Self-control, or a lack thereof.

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because there is probably some folks out there that don't take the game as serious as most of ya'll... Think about it, not everyone is going to be able to invest as much time into the game as some of you that are complaining. Look at the big picture and not just from your point of view, maybe things like this will begin to make sense, not everyone is going to know how to tune their car or think to come join a forum and ask a question only to get told to go search for it.
PD aint gonna make everybody happy, but at least they are trying. They could very well have been like EA was with Prostreet, allow you to pay for the game, you see the Audi R8 or CCX one day in the car lot, the next day there is an update and you have to pay $1.99 per car from the PS store... Be happy with what it is you are getting because PD can all the sudden decide to want to make more money off us.

If ya'll want to be mad, be mad about the lack of A-spec races... 60 damn dollars and i have to sit and watch Bob do more then me?!?!?! %$k THAT!!! B-spec shpould be a much, much smaller portion of the game.
 
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because there is probably some folks out there that don't take the game as serious as most of ya'll... Think about it, not everyone is going to be able to invest as much time into the game as some of you that are complaining. Look at the big picture and not just from your point of view, maybe things like this will begin to make sense, not everyone is going to know how to tune their car or think to come join a forum and ask a question only to get told to go search for it.
Well, I don't really disagree with the difficulty level being vastly different for different people, however, the lack of time on some folk's hands should be a reason to get rid of the grind. Making games easy because there might be a fistful of people who can't beat it seems to be, dunno, sucky.

It might be me, but I'm finding most modern games to be of little challenge, for whatever reason. Unless, of course, you're tying an arm to your back, so I can understand where that sentiment comes from.
I just disagree with making games so easy that every last guy can beat them without practicing... And, looking at Gran Turismo specifically, I do think that the use of the assists should be a decent enough way to affect the overall difficulty level of most races. Much like the difficulty settings in other games.

But PD gave everyone something that's along the lines of an optional aim bot in a first person shooter. Or a god mode, if you will. You don't have to use it, but I don't think that makes it a wise decision to include it...
 
I'd settle for some decent restrictions.

The problem is that the AI runs stock on pretty much everything. Look at the starting Sunday Cup. Even though it's the first race you'll run you've usually purchased at least one tuning upgrade for your car and you'll have the edge.

It should be set by BHP and Weight just like the challenges are were and then the AI should tune up towards that range giving fair competition without pidgeonholing everyone into the same car.
 
But PD gave everyone something that's along the lines of an optional aim bot in a first person shooter. Or a god mode, if you will. You don't have to use it, but I don't think that makes it a wise decision to include it...

I don't understand why it wouldn't be? The average consumer of this game isn't going to have the same passion for the game, maybe they just want to see pretty cars go round the tracks.
They have to please everyone and thus far it seems they've done a pretty good job at it.

Maybe for the next game they should add the restrictions, , I feel that it would be a good look for the next iteration.

Me personally I like the assist, I use the hell out of them, then if I want to actually challenge myself then of course I'll switch them off. I agree with you, Tuning is a form of difficulty setting.
 
because there is probably some folks out there that don't take the game as serious as most of ya'll... Think about it, not everyone is going to be able to invest as much time into the game as some of you that are complaining. Look at the big picture and not just from your point of view, maybe things like this will begin to make sense, not everyone is going to know how to tune their car or think to come join a forum and ask a question only to get told to go search for it. PD aint gonna make everybody happy, but at least they are trying.

Getting a gold trophy in each event shouldn't be the main motivation to play the game. Even the most casual gamers should agree with this. The most important thing is that the events are exciting, fun and challeging but those points are being harmed by the non existant event restrictions. So the gamers who would care to get gold would find the time and effort to so and the players who wouldn't care would maybe not get gold in each event but still it wouldn't prevent them from making progress in the game. The way the game is structured means that you can earn money and experience no matter how good you are. It would reward those who try to get most out of the game and at the same time let anyone else have a good time without getting stuck on a certain level.
 
In my opinion, self control and GTPlanet should not be mentioned in the same sentence, and if it is, it should be done sparingly.

:indiff:
 
Getting difficulty levels right for game producers must be a nightmare. There will always be those that say it's too difficult, those that like it, and those that say it's too easy. Out of three camps, you'll only ever please one. But what I think PD have done here is set the level of the AI for the individual race and then allowed us to decide just how difficult the race will be.

