With the online features, I can just see the elitist types making their own little club that you have to password to even see them race in their Premium damage modeling of a car. Spending hours secretly doing stuff normally found in The Burnout series.
I suspect most people want damage so hacks can be eliminated from online competition and won't re-spawn during the race. Of course if they take you out with them, you won't be able to restart the race either, so you'll be like every other pissed off real driver that gets punted off track.
Its very much a double edge sword. I hope you Damage Zealots enjoy both sides and react with just as much respect either way. Racing Incidents previously not in the game can happen at any time, I can see this especially happening in a multi-class environment like 24hrs of Le mans -
Or N24 -
The Realism Nazis, I got something for you as well. You demand realism and that's fine, but your missing several elements of real racing that can't be duplicated, yet and frankly I don't want to see. There is already a sect of GT enthusiasts with $2-3K in racing cockpits and $200-300 racing wheels. This is a sub-set of the hardcore Sim Enthusiast and because they couldn't get a game as fantastic as GT on a PC (GT would make the average Home PC cry) have demanded GT be more like [insert game]. Well GT isn't [insert game] and because its on a console with a much wider user base, it can't be all games to everybody, though Kaz tries.
You'll never make everybody happy and as long as everybody at PD understand that, I can full embrace the next edition of the GT series.
Some people seem to think it takes 6 years to put all in everything on your wish list and that anything less is worth complaining about to the choir because were the only people that understand where you're coming from.
Frankly I'm tired of reading what's in the game and how its not enough, they want more.
With the Collector's Edition including DLC, I'm pretty sure the code can be updated online, so you'll see continual improvements. I'm quite happy with the overall news and the game easily smokes visually any racing game on the market. I'm most happy about the online component, it was really the only thing missing from GT4 for me.
As somebody else said in this thread, you're going to buy it anyway....