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What Polyphony Digital must fix in Gran Turismo 5 and beyond

The game needs to be streamlined. I agree with most of the complaints here, stuff like not being able to see if you already have X car in the garage or the ticket system are stuff that I can't understand.

And they need to restrict the career mode because it's hard to know when you're underpowered/overpowered against the AI. Or even better, just give the option to choose if you want a career mode with or without car restrictions. This way you please the crowd that thinks GT is too hard and those that want a challenge.

Solal said:
B-spec that is explained nowhere? Wrong! I am at level 36 and still don't understand how pilots personnality works, how long do my commands last? etc...

B-spec with no gap times!?? How am i supposed to know if I m gaining time or losing if I can't even see the gaps between my pilot and my opponents? The game does not even tell you how many time the opponents stopped! How are you supposed to make decisions when you basically know nothing? Well... anyway: the only decisions I ever needed were "accelerate you moron!"

So you're saying that you reached a level 36 B-Spec and you never noticed the "Live Timing" button? Or the "timed circle" around the headphones after you issue an order to your driver? Do you think anyone believes that?
 
Solal said:
PS: the lack of official forum/community tools and english speaking community manager shows how full of themselves they are at PD.
Well I, and most, would completely disagree that PD are full of themselves, but as for a CM...well yeah, there really is no excuse. I really don't know why Sony don't act upon that. There are plenty of people who'd love the job. Maybe get two CM's; one for US and EU.
 
BioHazard said:
Fact: I've had more fun with NFS: Hot Pursuit than this game this year. And that's like a sin :(

Same here. Played GT5 for a few hours until I had to level up to buy the car I wanted. Quit and never went back.

It seemed to me that of the overall time you play the game you spend 80% in the menus, 20% racing.
 
#1

Fix how the damn clutch works.
It's awful right now, it has no ground in reality the way the clutch works right now, with the N gear kicking in every goddamn time you're shifting without completely lifting the foot from the throttle. Right now I find myself driving with the H shifter but without using the clutch at all becuase this way I don't get screwed by this "glitch", which is ridiculous.

#2


People who spent a lot of money on the Logitech G27 wheel should at least be able to assign a buttons' layout! You don't want to officially support it? Fine, pimp the Thurstmaster RS500 all you want, but there's absolutely no reason to lock us out of such a basic feature.
It's INFURIATING you can do that with the G25 but can't with the g27.
As it is we are practically stripped of handbrake, swipers, lights, ghost loading, honking and so on. Honestly this right here pushed me almost on the verge of selling the game, and I've kept it only because I was hoping for a patch which as not showed up yet.
 
I need to compile a big ass post when i get home, but quick things from work:

Time trial leaderboards
GT4 tracks
No more used car cycles
No more XP system (i hate RPG´s)
Remove the 100 favorite car cap
Bring back the PP system (i didn´t liked but it´s usefull since you always end up having unmatched online races
Matchmaking (selecting lobbies is nice, but i don´t want to spend 15 minutes looking for a good race everytime.

GET RID OF B-SPEC

did you hear that?

GET RID OF B-SPEC

it´s crap and it needs to go. If you love it, just leave it as an OPTION for the 0,00001% interested. Most people want to race.
 
I just think the menu system should be a bit more streamlined. I kinda like the GT5 career, it may be old-fashioned but it works for me. Just make the A.I. more challenging based on what car your using for that particular race. Oh, and I like the paint system, but you shouldn't lose the color once you use it.
 
There definitely needs to be an official forum and CM's.....absolute must.
After you have created a fourm, create a thread, "So what do you think GT6 should be?".
Do this at the beginning of development. Give the thread an x amount of time to accumulate the ideas then close the thread. Now you have a platform on which to make the ultimate game.....the end.
 
Hopefully Translator-San doesn't tell Kaz the bits where people are calling for his head...

There's nothing in GT5 that couldn't be fixed with relatively simple updates. Obviously my main gripe - A-Spec, if indeed they decide to change it - will have to wait until GT6. But really, it's just making the game faster by adding more options, and options in the right places, that I want.

Like I said in the OP, I don't understand why some useful options and settings from previous GT games have vanished.
 
seattle6418 said:
Time trial leaderboards
This, fucking this.

