What do you think about the singleplayer and the overall game design of Gran Turismo 7? And how does it compare to the previous games?

M

Mati_Blaster

87
Poland
Poland
I've been thinking about all the criticisms that GT7 has been getting - stuff like Cafe-based progression, rigged roulette tickets, inflated car prices etc. and I just feel like I want to ask this question again. What do you think about the singleplayer and the overall game design of Gran Turismo 7? And how does it compare to the previous games?
 
I respect what they tried to do, but I don't think the executed it very well. The Cafe has great potential as a way to teach you about cars, but a linear structure where you hop between cars constantly and don't get to fall in love with your car is not the way to do it.

I only wish they addressed that instead of doubling down.
 
I may sound delusional by saying this, but I believe there is still more to come.

As Nebuc said, the Café was not only linear but forced you to drive different cars constantly, but what I'm thinking about is the fact that no higher than the A License is required, leaving the last three completely irrelevant. The Café was a hastily put together "career" for when the game first released; the devs had to come up with something.

I just hope they won't give us too many more menu books or start to introduce a career with equally frustrating dripfeed. I hope they are working on a fully fleshed out campaign...which might not even be the case.

Problem is, we have no way of knowing what's coming since PD refuses to share anything with us...no upcoming content/features, no communication whatsoever, except the silhouettes every time a car update is coming soon.

We're also still waiting for Sophy, which might be the time we get a campaign of some sort. Even if they had planned everything in advance, a campaign now would be little consolation with the kind of AI we have now...it would be from-last-to-first races all over again.

But seriously, I can't help but think about the licenses. Or Kaz's cryptic "Please think about GT7 as a long-term project" comment...
 
Last edited:
In years gone by, GT was the go to game, there wasn't really that much competition. There still isn't in terms of a jump on and go game.
The problem I am having is it has gone stale in single player, the AI, and lack of better events. Then I switch over to sport and there is a problem with driving standards.
Overall becoming less interested in it. I recently made the move to ACC, its a real steep learning curve but already it is something so different.
I will carry on playing GT, why not? I have invested quite a bit of time into it and not sure I want out yet, but maybe sometime in the future.
 
AI is poor. Most single player races are repetitive and boring, and many are not much of a challenge at all. Many which are actually a challenge are no longer a challenge if you put sticky tyres onto your car.

Online races are so much better. This is not 2005, and we don't have to go isolated single player any more.

Some of the Mission 1 hour races are good.
 
It does a great job at reaching a wide range of players of different skills.
I love the game, and can't play anything else because of VR, but It is missing a career mode of some sort a la project car.

I hope a GT 8 or an update bring something like that.
 
Last edited:
The single player career mode feels like an overly long glorified tutorial (overly long for a tutorial), but when you do complete it, there's nothing else. The game doesn't open up and give you a load of choices, it's just, here's what you've already raced, do it again now, and again, and again.

The custom race feature has the potential to be excellent, but you can only pick custom AI cars that you own, so picking a grid of expensive cars takes a hell of a grind first. Also the AI rubber bands like mad in custom races (can't be turned off despite what the settings say), and for some reason you can't turn the difficulty up beyond 3, despite it going up to 5 in some of the other tougher single player races. And speaking of the grind, the payouts in Custom Races are so low, there's no point at all in using it to try to earn Cr.

Just some very odd choices all round. They tried something different, but it's not a better type of career mode than what has come before. I get that people don't want new games to be carbon copies of past games, but make it different and better, not just, different for the sake of it. If I were in charge of deciding on the gameplay loops for this title, and the Cafe menu career was pitched to me, I'd have told them to go back to the drawing board.

So, in short. Not impressed. Despite the game doing some things very well, the single player career mode is sadly not one of them.
 
Last edited:
Could it be better? Sure.

Is it good enough to be worth $60 to me? Absolutely.

The physics and driving dynamics are top notch for a sim-cade racer. The graphics, even on PS4, are pretty damnned good. The car selection is about average for me (but unlike most respondants, I want the bulk of 80s and 90s Japanese cars back from the previous games and couldn't care less about whatever new hypercars are out there).

In over a year and a half, I've reached the same "end goal" that I did back in my play throughs of the previous games: Running the extremely profitable races to be able to buy and tune cars that I'm interested in (which is certainly not all of them). How long it took me to get to that point is irrelevant, because that is my personal "end goal" of any GT game, and honestly the quicker I can get to that goal the better.

Occasionally I'll jump in to some sport mode or online championships if the car/track combo interests me (spoiler: Group 2/3/4 don't), but that is a distinct rarity, and something I couldn't do in the prior numbered entries in the series.

