Very well stated. As many have mentioned, there are races that demonstrate a different level of AI (challenging) not seen in probably 90%+ of the other races - The Chili races, 600PP Tokyo 12-lap, Gr. 1 Sainte-Croix, Neo-Classic races and many of the 1-hour endurance races with the biggest most glaring example being the 1-hour lake maggiore where you're required to hit the CE Gold time for an entire race!!
(small aside, I had Covid end of June into July and gamed a crazy amount. Beat all the 1-hours and tried Lake M one - the absolute and utter butt-kicking I took hit me so hard I didn't play for 5-straight days LOLOL I mean I was shook after that attempt!! I can get mostly golds in the other missions, a few silvers (only did 1-attempt at each) but all of a sudden I'm 50-mins into the race and in 2nd to last place with the race leaders lapping me in shame lol HOW?!?)
As you stated, the game shows us the potential for challenging AI is there, in the code and working. YET - doesn't allow the player to apply it to the races! Just make it an option! If you want the AI to be so hard that you cannot afford to make a single mistake in the race, great! If you're like me and you want to feel that anxiety of it being a close race, yet have thin-skin and still want to win, great! At the absolute minimum, have it as a feature in the custom races because if you're masochistic and want to race against the absolute best AI capabilities, you should be able to! This isn't asking for Sophy, this is just removing the governor
Exactly.
They gave us 3 difficulty settings, if I choose the hardest one, I expect it to be truly hard. I would expect the AI to be as good in
ALL THE RACES like it is in that final Endurance Race, in Maggiore. Which by the way, I did won it on my first try, but I actually felt the pressure in the final laps with a BMW M6 GT3 AI closing on me, and before the first round of pit-stops I was actually 2nd and was only closing the gap on the first placed guy by like 2 tenths per lap. Another thing of interest from this event is that you don't have the leader starting with 10-40 seconds ahead of you, it's a double row of cars with the leader 5-6 seconds ahead, like actual racing starts should be other tha grid starts.
So PD can make competitive AI...
But no, 95% of the races in this game are won on the first try, even when choosing the hard setting and even though most have PP limit. And the ones that aren't, are just because of massive nerfs to the player like you having to start 40 seconds behind on a 5 lap race (Suzuka WTC 600 Championship race) or have to nerf your car to oblivion while the AI has cars above the suggested PP (Neo-classic races), but even those races aren't at all a matter of skill, but rather a matter of choosing and tuning the right car, once that is done, even those races are just as trivial.
After the hype I received from this game, and even had before the game's release, a showcase of their future "great AI", Sophy, I would've hoped that finally Gran Turismo's AI would not be complete garbage... I knew that the actual Sophy that was beating top-tier GT e-sports players, was not going to be in the game, in fact, it likely never will since otherwise literally no one can beat it, but at the very least, I would expect an actual competitive AI, namely after I am shown the difficulty settings.
Don't even get me started on Custom Races, where even on Professional difficulty, the AI is at 95% throttle on the straights sometimes...
After the content (quality and quantity), economy and the dreaded roulette tickets, I have the AI as one of the biggest issues in this game. Just look at the video I posted in the OP... Like, what the hell is that?
