- 135
- Texas
- ChrisWPoindexter
- CW Poindexter
Gran Turismo 5 is, IMHO, a backside moment or downfall moment for the series, as good as it is flaws aside, where everything that I may think could go wrong transitioning from GT4/GTPSP to now has pretty much done so. For me, it has left a gaping hole in the gaming industry where we could have had a golden moment for the series and of its "sim-cade" or "semi-sim" kind like Gran Turismo 2, 3 or even 1!
All the things listed should, to me, have the opposite in GT6 (except for some that mention an idea for fixing a flaw in GT6.).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This list is constantly refined and added-on to as time passes and as I gather and recollect information on the subject.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Red = Flaws, which are meant to contain the opposite of in GT6.
Blue = Ideas, which shouldn't contain the opposite of in GT6 but should just in general be included into GT6.
Flaw (Or Idea) List:
-Overly complicated and pretentious menus and menu music, with too many features in unprepared places.
-Bad tuning setups. You only have three spaces for setups, and nothing more.
-Ridiculous, unrealistic tuning privileges, such as but not limited to permanent engine tuning on WRC and GT 300/500 cars, turbo kits on Le Mans Prototypes, etc.
-Oil changes and mileage break-in on cars that gives cars extra power makes stat-tracking and power restrictions for fair competition too complicated.
-No 100% accurate pre-defined tuning setup or readily avaliable in-game stats for the original untuned state of a car. (Which has and probably will continue to cost me hours, maybe even a day or so of my life compling them in the game alone since they aren't already.)
-B-Spec is not very dynamic or interesting at all: No qualifying which forces you to race your car overpowered, which destroys any AI's chance of being realistically or even enjoyably competitive, bad money and experience payout without a log-in bonus, with a boring set-up is made even more so with usually double the laps of the races in A-Spec when, logistically and realistically, it should be the other way around.
-WAY too much grinding required for experience-system progression in later levels even with the log-in bonus due to lack of events.
-Damage modeling and physics are generally always very inconsistent and unrealistic between all the useless endless cars. Mechanical damage doesn't let entire parts fall off, become wholly inoperable or in VERY EXTREME cases explode.
-Unrealistic car type privileges at the Nurburgring Nordschliefe: Le Mans Prototypes & F1 Cars? ON THE NORDSCHLEIFE?!?!?
-Championships sometimes give you prize cars that are extremely non-congruent with the level of machine skill required in some. (Caterham 7 from winning the Formula GT World Championship? WTF?)
-The difference between hard/medium/soft compound tires is very elementary in balancing out grip vs. durability between set-ups and so is the tire model physics-wise (elementary).
-Tuning options are not only less than previous GT's (no triple-plate clutch, no racing flywheel, limited amount of race mods when GT1/2 had nearly all cars with race mods, no super soft or super hard tires, etc.), but are also way too under-powered and not well-yielding. For example: a Honda Civic could compete against super cars with enough tuning and even race modifying. However, the max tuning level is much less than that, and when I do a Stage 3 Engine Tune for 30,000 credits, I only get a 10+ HP increase.
-For any Gran Turismo game in the past, present or future, having useless lower-end tuning options that in the long run you won't need at all. For example: why buy a sports or semi-racing exhaust when you aren't going to use it anyway and just use the best-power-yielding racing exhaust?
-Higher-league motor sports such as NASCAR and F1 have unrealistic pit stop times. NASCAR should be, say, 13-14 seconds and F1 should be about 3-4, etc.
-Tire wear and fuel consumption are also a bit unrealistically fast and are set-up like differences between tire compounds to be elementary and not realistic either.
-Also, its generally hard to read or understand the indicators of tire wear and fuel consumption. For example: every game before 5 had a simple but practical tire wear icon that showed blue as fresh, green as warm and slick, yellow and orange as losing grip, and red as almost no grip, while 5 has an awkward up and down meter for wear with an unusual blue-to-white-to-red coloring thing for how warm a tire is and/or how much grip is or isn't left, which is way too complicated. And, when fuel consumption was introduced in GT4, it was a simple up-down with little squares of liters left, where 5 is a strange, not-so-digital-or-exact more-analog bar with no real numbers displayed generally.