I agree with what you said in general, but no way in hell am I defending PD for what they did with a-spec. It's as simple as adding a difficulty slider from easy to hard; developers have been doing it for years in every other game. Like most other aspects of GT5, PD simply ran out of time (or whatever the excuse) and it just wasn't thought out and included. So, we are left with calculating power-to-weight ratios and making proper tire selections to create our own competitive race. Right.

With that said, I created a matchmaker spreadsheet that helps with this task. (Note that there appears to be issues with it on Excel 2010):

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=145177&highlight=matchmaker
 
Totally agree with the OP. To this I have to reply with the excellent matchmaker spreadsheet that calan set up: thread here
It really helps to find closer matched races as well you can adjust the difficulty of the matchups on the fly.

Haha ninja'd by the creator!
 
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I don't understand why it wouldn't be? The average consumer of this game isn't going to have the same passion for the game, maybe they just want to see pretty cars go round the tracks.
Because what makes games great is, quite often, the fact that they have certain limitations. It might be just being used to older games, but I think that a game that doesn't challenge you isn't fun.
And, as it stands, you have to challenge yourself in GT Life's A-Spec portion. Aside from one or two events, that is (FGT Championship and NASCAR event).
 
Getting a gold trophy in each event shouldn't be the main motivation to play the game. Even the most casual gamers should agree with this. The most important thing is that the events are exciting, fun and challeging but those points are being harmed by the non existant event restrictions. So the gamers who would care to get gold would find the time and effort to so and the players who wouldn't care would maybe not get gold in each event but still it wouldn't prevent them from making progress in the game. The way the game is structured means that you can earn money and experience no matter how good you are. It would reward those who try to get most out of the game and at the same time let anyone else have a good time without getting stuck on a certain level.

I dig where you are coming from, but i still feel that the casual gamer outnumbers those that take the game as serious as the majority of the people on here. I see GT5 as them trying to get more people involved. PD and Sony put ton of money into promoting this game, I feel it's only right that the average consumer isn't bogged down by the game being TOO difficult. I think PD did right by the Consumer by allowing them to still have some form of free will in this game.

If you want to restrict your self then I reckon that would have to be a choice you make. and not the game.
 
Because what makes games great is, quite often, the fact that they have certain limitations. It might be just being used to older games, but I think that a game that doesn't challenge you isn't fun.
And, as it stands, you have to challenge yourself in GT Life's A-Spec portion. Aside from one or two events, that is (FGT Championship and NASCAR event).

I guess I'm just looking at it different. I see all the assist and options as a form of difficulty setting plus you have the ability to use your own integrity. If you want to race against K cars in a Veyron then that also should be the consumers choice. (no matter how ridiculous it looks):crazy:
 
With every Series of Gran Turismo there allways been a "God" Car in the Races thats usually similar to the other event Cars but as mentioned in a Previous Post it Driven by the Stig it seems as it goes off into the Distance .

So you Tune a Car to Beat that and you still end up with a 2 Car Race even if there are 8 , 12 or in Arcade 16 Cars .

I'm in the Game like Previous Versions for the long haul . so the first full Playthrough it a simple collect every car get to level 40 on A & B-Spec then i'll Start over again from a New Account and do it properly .

By then also there may or may not be other events to contend with .

But i'll have a garage full of Cars to Drive , Test and Tune and having played the Game through once i'll get a better idea of the type of Cars I need for Closer Racing .

Also if you really won't a proper Challenge (without rewards though) Go into Arcade and Race with the Stock Arcade Cars , that at the moment for me is where the Challenge is to Race the Same type of Cars with Standard Arcade Cars as you know they'll have the same Power as you . So then it is down to skill and not Overpowering your Car .
 
I agree with the OP, but I do wish PD provided some baselines for the new seasonal events. Give us a base build similar to the first set of events that would give a good challenge, but don't make it required. As others have said, it's hard to get the tune "just right" and give a good race.
 
I'm going to jump in without reading the whole thread.

Yes, it is true that people can just restrict themselves in A-Spec, and if they think it's too easy, they should.

However, PD did not design many races with this in mind. The standard Gran Turismo race is basically the player vs the one amazing AI/car who is shielded by a road block of lesser cars. Other races are all over the place (Le Mans 24 hours has the GT cars vs the LMP's, why?)

