Another suggestion, besides offline saving (which is a must), that should be added would be
Make the following game modes available offline, such as:
- My Home
- My Library
- Brand Central
- Used Car Dealerships
- Legend Cars
- GT Cafe
- Scapes
- Tuning Parts Shop
- School
- GT World
- Special Events
- Mission Races
However, in Brand Central (if it were similar to how GT Sport functions), when offline, players can't access brand channels, the ability to view their website, or sign contracts for the Manufacturers' Series of the FIAGTC.
My personal thoughts on this alone:
During the PS3 era and GT Sport (more especially since the latter focused on e-sports and competitive online racing), I believe Polyphony are making a huge mistake in compromising for a more online-focused game, and not giving a damn about the basic core single player features (Arcade, Career, etc.), by downgrading them.
Polyphony are making GT7 to give single player gameplay more weight than previous titles while retaining online gameplay as its predecessors, but to what extent they're executing this concept, they should realize that not everyone can play online (others may have **** internet), some others don't want to play online (merely focusing on the single player aspect, the piece de resistance of the game), and that it's such a hassle to get the game connected just to experience the game in its entirety, let alone, save progress.
Other games can pull this off (like Forza, especially Motorsport 7) without needing a constant internet connection to save or access the bulk of the game. I honestly think they're using Sport mode as an excuse for requiring an active connection for all of this. That's also another thing Polyphony should consider: not everyone has PS Plus, and not everyone can, and/or wants to compete in the FIA-sanctioned races either.
Besides shortening the career mode in all of its scope, they also dumbed down Arcade Mode where it was no longer like GT4 where eventually you can get to use all the cars in the game once you've bought or obtained every possible car in the GT Mode firsthand. That's why I barely even touch GT6 anymore when the servers shut down. GT Sport being almost useless/obsolete by the time its servers shut down is also one thing I worry about if I would even dare to revisit the game when GT7 is out, and yet the single player aspect such as the Arcade and Campaign are not as innovative enough even in Sport.
But because it's an always-evolving game, the Arcade Mode car selection has to be like Forza's Free Play mode (Motorsport 4-style), you can drive anything you want for free, but with restrictions such as default colors only (no liveries, upgrades or customization on these cars), basic car-specific tuning, and no credits, XP, Daily Workout progress earned driving those cars, with the option to use cars in our Garage. That way, single-player can still be enjoyable somewhat.
Sony would really rather you buy the next game instead.
GT5 was initially barely online-focused in its single player design (mostly the crappy UI constantly trying to link to the servers and softlocking the game if it didn't like the response it got), they spent several years doing little things to dramatically improve the single player and add plenty of quality of life aspects to it that happened to be done through the online servers, then still basically gutted it of all its post-launch improvements and left it to die to try and force people to move on to GT6 even when it would have been trivial to make said improvements decoupled from the online component for people who wanted to keep playing GT5.
GT6 removed a major advertised aspect of the single player game in GT5 (course maker), made its improvement a major advertising point of the game to justify buying GT6 (whenever it eventually would come out), then killed it immediately after the servers were shut down for that game even there was no reason for that aspect to be coupled to the online component in the first place.
I'd be more surprised than not if GT Sport's servers being sunset* didn't basically make that game unplayable. And assuming GT7 actually comes out in March, everyone should also expect the date that Sport's servers are shut down will be sometime before Christmas.
This scenario is almost similar to the "Sony timer" urban legend. Not just the PS4 and PS5 are affected by the Sony timer, but even one of the game franchises itself, and it's Gran Turismo of all things.
chng.it