-An insane, irrational amount of hours of drive time will be logged with the way the rubbish, stupid experience system works, with a humongous difference between certain leveling-up periods, requiring needless grinding.
-Duplicates of cars in the car list. Quality over quantity, for God's sake! For example: don't have fifty Mazda Miatas or Nissan Skylines. Just give us certain specific generations of the car, with only one of each and that one being the best and/or most recent kind of that generation, like the new cars in GT1/2, the list in 3, or the premium lineup in 5.
-No more leveling system or B-Spec, just A-Spec as the main mode and just Licenses for ranking people into different offline/online races because they, the experience thing and B-Spec, don't work anyway and nobody gives a 🤬 about them. (Sorry for language.)
-License tests aren't the main vehicle for driver class or "level" to put you in beginner vs. professional races, and they aren't super effective about being professionally made and set-up to really actually be an effective educational tool for driver skill enhancement and have detailed tutorials on driving technique and methods.
-The failed attempt of a hardcore simulation driving style in the game with very obscure, unorganized driver's aids makes the game worthless for absolute realism with DualShock 3 users (like me) whom are unable to buy a full-on steering wheel or set-up and is totally hypocritical of what the game was highly successfully and maybe unintentionally made-to-be back in 1997-2001; a semi-simulation, not a full-on hardcore PC simulator, which it (GT5) still fails to do (hardcore sim style) anyway.
-The Online racing setup is extremely rudimentary and complicated; you can't automatically or at least easily narrow down the kind of race you want to be in, along with another primitive "lobby" system for game setup and matchmaking, which I think could still exist, as this isn't NFS: Most Wanted 2012 or Burnout Paradise, but in a much more simplified, refined and modern form.
-In general, the game structure, experience and money/economy system is very linear, lacking quantity AND quality, unbalanced and more of a chore than it should be that leaves players with not much to actually do after a point late in game completion.
-Arcade Mode is one-dimensional; the grid solely relies on what car you bring to the party, and is lazily preset according to what the car is.
-Another huge problem that has half or a little more of the time been present in pretty much all the Gran Turismo games; the drivers, # of laps, time/weather change, or presence of tire wear and fuel consumption don't dynamically adjust to the tuning extent of your car and/or your own license skill level via difficulty setting, NOT adjusting to the existing license and power requirements of a race but to your own car's tuning extent and your own license level, no matter what level of racing it is, from the Beginner's no-license Sunday Cup to the Professional's S License Formula GT World Championship.
- As I just said above, have this "Dynamic Competition Setting" to allow for the player's car's extent of tuning and skill or "License" level to be adjusted to by the AI for tight and solid competition and, just with skill/License level and/or player difficulty level option, increase the number of laps and the presence of tire/fuel wear, time/weather change and damage in races. However, even with this, these factors, even at the easiest difficulty level, should increase anyway to some extent when you reach a certain higher-level License race later and later into the game. Also, by increasing this difficulty setting, increase the credit rewards with it, to make it more rewarding than ever.
-For any race or championship in the game, unlike GT1 or even GT3, there are NO practice or qualifying sessions, optional or non-optional, which is logistically basic and downright stupid.
-As time and technology aren't necessarily a problem anymore (for the time being), have nearly every single car and track from all past Gran Turismo games, even including slightly different versions of ones (GT1/2 Test Course vs. GT3/4/PSP Test Course), and only have duplicates of Japanese cars be removed from older games. Also, as insane and as time/labor-inducing as this sounds, let every track have time/weather change. When it comes to graphics, have every car and track have the graphical detailing of somewhere between GT4 and GT5, without being extremely and overly well-detailed and having NOT the GRAPHICAL DETAIL OF but the GRAPHICAL STYLE OF Gran Turismo 3. (For example, no heavy emphasis on shadows or really boring late-afternoon skylines of daytime tracks.)
-Have, like Gran Turismo 2, the Used Car Dealers mixed in with the New & Special Dealers of one particular manufacturer's "lot" or set-up. Also have Used Car Lots in non-Japanese make dealers, but basically don't have duplicates with Japanese cars, and have a "Classics" section like GT4 of newly-made cars discontinued at the time of GT6's latest update so those of us with big money to spend don't have to buy classics used.
