IDEA: ‘Free roam’ main lobby

[Gomario JSP]

We could all pink slip drag there with the 20 million cars, they would finaly have a purpose lol

 

[Zweber1]

I think I’d both love and hate it. Love it when I’m not really sure what I wanna do ( it could count towards your daily mileage) and hate it when I just wanna race. Like now!! Haha

If you just want to race, then fast travel to the circuits and race. No one’s stopping you! Lol

 

[ScottPuss20]

I'm going to make the assumption that what you really want, in that case, is a more comprehensive test track. Not necessarily a whole free-roaming environment (as we understand it in other games), but a single, possibly open-ended track that provides various useful ways to test a car and which isn't necessarily structured like a race track, like the classic Test Course.

Maybe it's time for GT3's Complex String to return?

I really want to see this track revived as a proper proving ground.

 

[Suzuki-Cara]

i don't see any reason not to add onto this, so go full send.

Make it RPG style, and have a random encounter with one of the named drivers, lol.

 

[SU_Tempest]

i don't see any reason not to add onto this, so go full send.

Make it RPG style, and have a random encounter with one of the named drivers, lol.

A wild B. Fujiwara has appeared!
Cue profuse sweating.

 

[Suzuki-Cara]

A wild B. Fujiwara has appeared!
Cue profuse sweating.

Honk your horn three times at the UCD after Midnight, and a Samba Bus will appear. Beware, the Driver known as L. Ordonez has been known to get creative with his modifications.

 

[handcuff_]

I’m sitting in the main lobby looking at the map and thought of a very cool way to really improve this game.

Imagine the lobby map was a small ‘free roam’ or open world town, where you could drive to each location on the map. No racing is done here, just a small area to test drive your selected car. Once you arrive to your location the map opens up to its current interface, or you can just fast travel like it does currently.

It would allow you to test your newly tuned car out on the way to the ‘race track’ to enter a race, or to the cafe to check challenges. It could be a fun way to test the new tunes made to your car, without it being fully open world and without having to actually enter a race.

It could also have an online lobby function where a certain amount of players on each server(say 10) can cruise down the street together, or meet in the museum parking lot to show off their cars and use the photography function for more fun in the photo editor.

This open world aspect would immerse the player much deeper into the game and create a very fun way of testing out your tunes. Being able to briefly free roam would also open up lots of opportunity to use the photo features.

I’m sure I’m not the first to think of it, but I can be hopeful something like this is integrated into future GT games.

Thoughts?

Nah, they'll just keep releasing the same 3 games over and over again with updated graphics, a handful of new cars that are still 10 years old at game release, and claim the AI is groundbreaking...again.

And everyone will keep buying it.

 

[handcuff_]

It's a decent idea.

But looking at the comments now I hope it actually happens just so it'd pissed off those who are blowing gaskets over this lol

It is a decent idea. Frankly anything would be better than this stupid world map. GT Sport UI navigation was probably the best of the series IMHO.

The unashamed minimal effort they put into these games since GT4 is insulting when you consider how much money they rake in from them.

But hey Yama-whatever is too busy hobnobbing with industry figures and LARPing as a race car driver, so what more can we expect?

No! I don’t know what the desperation is for having free roam in Gran Turismo?! For me Gran Turismo is purely about racing other cars on track!!

Clearly the developers do not see it that way. Otherwise they would not have added the "meet up" feature to several tracks.
The problem in GT isn't lack of ideas, the problem is the unimaginative and crap implementation of those ideas by what I can only assume are low-tier developers.

I can't think of any other franchise the size of GT that underwhelms and disappoints more.
Owned every single GT, all of them at launch. I'm not buying the next one. I'm over it.

 

[SU_Tempest]

But hey Yama-whatever is too busy hobnobbing with industry figures and LARPing as a race car driver, so what more can we expect?

Ughhh...
Criticize the game, the company, or the man as much as you want, but please don't resort to childish takes like these... His name is Yamauchi. He isn't LARPing as a race car driver; he is a real one. Anyone who races at least once in a real racing event is - he is a six-time participant and two-time class winner in the 24 Hours of Nürburgring.

 

[hyperspeed980]

I've been thinking about this for a while, and how it could work.

