ORCA General Discussion

[SagarisGTB]

What's a BoP?

Sorry, it's "Balance of Performance", a motorsport term referring to what sanctioning bodies do to balance cars in a series. For example, any series that runs GT3 cars has a BoP using ballast and air restrictors to make the cars as equal as possible.

 

[BrandonW77]

Oh, ok. I know about that, just didn't know the abbreviation. That would be a nice option but not sure if we'll ever see it. I do think/hope we'll see the option for timed races in the future since its already implemented in the game. I certainly hope so anyway.

 

[SagarisGTB]

Pcars has BoP in development. It's quite simple really: the host chooses a set of cars to be allowed on track and sets a max hp and weight for each of them. I didn't expect PD to do that, but I was hoping they would let us, or at least the host, see the specs (hp/ weight) of cars on track. It would have been a big help with governing points series. They let us see what driver aids people are using, but not hp or weight.

I hope we see timed races too, but I'm not getting my hopes up. It's been three years since GT5 came out, and online lobbies (including options for setting up races) have hardly been improved at all since then.

Edit: Sorry, I think I'm done complaining for now. I had to let it out.

 

[RDAardvark]

Well gt6 finally arived this afternoon. Do much for pre-ordering!
Having fun working offline (broadband is dead, engineer coming Monday) and I mad e the mistake of showing the kids the cone challenge. So, I've lost the ps3 for now!

 

[Marcus Garvey]

GT5 was difficult to turn off at times. GT6 is difficult to turn on.

That is all.

 

[BrandonW77]

I've played all day yesterday and most of today, but I guess I probably expected different things from it than some other people did. I'm enjoying the way it looks and feels. Trying to acquire some cars to be ready for some online racing, I think I have over 40 so far.

 

[dsgerbc]

I've played all day yesterday and most of today, but I guess I probably expected different things from it than some other people did. I'm enjoying the way it looks and feels. Trying to acquire some cars to be ready for some online racing, I think I have over 40 so far.

So, any comments on physics and framerate?

 

[Marcus Garvey]

4.2 Hours of drive time on one account....total earned $196k. That's almost enough to buy two bottles of nitrous!

Has the same jagged moments that GT5 does. The graphics are marginally better, the physics are still whacked. It's obvious they attempted to fix the relative(or not) differences between longitudinal grip and lateral grip, although in doing so now the tyres have different longitudinal grip for braking and acceleration. 500HP cars no longer do John Force burnouts in 4th gear at 90mph, but if you touch the brakes in a Civic it just goes straight. I can tell you that is not correct, with video evidence haha. Again it's not that it's an awful game, but they didn't fix what was broken in GT5 and what they added new is also broken. So with it you get all the bad about GT5, and none of the good. The minute differences in the physics and graphics don't make up for the atrocious gameplay, progression, economy, and general arcadiness of the game.

I know my opinion on the matter may stem from some higher expectations or such, but they didn't have to make the gameplay worse.

Edit: As well, they might've notified players that the name they select during the tutorial would be visible to everyone, including those in random lobbies. Now, it's not necessarily a concern for proper league racers; but it wouldn't be far fetched to win in a public lobby and some disgruntled competitor decides to retaliate. I mean how many of you have been kicked or verbally assaulted(in the room or by PSN message) for simply performing better than Billy Badass in one of his rooms? Now Billy has your real name, which along with it comes your address, phone numbers, place of employment, and pretty much anything else they want to find out about you. Go internet!

So, yeah.

 

[dsgerbc]

Edit: As well, they might've notified players that the name they select during the tutorial would be visible to everyone, including those in random lobbies.

Yeah, I've read about it. iRacing has it that way, which is fine when everyone has to use their real name. In iracing most people have to pay w/credit card with their name on it. In PSN, however, I can still create an account with random name, pay for stuff with psn cards I bought in walmart w/cash. I think I'll put something fake in there.

 

[Marcus Garvey]

Yes, Iracing does list your real name, but as you mention it lists everyone's real name. The fact that Billy Badass is no longer anonymous on Iracing keeps his Badassness in check. Also, the fact that it is a pay service, with more stringent requirements to enter certain series keeps the riffraff out to an extent. You'll still have fender banging and get punted and this and that, but you won't have some random putting your number into a bot so your home and cellphone gets blown up 24/7 with nonsense. I haven't experienced much hate on Iracing(disclaimer, limited time on there ccompared to GT5) but I've got a collection of gems on file in my PSN messages folder. It's a different demographic and community in Iracing.