-After reaching a certain high point in completing the game (for example, Formula GT World Championship won, a League won, 100% completion, etc.), unlock Odometer Reset function to reset a previous owner's mileage on a used car.
-As a game like Gran Turismo was specifically made by its creator not only to be a way to drive, tune and race real world road and race cars that you couldn't possibly own in real life, but as considered by some players and maybe even by the developers to be a way to drive these cars WITHOUT WORRYING ABOUT THE CAR BECOMING DIRTY, WORN DOWN OR DAMAGED. Therefore, any damage or dirt that plagues a car during a race must be automatically fixed, repaired and cleaned, unless requested by the player to be the opposite, because, lets face it, almost no other semi-simulation or simulation racing game in the world forces you to pay money for a car getting dirty, suffering inevitable wear-and-tear or becoming damaged. So, unless you want absolute simulation realism and to suffer the consequences of reality, you'll no longer need to worry about washing a car, its oil, or refining the engine or chassis.
-To cover a LOT of bases and appeal to a broader audience of Gran Turismo and racing fans and all kinds of controllers, in the game settings or race settings or something, have settings for driving styles a Semi-Simulation driving style akin to Gran Turismo 1, 2 and 3 and those who still love playing it, with only a few driving aids avaliable and an entirely optional no-ABS option, and this setting is accustomed to or more friendly for normal joysticks and gamepads, along with being good for beginners as well as old GT fans. Then, have a Simulation driving style that uses GT PSP/5 as a base model but will be evolved to a Hardcore PC Sim level with all kinds of driving assists, meant and recommended for steering wheels and realistic racing seating set-ups and people who want to drive with absolute realism, along with the driving assists there for beginners with steering wheels/racing set-ups who want to drive realistically. I don't think we should use GT4's physics, because its not only un-realistic but also unrealistically difficult, and its never really been reused or needed to be much at all since GT5 Prologue. Also, as you decrease driving aids in either setting, increase credits rewards, but don't increase it for disabling ABS in Semi-Sim or for switching between the two main driving styles.
-For all the existing rally stages and new ones, make point-to-point versions of existing, older ones,along with the closed circuit versions of them as merely for two-driver races and the point-to-point set up for time trial rallies like in real life. Then, for brand new rally stages, not only the point-to-point actual version but also a closed circuit one as well like the old stages.
-Have realistic AI that doesn't just follow the racing line robot-like and actually reacts to your presence by blocking, driving differently, taking different lines, trying to overtake, be aggressive, free thinking, responsive, opprtunistic, intelligent, and just actually realistic and enjoyable for once!
-Have realistic sound that uses different technology, recording processes and conversions to allow for sounds that actually sound realistic, and match up with and react to different actions of driving the car such as gear changes and clutch, suspension, braking, tires, throttle modulation, etc.
-With Semi-Sim and Sim, by difficulty setting, allow for damage modeling and physics that are the dynamic and realistic real-time kind and be akin to hardcore PC sims such as NR2003, Rigs Of Rods, or even Crysis 3!
-The "Paint Chip" mechanism needs to die and just have factory colors avaliable for purchase per car and not as chips to paint cars.
-The Indianapolis 500 shouldn't exist in-game if it doesn't have actual IndyCar race cars.
-Car graphics shouldn't be seperated into Premium/Standard. Enough of that.
-Way too restrictive. The opponents cars should be tuned as well to the human driver's car's tuning extensitivity by difficulty level so we don't have to down-tune our cars.
-Not very accurate horsepower ratings on cars like Le Mans Prototypes due to general literal inaccuracy, and useless, highly bothersome oil changes, mileage break-in and needless tuning prvilieges that affect the original setting.
-Road car races have too many cars (up to 16), which offline races don't even use, when more higher-league race car races should be the ones having that many.
-Some basic fundamentals of suspension tuning like tire pressure are missing.
-Used car lists aren't very dynamic, they're just preset.
-F1 car physics aren't realistic at all. Extremely arcade, only for their particular kind.
-Overly priced cars that take way too long to buy in the game grinding money and should be much less than that for the sake of convenience within playing the game.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This list is constantly refined and added-on to as time passes and as I gather and recollect information on the subject.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This shows just how much I and others believe IOHO (In Our Honest Opinions) GT5 is God-awfully flawed and how much should be fixed.
