Why to they seem to want us to play online so badly?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Adamaw11
  • 50 comments
  • 3,124 views
Adamaw11

Adamaw11

Messages
92
Australia
Australia
Messages
Adam-aw11
Some current seasonal events seem a lot like basic non-racing car races against AI. They might as well be offline races.

They give bonuses just for logging in every day.

They don't seem to put as much effort into the single player aspect of the game any more.

It seems pretty clear they want us to login and play online regularly and play offline less.

I have my theories as to why, but why do you think it is?
 
It's a worrying trend indeed. Whilst I think GT6's shortcomings maybe aren't entirely about driving us online, I do think it'll move that way more. The daily log in bonus is about making sure people don't forget they own a copy of GT6!

It's far more evident in other games though. GTA:V being a prime example. They're just putting less effort in to single/off-line play, it's feels like it's becoming little more than a tutorial for online.
 
it would be awesome if they could keep their login servers up a bit

i think it makes the game easy to end

see GT5

there will be a day when they dont want to continue supporting GT6 so it makes it easy end it
 
I don't see an issue to be honest. Yes the single player is terrible but I, and many others, are part of a group of some form who race regularly online together and the game is really good when you have a bunch of friends racing. I race around 3 times a week in an organised group and the game is transformed into what it should be. In my opinion.

I think they are trying to make the game person to person racing instead of person to AI racing, which has been done since before the PS1 and they're starting to evolve the game. It's just the way the gaming industry is going though. Look at games like Battlefield and Call Of Duty, the single players are awful but they build the game solely for online play because it's considered prehistoric to play just the single player nowadays in the modern world of connectivity. I feel that GT is going down that same path to make people race against other people, and with the community features coming sometime in the next 10 years it's all pointing towards making racing real. Which is against against other people, like in the real world.

That's how I see it anyway.
 
I'd like the AI side of things to be better, considering GT's AI side has been weaker than 10 years old racing game. But as the above said, once I got a semi-regular group of friends racing a few times a week it is better than any single player aspect of the game, aside from the lack of payout. The Seasonal being TT is also good since you also get some competition going with your buddies, and those actually pays decently...
 
Is there a reason that making them "offline" would be better , because I don't really see where we (players) would benefit from that?
Anyway you would need to be online/connected so you could update new "offline " seasonals. Only change making them "offline" would be , that you don't need to be login online all the time when you do a seasonal > few minutes/half hour ?


PS: PD keep leaderboards for online events only , because they have more control over (mods/hacks) and do not want to have a cluster**** on leaderboards when every kid that ever moded /hacked a car would post their hacked/moded offline lap times and then brag about his Nordschleife 30sec laptime .


PS(II) : ps4 "pay for online" is only for multiplayer and I don't think seasonals constitutes as a multiplayer (yet they are online) so please dismiss another evil conspiracy theory :D
 
All they do is provide us with cars and tracks and hope we go online to enjoy them. There's too much cars in GT with no events for them. That's why we got base model cars this toss, for online play. That's why cars get added with no single player content. Other games that add cars usually add some single player events for the cars.

Wonder what Spec 2 will bring.
 
Adamaw11
I have my theories as to why, but why do you think it is?
Click to expand...

Because microtransaction based online gaming generates more revenue. Some people might like playing against the AI, but more people prefer testing themselves against other people. So much so that they are willing to sink a lot of money into it.

They are slowly moving the franchise towards that business model. GT already exist to sell Playstations, so moving to F2P and bundling it with a PS is a pretty good strategy.
 
I suspect it's a marketing to advertisers (i.e. "car companies") thing. For PD to be able to charge car companies to sponsor content (i.e. the recent cross promotionals with BMW of Japan in Europe) they have to be able to say, "For your money, I can guarantee I will expose X number of consumers to your product." Without online play data they can't really quantify the potential exposure of advertising/sponsored content through GT. Without quantification, they can't establish a market value for the content.