Edit: I always remember things after I post. Another distasteful action is that they have already spent time and resources to patch certain cash exploits and altered the physics(rendering comparing lap times, license tests impossible as people performed them at different times under different physics) but they haven't put a thought into fixing the stockyard glitch(people have lost their entire garage, reminiscent of GT2(or 3 was it the power test?)). To me that demonstrates where their priorities lie. I think they're building the brand equity to leverage an EA sports buyout hahaha.

 

[BrandonW77]

So, any comments on physics and framerate?

Marcus' answers would probably be more inline with what you're interested in. I don't even understand most of the things he mentioned, I wasn't aware of the issues in GT5 so I don't notice them in GT6. The stockyard seems to have an issue so I'm not gonna use it until it's fixed, but I can keep 500 cars in my garage so not an issue for a while. You can change your name display, I fixed mine so it matches my PSN ID.

For what I do with online racing I'm going to enjoy things quite a bit more and am looking forward to it. For the serious racers I guess some things have changed that don't work for them but they found ways around problems in GT5 so hopefully they'll figure out a way around the new problems. (Or some problems will be fixed via updates).

 

[Marcus Garvey]

Yes, you can change your display name twice. So for those who changed it back they have one left. However any records for laps or license tests set under your old name(which was their real name for some) are kept under the name they were set. So to remove that name from the boards you have to go through your old records and best them to replace the display name. It's just time consuming.

Overall, the physics are better. Yes.

You can still cook the fronts in true video game style, but you just have to lift the brakes to get the turn in. That last bit at least is usually correct, but you can still trail it in much harder than you'd think and not pay any price for it. The body roll allows you feel the surfaces better, and it results in more realistic feedback through the controls. For example; when you begin to lift the inside rear on a RWD, you can now tell that it is about to before it does actually lift as long as you are familiar with the roll characteristics of that particular car. GT5 the only way you knew you were lifting the rear is when it was already spinning and making that associated sound. That has improved.

Weight transfer on FWD cars are better as well. In GT5 few FWD cars would regain a neutral attitude after applying throttle near the apex for exit, even with the proper(usually less than most have dialed in) steering angle. The '04 Integra RM did that, somewhat. Now as you unload the weight from the front axle accelerating off the corner the car turns in as you would expect. In FWD you really roll into the entry so that you load the outside front as slowly as possible(because the sooner you load it the sooner you will overload it) and as the outside front begins to overload, you have to get back on the throttle to move the weight to the rear. This will tighten the exit radius, or make the car feel like it is turning in harder(despite the expectation of a FWD to push on-throttle) and allows you to straighten the wheel and gain even more speed. The idea is to time the overloading of the fronts with the point in the turn that you need to be back on throttle(usually around 35-40% through the turn) such that the lowest speed you hit in the turn is aligned with the highest steering angle and immediately following that you are applying the throttle and unwinding the wheel quickly. As such you will be acclerating harder earlier. This is duplicated much better in GT6 than GT5. Nonetheless if you hammer the brakes(even with adjustment applied) these cars will go straight, even with steering input applied or surface camber.

You can still grab a lot of curbing, although the wrong ones will throw you off more than they did in GT5. I rolled a car once, and the action is much more real in timing. The car doesn't go into slow motion when it rolls past a certain point; when it hooks a tire bead into the dirt, it just goes.

There are other differences, but it's more familiar than not.

 

[BrandonW77]

From a laypersons point of view I feel like it's more forgiving in the right ways but also more punishing in the right ways. It feels more natural and I feel like I have more control, especially under braking. Does that mean it's more accurate or realistic? I don't know, but I can drive a little better which makes me enjoy it more. I do know that some of the weird driving characteristics in GT5 that I hated are gone and certain corners at some circuits that always gave me problems are much more manageable.

It took time to learn GT5's deficiencies and how to work around them but for me that's part of the experience and fun. They said there's a substantial patching coming in Janaury and many more to come so hopefully things will only improve. It kinda feels like they started simple and are going to add as we go, hopefully based on our input and how we use it.

 

[Marcus Garvey]

Well, I made it to the GT World Championship, which all but requires an LMP car to compete. I have nearly 750k credits, which is conveniently just under 40% of what the less expensive LMPs cost. So, I can either grind for another 8 hours, or take a nap.

🤬 them. Again.

 

[IforceV8]

Well, I made it to the GT World Championship, which all but requires an LMP car to compete. I have nearly 750k credits, which is conveniently just under 40% of what the less expensive LMPs cost. So, I can either grind for another 8 hours, or take a nap.

🤬 them. Again.

That sounds it should be in the ad for the pre-order..

