challenge in the special events section (and especially the ones in the top gear category) are set to teach and refine some fundamental racing skills. If you want normal races with street legal cars A-spec -> that way.

Gran Turismo 5: The real armchair game designer simulator.
 
yeah, and those "challenges" you so carefully planned (copied) out, would have thaught you absolutely nothing.

Every challenge in the special events section (and especially the ones in the top gear category) are set to teach and refine some fundamental racing skills. If you want normal races with street legal cars A-spec -> that way.

Gran Turismo 5: The real armchair game designer simulator.
I must be one of the few that enjoyed beating every one of the Top Gear challenges, but what on earth are you rambling about? The current Top Gear challenges only teach you three (rather useless) things:
  1. In order to maintain top speed in a really old, underpowered car in GT5, you have to feather the throttle at redline or else risk bouncing off of the rev limiter (that shouldn't be there) in super slow motion, losing power for a few seconds.
  2. If you put really bad tires on a lightweight MR car, the tail kicks out pretty easily.
  3. A staggered lineup of cars on the Top Gear test track can potentially end up on a collision course in the middle.

I hope you forgot <sarcasm> tags in your post.
 
I must be one of the few that enjoyed beating every one of the Top Gear challenges, but what on earth are you rambling about? The current Top Gear challenges only teach you three (rather useless) things:.

You forgot the importance of identifying and polishing your lines, the importance of keeping momentum through turns and bleeding as little speed as possible, the importance of delicacy in braking and accelerating during turns in midship cars...

You know, those little things that tend to make a rather crucial difference between a mediocre gamer and a decent racer.
 
A brilliant post! I was expecting something similar to what you have suggested when the game was first released. It would be nice to see if PD can implement any of your ideas (or something similar).
 
I agree. The Top Gear Special Event is one of the worst. Not much fun and I hoped for something as you suggested. What can we do at this point?
 
You forgot...those little things that tend to make a rather crucial difference between a mediocre gamer and a decent racer.
"the importance of identifying and polishing your lines"
  1. See AI car
  2. Don't hit AI car (too hard)
  3. Drive around AI car any way you can
  4. It's okay to run over cones when you have to pass a dozen cars crowding a time trial course; just not all-red ones
Groundbreaking lessons!

"the importance of keeping momentum through turns and bleeding as little speed as possible"
  1. Start from the back of the grid
  2. Drive as fast as you can
  3. Brake much, much later than the cowardly AI
  4. If you slow down too much you won't catch 1st place
Wow, I've never seen anything like that in any Gran Turismo race before!

"the importance of delicacy in braking and accelerating during turns in midship cars"
Fair point. I didn't think of it because when I did the challenge I was simply impressed that I could finally enjoy a properly loose RWD car in a Gran Turismo game. Sailing into the first corner sideways under braking in the Elise was my first grin-inducing experience with GT5. :D

Mid-engined cars are all rather similar in this game, though (too similar IMO), so every race/challenge with an MR/MAWD car reinforces this lesson. Take license test IC-10, for example, which teaches everything you could learn from the Elise challenge, yet in a more plausible and rewarding setting.

It seems clear to me that the Top Gear challenges are Polyphony's attempt at TG-style humor, not TG-related lessons on driving skill. I thought Fashion Cat's challenges were more topical and valuable -- learning to overcome a tough, single rival (assuming better AI as stated) in identical, similar, or slightly mismatched cars, encompassing a range of drivetrain layouts, curb weights, and power outputs.

You're the expert "armchair game designer," apparently, so what makes his suggested events so worthless?
 
overall, very nice, good ideas, i (but who am i) like them, except one thing, that erked me right away.

Thats not a "knife at gunfight".

They are both knives, or guns. A knife at a gunfight is two deadly weapons that are very different in many ways, except for the fact that either one can win.
Caterham Vs. Ferrari,
built Civic Vs. lightly tuned Skyline,
Alpine A110 Vs. Challenger.
Lightweight an low HP is a knife, high power to make up for more weight is a gun. There's almost no difference between the two cars mentioned. I try an run open lobbies with similar ideas as you mentioned, I'll use a couple for sure, thanks.
 
