A Fine thread. Perhaps PD will see it and get some ideas and move forward having seen areas they can improve. With that... i add my criticism.
1). The lack of tracks from former GT versions. It is in my view that if a developer creates a sequel and expects to make monetary gain from said sequel... that they should include as much content form the prequels as possible. There are no excuse for this. Just plan greed and slackness from developers. Plus... so much good content wasted and all because users can't access it because developers never included it.
2). The lack of a feature rich statistical environment. The game doesnt even build on previous BASIC stats. Why can't i find out how many online km's i've done or A spec km's? Why can't i find out how many laps i've done of a certain track and how many of those were 'clean' laps. Why isn't there any stats to tell me how many online races i've won? So SOOO many things that shoudl be in current generation games but this stuff gets forgotten time and time again by developers.
3). The lack of online "Time Trial" world and friend leader boards. Umm hello PD.. how popular was this in GTHD? And how long have people yearned for it prior to then? I thought for sure it'd be in the final GT5 given it was in there. But there i was left wondering WTF PD do all day... stand around with their c*** in their hands looking at toy cars?
4). The severe lack of what i'd even call "Current Generation" features in Saved Replays & the playing back of said saves. Why can we not fast forward or rewind a replay by seconds/mins/laps? Why can we not frame advance/retreat a saved replay at any point the user desires? I'm sorry but we had more in depth feature sets in 1999 in Quake 2 then what this "Next Generation HD Game" can even dream of! Even a user assignable description of a saved replay would be great.
5). The completely missed opportunity (yet again) of the "Live Timing" mode. Its so great! Untill you get in there and want ot know who's got the fastest lap classification so far. Oh damn... its not readily available in the U.I. Or who has the fastest 2nd sector time. Or of its the users P.B. sector time... the list goes on.
6). The very poor driving H.U.D. I mean please... This thing has been around for how long and you cant' even give us another two or three to chose from on top of it? Here's a novel idea. How about making it user customizable and letting us have access to every possible data field so we can let you guys chill out in your exercise room and have the "open source" style guru's make REAL user interfaces that contain MORE USABLE race data for the driver. You know... like relative split times fore/aft or hell... split times that actually ALWAYS show and not when they want to. A little number next to the sector time (LIKE OTHER GT's) would be great to... there's a lot of them in Nord!
7). Qualify. Ohhhh so close yet so painstakingly far. Great first go i'll admit. But the moment i get into trying it i immediately hit the wall of "WTF! why can't do do THIS or THAT.. what were they thinking!?"
That's not an exhaustive list. Just what i can come up with off the top of my head. I think its silly to say that PD are so great at games. Sure they do alot of things well but people are blinded by what they forgot they once had and just accept it because they have no real choice. But to me this is a continuation of a game once created. A series. If they don't build on it and make it better... deeper... richer. Then its not really a series like they have you believe.
How many iterations of GT is there? And how many times have these features had chances of being implemented but just totally over looked? If i acted like this at my work i'd be sacked on the spot for undue care and attention! We are expected to create MORE in less time... for cheaper then we did only 24hrs ago. I don't think its harsh to expect this from a multi billion dollar world wide company that sells millions of units every year... even if they don't make a product better then the last (just prettier).
Apologise for the length. Its just a shame to have such a good game engine miss out due to the finer details that should make it grand (and truely "Next Generation").