Car Value & Crd System

[Lotrzyna]

I think it should be resolved that way:

Cars should be much more expensive than they are in GT4 just to make game harder/more fun plus because we will be able to earn money online.

Value depreciation should stay as it is again to make getting new cars harder/make game more fun and make game last longer.

There should be a test drive option so that people like Toronado (no offence) would have not problem with buying a wrong car - but by test drive I mean only being able to test drive a car that's price is up to your budget - for instance you have 10k credits you go to used cars dealer and you are able to test any car up to 10k c. and by test drive I mean 5 laps on some mandatory track (for example Suzuka for Japanese cars etc) or on 1 test track like the one from GT3 and you only get these 5 laps, game autosaves after that 5 laps, you are now able to take another car etc then you choose the car you want to buy and you buy it.

 

[Tornado]

I'd rather autosave ceased to exist in the series. In fact, other than the mention that there should be a test-drive and it should only be allowed for cars you can afford to buy (which is a great idea that I hadn't thought of), I disagree with everything you say.

Keep in mind that as far as rebalancing the credits system goes, I merely think it should rebalanced, mostly because of how illogical it is. I can understand why some people wouldn't want it changed, I just disagree with their reasoning.
But as far as the interface stuff goes (ie. the car stats screen, the inability to test the cars before buying), that is stuff that needs to be changed because the way it is now is pretty much objectively bad game design. There needs to be a test drive function so the crapshoot of ending up with a bad-to-drive car isn't even possible, or their needs to be an overhaul to the stats screen so one can at least make assumptions about a car's handling. As it is now, the game gives you practically zero information about a car's handling other than its basic drivetrain, which isn't nearly enough to guess how it will handle; and because you can't test drive its entirely likely you will lose out big. In fact, I would only say that a credits rebalance is absolutely necessary if they don't fix at least one of these two problems, and by itself it wouldn't be as good of a change as a test drive function.

 

[Lain]

I think it should be resolved that way:

Cars should be much more expensive than they are in GT4 just to make game harder/more fun plus because we will be able to earn money online.

Value depreciation should stay as it is again to make getting new cars harder/make game more fun and make game last longer.

There should be a test drive option so that people like Toronado (no offence) would have not problem with buying a wrong car - but by test drive I mean only being able to test drive a car that's price is up to your budget - for instance you have 10k credits you go to used cars dealer and you are able to test any car up to 10k c. and by test drive I mean 5 laps on some mandatory track (for example Suzuka for Japanese cars etc) or on 1 test track like the one from GT3 and you only get these 5 laps, game autosaves after that 5 laps, you are now able to take another car etc then you choose the car you want to buy and you buy it.

Wow, never thought of limiting test drives to cars you can afford. Brilliant.

However, I don't think cars should be made more expensive. It'd just feel wrong. The same effect of increasing the difficulty could be accomplished by universally lowering the amount of credits earned. I think that credits were fairly well balanced in GT4 though... unlike GT3, where you virtually had to redo racing series many times to afford anything. But in GT4, unless you exploited certain prize cars, you didn't exactly get buckets of credits for winning either. So if you wisely allocated your credits, you could afford what you needed when you needed it, but you never got so much money that you could just go out and carelessly buy dozens of cars just for the heck of it.

I'd rather autosave ceased to exist in the series.

Really? What's your reasoning behind this? If there's a test drive option to keep you from accidentally buying a terrible car, I can't think of anything you'd need to worry about not wanting the game to autosave.

When I first started playing GT3, my first time with the series, there were countless times when I absent-mindedly shut off my PS2 after hours of playing without saving. I've had to reearn countless licenses, redo countless races. So GT4's autosave was a godsend, whose only problem was that if I bought a vehicle and it sucked, I was out of luck. If that proplem was resolved through means of being able to try a car before you buy, what other problems are there with autosave?

 

[Ardius]

I'd rather autosave ceased to exist in the series. In fact, other than the mention that there should be a test-drive and it should only be allowed for cars you can afford to buy (which is a great idea that I hadn't thought of), I disagree with everything you say.

Keep in mind that as far as rebalancing the credits system goes, I merely think it should rebalanced, mostly because of how illogical it is. I can understand why some people wouldn't want it changed, I just disagree with their reasoning.
But as far as the interface stuff goes (ie. the car stats screen, the inability to test the cars before buying), that is stuff that needs to be changed because the way it is now is pretty much objectively bad game design. There needs to be a test drive function so the crapshoot of ending up with a bad-to-drive car isn't even possible, or their needs to be an overhaul to the stats screen so one can at least make assumptions about a car's handling. As it is now, the game gives you practically zero information about a car's handling other than its basic drivetrain, which isn't nearly enough to guess how it will handle; and because you can't test drive its entirely likely you will lose out big. In fact, I would only say that a credits rebalance is absolutely necessary if they don't fix at least one of these two problems, and by itself it wouldn't be as good of a change as a test drive function.