Advertisers, car companies, and parts manufacturers are going to be the major revenue stream for PD in the foreseeable future, not necessarily microtransactions (though if they can profit from those, they'll offer them, too.) Why do you think all suspension stuff in GT6 is KW and all tires are Yokohama?

Those companies ponied up the cash, my friends. And to keep that cash flowing, PD has got to keep us playing online.
 
I could barely fill a grid of 6 cars with my friends list. Doesn't matter how good the online is, if they don't maintain a certain minimum standard of quality for off-line play it will deter a lot of people from the game.
 
Because after GT4 they completely forgot how to make a complete offline career mode. So they put the burden of us. Nevermind actually planning carefully each event for the players and make sure you make enough events so the player can use all kinds of cars, nevermind giving them an event syntheziser tool...
 
MatskiMonk
I could barely fill a grid of 6 cars with my friends list. Doesn't matter how good the online is, if they don't maintain a certain minimum standard of quality for off-line play it will deter a lot of people from the game.
Click to expand...
You can either make more friends or play with other online players. I have 100 PSN contacts all of them from GT.
 
NixxxoN
You can either make more friends or play with other online players. I have 100 PSN contacts all of them from GT.
Click to expand...

It's a pain in the ass. I've got 1 actual friend that plays GT, none of my other friends do. Most of the other people on my friends list are adds from racing in public lobbys, I don't know these people, when they are online, or any rubbish like that, let alone being online at the same time as them, or co-ordinating a time to race... and that's supposing they like racing similar tracks and cars to me.. no good if all they want to do is the RBR in the Lotus 97T.

It's a game, I'd like to play it, ideally when it suits me.. if I want to socialize, I'll go to the pub.
 
I like the online gameplay alot more than the in game races, for more customization of the races.

Payouts are getting better, but still suck compared to in game.

But I do agree it has a lot to do with advertising money.
 
MatskiMonk
It's a pain in the ass. I've got 1 actual friend that plays GT, none of my other friends do. Most of the other people on my friends list are adds from racing in public lobbys, I don't know these people, when they are online, or any rubbish like that, let alone being online at the same time as them, or co-ordinating a time to race... and that's supposing they like racing similar tracks and cars to me.. no good if all they want to do is the RBR in the Lotus 97T.

It's a game, I'd like to play it, ideally when it suits me.. if I want to socialize, I'll go to the pub.
Click to expand...

I completely agree with you. I literally have one friend that I know in real life who plays GT, but that's it. Taking the time and effort to find people who like to race similar tracks and cars is too tedious. It would be nice to turn on GT and race against decent AI in fun and competitive races. I don't want that to completely die out, unfortunately it looks like that is direction things are headed.

I think a good idea for online racing would to be to have rooms set up by PD that are for a specific type of car, track, and racing (ex. GT500, real life tracks, 600PP). That way these rooms would already be created for the player and we could simply go into the rooms with an idea of how the event will be structured. It would make online racing a lot more accessible.
 
Those of us over the age of 30 would be very sad to see offline modes go away.

I doubt solo time trials will ever be discarded and that's all I care about.
 
Last edited:
I am over the age of 30 and I have a group of people who are mostly the same age that does this. I also autoX with half of them on weekends so that might have something to do with it.
 
I too used to be one of those people who didn't like online play...mostly because I was intimidated by it. Too much going on, too many choices, everyone was so damn fast, etc.

That was 4 years ago. Now, online is all I do...I wouldn't lose a second of sleep if all single player aspects of GT were removed. It took some time to learn the ins and outs of online, and to find what aspects of it I actually like, but it was definitely worth the effort. Same with meeting new people. Started out knowing nobody, now (largely thanks to GTP) I have 100 people to play online with.
 
raweer
... it's easier to log/record, what users do, when you have a connection to the server. r.
Click to expand...
Exactly, I'm sure they monitor most and least used cars, most and least used tracks, average session length, which events are most popular with users, how logins increase with additions of cars, tracks, and new events, amongst many many other things.
 
Every modern game is almost 70% online (at the very least), there are some games that are online from the get-go. All games are criticized by the length and content of online play vs offline so game designers are focusing heavily on online - as that's what keeps users.

Look at a game like GTAV, if they didn't have such a vast online mode they wouldn't have so many users still playing. In games like those, once you've completed the story mode/offline there's nothing left to do but run around aimlessly or start over - this is where online mode comes in; fresh new environment that constantly changes, un-predictable opponents, basically a never ending game, . This is the same for GT.

This is one of those games that could benefit from being online only as human to human racing has much more emotion than an AI could give you - you could bump into AI with no remorse but doing that to a human player, you'd be obligated to say sorry at the least or feel some sort of guilt. Also with AI, it's easier to predict their movements (in every game), online does away with all predictability bringing a whole new level of difficulty. AI worked in the past, human to human is where we're going.

Thanks to places like GTPlanet, making some quick friends is easier than ever!
 
I'd like ability to add AI in multiplayer races though...not sure how that would work from a programming stand point, but you can have big grid with still human player racing...

Though they still need better AI...
 
Bluntified
Every modern game is almost 70% online (at the very least), there are some games that are online from the get-go. All games are criticized by the length and content of online play vs offline so game designers are focusing heavily on online - as that's what keeps users.

Look at a game like GTAV, if they didn't have such a vast online mode they wouldn't have so many users still playing. In games like those, once you've completed the story mode/offline there's nothing left to do but run around aimlessly or start over - this is where online mode comes in; fresh new environment that constantly changes, un-predictable opponents, basically a never ending game, . This is the same for GT.

This is one of those games that could benefit from being online only as human to human racing has much more emotion than an AI could give you - you could bump into AI with no remorse but doing that to a human player, you'd be obligated to say sorry at the least or feel some sort of guilt. Also with AI, it's easier to predict their movements (in every game), online does away with all predictability bringing a whole new level of difficulty. AI worked in the past, human to human is where we're going.

Thanks to places like GTPlanet, making some quick friends is easier than ever!
Click to expand...

Nothing personal Blunt, but I'm reading your post and I'm wanting to smash the side of my skull into the corner of my hefty wooden coffee table as hard as I can.
 
MatskiMonk
Nothing personal Blunt, but I'm reading your post and I'm wanting to smash the side of my skull into the corner of my hefty wooden coffee table as hard as I can.
Click to expand...
That's funny, I feel the same way when people ask PD to prioritize offline content over online content :P

I've said it before, I'll say it again. The only "offline" additions that GT needs is an event/series creator, and better AI. If done properly, both of those features could be used online as well (create custom events/series online, use AI to fill in empty grid spots).

My view on a "Career Mode" is simply asking someone else to create their version of a linear/partial-linear series of events. With a proper event creator, anyone can do that on their own.

Want to simulate a "career"...use self discipline (you are offline, competing against yourself, after all) to create your own career.

Hell, with an event creator and good AI, you don't even need an "offline" mode. Simply jump into your lounge (if we get that back...), create an online event, populate the grid with AI, and there you go...your very own, single player race / event / series.
 
twitcher
That's funny, I feel the same way when people ask PD to prioritize offline content over online content :p

I've said it before, I'll say it again. The only "offline" additions that GT needs is an event/series creator, and better AI. If done properly, both of those features could be used online as well (create custom events/series online, use AI to fill in empty grid spots).

My view on a "Career Mode" is simply asking someone else to create their version of a linear/partial-linear series of events. With a proper event creator, anyone can do that on their own.

Want to simulate a "career"...use self discipline (you are offline, competing against yourself, after all) to create your own career.

Hell, with an event creator and good AI, you don't even need an "offline" mode. Simply jump into your lounge (if we get that back...), create an online event, populate the grid with AI, and there you go...your very own, single player race / event / series.
Click to expand...

Yes I can imagine. I don't even want priority though. I just want the game I buy to not be **** because the developers want online numbers. GT is not so bad because they cannot monetize their online gaming presence so readily.. the likes of GTA... forget it.
 
Back