Sorry to not confirm the "OMG this game is the worst!" attitude.
 
Last edited:
GT4 will always be the gold standard for offline games. At the time, everyone was wetting their diapers that there was no online multiplayer, but it was the best decision as it created the best career mode to date as PD had no option but to give us mountains of offline content. Nowadays, they are like, 'Here's a couple races to do in career mode, oh collect some cars and then just go race online in multiplayer.'

While I understand everyone wants to play multiplayer online, the reality for me is, I do not. People are ***heads when they are protected by the anonymity of the internet (also see Rocket League, CoD, etc.). It makes the game very, very dry for me, and frustrating, so I just avoid it like the plague. PD's only saving grace for GT is Sophy imho. If Sophy can teach me how to become an alien, then that's all I'd play, day and night :lol:

As for GT7, it's light on content for career mode, but if the AI were on par, I'd give it higher marks for sure because I'd set the difficulty to match the car I want to use (and try other cars) and I'd enjoy the championships more.


Jerome
 
The cafe sounded good as a side mode. That it's what the whole singleplayer game is built around is absurd.

I used to believe it was only the first half. It feels like a first half. Easy races, low license requirements, surely it's only the beginning. But it's been a year and a half now with no sign of change. That wasn't the first half, it was the whole thing. With no promise from the developers of any real future, I have no reason to think there will be a change. This is the game. Anything added on top is an occasional bonus.
 
It feels too easy, and dare I say it, a bit soulless. It doesn't feel like a full-fledged campaign and lacks that Gran Turismo essence we've all come to love. Many parts of the game make no sense, such as the AI using the same cars over and over, as if they never upgrade. Sure, they lose the race to me all the time, but surely even then they'd still be making hand-over-fist in terms of credits by now to afford better cars than that shoddy red 2002 Viper and green C7 Stingray.

If I were to enter a Tomahawk S into an event It would be logical for the Ai to adjust to use either a similar car or perhaps the same car, no? Seems like a basic thing one would do the for sake of balance.
 
Last edited:
There was a distinct lack of progression. I play GT4 every couple of years, and it really shows how progression should work. You need to decide to modify or buy a new car, pick cars based on them being eligible for the max number of races etc.

The Missions in GT7 are the best portion of the single-player game, and very underrated IMO.
 
I think the single-player part of racing games has a big problem. They create crash kids. For one thing, crashes are often not punished or not punished enough.
But much worse I find that the only victory counts mentality is strengthened. Which then ends in frustration and crash kids mentality in online races.

Why are there not such scenarios. You start in 15th place and your goal is to gain 3-5 positions in a 10 lap race. Then the AI could drive much better, there would be exciting duels where you have to try to overtake for 1-2 laps.
Or how about you are in 7th position and have to try to finish in the points in the inferior car. So that your defensive skills are tested.
That would also strengthen the character and get away from only P1 is good.

As for the topic here, I think the single player mode is ok. There are too few races, which is a shame... and the payout is just too low due to the microtransactions. Nevertheless, I spent a lot of hours with the game and also had a lot of fun with it and will probably spend many more hours with it.
 
If there was more consistency in the difficulty of the races, I think the single player part of the game would be good. Unfortunately, you get really easy races (even on hard difficulty) and then you get near impossible races (Lake Maggiore 1-hour Mission, Mt. Fuji Super Formula, etc). It's like there is a really big margin of error in what is a considered a hard race.

Also, why no qualifying? All this start in last and work your way to first BS is dumb. It incentivizes picking a much faster car than the AI and ramming your way through traffic. Give us qualifying, make the car selection much more strict, make all the races equally hard and let us actually try to have clean, we'll fought races.
 
I think the most glaringly obvious drawbacks is in the Ferrari/German Car events.

Let's say there's 15 Ferraris in the game. They all lineup for the rolling start, but you're only going to win if you pick one of the top 5 or 6 models because the F8 Tributo and Enzo are just going to run away with it, so what's the point?
 