In races where the tire is unrestricted, the AI can used any tires, and the only way to find what tires they use is to go into a race, quit, and then watch the replay.

People can definitely make their own challenges, but it should really require a lot of effort. Every race should have a fully defined suggested rules list. Following the rules would give you a car more or less equal to all the AI, down to the type of exhaust, tires, aero package, whatever. Not following would let you bring something over or under powered. This way, people can easily race how they want.
 
Exactly. The problem, for me at least, isn't an unwillingness to challenge myself. It's an unwillingness to sit through 10 minutes of menu loading screens each time I want to change cars/tires/etc. because I only found out mid race that the race is too easy. If they actually designed a streamlined menu system it wouldn't be a problem.

Also, if they could design AI that could compete in a spec race, that would be nice too. Other games do that, no problem.
 
Yeah I can't understand it myself, they give us free reign to tune our cars how we want, maybe leave them standard, maybe spec them up, maybe choose are car that's got a battle on it's hands, but it seems some people just tune to the max because they can and then complain because PD made it too easy!!

And now I see it's carried over to the 3rd seasonal event. What they have done people, in my opinion, is made the game accessible for everyone, made the rewards attainable no matter how good of a driver you are, so everyone can experience that rare car that's going to cost them 20,000,000 credits. It's up to you how easy you make that experience.

Yeah 👍

Right now I want to accumulate credits so I can stock my GT5 garage with the cars (premium) I want.

I have years to race the AI evenly once I have the cars I want. I also spend more time online racing 👍 than racing the AI
 
It just goes to show really. There was alot of posts about the Seasonal Bonus Race 1 with the GTR being what GT5 should have been. However as I see it, these people obviously used overpowered cars/gripper tires for the rest of the game
 
I read a lot on here about how 'a-spec is ruined' because you can enter a car that is overpowered and decimate the competition, making the game far too easy. Well here's how I view it.

Notice how there is no difficulty option? You can't adjust the difficulty of the AI drivers etc. What you can adjust however is the vehicle you choose to enter, the state of tune, the tires (notice how in a-spec tires are open, b-spec not so). So if you lack self-control and enter a car way over classed, then yes of course you will win. And by some distance. But who's cheating who here? Why not show some self-control and enter a car that is similarly powered? Or for a challenge of your driving ability, a car that is underpowered?

Getting difficulty levels right for game producers must be a nightmare. There will always be those that say it's too difficult, those that like it, and those that say it's too easy. Out of three camps, you'll only ever please one. But what I think PD have done here is set the level of the AI for the individual race and then allowed us to decide just how difficult the race will be.

A bonus to this is that by simply increasing the power of your car, you are not automatically making it easier for yourself, as leading by 30sec will make you lazy, leading to stupid crashes, and also bore you. So this encourages you to learn to drive the cars better with less power, actually improving your driving technique rather than relying on an out and out power advantage.

Or I could just be waffling. Or I could have missed this from a thread a month ago. But whatever, it works for me.

(Oh, and by 'driving ability' and 'technique', I'm obviously just referring to 'in-game'.)

STICKY please. Seeing people complain the game is "too easy" should maybe try this out as they obviously can't figure it out for themselves.
 
Notice how there is no difficulty option? You can't adjust the difficulty of the AI drivers etc. What you can adjust however is the vehicle you choose to enter, the state of tune, the tires (notice how in a-spec tires are open, b-spec not so). So if you lack self-control and enter a car way over classed, then yes of course you will win. And by some distance. But who's cheating who here? Why not show some self-control and enter a car that is similarly powered? Or for a challenge of your driving ability, a car that is underpowered?

Although I agree with you in general, what baffles me is that they still have some races where most of the cars are snails and then there's one rabbit in the same race. I'm a very average driver and the only way to win is use a (less powerful) rabbit too. They could have easily corrected that in GT5 since they already had that in GT4 too. E.g. power to weight ratio or something other that evens out the playing field. It would make it much more fun for me to then go and find a similar car or slightly less powered one to try and win.

AMG.
 
