First off, this isn't about online vs offline. Allowing a progression bypass has zero effect on single player. Every person on Earth but one could vanish and single player would be left intact, because single player is as the same implies played by a single individual. What other individuals do isn't really something that people should get to decide.
No. I bought the time savers pack for burnout and it ruined it for me.
Then decline the bypass option. GT5 not having all cars unlocked ruined the first hours for me.
Unlocking cars doesn't necessarily help your driving, but what it DOES do is allow you to get a feel for the game and it's mechanics with much more tame cars. Having real world racing experience doesn't do much for your argument because, as we all know, GT5 doesn't go hand-in-hand with real life, but that's a different discussion.
It doesn't have to go hand in hand. Not even professional simulators do. It's about how close. GT5 has issues, but it's at least close enough to apply real driving techniques. There also isn't a need to adapt to anything in slower cars. You can do it in whatever car you want. I don't play the F1 series, but I don't think that by starting off players in F1 cars (as I assume they do) the player population is left unable to drive.
Because to earn the car, you have to do the Vettel challenges. If you did them (especially if you golded them), you probably know that it took hours of getting used to the car to get a good lap time, and once you took the car somewhere else, you already knew how to drive the beast correctly.
Or B-Spec. And no, you didn't necessarily know how to drive it. You knew how to get at least bronze with the car on its minimal downforce setting on three specific tracks for only two laps. Throw custom settings into the mix and possibly other cars on the track and you could have huge problems because GT prevented you from experiencing these conditions and practicing.
I won't deny that by driving the car, you'd learn something, but your experience would be very limited if all you could do was the VC, as opposed to being able to take the car anywhere and engage in unlimited practice. It's also not like once the car is unlocked from the start, people are barred from practicing with it. Freely available X1's could have increased average driver skill for that car (or any car). And as always, trouble makers could be dealt with swiftly.
Are you saying GT isn't fun if you aren't always driving a top level car?...
Of course not (though some of the GT games really made slower cars seem pointless because of physics issues, GT5 excelled with slower cars compared to some past GT's).
I'm saying that having whatever percentage of content locked away until you complete some arbitrary criteria adds nothing to the game. It actually takes away. I like racing simulators because I like to race, and I don't want to have to go through hoops to race as I please. This applies to everything in the game. F1 cars should not require hours of play to acquire, and neither should Fiat 500 (the UCD was another horrible part of GT5 IMO).
A new system that allows people to dive into the game can coexist with the old system, so I don't see there is any reason to oppose it.
Why would you buy a game if you don't want to play through it?...
Why should a game require playing through? I just want to play it. I don't want to have my hand held and be taking through a long, annoying, round about way of accessing the entire game.
I've driven multiple hour long endurance races online. The same races offline I just rammed my way through with the X1 because there was nothing to enjoy (in part due to the AI and terrible race set ups such as catch the rabbit). I would only do them to unlock something else.
Even if you took online out of the equation, I would much prefer an event creator where you could set up any race to GT Mode where your options are limited.
Just because you feel this way doesn't mean that everyone does. You actually sound quite arrogant with your opinions. On top of this, (weakening your argument even further) not everyone who has a PS3 has a PSN Account and Internet access, so basing the game on online play would be screwing those people over, and any game designer wants to cater to as large of an audience as possible.
The bold resounds in everyone of my posts. That is my entire point. GT Mode and free mode can coexist, and everyone is happy.
I have no idea how I sound arrogant, but if I do I apologize. It's not my intent. I can be blunt, and when I see people repeating the same old things or stating opinions as fact, I like to jump on them. However, I'm am being as accommodating as possible because I realize that the world doesn't revolve around me.
I am not, and have never advocated basing the game around online play. What I've done is promoted a new kind of GT game that allows one to choose how they want to play.
But it does. If this was in GT5, people purchasing it would have cars that are
WAY overpowered for events.
Think about that for a second. What real life race allows you to enter a F1 car against Mini's? Firstly, what someone else does in GT is none of your business. If someone wants to nuke the competition, it is perfectly fine. Secondly, if GT was designed with proper racing in mind, we would be able to get a close race the first time by clearly knowing what our opponents would be driving. Finally, you could come in last place in every race in GT and eventually be able to buy a car that would wipe the competition away in 99% of race. Difficulty is foreign to GT Mode. It only deals in terms of time spent. "High difficulty" in GT just means it takes you longer to do. You can't really fail.
By this time in GT5, I would assume you have a lot of cars in your garage. Go back to the lower tier of A Spec races, and you'll see that you have cars that outclass the events tenfold. (McLaren F1 in British lightweights, where your closest competitor has 200 BHP. Need I say more?). Having a timesavers pack would ruin the balance of A Spec, and working your way up through the ranks, which is an important part of GT5.
What if I went through my garage and picked one of my 200 hp cars for the BLW cup? Or a 150 hp car? I could do that too with all cars unlocked. By the way, the first time I did the BLW cup, I used a TVR, obtained "legally".
Working through the ranks is not an important part of GT5. It is an important part of GT5 to you.
Nope, because that makes players not try single player, which is what the GT series is about (sadly lost in GT5). I'd agree if this was forza for example (which already does for the most part), but in the GT series collecting cars is a flagship.
No one has to try single player, there is zero reason to, so this isn't a problem.
"forcing" people to play offline? You've got to be kidding me... What about all of the GT's that didn't have online play? No one complained about playing single player then.
Actually, yes, people did. GT has had many flaws as a game and as a sim. In GT2, nearly every race hard restrictions which at least helped the player pick a car that would in theory provide a close race. Then the restrictions vanished, and then they would occasionally pop up, they would still only be hp restrictions, which meant you could take your 500 hp car X into a race only to find that the rest of the field has 500 hp car Y's, all weighing half as much as car X.
PD is guilty of many lazy omissions like that.
Everyone who complains about having to play through an offline mode is kind of sad to be honest. By trying to make GT more biased to online play, you're killing a fundamental part of the GT series.
There is nothing special about offline. Some people like it, some people don't. The same goes for online. Online has been every bit as fundamental to GT since GT4. If it disappeared, it would almost guarantee that GT would fail as a franchise. If you want to argue tradition, why not get rid of the the real tracks and banish all the cars faster than Super GT. Those weren't a part of GT1 after all.
That's cool, I respect that, play the game how you want To
However, I don't think the game should be catered to those who just want to play online. Offline is, always has been, and always should be a staple of the GT series.
You can't force people to think like you. Face it, offline is garbage in the minds of some people, and there is nothing that will make as important as online to those people. There is nothing that makes one side more right than the other. There is also no reason that one side needs to oppose the other. Like I said in the beginning, arguing about online vs offline is pointless. You could still play old fashion GT even if PD added a Mario Kart mode. Why make an argument out of nothing?