Schumacher's retirement makes me afraid for GT5.

[Rezonance]

You know, Schumacher's retirement has got me thinking...

Whether you're a fan of his or not, you can't deny the man's relentless, almost robotic pursuit of perfection. While thinking about this, I realized that that's what makes competition really fun and exciting. The thrill of winning a competition of any sort is much sweeter when it's won by a hair's-breadth; the last-second hail mary pass, the three-point shot at the buzzer, or the race victory by a few thousandths of a second. How much fun would it be to watch a boxing match where one fighter has gloves and the other has a gun? Not much fun at all, in my opinion. I want to see them duke it out to the bitter end.

Applying that analogy to GT4, I now know why I've only completed about 85% of the game. While GTs 1 2, & 3 didn't get a rest until I was 100% done with them, Polyphony seemed to lose the plot a bit with GT4. Here's what I mean: what is it that has made the GT series the most successful driving games in history? The REALISM. I've felt more like I'm driving a real race car in Gran Turismo then in any other driving game, period. Are there features that they could add to make it even more realistic? You bet, but all things considered they've done a pretty bang-up job so far. GT4, however, started in with some bells and whistles that didn't add to the driving experience for me. Photo mode, B-Spec mode, adding cars that don't seem to have a home in any particular race series, etc. I understand that Polyphony wants to reach the widest audience possible and also has the needs of its licensors to consider, but at what cost? For me, the driving experience in GT4 has been diluted by the elimination of some other features: single-race qualifying is gone, car requirements in the individual races are either fascist strict or wide open, allowing overdog cars to come in and get ridiculously easy wins, etc.

Sony, here's what I want: I want to feel that thrill of competition whether I'm racing an 1100hp GTP car at LeMans or a 60hp Daihatsu around the practice track, and I'm tired of racing 'Vettes and Vipers with an econobox just to make things interesting. I want every race to be as difficult as the most difficult license test. I want to feel like I've accomplished something even if it's just winning the Sunday Cup. Granted, in real life success is the reward of repeated failure, and the price of that success is the shine going off the penny. However, in a computer game that reality can be altered.

Here's what I want you to do Polyphony: Include a "Pro" mode, or at least make these selectable options that I can choose to enable. If I crash into a wall or another car in a race, I want that race to be over because I screwed up and wrecked my car. I want to be forced to race cars in every single race that are competitive, but certainly not significantly faster than the competition. I do not want the damn computer to be able to race my car for me. I want the other cars to race me back. I want to be able to practice before a race and tweak my car settings for half an hour in qualifying because I'm not going to have a snowball's chance in hell of winning if I don't. I want to know that if I miss a single apex or miss a shift it's going to cost me dearly. I want these things because that's how it works in real life. I want to suffer repeated failures so that I can enjoy my successes again. I want the game to be effing hard!

Leave the whiz-bang stuff in as an arcade mode if you must for the dilettantes and blood-lusting GTA aficionados, but please, oh please allow us to turn it off and race like men! I may not have an ounce of Schumacher's talent, but give me the option to pursue that degree of perfection over and over again until I finally cross the finish line with my fist in the air!

Challenge me GT5! Make me love you again!

 

[Touring Mars]

👍 Terrific post - one which no doubt will have plenty of 'rezonance' with many members here...

I agree with most of what you're saying, and the racing aspect of the GT series could use some - ok, alot - of improvement. However, as some threads in this forum show (the 200pt A-Spec Race Thread, as well as a variety of Race Reports), it is possible to 'force' GT to give you a decent race - so long as you are prepared to use your imagination, and sacrifice (in my view) an unnecessarily long amount of time just trying to find a car/race combo that works...

I suppose, for me, I can't have it both ways - if you want to be able to just 'plug and play' then you can't really expect to have an 'ultimately realistic' racing experience - but for those who are willing to put time and effort into making (or even finding) a race that is much more challenging, then there are ways of doing it already - although it would be good if the game itself made it slightly less difficult to find more of a challenge.

