Racing or Driving - The Future of Gran Turismo

[mr_serious]

It's not about making AI as competitive as human beings, it's about making the game playable. If the grid consists of 15 Vettels, 99% of all gamers is going to end up dead last in every single race. If the grid consists of 15 amateurs, then 99% of all gamers is going to end up first in every single race. If the AI is somewhere in between, you'll still have the same problem, for some it's going to be too easy, for some it's going to be too hard and for some it's going to be perfect (until they improve their skills, then it will be too easy).

To make it playable, the AI needs to adjust to the skills of the gamer, something a human driver wouldn't do. Rubber banding is one method of doing so, an option to select difficulty level is another. Personally, I'd prefer to have an option. It will not be perfect, but better than rubber banding I think.

There is another advantage to having difficulty options. It actually helps persuade people to get better. I have spent years turning people not interested in racing games into people who love them. One big motivator is being able to say to someone "Nice one! what difficulty level were you on?" Being able to answer 'elite' or whatever to this question is a driver in turning casuals into enthusiasts.

 

[jimipitbull]

The AI settings are only in arcade races and not career mode races. Opponents / AI do appear to improve as you progress into the upper tiers of the career mode but I want my Sunday Cup to be just as challenging as any Super License races.

The hardest difficulty level should force all aids off, including driving line. Sure, we can do that ourselves already, but they should also have an option that does it for you.

 

[Z1-AV69]

I don't think it has to do with loving old AI code. It's probably the lacking ressources of the consoles. PD has to decide if they want better looking cars, better physics, better track surroundings or better AI. It will get a little better with the PS4, but probably it will still be a matter of priorities. The success of GT comes from the focus on cars, physics and driving feel. And I'm all with Kaz if he keeps that priority. I would rather like more aspects of car ownership. I would love to be able to open the doors and look into the interior or even different interior options available. (*)

The racing aspect on the other hand, I'm not sure what purpose that really should have other than a career for learning to drive. In a shooter game the single player mode is just to get used to the game, the real game is online anyway. Racing is all about competition, not story or something. So the case for playing online multiplayer is even greater. In the end every race against some AI is fake competition anyway as long as it isn't a very advanced true intelligence, you wont see on a console for 20 more years.

The only interesting AI races I could imagine would be the old, long endurance races, like realtime 24h. You can't do that online. But not many liked it in GT5 it seems.

(*) If I were Kaz, I would develop GT into a platform where car makers could show off their cars in full detail, with every option you can order available in game. PD should only develop the game engine, tracks etc., the coding for the cars should be done by the car makers, who also pay for it, but of course on a closely controlled framework to keep it realistic. Once some carmakers see what a great marketing tool that would be, they would all come I believe. Car makers actually pay for getting potential consumers to test drives and it's not a few cents (It's more than a copy of GT6 I heard). A future GT could provide much cheaper testdrives for a much larger audience.

 

[stb155]

GT6 is so bad because it is not a racing game, not a driving game and not a simulator.

I has become a arcade/kids game with very decent physic model.

AI that does not want to win and waits for you when you are slow or crash, and "races" where you have to overtake 14 cars in 3 laps does not go together with realistic car handling.

Just not the same target group.

People that want realistic car handling will not be happy about unrealistic races.
(All the "AI lets you win" threads)

People that enjoy the GT style "races" will not be happy with realistic car handling.
(All the "broken car" and "MR cars undriveable" threads)

I just don't get why they not try to make it bearable for both groups.
Let me switch off SRF, give me a "custom race" option where i can select what i want (like online but with ADJUSTABLE AI opponents)

And make some "matching" for online !

It is so hard to find something interesting because you cant see all games, cant filter by anything useful and cant see the rules without joining.

 

[NixxxoN]

Why people care about the AI when you have the online mode???
Racing against other real people will always be far far better than racing against the AI.

It seems it has improved in GT6 and it still could improve more of course, but no matter how good it is, it will never match a human intelligence. Never

 

[mr_serious]

Why people care about the AI when you have the online mode???
Racing against other real people will always be far far better than racing against the AI.