A free-roam version of the world map? Probably not, I don't want those NFS Underground 2 vibes of having to drive between each individual shop just to customise one car. It would be fun as an easter egg, but maybe not as an actual feature. (Then again, you could fast travel either way.)

An open layout of the Tokyo Expressway though? Absolutely. Combine the East, South and Central layouts, along with connecting routes, and maybe even implementation of Special Stage Routes 5, 7 and 11, and you've got yourself an instant banger. All the Assetto Corsa Shutoko players would instantly flock to it, all the RP lobby people would jump on it, and all the people with sticks up their asses who hate fun would cry about it. Which is fine by me.

 

[Theufcveteran]

I've been thinking about this for a while, and how it could work.

A free-roam version of the world map? Probably not, I don't want those NFS Underground 2 vibes of having to drive between each individual shop just to customise one car. It would be fun as an easter egg, but maybe not as an actual feature.

An open layout of the Tokyo Expressway though? Absolutely. Combine the East, South and Central layouts, along with connecting routes, and maybe even implementation of Special Stage Routes 5, 7 and 11, and you've got yourself an instant banger. All the Assetto Corsa Shutoko players would instantly flock to it, all the RP lobby people would jump on it, and all the people with sticks up their asses who hate fun would cry about it. Which is fine by me.

In the OP’s idea, you can fast travel just like you can now, at any time. I imagine you’d just press the options button and you’d jump back up to the current view.

It’d probably be out of scope for GT to make an open layout, but I’d love it if they recreated the Wangan line, or made a new Special Stage that’s inspired by it, to link up with the existing Tokyo layouts, as you said. I don’t know if they’d like to mix and match real and fictional, but maybe they could just make the whole thing a new Special Stage, with the existing Tokyo layouts and connecting routes as you said, along with the Wangan line.

Imagine the custom races you could do if you could set your route. Or not even, maybe they can have connecting roads that let you do a loop of the whole thing. Maybe a lap has you go all the way to a toll booth, where you turn around and do it in the opposite direction.

Even better if you could choose specific sections to race in, or as I mentioned, being able to set a route.

Import Tuner Challenge had a great map, really immersive, and had the various expressway lines. It was smaller than previous Tokyo Xtreme Racer games, which had other lines, but what it had, it did very well.

Just a shame the AI was pants, but that was kind of balanced by a life metre that decreased when you hit a wall or fell behind, and that some AI cars were hugely fast in a straight line. Mostly later-game boss cars, but still. While they sucked at corners, it was still generally competitive with the right matchup to help their weaknesses.

If you made a mistake early in the game, it could trash your race, because you’d lose a good chunk of SP (spirit points) for the time you’d be behind while catching up with a slower car, though the amount lost slowed relative to how close you were. The further behind, the faster the rate you’d lose SP at.

ITC and the series has a charm to it, though, and I’d be so excited for an expanded and open Tokyo Expressway.

 

[Suzuki-Cara]

I've been thinking about this for a while, and how it could work.

A free-roam version of the world map? Probably not, I don't want those NFS Underground 2 vibes of having to drive between each individual shop just to customise one car. It would be fun as an easter egg, but maybe not as an actual feature. (Then again, you could fast travel either way.)

An open layout of the Tokyo Expressway though? Absolutely. Combine the East, South and Central layouts, along with connecting routes, and maybe even implementation of Special Stage Routes 5, 7 and 11, and you've got yourself an instant banger. All the Assetto Corsa Shutoko players would instantly flock to it, all the RP lobby people would jump on it, and all the people with sticks up their asses who hate fun would cry about it. Which is fine by me.

1+ on the traveling to shops idea, and the combining all the Expressway routes. Instant Tokyo Xtreme Racer.

 

[hyperspeed980]

1+ on the traveling to shops idea, and the combining all the Expressway routes. Instant Tokyo Xtreme Racer.