Too much repetition, just like GT4. When they came out with GT5 I truly had to ask myself if it was some kind of sick joke.
Missions = rebranded license tests. Circuit Experience = rebranded license tests. Get bronze easy, get silver in a few tries, find out gold is futile for at least the first 10 hours you try each event. Finally accomplish that and you get a 1 lap magic on the Nord with ridiculous penalties, instant failures, and, drumroll please, a two minute wait to start. Every. Single. Time. Finally give up on that and the series as a whole, pick it back up after 15 years and it's the same stuff. Finish licenses and missions, now rinse and repeat for a THIRD time, only it's called Circuit Experience and the lines you have to take for gold are totally unrealistic. Let me throw the spare out so I can at least keep that as my one tire still on the track. Oh, no, now the physics have changed and your gold time is no good...as if after six hours of trying you couldn't match it regardless of the physics.
Sometimes simple is better. Take the Sega version of Episode 1 Racer...all arcade, only three tracks (plus a short variant of the Boonta course), a handful of pods, and entirely possible to get your head caught in the power coupling or get splattered onto a rock face. Or look at Hydro Thunder, with its limited go fast fuel and both marked and unmarked go fast pads. Go ahead, fly Miss Behave right through someone's barn, or take your fishing pole and your dog on a jet powered rowboat for a journey over the nearest cliff. Water is recommended but not required. Watch out, you freakin' nutjob, we're trying to save lives here!
 
Last edited:
Matt777
It feels like it has been built by evil lizard overlords with no understanding of the reward system of the human brain.
Click to expand...
Actually they (PD) have done a good job with the "rewards system of the human brain". They know exactly how to bait and switch people. How to get people hooked into doing daily mileage for **** rewards, how to prey on human dopamine more-or-less. In that aspect it's a masterpiece... shame the rest of the actual game is not so.
 
They could certainly do better, like deepening its structure by combining the process with more license limitations and invitation rewards, I also deem that if they'd like to add some longer endurance races then the whole process won't feel so thin and short, but obviously they'd rather put their effort into shooting more scapes.
 
Everything has been said already, to me the single player content doesn't live up to the expectations I had, especially for a game advertised as "the Best Gran Turismo ever"...

Heck, they could have copy paste the GT League from GT Sport, made some minor changes here and there and call it a day and it would have still been better than what we have now
 
Last edited:
I give GT7 a 7/10 rating. I like a lot of the game basics, but the single player experience could have been a lot better. Unfortunately, the online racing experience is also flawed because of the penalty system. Also, online requires a lot of concentration, so I don't always want to play online.
This makes the issues with single player worse. It is lacking variation and the rewards are inconsistent and inadequate except for 4 races.
The baffling thing is: the game could so easily be a lot better, but PD refuses to listen to the feedback and stubbornly keeps things broken that could be easily fixed. Such a shame.
That having been said, I do still enjoy the game regardless. But PD please listen to your customers and fix the problems.
 
Last edited:
GTboyz
Wasted potential. It's more fun to hot lap and tuning rather than racing.
Click to expand...
I'd be all for hotlapping, but they for some reason removed the music and credit payout. I feel like since those two are gone now I either have no incentive nor excitement to do it. Sucks because that was one of my favorite things to do in GT games prior... Just testing out cars and such while listening to music taking in the game atmosphere... The miniscule credit reward you got in Sport really helped give incentive too.

This next bit is gonna be subjective, but I feel like they **** on everything Sport did right for seemingly no reason.
 
Last edited:
Not great. As everyone has been saying, there is a real lack (or at least feeling) of progression in the game, many of the events feel a bit too easy and the variety seems to be limited.

Maybe a bit unpopular, but a solution for a lot of these problems could be simply making the events more restrictive on the types of cars and equipment that can enter. Require the player to use specific tires and limit the PP of the player car so that the AI can remain somewhat competitive. The Porsche Cup, for example, lazily allows all Porsche models to enter with any build to participate, which sounds great for player freedom, but why should you ever go in with a relatively normal Taycan? Spyder type 550?

Does every Ferrari model need to participate in a race focusing on Ferrari? Or any car be considered a "Hypercar" for the Hypercar Parade event? Why add any special car (like those in the "#Professionally Tuned" category) if you will inevitably shoehorn them into the same X PP event as everything else?

Even with the very small selection of hatchbacks and sedans, for example, why are there no events dedicated to these car segments? Hybrids and EVs are an emerging technology, yet I am supposed to care about these vehicles when most events are catered towards the traditional ICE &/or Gr. experience. Arguably the most influential car in the last 2 decades, the Toyota Prius, is merely a car that you enjoy in a purely ironic way.

VGTs are supposedly made for the game, but somehow not a single event has been made so that one model can be enjoyed without the others. You mean to tell me there is not one track or event where I can get the definitive XR-PHEV experience? Why should I ever purchase an Copen RJ or Honda Sport other than pure novelty? These cars will always get beat out by others with more utility. I would happily choose an all-time favorite over them any day of the week.

I’ll probably say it a million times before the game’s lifecycle is over, but GT7 fails to use its car list effectively, and by not fully addressing that, hurt so many elements that could have helped provide a better single player experience.
 

Latest Posts

Back