It seems it has improved in GT6 and it still could improve more of course, but no matter how good it is, it will never match a human intelligence. Never

Well asides from the fact that playing online requires quite a bit of time & effort to find the right people / rooms, having a better offline mode makes for better online players.

 

[NixxxoN]

Well asides from the fact that playing online requires quite a bit of time & effort to find the right people / rooms, having a better offline mode makes for better online players.

You don't need a good AI to learn to drive and become a good driver. All you need is to practice and practice and improve your laptimes.
If you really want to practice racing against the AI, all you need to do is pick a slower car than them... But seriously... racing against them doesnt make you a good racer, more like the opposite... people tend to overtake them by ramming them off on corners.
When I go in online mode, only 5% of people have proper overtaking skills and I try to teach them everytime I see someone doing clumsy moves trying to overtake someone.

 

[mr_serious]

You don't need a good AI to learn to drive and become a good driver. All you need is to practice and practice and improve your laptimes.
If you really want to practice racing against the AI, all you need to do is pick a slower car than them.

Fine let's not get into another "but there's online!" discussion because you can find them & all arguments for & against as a defense in any thread, but PD put in a single player mode - so the single player mode should be playable.

 

[NixxxoN]

Fine let's not get into another "but there's online!" discussion because you can find them & all arguments for & against as a defense in any thread, but PD put in a single player mode - so the single player mode should be playable.

Please read the rest of my post if you havent done so (I edited)
The IA doesnt complain when you bumper them / ram them off track or when get overtaken in a dirty way. That's why I think people only really learn to drive against other real people.

 

[GranTurismoer]

For me GT5/6 has no real focus, I play GT5 predominately for hotlapping cars around the Nurburgring. This is fun to some extent but I am really crying out for a decent and fun career mode, something in my opinion GT5 nor GT6 has.

I would love to see GT7 focus on actual racing with mandatory pitstops, race rules with flags and qualifying with proper grid starts. There comes a point in GT where we are saturated in the number of cars and the focus has to be directed to the racing aspect.

Right now Gran Turismo is a car collection and hotlapping simulation for me, it could be so much more.

 

[HKS racer]

Please read the rest of my post if you havent done so (I edited)
The IA doesnt complain when you bumper them / ram them off track or when get overtaken in a dirty way. That's why I think people only really learn to drive against other real people.

Nope. A decent virtual/real driver doesn't necessarily need someone else complaing in order to realize that dive bombing first corner or the stuff you mentioned is not the way to go.

A decently designed racing game should also teach you how to drive OFFLINE with competitve AI in order to prepare you for other decently skilled humans. Instead pubblic online is full of noobs/dirty drivers because the game didn't teach them anything.

I don't think it has to do with loving old AI code. It's probably the lacking ressources of the consoles.

And here we go again. I'm sure we'll heard the same excuse on the PS4. I'm dead serious.

 

[NixxxoN]

Nope. A decent virtual/real driver doesn't necessarily need someone else complaing in order to realize that dive bombing first corner or the stuff you mentioned is not the way to go.

A decently designed racing game should also teach you how to drive OFFLINE with competitve AI in order to prepare you for other decently skilled humans.

Yeah, but a lot of players are like that. Not everyone is naturally talented to do car racing yet they like to do it.
I think OVERTAKING is some sort of "art" that requires a lot of time to be learnt and mastered.
The AI will never be human like, so the best way to learn is to find proper people online to play with.

 

[stb155]

Why people care about the AI when you have the online mode???
Racing against other real people will always be far far better than racing against the AI.

As I said, the way online works at the moment it is impossible to find good races for me.

Was online 3 days for 1-2h and only once found a room with people sharing the same interests.
(Street cars, no tuning, hard sport tires, no aids, realistic damage/fuel/slipstream)
Of the 5 people in the room only one was roughly the same skill level (other 4 way faster) so it also got boring pretty fast.


There should really be some system in place that tries to put you on a server with people of the same skill level an interests.
How hard can that be ?