There is a small problem about restricting yourself though. The typical opponents list we can see before entering a race does not necessarily show all the cars which we will face in an event. Take the FR event in the Beginner Series for example. Sometimes you are racing against some rather weak FR cars while at other times there are a couple of really powerful FR cars. So let's enter the race with a car that seems to match the strongest car on the typical opponents list. When the race is about to start you find out that the competition is different and your car could still end up being overpowered. PD should just have made the cars that appear in each event the same each time you enter and players could consitently restrict themselves.

I still don't see any good argument against why they shouldn't just have added a few more entry requirements for each event. Imagine how limits for horsepower and weight could have worked as guidelines to how we could enter with cars that would be able to compete without being too powerful. It would not make the game hardcore. I think it could have worked perfectly if the entry requirements would give players a good advantage in the Beginner series. Then let us feel how the difficulty would increase as we make our way through the Amateur, Professional, Expert and Extreme series. It's pretty basic stuff and the people who would care to get far in the game would grow with the difficulty that comes with finding a proper car setup etc. It could be such a rewarding experience for everyone who likes an evolving game and who doesn't?

I think the lack of these entry requirements is either a consequence of rushing the game out or maybe they just got lazy at some point. The European Hot Hatch event in the Amateur Series does at least indicate that PD made some strange priorities. The beforementioned event requires that you enter with an European car but there is no restriction for which type of car you can enter with. I completed this event with the AMG SLS just to confirm how stupid it is. Then take a look at the entry requirements for the pick up truck event and you will see that they have carefully listed the 5-6 pick up trucks that are in the game. So why didn't they do something similar for the hot hatch events? Sorry, but PD really needed to make this part of the game match the big effort that shines through in many other aspects of the game.
 
I see this very simply. Motorsport is all about finding ANY way to go faster than your opponents abiding by the rules of the competition (well sometimes aka f1). So if there are no restrictions why would you go against natural instict and create your own challenge. I payed money to be given a challnge by experts, not do it myself. Very easy to sort, either have a bhp limit for races (aka earlier gts) or roughly match the bhp of ai to your car. End of story
 
I read a lot on here about how 'a-spec is ruined' because you can enter a car that is overpowered and decimate the competition, making the game far too easy. Well here's how I view it.

Notice how there is no difficulty option? You can't adjust the difficulty of the AI drivers etc. What you can adjust however is the vehicle you choose to enter, the state of tune, the tires (notice how in a-spec tires are open, b-spec not so). So if you lack self-control and enter a car way over classed, then yes of course you will win. And by some distance. But who's cheating who here? Why not show some self-control and enter a car that is similarly powered? Or for a challenge of your driving ability, a car that is underpowered?

Getting difficulty levels right for game producers must be a nightmare. There will always be those that say it's too difficult, those that like it, and those that say it's too easy. Out of three camps, you'll only ever please one. But what I think PD have done here is set the level of the AI for the individual race and then allowed us to decide just how difficult the race will be.

A bonus to this is that by simply increasing the power of your car, you are not automatically making it easier for yourself, as leading by 30sec will make you lazy, leading to stupid crashes, and also bore you. So this encourages you to learn to drive the cars better with less power, actually improving your driving technique rather than relying on an out and out power advantage.

Or I could just be waffling. Or I could have missed this from a thread a month ago. But whatever, it works for me.

(Oh, and by 'driving ability' and 'technique', I'm obviously just referring to 'in-game'.)

The difference is that you have no idea where the line lie between "hard" and "impossible". Trying to do soething you know is hard is challenging, but if it's impossible it's just a frustrating waste of time.

The Seasonal challenges before appeared impossible at first but they remained fun beacuse you knew they were not impossible.

When you restrict yourself, you have no idea if the restriction is just really hard or if it's impossible.

That's why they are not the same thing.

It's easy to say just restrict yourself, but is it as easy to do it in a satisfying way?

What everyone suggests when it comes time to restrict themselves is "try the race, then upgrade after a few attempts if necesary".

What this does is make the race approrpiate for your current skill level.

It does NOT provide you a veryhigh level of challenge, which is what the seasonal events did.

As yourself this - those seasonal events, if you had tried them with no foreknowedge of the restrictions and just used your rule of "upgrade if it appears too hard" would you have upgraded past the restrictions listed? I would be the answer is yes...