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The OP has come up with some cool challenges indeed :D

What I miss from the TGTT is two things:

Star in a reasonably priced car - have all the RPC's from the show available so you can see if you could beat Jay Kay, or even the top F1 driver (I forgot who won :P)

And, of course, standing start one lap time trial (I know you can do this by restarting, but it would be nice to have it as a feature).
 
Agreed!

Some of those challenges you thought up bought a smile to my face:
Godzilla vs King Kong? Brilliant!

These are the sort of challenges I was hoping for too.

So far, I've only done the first Top Gear challenge, and it bored the hell out of me.

Also, as many people have said in other threads, why can't we get a leaderboard challenge where we have to beat the times set on the Top Gear Power List?

Godzilla vs King Kong... lol...
 
Fashion Cat, I may just want to have your babies.

I don't care WHAT gender you are.


*ahem* That aside, yeah. I think what the devs were looking at was more the Cheap Car Challenges and such than other crazy things Top Gear does with premium-performance cars.

That being said, why not some Cheap Car races? Enforce a max Cr spent limit on a car and take it to the Test Track for a number of challenges, both important (full races, time trials) and ridiculous (doing handbrake turns by shopping carts, knocking over garbage bins, etc). It'd have us rifling through the UCD to find that one perfectly goofy car to really embrace the Top Gear spirit, which isn't just having cars do things for which they were never intended, but having FUN with cars doing things for which they were never intended.
 
Would've been great if PD had even the slightest inkling of what they were doing with the TGTT, instead of piddling around with nonsense cars and turning it into a bloody awful bore-fest.

Great OP. Has my vote 👍
 
It's like some one from Sony went to PD and said "There's this really popular car show from Britain, it's quite funny, they hate the Germans and they have a test track designed by Lotus why don't you feature it?" and so PD went on Google earth, got the track layout (no elevation probably the most simple track in the game) and thought it would be funny for 2/3 of it to be in horrid German vehicles and to butcher the Lotus cars handling as some kind of cruel joke.
 
Oh, and before I forget, somebody suggested that Renault Avantime challenge thing. Anybody want to link that thread to this one or just pick the discussion up here?

If memory serves me right, the idea was to buy an Avantime from the UCD, then you could only spend 15000 CR on REMOVABLE parts to improve it in order to beat an Evo X's one-lap time around the Test Track.

The thread devolved into arguing about if GT Auto services and the like counted towards the budget and if this was okay, if that was okay, if there were standing starts, etc. but it's still worth mentioning.
 
Agreed that the two car races are much more in the spirit of Top Gear than the races we got. I've linked back to this thread in one I started from one i started on the topic of replicating top gear challenges. It is here if people want to make some suggestions. For those who are interested the Avantime challenge is discussed here and here.
 
To keep the discussion of other Top Gear challenges going, what about some interpretation of the Alfas challenge? No Competitzione, no Zagato, but find a way to find an Alfa in the UCD and...well, we'll figure out challenges.
 
To keep the discussion of other Top Gear challenges going, what about some interpretation of the Alfas challenge? No Competitzione, no Zagato, but find a way to find an Alfa in the UCD and...well, we'll figure out challenges.

Yeah but the game doesn't accurately model reliability issues :)
 
I suppose there will always be "haters", and I never mentioned these were original ideas. That would be like saying I created the whole Top Gear challenges and thought up of the idea of the Stig in the first place.

And let's have a look at A-spec, yup, what a disappointment, honestly.

Armchair racer, I highly doubt you're in a position to say otherwise.

Anyways no reason to keep this kickin' around.

PD, maybe next time you'll have cojones to create something well, honestly better. There's always enough fanboys (and critics) kicking around.
 
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