If you go online there comes up a screen and u tick a few boxes like:
Training&fun/racing
Aids: none/few/many
Cars: race/street/both
Tuning: yes/no/both
Tires for street cars: Comfort&Sport Hard only/Sport Medium up to Race Soft
Skill level: Beginner/Amateur/Pro

And then you get put on a server with people that ticked the same boxes and not randomly.

At the moment i get shown ~30 rooms with only filter being SRF off.
70% i can rule out by description (cops,fun,cruising,training,tuning,...)
30% sound interesting (street,stock,fair,clean) but if you join and look at the rules 29% are crap.
Like street cars but on soft sports or even soft slicks, tuning allowed (but you cant see anywhere how much the others tuned), full slipstream, all aids allowed and so on.

If you don't have friends to arrange a race or are in a league (but if i'am that serious/committed i get a race sim and not GT) online is useless.

It seems it has improved in GT6 and it still could improve more of course, but no matter how good it is, it will never match a human intelligence. Never

If you call it an improvement that their Nr.1 goal is now to let you win every race no matter how or what car you drive then they have indeed become very good.

 

[Prototyp3]

i love ghosting, it's almost all I did in GT5.

 

[cjr3559]

The game (to me) is more about 'challenges' than 'racing' for the sake of racing. GT has always been about the car, not the race. I think the offline race series as merely test drive race challenges with different types of cars.

I think the game has improved dramatically since it's first iterations 15 years ago as far as AI is concerned. The AI isn't perfect, but maybe that's a good thing. Who wants to go back to racing a bunch of AI drivers that take predetermined perfect lines and speeds through every corner? I personally hated it when they wouldn't yield or acknowledge you or other AI cars even existed.

Regarding the lack of qualifying; I liked to qualify, as it gave me a chance to warm up and test the car/track. But what was the point of qualifying (was it GT2 or 3? can't recall) when you pull up with the fastest car in the game and instantly pull off the fastest lap, start on pole and never even see the competition? If that's a challenge then I'd rather go bowling. The addition of PP was probably one of the better inclusions in the game.

So, I think there's nothing wrong with the GT series. It's a driving simulator with racing moments and I'm fine with it.

 

[NixxxoN]

To me there's no need for qualifying as the most fun is to charge through the field and overtake all cars.

 

[raytard]

IMO, the game is split between the hardcore racers (no aids, clean driving, pp and tire regs, etc) and "everyone else" who prefers to drive with aids, srf, and RS tires on everything, and feels that every car needs to be 100% upgraded (instead of just buying a faster car).

We now have a single player game that doesn't feature anything that looks like a race until the 24 minute "enduros". Everything else is a time trial or passing challenge (don't tell me starting 16 places back with an overpowered car and the goal of hitting first within a time or lap limit is anything besides that).

They just need a "casual or hardcore" prompt in the beginning. Casual can play whatever it is that PD calls a racing game. Leave it exactly as-is. AIDS and tuned bumper cars, because that's what they like.

Hardcore players get grid starts, qualifying, and AI that mirrors the harder AI in arcade. Collisions and shortcuts are a penalty. Throw a flag system in, it's not rocket science. Due to the added difficulty and time involved, payout rewards are higher, but hours to hours you earn about the same as the casuals.

"Race for Real" online would be limited to those "hardcore" players. Help keep somewhere normal people can go without being an ancillary brake for all the casuals sliding off corners in overpowered imports with RS tires.

 

[Earth]

To me there's no need for qualifying as the most fun is to charge through the field and overtake all cars.

The problem with that is it means the other cars are terribly slow to allow you to do that, making them nothing more then slow moving obstacles.

I think theres more challenge and fun in beating equal or even superior AI by pit strategy, or simply having to spend a few laps searching for the weakness of the car ahead and finding it for that perfect overtake.

Starting 5th and finishing 3rd can be more satisfying then starting 16th and finishing 1st. Battling door to door with a couple AI for an entire race can be much funner then just blowing their doors off as you march to the front untested. Reminds me of online races where I had fun battles for 5th place. Certainly more interesting then just stomping some online noobs like you do with GT AI.