I can't believe a racing sim is released without any sort of online time-trial leaderboards, except for those in seasonal events. No ones expecting them to do autolog sort of thing, God knows when they'll figure that one out, but a simple WW leaderboard where I can compare times with top player, see their ghost replays and improve my own time isn't too much to ask. Even fking Prologue had this, with realtime updating that showed your online ranking at the end of each lap.
 
offshore said:
Hopefully Translator-San doesn't tell Kaz the bits where people are calling for his head...

There's nothing in GT5 that couldn't be fixed with relatively simple updates. Obviously my main gripe - A-Spec, if indeed they decide to change it - will have to wait until GT6. But really, it's just making the game faster by adding more options, and options in the right places, that I want.

Like I said in the OP, I don't understand why some useful options and settings from previous GT games have vanished.
I'm afraid that adding,swapping and changing an already badly designed game will make it even more clusterfucked.
Sure, little things can be taken care of but imo, they should forget about what happened with GT5, gather up all suggestions from 101 forums, get out of the cave they have been living in and check out other games, start knuckling down right now and create GT6....the masterpeice that GT5 should've been.
 
I largely agree with offshore and Goldrusher, but here's my comment:

* topmost issue: PD, all these years you've been so set on the racing experience, and now you have a fingerlicking-good sim to back that up, but you trashed your framerate. I don't care that the game boasts "16 cars on-track" - in many situations this is a pipe dream. The replay of some of those 16-car races starts with a freaking slide-show, until the cars sparse out along the track. If your platform/tech/state of mind does not allow for this amount of cars in certain/any races, then, for Pete's sake - don't put so many cars on the track! You don't have to "1-up" the competition at any cost! In the same department - screen tearing. Track down the occasions when tearing occurs, and do whatever is necessary to eliminate it. Course spectators and other track decors are not nearly as important as a smooth fps experience.

* WTF gripe: high-level special events that effectively start with a non-skippable cutscene. Case in point - first challenge from NASCAR's lvl21 special event. Who decided that entering to the pitstop, and sitting there for half a minutes, would be a good idea for an event that you'll likely need to replay more than a few times to get right?

* a suggestion: in all of the sports/racing world, tyres are one of the major consumables. If you want to give a feeling of the maintenance of a car, don't go wild about body rigidity restoration (though the engine overhaul was a step in the right direction) - add permanent tyre wear & tear.

And now for some positive notes I'd like to see advanced further:

* the procedural cosmetic damage modeling: you listened to some (vocal) part of the fan base, and now cosmetics are in. At first I did not give a crap about it (having experienced some of the pre-canned implementations and not liking those one bit) but car model complexity of the caliber of PD's premiums allows for some really convincing procedural body deformations. I've had more than a few 'Wow, that's looks hella convincing!' moments from car body damage in GT5 so far. Build up on that, please!

* XP for events makes plenty of sense (not for cars, though - those should be a monetary matter alone), just make sure to balance those XP requirements. Also, balance them against the vehicles you'd expect a person to have at this stage of the game. A lvl19 event with multimillion-dollar vehicles? Does not look like a lvl19 event to me.
 
I would add a few small but niggling things to some of the stuff above:

- add "Next Race" buttons in a series.
- In BSpec, allow us to que races or enter a whole series at once, so we can just let it go by itself.
- get rid of the new color swatch popups or the whole painting system altogether.
- get rid of the car buy dark to headlights sequence.
- have an option for flat menus for shop/tuning... to have quicker load sequences. Or better yet, fold those two into one menu using the same custom background as main GT life.
- fold all dealerships into one with sections. New/Classics/Featured.
- a dealer shortcut from a series requirements screen showing only those eligible cars as purchaseable.
- for Bspec, develop a team aspect, rather than driver aspect. Allow a team livery or at least car color, a team uniform and team name. Show a garage sequence with team uniforms like in the trailers.
- allow Bspec online against others.
- allow us to buy upgrades from the tuning menu before a race.
- or allow us to buy more than 1 item at a time. I dont mind buying 10 sets of tires to have them in stock.
- add the tracks to the photo locations.
- allow few seconds of ff/rw in replays.
- use the track creator more, particularly in these seasonal events.
- allow open doors in photo mode.
- allow more than one car in photo mode.
- allow those nice formation scenes like in the trailers.