I definitely agree the menu's need to be more well thought out, they have shown they are trying to improve though - remember when you had to back out of 5 menu's just to alter your car if it was the wrong one for a race? Or having to wait through loading screens if you were backing out to try a different car?
In GT5 Prologue they at least allowed us to alter the car choice before entering races, so they are clearly trying to solve this problem.

The stats screens so far have been fine, as far as I know they have always shown very detailed information about the car, from power outputs, torque, wheel bases, ride heights, etc. They also provide history and information about the car which sometimes tell you if a car is difficult. However, most of this info is only available after you buy the car which I would agree should be available before purchase (like it would be in real life, if you were buying a real car you would be able to ask for the full specs for the car and read its history).

As for autosave...erm, you can turn it off? No problems there

 

[NBH]

The credit system just needs to be logical. In previous GT games it felt like you had to do the same race several times to earn enough credits to buy a new car to enter a new event. It should be that the lower spec your car is, the more credits you win in that race. So if for example the HP limit on a race is 300 and you enter in a car with 250 and win, you should get more credits than if you win more easily in a 300bhp car or alternatively base it on the performance points seen in GT5P. If you win events that are challenging you shouldn't have to repeat them over and over to move on in the game.

 

[Lain]

The credit system just needs to be logical. In previous GT games it felt like you had to do the same race several times to earn enough credits to buy a new car to enter a new event. It should be that the lower spec your car is, the more credits you win in that race. So if for example the HP limit on a race is 300 and you enter in a car with 250 and win, you should get more credits than if you win more easily in a 300bhp car or alternatively base it on the performance points seen in GT5P. If you win events that are challenging you shouldn't have to repeat them over and over to move on in the game.

Yeah... if A-spec points return, they should make it to where you get a bonus of 5x the A-spec points for winning a race. Win a 1 point race, the bonus is 5. Win a 250-pt race, 1250 bonus.

Or actually, instead of that (or in addition to?), they should increase the prize credits by a fair amount but penalize heavily for repair costs. Drive cleanly and you advance without having to redo events. Drive wrecklessly, and you'll be stuck repairing your current vehicle instead of being able to afford a new one.

 

[garybee]

The credit system just needs to be logical. In previous GT games it felt like you had to do the same race several times to earn enough credits to buy a new car to enter a new event. It should be that the lower spec your car is, the more credits you win in that race. So if for example the HP limit on a race is 300 and you enter in a car with 250 and win, you should get more credits than if you win more easily in a 300bhp car or alternatively base it on the performance points seen in GT5P. If you win events that are challenging you shouldn't have to repeat them over and over to move on in the game.

I don't agree with that. In a real race, the prize money doesn't increase just because your car isn't as good as others in the field.

 

[Lain]

I don't agree with that. In a real race, the prize money doesn't increase just because your car isn't as good as others in the field.

Yeah. That's why I really think the best solution would be to just increase the amount of credits you win for all races, but have moderately severe repair costs. That way, the cleaner your drive, the smoother your advancement through the game will be. Bang your cars up, and you'll be stuck repairing them and using them to win the same races over and over.

 

[Ardius]

I think making people have to repair their car is possibly OTT for the casual player. Maybe as an option?
A-spec points counting towards money I also agree is not realistic, but then again it doesn't need to be. After all, in real life you don't get "points" for how well you drive rubbish cars so I see it as a good incentive for not using rediculously powerful cars to win everything. Like I said before, not everything in the game has to be realistic, so I think using A-spec points for extra credits is a good idea.

I think perhaps if you made people have to repair their car or incur long-term penalties, you would have to again split the game between "standard" and "professional" modes because not everyone would enjoy that game dynamic (or be able to drive well enough to have fun). But I would like to see some kind of additional stewarding system, where not just penalties on the track but penalties for future events can be forced for particularly bad driving (like going the wrong way on the track) but I'm not sure it would be used so much, as the only drivers who would drive this way wouldn't use "pro" mode

 

[Exorcet]

As for autosave...erm, you can turn it off? No problems there

Not in GT4. A terrible addition. I hope for the option to fully, utterly, disable it from even being suggested to you in load screens, or anything, in GT5.

 

[Tornado]

I definitely agree the menu's need to be more well thought out, they have shown they are trying to improve though - remember when you had to back out of 5 menu's just to alter your car if it was the wrong one for a race? Or having to wait through loading screens if you were backing out to try a different car?

I haven't played Prologue with anything more than a passing glance at a friend's house, so forgive me if I come off wrong, but the most recent full game in the series (GT4) was also the one with the absolute worst menu system (oddly enough immediately after the game with arguably the best), so I'm skeptical.