If PD refuses to address the racing aspect of GT, Im done with the franchise, doesn't matter how good GT7 looks or handles or sounds. Sad part is I remember some very fun racing from GT1 and GT3 before the chase the rabbit thing infested the series in GT4.

 

[JackC8]

Isn't it time Polyphony just drop all pretense of being a "racing game"?

The Real Driving Simulator needs to play to it's strengths - it doesn't need to become iRacing/GTR/etc, in fact, it needs to go the opposite direction and do away with racing all together, becoming a time trial/test drive type game.

I wouldn't give you two bucks for a game that's nothing but time trials. Neither I suspect would 99% of Gran Turismo's customers.

They need to improve the AI and add adjustable difficulty.

 

[NixxxoN]

The problem with that is it means the other cars are terribly slow to allow you to do that, making them nothing more then slow moving obstacles.

I think theres more challenge and fun in beating equal or even superior AI by pit strategy, or simply having to spend a few laps searching for the weakness of the car ahead and finding it for that perfect overtake.

Starting 5th and finishing 3rd can be more satisfying then starting 16th and finishing 1st. Battling door to door with a couple AI for an entire race can be much funner then just blowing their doors off as you march to the front untested. Reminds me of online races where I had fun battles for 5th place. Certainly more interesting then just stomping some online noobs like you do with GT AI.

If PD refuses to address the racing aspect of GT, Im done with the franchise, doesn't matter how good GT7 looks or handles or sounds. Sad part is I remember some very fun racing from GT1 and GT3 before the chase the rabbit thing infested the series in GT4.

You can always get a slower car if you feel the IA is too slow... It's all your choice so I don't know why some people complain about it.
And I repeat, there's online aswell. Nothing compares to racing against real people.
To me not buying or not liking GT6 because of "slow AI" is one of the most bizarre things I've heard.

 

[HKS racer]

You can always get a slower car if you feel the IA is too slow... It's all your choice so I don't know why some people complain about it.

And I repeat, there's online aswell.
Nothing compares to racing against real people.

In the casebox of GT5 and GT6 there is offline as well.
Luckly for us nothing compares to "racing" against GT5 & & Career Mode AI.

To me not buying or not liking GT6 because of "slow AI" is one of the most bizarre things I've heard.

Since when you get vaseline and accepted Gran Turismo series to be an online racaing game only? Tell Kaz to remove offline part completely then. Oh wait, there's iRacing for that already.

 

[NFSCARBON1]

What PD need to add is competitive races at the end of career mode (which do not contribute to trophy's or the overall progress of the game) which more experienced and better drivers can enjoy, but new/slower drivers don't have to do. This way most people should be happy and hopefully people won't feel excluded.

I'm not the fastest driver in the world, but I have been playing GT games since 1998 so I'm not bad. However my girlfriend has recently gotten into the game but she is struggling with some parts of it. Seeing the problems she has reminds me of the problems I had back in GT2 with licences and certain races. For newcomers and casual gamers, if the game is too hard they will get bored and not want to play.
If PD had taken the 'hardcore' approach since the beginning, I very much doubt we'd be seeing a GT6 at all, let alone with such a big fanbase. GTP may never have come into existence, or could have faded away.

BSpec and (hopefully) Endurance races will be coming soon. With any luck the AI will be deliberately made more competitive, so that faster drivers have a challenge and slower drivers can let Bob take the strain.

 

[Exorcet]

IMO, the game is split between the hardcore racers (no aids, clean driving, pp and tire regs, etc) and "everyone else" who prefers to drive with aids, srf, and RS tires on everything, and feels that every car needs to be 100% upgraded (instead of just buying a faster car).

We now have a single player game that doesn't feature anything that looks like a race until the 24 minute "enduros". Everything else is a time trial or passing challenge (don't tell me starting 16 places back with an overpowered car and the goal of hitting first within a time or lap limit is anything besides that).