That is why it's not the same thing at all. The seasonal event restrictions required you to step up your game, your suggetions just means you just race at your current level, it's the difference between playing chess with different people until you can find someone who is matched with you and playing with a great chess player knowing he is beatable but you have to get better to do so.

And before you say "but you can tune it to be that difficult yourself" you try that... you try and find a tune that is THAT hard but also doable. The problem is you can never know if it's just harder than you can do right now or impossible... after 2 dozen laps of some of the seasonal challenges I would think certainly they are impossible, time to tune up - but no, they aren't and to figure that out by trial and error would requrie days or weeks of racing the stock car over and over to FINALLY be sure it wasn't winnable and then upgrade one part and try again - rinse repeat.

See my sig.
 
I have to agree with a number of other posts, the issues are:
a) racing the pack, not just one 'rabbit', the whole pack should be more even.
b) finding a race for a car I want to race... rather than finding a car which matches the race.
 
When you restrict yourself, you have no idea if the restriction is just really hard or if it's impossible.

You must be on a religious mission or something.

Just come over it if you don't like cocking about in GT5 - others, including me, do have a blast doing so.

There was the tradition of 250 A-spec pts. races, where do you think that came from?

Oh, and there is the internet. I can't beat race X in my cock-omotive (aka M3 CSL), can John Doe? No? Then add a dash of bhp and run again. See, internet + people talking + trial and error: isn't that great?

But, really dude, try have some fun with GT5 and don't play always for the (certain) win - winning is so boring after a while.
 
There was the tradition of 250 A-spec pts. races, where do you think that came from?
That tradition came from A-Spec points being in the game, serving as an indicator to how difficult the race actually was.

Oh, and there is the internet. I can't beat race X in my cock-omotive (aka M3 CSL), can John Doe? No? Then add a dash of bhp and run again. See, internet + people talking + trial and error: isn't that great?
Wait, you're saying that you have to got to the internet, search for a specific thread dealing with a specific event and hope that someone who's roughly on your skill level has already done the event with a decent car to provide a challenge and shares that information? And that that's supposed to be a good thing?!
 
They got it pretty close with two races, the FGT championship and the NASCAR event. In those races, the AI cars basically stay somewhat together. Like it has been mentioned, there's really no point to having an equal car because the races involve one, maybe two, fast "rabbit" AI cars and the rest are just obstacles on the track.

To me, it's just a trend in the long line of recent games that focus to much on the surface and have actually no content at the basic gameplay level. We are talking about nextgen console gaming, and I know they could have the AI function better than it does on this game.

The thing is, it seems intentional. Why else would they always start you in 7th place if they didn't expect the rest of the cars to be pushovers? How can you have a "real driving simulator" that doesn't use time trials for placing in events? They even had that for previous consoles.
 
All I want from SP is money to get new cars to race online. Racing the CPU is just boring and all they do is ram you.
 
Essentially, what I think everyone is after is parity, meaning the car's should be as equal as possible, allowing driving skill to come to the forefront rather than a type of car dominating.

There a few problems with this however -

*It requires a top notch A.I system, something GT5 doesn't have, nor any other racing game I've played. The AI would need to adjust to your skill level, remembering that the range of player skill is immense. This is why GT5 has no difficulty settings. Although it's tedious, not to mention lazy on Polyhony's part, you can make an event as easy or difficult as you like by spending what can equate to hours working out the perfect car/tune so that you just win.

*Even real life race series have great trouble achieving parity, sometimes with car's that are for all intents and purposes, the same. Someone will always have a better set-up than the next guy, although that doesn't stop them trying to acheive some equality. Super GT adds ballast to winning car's, Speedway car's at times have reverse grid's, F1 has encyclopedias full of regulations. An interesting method can be found in WTC. The first race of a weekend is run in normal fashion while the second race is run in reverse grid order of how the racers finished Race 1. Exciting, not really parity though....


I've said it before, it has to be worth my while to lose. Coming first every race is not realistic, but coming third isn't an option when you forced to scrounge for credits/XP. If you don't have to come first though, making a race difficult is a lot easier. Take Forza for example. On Medium, I dominate, while on Hard I usually come second, quite a difference in difficult levels. But make second place pay well enough and it doesn't really matter.

To those wanting some fun races, with decent "known" difficulty, try Arcade. Advanced is similar to some of the harder Seasonal events.
 
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