Plus, what's also amazing is how much I've already written and complied! Good grief!!!!!
All the things listed should, to me, have the opposite in GT6 (except for some that mention an idea for fixing a flaw in GT6.).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This list is constantly refined and added-on to as time passes and as I gather and recollect information on the subject.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Red = Flaws, which are meant to contain the opposite of in GT6.
Blue = Ideas, which shouldn't contain the opposite of in GT6 but should just in general be included into GT6.
Flaw (Or Idea) List:
-Overly complicated and pretentious menus and menu music, with too many features in unprepared places.
-Bad tuning setups. You only have three spaces for setups, and nothing more.
-Ridiculous, unrealistic tuning privileges, such as but not limited to permanent engine tuning on WRC and GT 300/500 cars, turbo kits on Le Mans Prototypes, etc.
-Oil changes and mileage break-in on cars that gives cars extra power makes stat-tracking and power restrictions for fair competition too complicated.
-No 100% accurate pre-defined tuning setup or readily avaliable in-game stats for the original untuned state of a car. (Which has and probably will continue to cost me hours, maybe even a day or so of my life compling them in the game alone since they aren't already.)
-B-Spec is not very dynamic or interesting at all: No qualifying which forces you to race your car overpowered, which destroys any AI's chance of being realistically or even enjoyably competitive, bad money and experience payout without a log-in bonus, with a boring set-up is made even more so with usually double the laps of the races in A-Spec when, logistically and realistically, it should be the other way around.
-WAY too much grinding required for experience-system progression in later levels even with the log-in bonus due to lack of events.
-Damage modeling and physics are generally always very inconsistent and unrealistic between all the useless endless cars. Mechanical damage doesn't let entire parts fall off, become wholly inoperable or in VERY EXTREME cases explode.
-Unrealistic car type privileges at the Nurburgring Nordschliefe: Le Mans Prototypes & F1 Cars? ON THE NORDSCHLEIFE?!?!?
-Championships sometimes give you prize cars that are extremely non-congruent with the level of machine skill required in some. (Caterham 7 from winning the Formula GT World Championship? WTF?)
-The difference between hard/medium/soft compound tires is very elementary in balancing out grip vs. durability between set-ups and so is the tire model physics-wise (elementary).
-Tuning options are not only less than previous GT's (no triple-plate clutch, no racing flywheel, limited amount of race mods when GT1/2 had nearly all cars with race mods, no super soft or super hard tires, etc.), but are also way too under-powered and not well-yielding. For example: a Honda Civic could compete against super cars with enough tuning and even race modifying. However, the max tuning level is much less than that, and when I do a Stage 3 Engine Tune for 30,000 credits, I only get a 10+ HP increase.
-For any Gran Turismo game in the past, present or future, having useless lower-end tuning options that in the long run you won't need at all. For example: why buy a sports or semi-racing exhaust when you aren't going to use it anyway and just use the best-power-yielding racing exhaust?
-Higher-league motor sports such as NASCAR and F1 have unrealistic pit stop times. NASCAR should be, say, 13-14 seconds and F1 should be about 3-4, etc.
-Tire wear and fuel consumption are also a bit unrealistically fast and are set-up like differences between tire compounds to be elementary and not realistic either.
-Also, its generally hard to read or understand the indicators of tire wear and fuel consumption. For example: every game before 5 had a simple but practical tire wear icon that showed blue as fresh, green as warm and slick, yellow and orange as losing grip, and red as almost no grip, while 5 has an awkward up and down meter for wear with an unusual blue-to-white-to-red coloring thing for how warm a tire is and/or how much grip is or isn't left, which is way too complicated. And, when fuel consumption was introduced in GT4, it was a simple up-down with little squares of liters left, where 5 is a strange, not-so-digital-or-exact more-analog bar with no real numbers displayed generally.
-An insane, irrational amount of hours of drive time will be logged with the way the rubbish, stupid experience system works, with a humongous difference between certain leveling-up periods, requiring needless grinding.