They just need a "casual or hardcore" prompt in the beginning. Casual can play whatever it is that PD calls a racing game. Leave it exactly as-is. AIDS and tuned bumper cars, because that's what they like.

A step in the right direction, but rigid divisions won't help much. Instead of having predefined mode 1 and predefined mode 2 just list everything, every option related to racing and let people build exactly what they want. For those that won't want to bother the defaults could just be set to mimic GT as it is now, maybe with a couple of other predefined suggestions.

I don't play career mode and I don't have GT6, but I can sympathize with your comment about the first real race. I don't like 2 lap races and I don't like chase the rabbit. Even if I did think that career mode was important, I would find very little satisfaction from the majority of races because they don't even feel like events. We don't need to be handheld into driving underpowered cars for 5 minutes at a time. Career mode should be more free form. If you want to go LMP racing from the beginning, you should be able to. Or maybe you like the slower cars (which are no easier to race in - speed and difficulty are basically unrelated). Where are the professional level events for sub 200 HP cars?

GT has just become stagnant, or in some cases gone backwards. Drawing in casual players only makes sense, but I don't understand why this must go hand in hand with taking options away from everyone else.

 

[Brend]

Drivatars..

In theory, most people I have seen have said the erratic driving ruins the experience.

 

[CTznOfTime]

So in conclusion on this topic, after reading you all, it seems the consensus is for Kaz to improve and to give us players the choice of selecting the difficulty level(*) in the OFFline mode.

That would be one of the critical points of improvement to determine the future of GT...

Allright then, by democratic forum decision, if someone at PD is reading us, please elevate this issue to Kaz-san.

And dont forget tire drifting sound, which is horrid.

Thank you in advance,

Your fans who care


*EDIT: given more thoughts about it, it would seems unrealistic and unfair to let players select the AI offline difficulty level on the fly... you start out the game by selecting the level and you commit and stick to it until the end. If you switch it in the middle, it will void all your progress and trophies and wins. You would basically start your offline career mode from scratch. Fair enough as a proposition?

 

[Firedragon]

So in conclusion on this topic, after reading you all, it seems the consensus is for Kaz to improve and to give us players the choice of selecting the difficulty level in the OFFline mode.

That would be one of the critical points of improvement to determine the future of GT...

Allright then, by democratic forum decision, if someone at PD is reading us, please elevater this issue to Kaz-san.

And dont forget tire drifting sound, which is horrid.

Thank you in advance,

Your fans who care

I think that is the best of all worlds and generally what the player base wants, based on common sense and the posts over here and in the rest of the forums. The problem is whether that would be technically possible or even fit into the time schedule of doing things. It's this management part that's the problem and I think that no one on the forums here hasn't got even the slightest scope of whether it is possible...well, not well enough to say that they could absolutely pull it off and why they are not/haven't done so already. So yeah, we can only wish for it...as much as anyone else I hope they are getting the message.

 

[stb155]

You can always get a slower car if you feel the IA is too slow... It's all your choice so I don't know why some people complain about it.

No you can't in GT6 and this is exactly why so many complain about the AI.

They can drive fast, the can take different lines, they can outbrake you and they can drive behind you for many laps without hitting you.

They are just not allowed to most of the time by the new "prime initiative" of GT6:
Always let the player win.

(To be exact its: start to slow down after 50% of the race until the player overtakes)

 

[Exorcet]

given more thoughts about it, it would seems unrealistic and unfair to let players select the AI offline difficulty level on the fly... you start out the game by selecting the level and you commit and stick to it until the end. If you switch it in the middle, it will void all your progress and trophies and wins. You would basically start your offline career mode from scratch. Fair enough as a proposition?

My view is this:

The game is meant to be fun. Any competition should be opt in, not opt out. I don't care about trophies, progress, or any of that extraneous stuff. If some people want to get around that one race or the race they just don't enjoy by lowering the difficulty, they should be able to do it without penalty. Then you also have cases where players might want to do something special like having a friend over and doing driver swaps for a long race. Perhaps a slightly lower difficulty would be better for this event if the skills of the drivers are far enough apart.