Try this-International A,world circuit tour race 5,Ascari.Take anything thats nimble,X-BOW for me,start the race.Once you get control take a hard left over the grass pass the end of the wall on your left across the sand to the track.Once you are on the track the game will punish you for being a dirty cheat and dump you back at S/F.Reverse the car over the line and stop.Drive off the left side of the track at S/F and the lap counter will click lap 2.Be sure to be off the track or it wont work.Drive thru the sand around the left wall and back on to the track on the other side and you will be transported back to SF again.Left off the track (lap 3) again beside the S/F line and do it once more (lap 4) and finish.

43,570 payout in 45 sec.Once it going you can do this once every 60-65 sec until it gets too boring.12 minutes = 440,000

 

[dsgerbc]

^Jeebus.

 

[BrandonW77]

On a positive not, here are some things that I think will benefit our little group.

1. All cars are available in the dealership, no more having to send people cars and having to keep those cars under the trade limit. Should make getting a field of, say, vintage Japanese cars together a lot easier.

2. We can now hold proper qualifying and dictate how long the session is, and it seems to work.
- There is also an option to hide all the other cars during qualifying so you don't get balked by traffic. 👍

3. A results screen is displayed for qualifying, should make for a nice screen shot in a thread.

4. We can make pit stops mandatory and I believe even dictate two tire types.

5. Once you enter the track you are "entered" in the race (unless you uncheck the box) and even if you're in the tuning screen or "watch race" screen when the race starts you'll still be on the grid. So you don't have to scramble to get on the track before the timer runs out. I'm wondering if this also means it holds on to your time when you exit to the lounge instead of resetting it like it did in GT5. But I bet if you uncheck the "entered" box it does clear your time.

6. The timing monitor now shows green (personal best) and purple (overall best) sector and lap times, a very nice addition. It also shows what tires you're on and how many pit stops you've made. I think it might even show when someone is in the pits. You can also change views in the "watch race" screen.

7. Better physics. It's easier to control and correct the cars now, especially under braking. I think this will lead to cleaner racing and more enjoyable races. I think the blind spot indicators will help with cleanliness too, even though they're a little hard to see at times.

8. Shifter karts! Seriously, they're awesome. All the karts are much more enjoyable. But for some reason you can't take them on any time change or weather change tracks, which rules out some good kart tracks (ARM, Tsukuba)

9. Lots of time change tracks! They don't all have full night cycles but it's still cool and there's like a dozen of them now.

Some negatives:

- no shuffle racing, surely it will return at some point (I hope)
- smaller recommended garage, but it has some good ones.
- can't enlarge map size, something many people did to help with spatial awareness.
- no more private lounge network, RIP ORCA_Champ. But I'm hoping the community features coming in January will offer some kind of substitue.

I know some of the changes have had a negative impact on some other leagues/clubs but I haven't seen anything that will really disrupt what we do here. But I see several things that will really improve the experience and hopefully there are even more improvements with the community update next month.

I don't plan on starting anything official until some bugs get sorted and the community features are unlocked but will probably open some rooms for us to mess around and experiment. There are some decent prize cars we can play with and we can race shifter karts too. I'll post here if I'm going to open a room, I might be on later tonight if anyone's interested.

EDIT: 10. Cars don't have to be broken in anymore, but changing the oil right away does still increase PP a little. So buy it, change the oil and take it racing!

11. You can now undo engine/weight/body modifications instead of them being permanent like before. So getting a car into a tuning prohibited race should be much easier.

 

[BrandonW77]

Some things to be aware of apparently. Firstly, there appears to be a bug with the stockyard and if you put cars in there for storage they may disappear. I'd recommend not putting anything in there until a patch fixes it. Secondly, there is no "reset to default" button on the tuning options so if you start making adjustments to parts on your car you may not be able to get them back to default and thus (presumably) would not be able to enter a "tuning prohibited" race. The only option for now is to keep one of your tuning sheets saved as default so you can always revert to that.

Does anyone have some favorite cars yet, that they'd like to race online? Or did everyone hate it so much and trade in the game for a copy of Grand Theft Auto? I really like the KTM Xbow, the BRZ/86 GT variants, the Alpine and even the R18 LMP car was surprisingly fun to drive.

 

[RDAardvark]

Some things to be aware of apparently. Firstly, there appears to be a bug with the stockyard and if you put cars in there for storage they may disappear. I'd recommend not putting anything in there until a patch fixes it. Secondly, there is no "reset to default" button on the tuning options so if you start making adjustments to parts on your car you may not be able to get them back to default and thus (presumably) would not be able to enter a "tuning prohibited" race. The only option for now is to keep one of your tuning sheets saved as default so you can always revert to that.

Does anyone have some favorite cars yet, that they'd like to race online? Or did everyone hate it so much and trade in the game for a copy of Grand Theft Auto? I really like the KTM Xbow, the BRZ/86 GT variants, the Alpine and even the R18 LMP car was surprisingly fun to drive.

