What are some overall "guiding principles" you'd suggest for PD?

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White & Nerdy

White & Nerdy

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Mine would be:

Content over marketing, quality over quantity: IMO, 80-90% of the game's problems happened because they didn't follow these two simple rules. The core of the game has been neglected in favor of shiny new features, and many of the things they were doing well in previous games were actually downgraded for no reason I can think of.

Do the logical thing: Ideas like removing mid-championship saves make no sense. There are others, but I can't remember them right now.
 
"Do the logical thing" would fix so much that is wrong with this game.
 
"Don't bite off more than you can chew!"
In other words, proper time management. Don't spend 5 years making the premium cars all pretty if the rest of the game will suffer badly.

"Change what's bad, keep what's good!"
Instead of fixing what was bad with GT4, they kept the bad stuff and instead of keeping the good stuff, they replaced it. With stuff that's worse.

"Communication, communication, communication!"
I guess everyone knows that PD can't fix every flaw instantaneously. However, aknowledging the feedback they get and telling us what they want to do would be cool. Telling us before they do it, not a week after it has been done.

"Don't pretend there's no competition!"
There are a few other games out there that do some things rather well. Don't ignore them. Instead, take a look at them and learn from them. It's not 2001, where basically nobody could compete with GT3 anymore.

"Make the game for the players, not for Kaz!"
Pretty simple: If GT is to sell, the palyers' preferences should take precedence over Kaz's.

"Racing > Stamp collecting."
Don't make GT the Pokemon of sim racers. Seriously, don't.


All of the above is just my opinion, of course.

gambleboyen
It's just a shame it's too late now.
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Well, there still is hope for GT6.
 
I would suggest them the very basic principle of every succesful game since space invaders and pacman...

"Make the game difficult and challenging but not impossible"

Leaving all tuning/tyre options without limits is NO FUN...
I (and most people I believe) do not know how to choose a car to make the races really competitive and I do not want to find out by the boring procedure of trial and error.

It's PD's job to do game testing and offer events with various limitations which would make them difficult and fun.

They are selling a complete game not just the game engine/physics.
 
Understand that better is the enemy of good enough.

Get rid of everyone but the top programmers and graphics folks. Reinvent yourself and start fresh.
 
gambleboyen
And I do think that's where we will se any improvements.
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Let's hope so. I absolutely want GT6 to be incredibly good, but... I lost a lot of faith.

Either way, I think some of those guidelines would work for every game developer out there. 👍
 
I'm pretty sure that at the present state of things, it's possible to make midrace saves. That would be fantastic.

Also, longer races overall. If I want to do 3 lap races, I can do so in arcade mode.
 
Stop trying to change the game to please everyone's little complaints. Stick with the formula from past games. You won't necessarily break in to new markets that way, but you also won't piss off your core fanbase (which couldn't have cared less about NASCAR or visual damage, just to name two things).

Try to please everyone, and you end up pleasing no one.
 
  1. Value the player's time - if the player isn't driving, and they want to be driving, you're wasting their time. This means things like passing through car requirements from events to the dealership, eliminating unnecessary prompts in the tuning shop, and dropping nuisances like oil changes.
  2. If you can't do it, don't promise it - features like head tracking and mechanical damage are absent from the main game mode.
  3. Gameplay, then graphics - why was there any visual damage before the mechanical damage was perfected?
  4. Do right by the fans - Gran Turismo 5 isn't going to keep bringing in money forever, but it would be a good idea to tie up the loose ends in GT5, both large and small, before moving on to GT6. People will forgive a lot if they have the expectation that things will be fixed eventually.
 
Optomize & Streamline!
Instead of paying 1 person to model 1 pointless car that'll take 6 months to complete, how about paying 1 person instead to optomize & streamline the game, options & menus system. For instance, let's make the Circle button always the back button instead of the circle button sometimes taking you to an exit icon & then having to press the X button to get out, even the triangle has to be used as a back button in one instance & it's all so badly laid out! So many unecessary & aggravating things could've been ironed out before release, learn to optomize & streamline PD, or at the very least employ someone from outside the little bubble you live in to do it for you!

If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It!
It is so incredibly stupid & annoying to gamers when designers introduce a feature in one game & then unreasonably abandon it in the next, the GT series is filled with such examles. For instance, in GT3 you can't FF & RW replays, in GT4 you could only FF replays, but in GT5 we've taken a step back to GT3 with NO FF or RW options at all. Are PD gonna repeat this same mistake when releasing future updates, are they gonna start randomly removing features from GT5 we've all come to rely on? Learn to build on what works & don't remove features from previous games, just add to them.