This also goes the other way, if someone improves while playing, they might want to bump the difficulty up. The difficulty option should be available at any time to meet the needs of the player.

Fun should come first. When devs starting making everything into a pointless competition, they started negating the point of the games. Annoying and useless trophies pop up during cutscenes, save data left at risk because you're not allowed to back it up all to stop someone from "cheating", special codes for unlocking certain modes or content gone because then you have advantages over the other people in the competition you never wanted to take part in. How the next person plays the game shouldn't matter to anyone.

 

[CTznOfTime]

I dont think the above proposition would get in your way of playing.

My post was short and there couldnt explain everything, so let me answer your concerns here below:

The current AI arcade difficulty level slider would remain and would be independent from the AI offline Career mode.
In such case you would still be able to play with you guest in arcade mode against the arcade AI. This would not affect your trophies and wins stats.

As for getting around to finish the career offline game mode, i dont agree with you to let people change the AI difficulty on the fly or whenever you want. It would be too easy then to claim that you have completed the game.

You should be able to say:
I finish the career mode in easy
I finish the career mode in medium
I finishe the career mode in hard
I finishe the career mode in extremely difficult
I finish the career mode because i am Vettel

Get my drift

My view is this:

The game is meant to be fun. Any competition should be opt in, not opt out. I don't care about trophies, progress, or any of that extraneous stuff. If some people want to get around that one race or the race they just don't enjoy by lowering the difficulty, they should be able to do it without penalty. Then you also have cases where players might want to do something special like having a friend over and doing driver swaps for a long race. Perhaps a slightly lower difficulty would be better for this event if the skills of the drivers are far enough apart.

This also goes the other way, if someone improves while playing, they might want to bump the difficulty up. The difficulty option should be available at any time to meet the needs of the player.

Fun should come first. When devs starting making everything into a pointless competition, they started negating the point of the games. Annoying and useless trophies pop up during cutscenes, save data left at risk because you're not allowed to back it up all to stop someone from "cheating", special codes for unlocking certain modes or content gone because then you have advantages over the other people in the competition you never wanted to take part in. How the next person plays the game shouldn't matter to anyone.

 

[FishHunters]

I don't think it has to do with loving old AI code. It's probably the lacking ressources of the consoles. PD has to decide if they want better looking cars, better physics, better track surroundings or better AI. It will get a little better with the PS4, but probably it will still be a matter of priorities. The success of GT comes from the focus on cars, physics and driving feel. And I'm all with Kaz if he keeps that priority. I would rather like more aspects of car ownership. I would love to be able to open the doors and look into the interior or even different interior options available. (*)

The racing aspect on the other hand, I'm not sure what purpose that really should have other than a career for learning to drive. In a shooter game the single player mode is just to get used to the game, the real game is online anyway. Racing is all about competition, not story or something. So the case for playing online multiplayer is even greater. In the end every race against some AI is fake competition anyway as long as it isn't a very advanced true intelligence, you wont see on a console for 20 more years.

The only interesting AI races I could imagine would be the old, long endurance races, like realtime 24h. You can't do that online. But not many liked it in GT5 it seems.

(*) If I were Kaz, I would develop GT into a platform where car makers could show off their cars in full detail, with every option you can order available in game. PD should only develop the game engine, tracks etc., the coding for the cars should be done by the car makers, who also pay for it, but of course on a closely controlled framework to keep it realistic. Once some carmakers see what a great marketing tool that would be, they would all come I believe. Car makers actually pay for getting potential consumers to test drives and it's not a few cents (It's more than a copy of GT6 I heard). A future GT could provide much cheaper testdrives for a much larger audience.

Agree, that it's probably about priorities. Kaz needs to listen to his consumers. We want better AI. Disagree however, that online is it and career mode is not. People have personal preferences. Part of the audience is very concerned with the career aspect. They want the challenge of a good race without having to play dodge these cars to catch the leader who's already a lap ahead. Other games do it. Why can't GT.

The idea of car makers providing the cars is very intriguing.