Now imagine bigger lobby sizes and a PD-supported Shutoko server in the Meeting Places. Instant revival of GT7. 🔥

Now imagine you roll up to a bunch of cruising K-swapped Hondas in a Skyline or Supra with anti-lag, flash your lights to start the race, and smoke 'em. Instant 500 videos being made every day on this epic new style of racing. 🔥🔥🔥

 

[DuckworthDFV]

That would be nice. Not being the goal of the game but as a test track would be really cool

 

[FOG-Smokebeer]

Let them have at it as long as it's a feature i can avoid or skip like driving the buggy on the moon 🤷‍♂️

 

[GTboyz]

I've been thinking about this for a while, and how it could work.

A free-roam version of the world map? Probably not, I don't want those NFS Underground 2 vibes of having to drive between each individual shop just to customise one car. It would be fun as an easter egg, but maybe not as an actual feature. (Then again, you could fast travel either way.)

An open layout of the Tokyo Expressway though? Absolutely. Combine the East, South and Central layouts, along with connecting routes, and maybe even implementation of Special Stage Routes 5, 7 and 11, and you've got yourself an instant banger. All the Assetto Corsa Shutoko players would instantly flock to it, all the RP lobby people would jump on it, and all the people with sticks up their asses who hate fun would cry about it. Which is fine by me.

Pretty certain a lot of people would like that. I would go back playing the game if they make that lol

 

[jambor]

Gran Turismo is for real racing on real tracks. If you want free roam play crew 2 forza horizon driveclub. I am sick of the roleplay people in gran turismo why do you not race like others? You want a cruise go play an open world game. You want cops vs robbers go play need for speed not gran turismo.

The problem with the games you just mentioned is that they are 100% arcade games. So that's like telling a football player to go play basketball.
The driving physics in FH, Crew, Driveclub or any NFS is garbage compared to Gran Turismo and those game are targeted to completely different people than Gran Turismos.

An open world car simulator would be awesome and I hope that someday such game would be released.

Even having a small free roam area in GT7 where you could test your car would be awesome.
Here is a video of some guy modding/glitching in GT sport and being able to drive freely on Route X's airfield area.
That already looks a lot of fun:


But I understand that developers can't just add free roam map and convert Gran Turismo into an open world game. First problem would be that many car manufacturers are against that players would be able to use their cars in a video game to drive dangerously in streets or somewhere else than race track.

 

[SU_Tempest]

The problem with the games you just mentioned is that they are 100% arcade games. So that's like telling a football player to go play basketball.
The driving physics in FH, Crew, Driveclub or any NFS is garbage compared to Gran Turismo and those game are targeted to completely different people than Gran Turismos.

Gee, you were really sold on The Real Driving Simulator weren't you?

 

[jambor]

Gee, you were really sold on The Real Driving Simulator weren't you?

I'm sure you understood what I mean. You just can't compare the driving physics of GT7 to NFS, FH, Crew or Driveclub.
They are and are meant to be completely different.
I didn't say that GT7 is 100% simulator, I just said that those other games are 100% arcade.

 

[Nielsen]

Why do the capital letters in the thread title make me pronounce idea like IKEA?

 

[GTboyz]

Why do the capital letters in the thread title make me pronounce idea like IKEA?

So I'm not the only one who thinks this then lol

 

[SU_Tempest]

Why do the capital letters in the thread title make me pronounce idea like IKEA?

We must be going to the same store!

(With apologies for going off-topic, I just had to)

 

[sh33p]

I’ve personally never liked the idea of a ‘Playable Menu’

Esepecialy ones in games like Destiny (the Tower or other social spaces). They are slow and pointless imo.

I feel like having a playable menu in GT would be the worst. The games menu layout is allready a bit of a mess and having to take the extra time to physically drive their would be super annoying and unnessosary.

The menu’s in GT7 are allready slow enough as they are.

 

[Suzuki-Cara]

Why do the capital letters in the thread title make me pronounce idea like IKEA?

Careful, you'll get Volvo in the game. BUT, it's an Ikea collab.

 

[Loganistan]

This is honestly a great idea, and it would be totally optional. Just a few mile long track where you "pit in" to each menu. There'd be a lovely section of dirt road on the way to the cafe, or a lovely view of the water as you approach the multiplayer dock. I'd drive every new purchase on it.

It wouldn't even need to be open at all; just one long circuit with pit stops. I don't like the idea of other people on it but maybe you could do it like NFS Heat where you see other players' random cars parked at each spot.