Shift 2 gameplay wishlist

  • Thread starter Destinkeys
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Destinkeys

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Destinkeys
Mods want to keep things nice and neat, so I thought I'd start a thread JUST for gameplay suggestions, wishes, features from other games you'd like incorporated, things like that. BUT.... just gameplay ONLY, not physics, not graphics, not cars or tracks - just relating to how you PLAY the game.

Essentially, while physics accuracy and eye candy is all very well and good, if the GAME itself is bad, you still have a bad game. I mean, take a look at GT5! Superb physics, breathtaking (mostly!) visuals, but the gameplay itself leaves you wondering what went wrong, a lot of the time. So...

Here's a place to talk about what could be improved from Shift 1.
 
I'll kick it off...

I've posted some of this elsewhere, but to keep things tidy:

I'm concerned that Shift 2 might turn into the demolition derby that Shift 1 was. Racing your Friends, people that you trust and know to be clean(ish!) and fair and honest drivers, is all well and good, but sometimes, they aren't online, sometimes not enough of them want to race the type of race YOU want to race, or the tracks you want to run, or the cars you want to drive. Shift 1 did a VERY good job of matchmaking, it usually wasn't very long before you got a full grid of drivers, or at least a FEW that would want to race at almost ANY level. Banging little hatchbacks around Horse Thief Mile, screaming Zonda's down the Nordschliese, GT cars around Silverstone, whatever you liked.

BUT... it was always a VERY difficult job to get a nice clean(ish!) race. There would always be at least ONE total idiot who's goal it was was to ruin it for everyone. He'd ram, he'd barge, and if that didn't work, he'd sit round a blind corner on the racing line just for kicks.

Trouble is, accuracy of physics, or prettiness of graphics doesn't SOLVE that. So, I'm interested in finding out if SMS have taken any of that into consideration...

The problem is, I imagine their in-house testers and players ARE good clean drivers, with respect for the sport and their fellow players. Perhaps they need to task one or two of them to DELIBERATELY look for each and every exploit, every loophole, every way they can find a way to gain an unfair advantage.

THEN PATCH IT...

It would also be nice to have a commitment from them to keep the patches ongoing, at least for six months or so (most exploits will be player found by then). Shift 1 had one MAJOR upgrade to online, about the time that the last console bugs patch came out (but it was independent of that), and many of us noticed that many of the spots where you COULD exploit the track were now penalized (although the penalty was often insufficient to prevent people for still using it in spots), but it wasn't ALL of them. But after that one update to online, that was IT....

Many of the exploits (whole sections of track being cut at Silverstone and Donnington, for instance) still remain to this day. IF SMS are serious this time round, if they want to convince us that THIS TIME, they really want to create the ultimate racing sim, staying ahead of these exploits is going to be part of it. One patch, and it's sayonara is not going to cut it, this time round. It often takes quite a while for the online players who's goal in life is to find every loophole to find some of them.

Updates to the online system are not like game patches. The increase in penalized track cut sections online last time did NOT come with an update. SMS/EA did it at THEIR end. So, the expense of doing it is a fraction of doing a full distribution of a game update. I hope they consider a more active effort this time round to patch exploits as they arise. Just sitting down and playing random online lobbies for about a night or so is usually all it takes to be able to see them all.

Here's hoping!
 
boxox
.xml based user interface. That's pretty much it.
Click to expand...

Not sure what you mean by that, boxox...

If it is to do with PC modding, please remember that this game is likely to be played by more console players than PC users (I think). Opening up the game on the PC doesn't really address the needs of us poor PS3 and XBox players!

Mind you, one of the things that SMS could do this time around is maybe grab some of the better mods that will no doubt arise on the PC for little things that come up (as they always do) and incorporate them into more frequent patches for the console community. There were MANY really great little things (removing the wheel graphic for wheel users, adjustment of lighting angles for more accurate sun angles, stuff like that) that were modded into the PC version that the console players would have LOVED!

Here's hoping!
 
Everything that sucked about the UI in the first game was I think largely attributable to it being totally opaque and essentially unreadable/untestable as a set of data. It's just ridiculous to have all the game data plaintext/xmlised and have the UI as this gigantic pile of binary mess.
 
OK... I think (much of that is over my head)!

Is that anything to do with how the last update made it impossible to see the cars in the Garage for selection?

Anyway, not exactly a GAMEPLAY issue... maybe we need a UI wishlist thread?

But, I see your point. Menu navigation, etc. IS part of the 'gameplay' aspects, I suppose. Still not sure how having it in .xml is going to affect anybody that actually PLAYS the game, though. Guys like you that like to tinker with it, sure, but the rest of us? :dopey:
 
How about an option (don't want to disappoint the demolition derby players that might LIKE this stuff!) to remove course obstacles that get thrown onto the track removed after the pack has gone by? Blue boxes, concrete berms, things like that.