 

[Tenacious D]

Well, it could be made to work without too much trouble, I'd think anyway. Some of us have been mooning over wishlist threads over what we'd like to see in the next GT. A few of us have developed the idea that GT5 could be compartmentalized in three different ways.
Arcade Mode
Gran Turismo Mode (these two are like the old GT)
Professiona Mode (like racing sims)

This way you can have three levels of difficulty. Arcade where you just grab cars and have fun or get used to the game, or polish your skill on a certain track, whatever.

GT Mode which is what Gran Turismo has been like forever, something loosely modelled on real life racing, but with a more or less freeform structure so you can pick and choose your challenges. The rewards are kind of over the top, but the racing is fairly serious and to one extent or another, rather furious.

And then Pro Mode where you separate the arcade boys from the dity, smelly, battle damaged veterans. I like having a Season and Career Mode, so you have a choice of trying for a season's worth of play in a racing genre you like, like Rally or GT racing, or starting from scratch and basically racing for the rest of your life.

So, it may take some work and tweaking, but I think it can exist pretty well in a Gran Turismo game.

 

[Keef]

Rezonance, I totally agree with you. I love the thrill of passing and being passed, fighting for position, actually worrying if you're going to finish the race with gas in the tank, wondering if your opponent will run out, wondering if he'll spin in front of you while going 200 down the Mulsanne, having the baddies take advantage of every tiny mistake you make, like missed apexes and such. I want excitment and suspense. I want to be all sweaty, nervous, and exhausted when I get done playing my GT. I want to never be in a situation where I say to myself "I've run 380 races and only lost one." I hate that situation because it makes me worry about losing the next race to keep my near perfect record. I'd rather have to actually try and keep my record over 50%!

I've never used GT4's Arcade Mode. Gran Turismo Mode is great, but not hardcore enough. With only a few tweaks a professional mode--like what Tenacious mentioned--could be implimented and would cater to the few of us who want real racing. I don't necessarily want to go fast, be in the lead, or even win. I want to race, and that's it.

 

[Earth]

I dont want PD to include any 'PRO' mode. I dont want them to spend another second increasing the 'challenge' of mindless AI opponents.

Don't waste time with single player PD. It's had its day.

If you want white knuckle well rewarding racing, do it online against other REAL opponents not mindless computer chips designed to follow set tracks on the course.

That's why KY is shifting the whole GT series towards online. Because I have come to know and I'm sure others have come to know that offline racing is NOTHING compared to online racing. Hopefully in the future all racing games will be online only because racing against a preset preprogrammed AI is now (at least for me) retarded and a complete waste of time. (This said after spending the last 4 years racing online almost exclusively.)

 

[jdwk]

I'm not sure if it's really the difficulty that is the key. Making it insanely hard is certainly not the answer. It has to do with the types of races and the progression of them. GT3 I thought did a great job of this. And yes, I played GT3 fairly non-stop till it was complete (well 99%, I don't think I ever beat the time-trail on the complex course). I think I stopped playing GT4 somewhere around 65%. The progression was just terrible. Nothing really drove me to continue. The horribly slow and convoluted menu system didn't help things that's for sure, but it's that desire to win which you mentioned that GT4 did not fuel.
I don't want to have to work hard to make a challenging race. I want the races already setup so that if I don't make a mistake, I will win. I don't want to have to search through 50 dealerships to find a car to do it either.
I wish I could say exactly what they need to do to make the game more enjoyable, but just making it more difficult is not going to help.

 

[fideles1986]

great post, and I agree with all 👍

I actually restarted my GT4 carrer a couples of days ago, because when i got GT4 when it first came out i was in the NFS mode, thought i knew about cars, and only cared about wining. Now i actually have an understanding about automoiles and how fun it is to just race. On my first file i am at 99.8% and now i am around 10% and man oh man its boring, even with my DFP. It gets exciting 1 in every 10 races, but surely not enough to keep me hooked for long (stupid AI, i hate u), but I just want to keep playing just to maybe later on find that ounce of excitment again and remember why i love cars.

 

[De Bolle]

Well, it could be made to work without too much trouble, I'd think anyway. Some of us have been mooning over wishlist threads over what we'd like to see in the next GT. A few of us have developed the idea that GT5 could be compartmentalized in three different ways.
Arcade Mode
Gran Turismo Mode (these two are like the old GT)
Professiona Mode (like racing sims)

This way you can have three levels of difficulty. Arcade where you just grab cars and have fun or get used to the game, or polish your skill on a certain track, whatever.