The stats screens so far have been fine, as far as I know they have always shown very detailed information about the car, from power outputs, torque, wheel bases, ride heights, etc. They also provide history and information about the car which sometimes tell you if a car is difficult. However, most of this info is only available after you buy the car which I would agree should be available before purchase (like it would be in real life, if you were buying a real car you would be able to ask for the full specs for the car and read its history).

In Prologue does the game give you tire and suspension info? Sizes and suspension types, for example? Because stuff like that really saved my bacon in Enthusia, allowing me to determine whether I should even bother test driving some cars before I tried them for real. Seeing as how GT Mobile also didn't give you any of that stuff, I simply assumed that GT5 didn't either.

If that proplem was resolved through means of being able to try a car before you buy, what other problems are there with autosave?

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=81495

 

[Lain]

I think making people have to repair their car is possibly OTT for the casual player. Maybe as an option?
A-spec points counting towards money I also agree is not realistic, but then again it doesn't need to be. After all, in real life you don't get "points" for how well you drive rubbish cars so I see it as a good incentive for not using rediculously powerful cars to win everything. Like I said before, not everything in the game has to be realistic, so I think using A-spec points for extra credits is a good idea.

I think perhaps if you made people have to repair their car or incur long-term penalties, you would have to again split the game between "standard" and "professional" modes because not everyone would enjoy that game dynamic (or be able to drive well enough to have fun). But I would like to see some kind of additional stewarding system, where not just penalties on the track but penalties for future events can be forced for particularly bad driving (like going the wrong way on the track) but I'm not sure it would be used so much, as the only drivers who would drive this way wouldn't use "pro" mode

Nah, I don't think it would be too much. It'd work like this: A player damages their car as bad as the game allows during the course of the race (assuming GT5 doesn't have terminal damage), and that results in losing 90% of their winnings. So their car is repaired automatically (even though I'd love damage to be repaired manually at GT Auto, but for this I'd sacrifice it) at the cost of 90% of their winnings, but they still get to take home 10%. So they'll still advance through the game, but they'll be repeating events often to scrape up enough winnings to do so.

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=81495

Ah, ok. I see. But I can't help but feel that you're just stubbornly holding onto your negative opinion of autosaving due to a tragic loss of GT4 data. In GT5P, it is blatantly obvious when the game is autosaving. There's no longer just a vague, hard-to-see indicator in the corner of the screen. A window pops up and literally states that the game is saving. If you turn off your system during a GT5P autosave, you're dumb enough to turn off your system in the middle of a manual save.

Not to mention that, while most users will be fine not doing this, backing up PS3 saves is a breeze. If you're worried about your data being corrupted, then make a backup every once in a while. Data can be corrupted for any game. My stepfather was playing Resistance 2 a while back, and while saving, the power went out. All the media on my PS3 got corrupted, and I had to reformat.

 

[Tornado]

Ah, ok. I see. But I can't help but feel that you're just stubbornly holding onto your negative opinion of autosaving due to a tragic loss of GT4 data.

I'm doing what now? Do you see me as a member of that club? I was merely offering an example that you asked for. I personally think mandatory autosave should cease to exist because it is stupid and overly controlling of the player's actions, but autosave by itself isn't really a problem. I equate mandatory autosave to non-customizable control schemes and unskippable cutscenes as being the worst decisions that a developer can make in a game, and it is rapidly becoming the most obnoxious one in this console generation. There is more to it than that, but I'd rather not bother typing it up unless you want a more thorough explanation. Suffice to say though, if GT5 has an autosave system anything at all like that of GT4, the game will rapidly begin piling dust alongside GT4 while I go back to GT3 and GT2.

 

[Seismica]

I'm doing what now? Do you see me as a member of that club? I was merely offering an example that you asked for. I personally think mandatory autosave should cease to exist because it is stupid and overly controlling of the player's actions, but autosave by itself isn't really a problem. I equate mandatory autosave to non-customizable control schemes and unskippable cutscenes as being the worst decisions that a developer can make in a game, and it is rapidly becoming the most obnoxious one in this console generation. There is more to it than that, but I'd rather not bother typing it up unless you want a more thorough explanation. Suffice to say though, if GT5 has an autosave system anything at all like that of GT4, the game will rapidly begin piling dust alongside GT4 while I go back to GT3 and GT2.

As long as there is the option to turn autosave off its fine

As for the buy/autosave feature, i thought this was in all GT games? To stop people using 'try before you buy'.

 

[Tornado]

It was only in GT4 because the game required a memory card just to run simulation mode. It treated the memory card like expanded RAM or something. That is why the GT4 saves are the same size no matter how many cars you have in your garage.