-Duplicates of cars in the car list. Quality over quantity, for God's sake! For example: don't have fifty Mazda Miatas or Nissan Skylines. Just give us certain specific generations of the car, with only one of each and that one being the best and/or most recent kind of that generation, like the new cars in GT1/2, the list in 3, or the premium lineup in 5.
-No more leveling system or B-Spec, just A-Spec as the main mode and just Licenses for ranking people into different offline/online races because they, the experience thing and B-Spec, don't work anyway and nobody gives a 🤬 about them. (Sorry for language.)
-License tests aren't the main vehicle for driver class or "level" to put you in beginner vs. professional races, and they aren't super effective about being professionally made and set-up to really actually be an effective educational tool for driver skill enhancement and have detailed tutorials on driving technique and methods.
-The failed attempt of a hardcore simulation driving style in the game with very obscure, unorganized driver's aids makes the game worthless for absolute realism with DualShock 3 users (like me) whom are unable to buy a full-on steering wheel or set-up and is totally hypocritical of what the game was highly successfully and maybe unintentionally made-to-be back in 1997-2001; a semi-simulation, not a full-on hardcore PC simulator, which it (GT5) still fails to do (hardcore sim style) anyway.
-The Online racing setup is extremely rudimentary and complicated; you can't automatically or at least easily narrow down the kind of race you want to be in, along with another primitive "lobby" system for game setup and matchmaking, which I think could still exist, as this isn't NFS: Most Wanted 2012 or Burnout Paradise, but in a much more simplified, refined and modern form.
-In general, the game structure, experience and money/economy system is very linear, lacking quantity AND quality, unbalanced and more of a chore than it should be that leaves players with not much to actually do after a point late in game completion.
-Arcade Mode is one-dimensional; the grid solely relies on what car you bring to the party, and is lazily preset according to what the car is.
-Another huge problem that has half or a little more of the time been present in pretty much all the Gran Turismo games; the drivers, # of laps, time/weather change, or presence of tire wear and fuel consumption don't dynamically adjust to the tuning extent of your car and/or your own license skill level via difficulty setting, NOT adjusting to the existing license and power requirements of a race but to your own car's tuning extent and your own license level, no matter what level of racing it is, from the Beginner's no-license Sunday Cup to the Professional's S License Formula GT World Championship.
- As I just said above, have this "Dynamic Competition Setting" to allow for the player's car's extent of tuning and skill or "License" level to be adjusted to by the AI for tight and solid competition and, just with skill/License level and/or player difficulty level option, increase the number of laps and the presence of tire/fuel wear, time/weather change and damage in races. However, even with this, these factors, even at the easiest difficulty level, should increase anyway to some extent when you reach a certain higher-level License race later and later into the game. Also, by increasing this difficulty setting, increase the credit rewards with it, to make it more rewarding than ever.
-For any race or championship in the game, unlike GT1 or even GT3, there are NO practice or qualifying sessions, optional or non-optional, which is logistically basic and downright stupid.
-As time and technology aren't necessarily a problem anymore (for the time being), have nearly every single car and track from all past Gran Turismo games, even including slightly different versions of ones (GT1/2 Test Course vs. GT3/4/PSP Test Course), and only have duplicates of Japanese cars be removed from older games. Also, as insane and as time/labor-inducing as this sounds, let every track have time/weather change. When it comes to graphics, have every car and track have the graphical detailing of somewhere between GT4 and GT5, without being extremely and overly well-detailed and having NOT the GRAPHICAL DETAIL OF but the GRAPHICAL STYLE OF Gran Turismo 3. (For example, no heavy emphasis on shadows or really boring late-afternoon skylines of daytime tracks.)
-Have, like Gran Turismo 2, the Used Car Dealers mixed in with the New & Special Dealers of one particular manufacturer's "lot" or set-up. Also have Used Car Lots in non-Japanese make dealers, but basically don't have duplicates with Japanese cars, and have a "Classics" section like GT4 of newly-made cars discontinued at the time of GT6's latest update so those of us with big money to spend don't have to buy classics used.
-After reaching a certain high point in completing the game (for example, Formula GT World Championship won, a League won, 100% completion, etc.), unlock Odometer Reset function to reset a previous owner's mileage on a used car.