I actually think all these can be changes in spec updates as they are mostly interface and accessibility changes, rather than core changes. I think part of the slowness is that a number of menus have rendered car models, so it loads the model, then unloads on the next menu, then loads it again, wasting a ton of time.
 
Give me leaderboard time trials and unlock all the cars in arcade and I'll have a reason to play this game again. (aside from the occasional MP with a friend, which is always fun)
 
Hey this is the thread where you can address the big flaws about this game and not get banned? Super!

I'm sure these are listed in every post, but whatevs...

Improve the stupid AI.
Improve the slow, clunky, un-intuitive menus.
Kill the grinding.
Kill the random used-cars system.
Kill the god-awful scene when you redeem a car.
Kill the non playable stuff in some races... I mean for fucks sake...
Improve the collisions.

In that order.
 
NHale said:
So you're saying that you reached a level 36 B-Spec and you never noticed the "Live Timing" button? Or the "timed circle" around the headphones after you issue an order to your driver? Do you think anyone believes that?

yes. i am level 36 at B-spec and still don't understand how the "timed circle" works. Does it show how long the pilot will obey your command? So that means when you say "accelerate" he will do it for not even 10 secs? Sounds stupid but even then... Then when you tell him "pit stop" why is there the "timed circle"? This kind of commande is not time consuming is it? This lacks explanations and those explanations are nowhere to be found in the book. Are you going to tell me this is normal?

Asfor the "live timing", it tells you the times at each section... not the gaps.

If gaps are somewhere, please tell me where. if they are not, please don't call me a liar.
 
I think that the game is great and is probably the best SP racing game that I have played that doesn't have a lucrative career mode ala F1 2010.

Fix the rain drops and dust.

More A-Spec Events.
- Basically GT4's content with One-Make events for every car manufacturer. Winning this event nets you the best a nice car from that manufactuer. So in such, make the race hard.

More Special Events. GT5 has very fun special events.

B-Spec should not be separate from A-Spec.
We Should be able to win B-Spec races against CPU cars that have the same HP as your car. So the instructions need even more emphasis. The Pressure aspect of B-Spec needs to be more defined.

Being able to overpower the other cars on A-Spec is a good thing because if the cars scaled then GT5 would be a difficult game 100% of the time. Sometimes I compete with equal HP and cannot win so instead of getting frustrated, I just up the HP, win and go to the next event. That's fair game to me.

Make the AI drivers hmm, better, but don't make them too difficult. I actually like the AI as is.
 
LabouredSubterfuge said:
Hyperbole has a new hero.

Come on man, no sarcasm and arguments please. For instance, tell me one AAA game whose game design has so many flaws... or even whose menus are so slow.

This game should have been a masterpiece... it s just an infuriating experience with some mindblowing moments. (thanks to the driving feeling that is second to none)
 
Great thread.

This was my first GT and I was pumped for it - even got the DFGT early on and signed up for the GAF league. Then once I got through many of the special events and hit a wall in A-spec where I had to repeat races to advance my interest started to wane (this was later addressed a bit by the seasonal events but I had shifted to bspec grind mode). I decided to switch over to B-spec and that mode basically killed the game for me. I have my AI driver to level 38, but by grinding that I had a hard time shifting back to user-controlled races. When I decided to go back to A-spec and the special events I found myself already so burned out on the game that I just took the disc out of the console and felt/feel that I'd be fine if I never put it back in again.

It's stupid. The racing in the game is fun as hell but the navigation is cumbersome and loading is so slow that the whole experience just feels like a chore anymore. For the hard core it's probably still a great game, but for someone just getting into the series I'm pretty bummed about how it turned out. There are flashes of brilliance but they're dimmed by sluggishness of the overall package imo.
 
My goo.gl link got one click... from Japan! Kaz is watching and taking names guys.


seattle6418 said:
GET RID OF B-SPEC

did you hear that?

GET RID OF B-SPEC

it´s crap and it needs to go. If you love it, just leave it as an OPTION for the 0,00001% interested. Most people want to race.
Just don't play it?

Of course there's one or two interesting cars to be won, but the way I see it is that you'll only want to play it if you're aiming for that platinum trophy. And then you'll have to spend aaaaages on b-spec...
 
Lagspike_exe said:
The driving itself is perfect. But the presentation and career aspects need a complete revamp.
This. In addition to the OPs suggestions.

My major changes would be these:

- Allow us to see a list of events for the car we're currently in. There should always be an event available, for any car, that pays in cash and experience, offline.
- Allow us to separate weather and time change configuration. Maybe I just want to drive at night without rain.
- Make all time and weather change settings match between arcade mode, online and practice.
 
Angst said:
My goo.gl link got one click... from Japan! Kaz is watching and taking names guys.



Just don't play it?

Of course there's one or two interesting cars to be won, but the way I see it is that you'll only want to play it if you're aiming for that platinum trophy. And then you'll have to spend aaaaages on b-spec...

I thoroughly enjoy the idea of Bspec, but it needs to be fleshed out and improved to be a truly compelling experience. For one, since the races are same as A-spec, there's no surprise to it. Secondly, there is no real attachment to a driver. Developing a team would maybe be better. With more visual customization. Also online B spec against others would take it a long way. Also, the money and exp is piddly and too much of a grind to be worthwhile.

But most of all, give us time splits better, with coloring, pacing, and more commands than just 4. Let us see more of driver's traits, fear, tension as he is being passed, excitement as he passes and so forth. Make it more management and less giving him an overpowered car and switching the TV to another channel.
 
- Now the radical bit…get completely rid of Used Car Dealership.
Having to buy cars at full price every time would suck. As would several other suggestions I have seen (Minimum 20 minute races? Oh yeah that sounds fun.)
Solal said:
PS: the lack of official forum/community tools and english speaking community manager shows how full of themselves they are at PD.
I mean come on: no official forum?! In 2011?!For the biggest playstation franchise!? I guess they know they would be trashed...
Putting up official forums is asking for trouble. Most hardcore forum visiting fanbases are the most whiny and hyperbolic out there. Same for why there is no CM. The internet masses are terribly difficult to please and usually just act like assholes to said CMs.
Come on man, no sarcasm and arguments please. For instance, tell me one AAA game whose game design has so many flaws... or even whose menus are so slow.
You respond to a post about too much hyperbole with this?

While I agree a lot could be done to improve GT/GT5, threads like this too often feature ideas that would make a game worse.
 
seattle6418 said:
GET RID OF B-SPEC

it´s crap and it needs to go. If you love it, just leave it as an OPTION for the 0,00001% interested. Most people want to race.

It was optional in GT4. If a person didn't want to A-Spec an Endurance Race,they could choose to B-Spec it. Without B-Spec,I never would've 100%'ed GT4.
They should've left it that way...

Anyways,my most wanted changes:
- Ability to save mid-race in Endurance Races.
- Ability to save progress during Championship races.
- 1x-3x FFWD option for all B-Spec Races.
- Update the Standard cars. Not all need to be updated,but some deserve to be Premiums.
 
Solal said:
yes. i am level 36 at B-spec and still don't understand how the "timed circle" works. Does it show how long the pilot will obey your command? So that means when you say "accelerate" he will do it for not even 10 secs? Sounds stupid but even then... Then when you tell him "pit stop" why is there the "timed circle"? This kind of commande is not time consuming is it? This lacks explanations and those explanations are nowhere to be found in the book. Are you going to tell me this is normal?

Asfor the "live timing", it tells you the times at each section... not the gaps.

If gaps are somewhere, please tell me where. if they are not, please don't call me a liar
.

What do you think the + xx.xxx in one column in the live timing menu is? And besides the sector times, you still have the lap times so there is 3 basic answers to your question: "How am i supposed to know if I m gaining time or losing".
 
Played it for about 4 hours and stopped. The direction of the game and priorities set in the game for EVERYTHING other than the actual driving (including crashes, AI and EVERYTHING about the menus) are abysmal.

It seems that certain game developers from Japan just don't get modern game development, I would put PD up there near the top.
 
- Other little niggles could do with addressing. "You cannot sell a car currently being driven". Why? Seriously, why can't I sell a car I'm currently driving? Or "You must get into a car before entering licence centre". Why? You never drive the car you are in, so why do you need a car to enter? There are lots of these little things. They really need sorting out.

YOU MAY NEVER BE CARLESS AT ANY POINT AFTER THAT SCARY PERIOD AT THE START WHERE YOU HAVE TO BUY YOUR FIRST CAR.

e:I am surprised they don't lock you to the new / used car store at the very start.

This is probably because they don't want you to sell your last car and be left in a deadlock where you cannot win races and make money to buy a new car. Of course, it'd be just as easy to limit you to not sell your actual last car, but whatevs.
 
Madman said:
Putting up official forums is asking for trouble. Most hardcore forum visiting fanbases are the most whiny and hyperbolic out there. Same for why there is no CM. The internet masses are terribly difficult to please and usually just act like assholes to said CMs.

If Call of Duty games have Community Managers then I don't see why PD don't have one. It clearly showed when nobody in the community knew which features were in the game or the lack of news about the new release date. It was an avoidable mess.
 
Solal said:
Come on man, no sarcasm and arguments please. For instance, tell me one AAA game whose game design has so many flaws... or even whose menus are so slow.

This game should have been a masterpiece... it s just an infuriating experience with some mindblowing moments. (thanks to the driving feeling that is second to none)

The flaws are simply too minor to be described as the worst of anything. It's an excellent game, all told, that needs its tweaks here and there, many of which have already occurred.

You throw around the word 'infuriating' like you're an emotionally imbalanced individual throwing the pad at the screen because a menu took too long to load.
 
I NEED SCISSORS said:
You mean the guy who rallied together the team to veto the REAL ending, thus ruining an entire series?
WAIT. I need to more background information on this. The first part of the MGS4 ending was glorious.
 
ElFly said:
This is probably because they don't want you to sell your last car and be left in a deadlock where you cannot win races and make money to buy a new car. Of course, it'd be just as easy to limit you to not sell your actual last car, but whatevs.
Hey now, I never thought of this. That actually makes sense.

But if they wanted a way around that, they could just provide you with a "welcome" car when you first log in that can never be sold, but is still capable of winning the early races.

EDIT: Actually I'm not sure that does make sense, because the resale value of the car(s) you sell would always be enough to buy a used car I would have thought...even if it is 3-4k range.
 
I NEED SCISSORS said:
You mean the guy who rallied together the team to veto the REAL ending, thus ruining an entire series?

The "real" MGS4 endings I've heard of (
Snake killing himself
or
Snake and Otacon turning themselves to the autorities only to be executed
) are stupid. The game is enough of a downer and needed an uplifting end.



offshore said:
But if they wanted a way around that, they could just provide you with a "welcome" car when you first log in that can never be sold, but is still capable of winning the early races.

EDIT: Actually I'm not sure that does make sense, because the resale value of the car(s) you sell would always be enough to buy a used car I would have thought...even if it is 3-4k range.

There are various ways around it, but they chose the lame one. I am not so hot with the welcome car idea, cause it means an obligatory car for everybody, while the first car in career mode is always special in a gt player's heart.

You can always resell that 3-4k car and get 1k-2k, and over and over again. But then again, it depends on the luck of the draw on the used store. After a couple of licenses, though, you always have the special events. I guess it is a hold out from the old days (but I wouldn't bet that you couldn't sell the car you were driving in, say, GT2). It's just the easiest implementation to avoid testing for economic deadlocks.
 
I do believe the GT5 team knows what's wrong with their game, and that the problems stemmed from one thing: Yamauchi became the John Romero of car sims, spending time racing IRL and doing publicity shoots, when he should've been leading his team.
 
ShortBus said:
It was optional in GT4. If a person didn't want to A-Spec an Endurance Race,they could choose to B-Spec it. Without B-Spec,I never would've 100%'ed GT4.
They should've left it that way...


Anyways,my most wanted changes:
- Ability to save mid-race in Endurance Races.
- Ability to save progress during Championship races.
- 1x-3x FFWD option for all B-Spec Races.
- Update the Standard cars. Not all need to be updated,but some deserve to be Premiums.

Never played GT4, but that would be perfect. I would love if there was just one leveling system, and if I got bored or tired or something came up I could switch to my bspec driver to finish the race.

Other things that would be nice:
- Queuing races
- Background loading of queued races
- Oil Change from the pre-race menu (same area where you select tires)
- Skip track (Unless I missed it and it's there already). Sometimes I'm not in the mood for the song playing, but don't want to remove it from the playlist.

So many of the no-brainer suggestions in this thread make hypothetical GT5 one of the best games in a very very long time. If even half of these ideas were incorporated into the game through patches I'd be day 1 for the next game. I'd put the game back in the system now and forget the bad taste the current version has left in my mouth. I'd go back to my pre-launch excitement and then feel like the product is worth defending in the NPD threads.
 
I feel its a problem with Japanese devs. They simply do not expand their horizons. I feel they're all stuck in a backwards time loop. GT5 has this 'Japenese dev Syndrome' and other Japanese games also have it like Final Fantasy and Resident Evil (SHITTY CONTROLS TO CREATE TENSION. YAY.)

Photomode should be taken at any time during a race. I should pause, and take a shot. Simple as that. Replay photomode is a fucking pain to go through.

I loved playing GT5 (for the 200 hours I must have put in it) for the superb driving model, but the way the game was handled and presented is soo bad.

It's a worse game than GT3 and GT4. The menu load times are far too long, you can't save between championships, you can't save during endurance races, the standard dealership sucks, there is no in game photomode, sounds are all bad, graphical issues are bad, not enough tracks, night time races weren't even present in A-Spec mode, and worst of all, the career mode is a fucking grind. I hate grinding. It takes out any enjoyment of a game I may have. It's such a chore to play GT5 because of the grind. It feels like I'm playing the game for the sake of reaching a higher level. And to do so, I must repeat the same race like 10 times before I progress to the next level. Ugh.

The menu system and UI needs a complete overhaul. We need something more streamlined. GT5 uses too many graphics which is probably why the menus take 200 years to load.

If the menus were better designed, then I wouldn't be as annoyed with the game.

The needs to be some kind of HP limit on races too. It's too easy to simply breeze past the A-Spec mode with a high powered car. I think the A.I. needs some balancing.
 
All I want fixed in GT5:

-Fix the shadows / dust aliasing. Seriously, even if it means cutting down on other graphical details, this should have priority cause it is embarrassing and you always see it, particularly at the start of each race.

-Allow the player to change individual gear ratios.

-Change the race display to show the car models instead of the (made up) driver names on the races. Who wants to know if randomly-generated-name is winning? That information is 100% useless.
 
ElFly said:
The "real" MGS4 endings I've heard of (
Snake killing himself
or
Snake and Otacon turning themselves to the autorities only to be executed
) are stupid. The game is enough of a downer and needed an uplifting end.

I don't want to turn this into an MGS4 thread, but i'll just say that you are wrong and what we got was beyond horrible.
 
it is like waking up in alternative reality universe... all of this could be done in OP, which is why OP has been created in the first place... and PD has went beyond 99% other companies in supporting this game, and thats only in the first month.

half of the ideas are stupid anyway. You dont like Used cars, B spec, etc, etc, so cut them off so nobody else can enjoy them? Some people dont like special events, other thing they are the bestest thing ever, etc.

DIRT menus are the stupidest thing ever created in the game, and most people here bitch about GT5 menus, which are perfectly fine. I like GT5 menus...

Hopefully KAZ never reads this thread.


p.s. grinding is what the damn racing is all about... going 1000 laps around the same circuit to get better lap time... this is what GT is all about and always has been... fuckers go and blow some shit or play NFS if you dont like it.
 
Oh yeah, the damage to the cars should only last one race / championship.

The quality of my car shouldn't vary randomly between play sessions, particularly with how expensive the repairs are O_o
 
Did you read the OP? Offshore suggest they should remove the UCD, not standard cars. Make them all available for purchase.
 
LabouredSubterfuge said:
The flaws are simply too minor to be described as the worst of anything. It's an excellent game, all told, that needs its tweaks here and there, many of which have already occurred.

You throw around the word 'infuriating' like you're an emotionally imbalanced individual throwing the pad at the screen because a menu took too long to load.

Well... many players complain about many things...many players even say they stopped playing the game... GT5 has the worst critics since GT1 (GT PSP aside)... but if you say the flaws are minor... I guess you are right and all the complainers are wrong.

I won't even answer to your childish and condecending assertion about me.
 
Psychotext said:
There's something very, very wrong with you.

Nope, the GT5 interface is great. I love that it does away with nested menus and gives you quick access to anything you would want right from the home screen.

The loading between areas is not great, I'll give you that.
 
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