At the moment I think I've only got six cars, but I've not yet used my voucher codes; they'll get me 10 blue cars. I've only just done enough to unlock online play, but I've yet to go online. Any recommendations on cars to buy? I'm still plodding through the National A licence tests.

It does feel very strange when you start the game for the first time; virtually everything is locked and as Marcus said above, you are treated as a complete newcomer, untrustworthy until you prove yourself. I never experienced GT5 at launch so all this is new to me but it really does feel like this is a Beta version of the software: Get the core game out there for the Xmas market and then we can spend the next year adding in all the bits that should have been there from launch. I like the fact that all the cars are available right from the outset - In GT5 I missed out on a few of the rare cars in the Used Car Dealership.

Did I see it somewhere that you can restrict a room to just your PSN friends? If that's true, can we resurrect ORCA_Champ? Actually, it's just occurred to me that PD may have inadvertently killed off the generic accounts - If you use a generic account, you'll still have to go through the pain of unlocking online play. So if there are three admins for an account, all three will have to do that. And if you're an admin of multiple generic accounts...

 

[BrandonW77]

There are some good prize cars, I've mainly just been plugging away earning those. Since everybody can get them for free I figured they would make a good initial pool of cars to play with. Here's a list of the prize cars: https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/thre...s-win-cars-complete-so-far-2013-12-09.291615/

The ones I like best:
KTM Xbow
Light Car Company Rocket
Lancia Delta Integrale
High End Performance G37
BMW Concept 1 Series
Corvette StingRay Racer Concept '59
Acura NSX '91
RE Amemiya FD3S RX-7
Honda S2000 '06
Lotus Elise Race Car '96

The way it stands now there is no more "private personal lounge" so being able to enter someone's lounge (even if they were offline) is no longer possible. When you create a room you can set it to "friends only" but you have to be online to create/maintain the room and I'm not going to leave one of my PS3's online 24hours a day just to keep a lounge open. I'm presuming the January update which brings "community features" will probably provide something similar to the private lounge that we can use. They say you can create "clubs" and hopefully that club will have some kind of private room everyone can race in.

 

[LancerEvo7]

The Cappy gets 170hp now.

 

[BrandonW77]

The Cappy gets 170hp now.

Really? That's about a 25% increase in power. Is this the fully tuned Cappy RM? Is it actually faster or did the number just change?

 

[LancerEvo7]

I haven't compared it with the old GT5 lap times, but yes, it's fully tuned. Now that I think about it, I didn't do an oil change, so the power's even higher than that.

 

[BrandonW77]

Crazy. I believe we were seeing 1:15-1:16 lap times around GVE last week if anyone wants to compare (just for grins and giggles). I kinda like the micro-updates, seems like it will be much easier for them to address little issues as they arise. It's kind of annoying that they don't tell us what's changing, but if they did tell us then the people on internet forums wouldn't have anything to do!

 

[LancerEvo7]

I just did a 1:09 on my first lap on SS tires. 1:08s or 07s definitely possible.

 

[BrandonW77]

I should have mentioned, we were on SH tires. I don't think SS tires would have removed 7-8 seconds though so maybe it is actually a bit faster now.

 

[Johnnypenso]

The Rocket is the shizzle, very popular online..well 3 rooms out of 10 tonight...lol. It's got lots of grip with SH tires, good over the curbs, a great stock gearbox but tops out around 225 I think, still enough for all but the biggest tracks. Great sound too. Has headlights as well but I haven't checked them in the dark to see how good they are. It's a prize car for the early Goodwood events incase someone doesn't have it. BMW Z8 is a good car as well, one of the Anniversary cars. XBow is quite oversteery on entry but fun. Haven't driven a lot of cars yet but I'm liking just about every one so far. Even the FF's are a little more nimble and with some tuning they are quite formidable, at least the Clio is anyway

 

[LancerEvo7]

I should have mentioned, we were on SH tires. I don't think SS tires would have removed 7-8 seconds though so maybe it is actually a bit faster now.

I seem to remember us doing 1:13s and 14s back in the Capp Cup days, so it's definitely faster now.

 

[RDAardvark]

Sorry to change the subject but I've just noticed there has been a huge jump in the price of the "1 million credits" pack on Amazon UK. I can't find it anywhere else and the store in the game kicks me straight back out. On release day, 1 million credits was £7.99 sterling. Now it's £16.95!

 

[BrandonW77]

I guess Amazon got a micro-update that changed some prices on things. That's a bit steep! If the internet is correct and PD/Sony is trying to force everyone into micro-transactions, making them this expensive doesn't seem to be a very good way of going about it.. IMO 7.99 was already way too much for a measly 1mil credits.