GT Mode which is what Gran Turismo has been like forever, something loosely modelled on real life racing, but with a more or less freeform structure so you can pick and choose your challenges. The rewards are kind of over the top, but the racing is fairly serious and to one extent or another, rather furious.

And then Pro Mode where you separate the arcade boys from the dity, smelly, battle damaged veterans. I like having a Season and Career Mode, so you have a choice of trying for a season's worth of play in a racing genre you like, like Rally or GT racing, or starting from scratch and basically racing for the rest of your life.

So, it may take some work and tweaking, but I think it can exist pretty well in a Gran Turismo game.

Good suggestions which are badly needed imho. I won't buy a HD makeover of the same old tracks and cars...

 

[fasj6418]

they need, even with strong online play, put a progressive careear mode in the game. like you start inan old era and work you way up to year 2010 or so, racing with the cars of each era... something like that... something that makes fun completing. the missions were cool in GT4, but just like it happened with every other GT, i stopped playing GT mode and now only time attack and some races in the race series here at GTP.

careear mode would rock

 

[Sportscar_Rob]

I dont want PD to include any 'PRO' mode. I dont want them to spend another second increasing the 'challenge' of mindless AI opponents.

Don't waste time with single player PD. It's had its day.

If you want white knuckle well rewarding racing, do it online against other REAL opponents not mindless computer chips designed to follow set tracks on the course.

I couldnt agree less. Theres people out there (like me) who have no interest whatsoever in playing online. I think PD should try to please both sides, turning the nex GT into a merely-online based game would be a very bad move. Not everybody is into online-playing....

 

[JTSnooks]

I also don't care much for online play, and would love to see GT more challenging. However, it would need to be done right. First of all, have a truly adaptive and INTELLIGENT AI. One that obeys the unwritten (or written) rules of racing, such as when someone outbrakes you into a corner and gets inside of your car, you take the outside line rather than just slamming down into their car. Second, they need to have a much more strict control of what car can be raced in what series. Nobody wants to see 10 identical cars (other than the color) going around a track in single-file, but nobody wants to pick too easy or hard of a car and be the one odd duck that's by himself in front or behind while everyone else is fighting for the win or second place. They should take a clue from real racing series and have horsepower/weight ranges, more specific car types/sanctions, etc, so that the races are close, yet diverse. That would make the racing MUCH more interesting.

I also agree that they need to bring back qualifying. I've never heard of a race, championship, series, or tournament that doesn't require qualifying or at LEAST allow a few hours of practice beforehand.

 

[nickg07]

cant say ive ever used acrade mode in GT4...

but i think this too easy thing came inline with the removal of the BHP limits to the races (and the advent of the useless A-SPec point system). by limiting the BHP i think it made it a much more equal race (obviously potential for variations on BHP/Ton here, but unless u go beserk on weight reduction etc the cars are going to be more similar in each BHP class) which should lead to closer racing.

i restarted my game and went back and tried to win as many races as i could with as little bhp as i could get away with, and immelsely enjoyed using difficult cars to do the events with, even if it meant me losing a 100% winnign record, as it was more fun to challenge, lose, and retry to win than simply win first time by hitting the grid with a 3/500 bhp car or whatever.

i think the prizes for winning races were terrible and didnt inspire longevity to persist and use the new car to further yourself.


infact i enjoyed the lower BHP races far more than the higher BHP races. if they had staggered races 150bhp limit, 220bhp, 280bhp, for example, you could buy a do-erupper race it to win the 150bhp race, and then really tweak and tune and carry into the 220bhp race. then if your good challenge the 280bhp (with a lowly G20 for example) and maybe win an autech, or something with closer to 200bhp stock and take that to race the 280bhp event which may be beyond the G20's handling/power limits.

-for me this would have made the races more progressive and added to the fun and enjoyment from it.

as it is, u win either a direct replacement for the car u just used to win that championship with, probably to never be used again (if its the same layout/drivetrain/aspiration, which they usually were..). i just didnt like it!