Cohesion!
There is little cohesion between the high res look of some cars & the low res look of some tracks, also between different game modes. I can drive with weather & day to night on The Ring in Practice (but can't alter the settings) but online I can only drive The Ring with day to night, why? I can turn on/off tyre wear & fuel in a practice 1 make race, but not in Practice mode, why? I can't kick players out of My Lounge, only when in Open Lobby & if it's set to Fixed Host, why? Make all modes cohesive by giving us all options in all modes & make 1 My Lounge that I can choose to set to Open or Closed & Fixed of Not Fixed, with options to kick anyone out at anytime! Make the game more cohesive PD, for the love of common sense!

Make The Most Of What You've Got!
We have Suzuka & Suzuka East, but we don't we have Suzuka West, why? We have over 1,000 cars but only 17 cars can be Race Modified, why? Why haven't we got a Standard Car Dealership where we can buy what we need & want? There are many more instances where PD haven't made the most out of this game, including the small amount of unimaginative events. Learn to make the most of what you've got, instead of just focusing on the tiniest of technical details & becoming so consumed by them to the detriment of all else, look at the bigger picture & make the most out of the game.



👍


PS: Great post Luminis, +1 to everything you said! :)
 
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Increase your dev team, hire more people...Make sure they're not a bunch of Yes Men like the ones currently on your staff
It would be great if they're creative, talented and can meet deadlines. That last part is very important.
 
Try and add more useful cars

We have too many of the useless cars like the Kubelwagen, i-Miev etc.

Otherwise, give a use for them, or give a way to make them competitive (I love my Cappucino RM)
 
Grinding is not fun. People should not need to repeat events many times in order to unlock content.
 
Don't carry out any market research.

Don't proactively survey your likely user base and generate a consensus on what is and what isn't desired.

Don't try and assess what made previous entries in the franchise so successful; and definitely don't try and enhance and evolve the successful elements.

Do lock yourselves away from the distractions of your user base.

Do expend as much energy as possible on internal rivalries, corporate turf wars and creative differences.

Do get complacent about the fact that whatever end-product you churn out, people are going to buy it just because it carries the same franchise name as products they previously enjoyed.

Don't pay any attention to the braying and baa-ing of Internet cattle with an over-exaggerated sense of their importance within the overall corporate model.

Don't seek to recreate that sense of ingenuity and creativity that made previous entries in the franchise so exciting.

And above all:

Don't ever admit to making any mistakes: especially the really big mistakes.

Follow these guiding principles and you will be assured of publishing a Game that *EVERYONE* will be talking about.
 
IMO, they should follow these guidelines in no particular order . . .

The number of real tracks is more important than the number of cars.
The quality of the A-spec AI is more important than any aspect of B-spec.
The importance of depth/logic/credit structure in A-spec is critical.
Online options and variety as well as DLC ensures title longevity.
Grinding, while a GT tradition, is now simply, unacceptably boring.
You can't have great resolution with tearing and last-gen shadows.
Customization (including liveries) is a compelling feature.
Paint Chips are/were a bad idea (one use?)

The GT franchise had a history of providing both quantity AND quality, which made it the undesputed King of it's own genre. GT5 represents the fall of the king, the wrong quantities with mixed quality.
 
I'd say 80-90% of PD's problems lie with the fact that their users expect perfection. It's not going to happen. The game will never be "perfect". Even if every PD employee spends 80 hours a week for the next 20 years working on GT6, it won't be "perfect".
 
freight48
I'd say 80-90% of PD's problems lie with the fact that their users expect perfection. It's not going to happen. The game will never be "perfect". Even if every PD employee spends 80 hours a week for the next 20 years working on GT6, it won't be "perfect".
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I'd agree that some of the "critics" have expectations which are unreasonable- and who are best labelled the terminally unhappy. At the same time, I think that most the criticisms found in these forums are both valid and reasonable . . . especially given the quality and features found in competing titles, and the amount of time GT5 spent in development. Perfect is too lofty a goal, but there appears to be serious delta between reasonable expectations and what we were delivered in GT5. The purpose and the value of this thread appears to be the community speaking it's mind re: what it's perception of value is in this and future GT titles.
 
The only thing that ruins this game for me is that the leveling system prevents you from opening up the endurance races (especially the 24h races) without endless grinding or resorting to the rubberband trick. I just wish they'd unlock all A-Spec events from the start. Heck, they can even keep the leveling system in the game if they want, just stop preventing me from playing A-Spec events when there's only like 150 of them to begin with.

Everything else I can live with. Even the shadows.
 
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