No track racing in the world allows track obstructions to REMAIN there for the whole race. There's a yellow, they are removed, then racing resumes. In a game, the action doesn't even have to stop! They can just magically disappear!

BTW, be nice if there were an option for this to happen to lurkers out to sit on the line around blind corners, too. Sit there too long, poof! You are BOOTED!

Thoughts?
 
It's amazingly simple to get rid of those crash barriers, in fact I think there was actually a mod to remove them from the riviera tracks even before the tracks themselves were fully converted. I agree :)
 
I haven't played Shift 1, and I know only bits about the features in Shift 2 but...

Pit stops
Flags
Safety car (Wiesmann GT?)
Tyre wear, punctures, damage
Fuel load, fuel consumption
Qualifying
Mechanical damage
Dynamic Weather (rain, fog, etc.)
Endurance races
Penalties
Grid girls (Why not? It's Need For Speed afterall)
Racing teams, sponsorships, liveries
Online leagues, teams
 
Pit stops would be nice.

The game should also include a futuristic F1 car with an insane amount of power and grip that can lap the Nordschleife in four minutes. The developers should also name it the 2010X and the name on the car should be Mark Webber. :)
 
Yes I hope they address the track cutting problem this time,most racing games I have played do this by slowing the car down when it goes off track and also adding a time penalty.
Wallriding didn't slow the cars down either, I even saw one car go right over the top of a 10ft fence in an online race, It was just getting silly.
Also there was no damage in online racing for Shift 1 due to bandwidth limitations of online servers, or I think that was the explanation given for It.

So It will be interesting to see what improvement's they can make for Shift 2.
 
coreyvf
I haven't played Shift 1, and I know only bits about the features in Shift 2 but...

Pit stops
Flags
Safety car (Wiesmann GT?)
Tyre wear, punctures, damage
Fuel load, fuel consumption
Qualifying
Mechanical damage
Dynamic Weather (rain, fog, etc.)
Endurance races
Penalties
Grid girls (Why not? It's Need For Speed afterall)
Racing teams, sponsorships, liveries
Online leagues, teams
Click to expand...

The stuff in bold, Shift 1 already had. Admittedly, the damage was optional, and a lobby creator couldn't mandate it (hope that's fixed!), the penalties were just for track cutting, and weren't completely effective (mind you, GT Academy is showing just how bad PD got that, too) and the online leagues and teams, you had to organize for yourself (but they did patch in a whole Team Racing mode, where you automatically got assigned to Red Team or Blue Team - it over-rode your livery and painted all team member's cars the same - and then you won or lost as a team).

There was MUCH in Shift 1 they got right. Only the physics let them down, and, to be perfectly honest, after seeing Shuffle Racing in GT5, with everybody hooning around on Comfort Soft's, I don't think it's half as bad as everyone made out!

Shift's idea of an Endurance Race and PD's is a bit different! Shift's idea of Endurance was three laps of the Nordschliese, GT's idea is you sitting in front of your PS3 for 24 hours without being able to do a save! I don't think either of them got it right, at least in regards to a GAME! But you COULD specify a high number of laps in an online game if you could get anyone to race it! Few would...

At the moment, we are waiting to see if tires and fuel are depleted. I will be saddened if they aren't. Word is, no pitstops, but this being a game, you don't REALLY need those. Just the wear, and then pull off the track and hit the 'refuel and re-tire' button, and have to wait it out. We'll just have to wait on that one.

Qualifying would be good, so would flags, at least for start and finish. No idea why, if they went to the trouble of modeling flag girls, they couldn't be bothered with a green flag and a checkered. Laziness...

Yellows, double yellows, etc.? Only if they don't remove track debris (they didn't in Shift). Personally, I'd rather they just made the obstacles go 'poof!' as this is a game..!

Some good stuff there, though. Keep 'em coming, everybody.
 
Topracer
Yes I hope they address the track cutting problem this time,most racing games I have played do this by slowing the car down when it goes off track and also adding a time penalty.
Wallriding didn't slow the cars down either, I even saw one car go right over the top of a 10ft fence in an online race, It was just getting silly.
Also there was no damage in online racing for Shift 1 due to bandwidth limitations of online servers, or I think that was the explanation given for It.

So It will be interesting to see what improvement's they can make for Shift 2.
Click to expand...

Actually, there WAS mechanical damage to cars online in Shift 1. Just no visual. Trouble was, it was up to each player himself whether to activate it or not, there was no way for a Lobby creator to mandate it. So, hardly anyone used it, as those that didn't gained an advantage (and there was no way to tell who had it on and who didn't, pre-race).