-As a game like Gran Turismo was specifically made by its creator not only to be a way to drive, tune and race real world road and race cars that you couldn't possibly own in real life, but as considered by some players and maybe even by the developers to be a way to drive these cars WITHOUT WORRYING ABOUT THE CAR BECOMING DIRTY, WORN DOWN OR DAMAGED. Therefore, any damage or dirt that plagues a car during a race must be automatically fixed, repaired and cleaned, unless requested by the player to be the opposite, because, lets face it, almost no other semi-simulation or simulation racing game in the world forces you to pay money for a car getting dirty, suffering inevitable wear-and-tear or becoming damaged. So, unless you want absolute simulation realism and to suffer the consequences of reality, you'll no longer need to worry about washing a car, its oil, or refining the engine or chassis.
-To cover a LOT of bases and appeal to a broader audience of Gran Turismo and racing fans and all kinds of controllers, in the game settings or race settings or something, have settings for driving styles a Semi-Simulation driving style akin to Gran Turismo 1, 2 and 3 and those who still love playing it, with only a few driving aids avaliable and an entirely optional no-ABS option, and this setting is accustomed to or more friendly for normal joysticks and gamepads, along with being good for beginners as well as old GT fans. Then, have a Simulation driving style that uses GT PSP/5 as a base model but will be evolved to a Hardcore PC Sim level with all kinds of driving assists, meant and recommended for steering wheels and realistic racing seating set-ups and people who want to drive with absolute realism, along with the driving assists there for beginners with steering wheels/racing set-ups who want to drive realistically. I don't think we should use GT4's physics, because its not only un-realistic but also unrealistically difficult, and its never really been reused or needed to be much at all since GT5 Prologue. Also, as you decrease driving aids in either setting, increase credits rewards, but don't increase it for disabling ABS in Semi-Sim or for switching between the two main driving styles.
-For all the existing rally stages and new ones, make point-to-point versions of existing, older ones,along with the closed circuit versions of them as merely for two-driver races and the point-to-point set up for time trial rallies like in real life. Then, for brand new rally stages, not only the point-to-point actual version but also a closed circuit one as well like the old stages.
-Have realistic AI that doesn't just follow the racing line robot-like and actually reacts to your presence by blocking, driving differently, taking different lines, trying to overtake, be aggressive, free thinking, responsive, opprtunistic, intelligent, and just actually realistic and enjoyable for once!
-Have realistic sound that uses different technology, recording processes and conversions to allow for sounds that actually sound realistic, and match up with and react to different actions of driving the car such as gear changes and clutch, suspension, braking, tires, throttle modulation, etc.
-With Semi-Sim and Sim, by difficulty setting, allow for damage modeling and physics that are the dynamic and realistic real-time kind and be akin to hardcore PC sims such as NR2003, Rigs Of Rods, or even Crysis 3!
-The "Paint Chip" mechanism needs to die and just have factory colors avaliable for purchase per car and not as chips to paint cars.
-The Indianapolis 500 shouldn't exist in-game if it doesn't have actual IndyCar race cars.
-Car graphics shouldn't be seperated into Premium/Standard. Enough of that.
-Way too restrictive. The opponents cars should be tuned as well to the human driver's car's tuning extensitivity by difficulty level so we don't have to down-tune our cars.
-Not very accurate horsepower ratings on cars like Le Mans Prototypes due to general literal inaccuracy, and useless, highly bothersome oil changes, mileage break-in and needless tuning prvilieges that affect the original setting.
-Road car races have too many cars (up to 16), which offline races don't even use, when more higher-league race car races should be the ones having that many.
-Some basic fundamentals of suspension tuning like tire pressure are missing.
-Used car lists aren't very dynamic, they're just preset.
-F1 car physics aren't realistic at all. Extremely arcade, only for their particular kind.
-Overly priced cars that take way too long to buy in the game grinding money and should be much less than that for the sake of convenience within playing the game.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This list is constantly refined and added-on to as time passes and as I gather and recollect information on the subject.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This shows just how much I and others believe IOHO (In Our Honest Opinions) GT5 is God-awfully flawed and how much should be fixed.
Plus, what's also amazing is how much I've already written and complied! Good grief!!!!!
Last edited: