Disagree, but that's opinion.
4. DLC
Yes, that awesome period when we all thought about a simulator which updated once in a while in order to always have new cars and so. We dreamt about 10 minutes to get 5-6 new cars in a months, and not of 30 minutes to update the game when it's evening, you come across the PS3 with no idea about what to do and your only wish is racing for less than 5 minutes on Trial Mountain, that 30 minutes only to discover they've added 3 new cars I can't even buy, because they all require real money.
Of course it costs money, I wouldn't expect otherwise. Still, we did get some free cars. Downloading DLC wasn't a problem for me, and whatever I didn't want I was able to avoid buying.
3. Special events & License tests
I didn't bother with these, but that's good. They should keep them optional from now on.
2. Loading times
There's no game in the GT saga as slow as GT5. Slowest in loading tracks, unbelievably slow in detecting network problems, slow in everything. There are times I think my ps3 has problems reading the disc, when I remember the content should have been installed on the HDD... why? Why has it to be so slow? When you reach the "Seasonal events" after 5 minutes of unnecessary loading time, you happen to choose the wrong one, only to wait another minute just to load 2 images of the tracks and the data concerning your reward. Not to talk about when you actually select the single race into the event: 30 seconds to load the scenery, and you're stuck for 2 minutes looking at an "Eni" advertisement and the blue sky. Even the loading noises from the cd drive of the Ps1 were more interesting![/QUOTE]
Yeah, GT5 is a bit slow. I think the bigger problem was menu layout though. With load times like this, they should have cut pointless things like GT Auto animations and the music and just put it as a simple menu in the tuning shop. Load time for races I don't mind that much.
1. The PP system
A PP system. What a clever idea! A pity they managed to realize it the worst way they could. My Dodge Viper of the late 90s has got 550pp or little less, while my BMW M3 of year 2004's got 496, and the later is 3 second faster than the former at Tokyo R246. I have a TVR V8s I love to drive: 447PP, enough to be beat by every car in its class. Not to talk about the 430PP of an Alfa Romeo GTA of the 60s... how can I compete Mugen S2000s and similar beasts with 160HP?
There's an unbelievably large amount of this cases, like the 600PP Ferrari F40 or the 516PP Mercedes SL600 (1998), and what's the result? The result is, yesterday evening I joined two different rooms for the 550PP class: saw nearly 15 cars, 11 were BMW M3s, 2 BMW M3 CSL a 350Z maybe and some other non-M3 cars which ended in the last positions. Why is it so stupid? It doesn't care about LSD, suspension tuning and other 1000 things the game includes and PP doesn't.
PP is required. PP is one of the things that would be on a list of why GT5 is the best in the series. Your BMW is faster on 246. Is that the only track where it happens? Has this matching been shown to be consistently backwards across a large number of players, or is it just you?
PP can't make all cars completely even without making them the same car, but this is pointless as you could make a one make race for that. PP puts cars in the same class and while I suppose there may be some cars that get slightly ahead on the PP curve, in general PP has been good enough to let me set it and forget when it comes to making a room aimed at competitive racing.
PP needs to be modified though. It should absolutely be useable
with power, weight, and other things and things like LSD and suspension need to be taken into account. Downforce needs to be fixed, and its
settings should not change PP at all. However I think I know why they aren't in GT, the physics being as they are makes some upgrades (suspension in particular) far less potent than in reality. New suspension won't make you faster, it's just a preference thing in GT5, which is unfortunate.
And all these things come between an amazing moment and another, when your soul is filled with admiration for the spectacular graphics or for your close win after 5 laps of perfect driving. In such moments you're literally in love with the game and you feel you may keep playing for hours... then you say, "Why don't I try that new Seasonal?" ending up in turning the whole thing off after that long waiting and writing here your disapprovement for PD.
I think the only things that have made me do that are having to deal with credits, the UCD, and time when the physics issues become blatantly obvious.
Problem one: Random disconnects and massive lag.
Online is missing a mass of options that would make your point more valid, such as wider specification of vehicle category restrictions, years etc. I also find that online is the lazy way out of any game programming these days, "we've exhausted our creativity, so we'll make the customers make the game interesting for us" The sole reason for gt5's survival is the online system, depite it's huge flaws. Without this millions of copies of this game would have been in the trash for a while.
Sounds good to me. User created content should be in games. Everywhere. I'd much rather make my own fun than play GT mode. One of the biggest differences between GT5 and GT5P was online. In P, you had to deal with pre-made rooms with a limited choice of races. I found it terrible and constantly hoped we would get a free room option (like in GT5), that would have made GT5P basically last indefinitely (keeping it mind, it was a demo/beta thing).
Online is certainly missing options, but like you've said it's the core of the game. At this point, I don't think that can change. Single player for me is inherently inferior when it comes to gameplay.
The PP ranking is undefendable. I mean, I admit I'm not a fast driver, but the problem is, with my own driving two cars, one 500PP another 550PP have comparable performances, with 500PP being a little faster than 550 one.
That is not at all typical.
Have you ever seen a Viper in online racing?
Why yes. It's my favorite car when driving competitively and I've never found it to be slow. I own about 30 of them all tuned to different specs and use them across a wide range of PP. It's never had a problem.
so that for each PP class you'll rarely see a really wide range of models.
Even if true, this could be fixed or mitigated by using subclasses of car. In other words, more lobby options from PD. I find it crazy that the game shipped with the ability to restrict a room to a hand pick list of recommended cars, but that same feature was never applied to garages or the full car list where it would actually be useful.
Online in general is the cancer of this generation.
Online ruined almost every games off-line experience.
Instead of focusing making a game better and longer, they just add online and that solves everything... add to the equation DLC and there you have it.
How can online be blamed for that? It's more of the devs being ridiculous.
Something else that shows how poorly the games of this gen are made and the effects of online, is that after you finish a game or just stopped playing it for any reason, you don't get back to it.
For the simple reason (as you both also mentioned) that in off-line mode have nothing to offer.
IMO if GT5 didn't had online, the 800+ standard cars and the major flaws that takes you a week to tune-repair-test a car... would be dead in less than a month.
I always liked GT series, i have finished every GT to 100%, i've also got the platinum in GT5 and have played many-many hours on-line with lots of fun...but after 2 years and 15? 20? updates it still looks like a demo.
Opinion. Online games are usually the only games worth going back to for me, this includes GT5, which in terms of replayability kills the other games despite its flaws. There is no finishing an online game. That is one of the things makes them better than offline games. Offline games usually end, although good ones can have replayability.
If I had a choice, I wouldn't have started GT mode, but sadly it's a requirement to actually get to online. I don't care how much time and effort PD could have put into it, it wouldn't be online. However a good offline mode would be nice fill in for times when the internet was out or no one was really online.