I certainly hope the wallriding is GONE. Too many tracks were ruined by that, and gave the riders the lap times impossible to beat. Wall riding should either destroy your car or simply slow you down to a standstill. I don't mind all the gymnastics and idiot tricks I saw online, as long as they have CONSEQUENCES. Mind you, to do some of the things I saw, you have to have a physics model that is flawed in the extreme, but, all that aside, sure... fly 30 feet in the air. Land on top of another car. Flip over the whole track... just as long as you don't drive away from it!

Total your car.... GAME OVER.

(all of this as an option for the Lobby creator, as we know half the people playing games don't care one way or the other about realism. They are just in it for the crashes!)
 
We know that they have done the physics, should be okay i think.
I hope for private lobby's it was difficult to get in a room with "normal" people who liked racing not playing bumper cars. accidents can happen it is part of the game, but No more idiots! Penalize corner cutting, 4 wheels of track? penalty! 2 wheels can happen as this is seen in real motersport, but no more then 2.

I think the cars they will implent would be more then okayˆ
 
Daniel_Elessar
We know that they have done the physics, should be okay i think.
I hope for private lobby's it was difficult to get in a room with "normal" people who liked racing not playing bumper cars. accidents can happen it is part of the game, but No more idiots! Penalize corner cutting, 4 wheels of track? penalty! 2 wheels can happen as this is seen in real motersport, but no more then 2.

I think the cars they will implent would be more then okayˆ
Click to expand...

They already have penalties online for cutting the track. They just don't have them for crashing into other cars(which they should add by the way).
 
ShortAznGuy
They already have penalties online for cutting the track. They just don't have them for crashing into other cars(which they should add by the way).
Click to expand...

Actually, the corner cutting penalty coverage was quite spotty. There was only a handful of tracks where I thought that they COULDN'T be exploited in some way. Chicanes were one. Only the Bus Stop at Spa had a sufficient penalty that doing it rarely made you faster. But Donnington, you could plow through BOTH chicanes there and gain time. And Silverstone, there were entire sections of track you could cut. Add in rail-riding round the Aramco rather than driving the track, and you added a whole LOT of other tracks where these exploits (game behavior that didn't reflect real world consequences) made you considerably faster.

There were many corners that going completely off the track (all four wheels) gave you a better exit line, and due to the fact that grass and kitty littler didn't either cause you to lose control or slow you down VERY rapidly, many made use of those exploits. In fact, I occasionally had an exchange with drivers that THOUGHT they were driving 'clean' but still mercilessly using these exploits!

This is why I feel the GAME, and not the drivers, should be the Steward of the race. Drivers (me included, sometimes!) ALWAYS think they are in the right until proved wrong..!

The thing with exploits is, you aren't always going to find them at the start. Some pretty persistent players often still take quite a time to find them ALL. This is why I feel it is important to have ongoing patches to the online system, to plug them as soon as they are found and widely exploited.
 
Everything I've heard about the game is sounding pretty good. My major concern is - fix the bugs! In the first game, races at Laguna Seca and Autopolis ran in slow motion. They finally patched it six months later, but screwed up other stuff, like the sound of my car accelerating would cut in and out, like a far-off radio station or something. It was very annoying.

And it wasn't at all uncommon for it to freeze on me, and sometimes the sound would be absent - I'd be driving a silent car, but if I hit something, that would make noise.

And make the steering tight and precise, like GT5. In the first game there was play in the steering wheel (which couldn't be gotten rid of) and it gave the driving a loose and sloppy feel. I got used to it after a while, but it would be much, much better if they got rid of that.

I'm also hoping they fix the color wheel. That was a great idea, but terrible execution. You could only really use the bright, primary colors; pretty much everything else was absolutely hideous.

And fix the Karussell at the Nuburgring - that corner was screwy. Like it wasn't banked or something.
 
I've been thinking about this for a bit, and have come to the conclusion that almost just the ONE thing will help a lot of the online cutting and rail-riding practices...

If the Lobby creator gets to mandate FULL damage for that lobby, guys that hate driving dirty just to keep up will be able to set consequences for those that choose to 'cheat'. And if 'Full' damage either remains for the entire race, or at LEAST one whole lap, few exploits are going to give you enough of an advantage to be worth doing.

Just this ONE gameplay feature, and a better wheel FFB implementation would have been sufficient for me to remain on Shift 1, if the truth be known. It's the LITTLE things that matter, in the end...
 
Destinkeys
I've been thinking about this for a bit, and have come to the conclusion that almost just the ONE thing will help a lot of the online cutting and rail-riding practices...

If the Lobby creator gets to mandate FULL damage for that lobby, guys that hate driving dirty just to keep up will be able to set consequences for those that choose to 'cheat'. And if 'Full' damage either remains for the entire race, or at LEAST one whole lap, few exploits are going to give you enough of an advantage to be worth doing.

Just this ONE gameplay feature, and a better wheel FFB implementation would have been sufficient for me to remain on Shift 1, if the truth be known. It's the LITTLE things that matter, in the end...
Click to expand...

To solve online cutting issue developers just need to map the track in the way if you go outside too much you get a penalization. It's not a difficult thing but you HAVE TO do it. Practice mode of GT5 do it quite right, but GTAcademy was an epic fail. Wonder why developers miserably fails in these little things... they really need to try online features a couple of times to know whats really going to happen.. too many software houses don't even know these issues 👎 Guess their big bla bla managers asking "What's wrong with our game?!" ...facepalm dear software houses, facepalm :)
 
I still believe every game developer needs to hire a high school student, and get them to DELIBERATELY find every way you can 'cheat' the game!

The thing that annoyed me was not that Shift 1 allowed you to cheat... it is that Shift 1 TRIED to stop you from cheating, and they did such a half-assed job at it that you KNOW they weren't really into it. Sad fact is, MOST track cutting got you a penalty, and MOST of the time, that penalty was sufficient to make using the cut a net loss in time. But it wasn't ALL of it. And, online, a change in cutting detection isn't a matter for a huge patch overhaul, just a small change in the server code. They did it once, around the time (but not at the same time) as one of the major downloaded patches.

But that was IT... after that, not a single exploit remaining got a fix. Why bother in the first place at all if you can't be bothered to FINISH THE JOB?!

Ongoing exploit patches is a part of extending a game's lifespan, and ensuring players want to play the NEXT game. Look at how badly Shift 1's physics has nerfed it for players wanting to give Shift 2 a try... LOTS of 'wait and see', and LOTS of 'I'll never play Shift again'.

TBH, Unleashed's vigilance about track cutting exploits is going to be a VERY big factor in whether I get the game or not (I will be querying the first players VERY hard before I pick up my pre-order!) this time round.
 
OK, new gameplay suggestion...

Shift 1 had Time Attack and Race modes. Why not combine the two? Two laps Time Attack, and that is Qualifying for the race?

Little needed in the way of coding to make that work (and it would be a feature even GT5 doesn't have)...
 
As much as I loathe GT5 a couple of the features I would really like to incorporate into Shift 2 are the ghost feature and the reject player options. If they incorporated the ghost feature & reject player option it would solve 50% of problems I detest about Shift. Of course the major problem will always be track cutting...
 
I can see a 'reject player' option used against good drivers as well as FOR them. There are still probably way more kids than adults playing the game..!

Personally, I am FAR more for the game itself adjudicating bad driving than leaving it to the players. All that REALLY needs doing is upping the penalty time from 15 sec or so to maybe 30-45 sec. Enough to ensure that track cutting makes you lose for sure... Then ongoing updates to fix online exploits as they are discovered.

BTW, yes! +1:tup: to the 'ghost'.

Missed it BADLY in Shift 1.
 
Indeed qualification would be great especially online.
Also a "bspec" "manager" mode should be fun, 2 drivers at the same time?
Leading your own racing team, would be great:) racing manager pro ;)
 
Daniel_Elessar
Also a "bspec" "manager" mode should be fun
Click to expand...

BSpec is a waste of time and energy that PD would've better spent improving many other things. Don't want to see it in Shift 2. If people enjoy managing drivers, there should be specific games for them, as they do with football.

Destinkeys
All that REALLY needs doing is upping the penalty time from 15 sec or so to maybe 30-45 sec. Enough to ensure that track cutting makes you lose for sure...
Click to expand...

What if you have to take a shortcut in order to avoid a big crash in a blind curve when you don't have proper braking distance? This necessary mistake, that real-life drivers would make too, would ruin your whole race and maybe make you want to spoil it for others as well so you can have a chance to win.

Destinkeys
If the Lobby creator gets to mandate FULL damage for that lobby, guys that hate driving dirty just to keep up will be able to set consequences for those that choose to 'cheat'.
Click to expand...

My experience of online GT5 says it's a bad idea. How many times did the guy behind me brake too late or not at all, bang into the back of my car and make me crash hard against the wall? I get to reverse and come back on track and try to stay on it with heavy mechanical damage for the rest of the race while I did nothing wrong in the first place. Depending on how and where you hit the front car, yours won't be too affected and the victim's race is over.
 

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