Because GT4 didn't have incredibly over inflated expectations due to a long development time.
I guess more A-Spec and less B-Spec fluff would be alright, but would that fix the fundamental problem of racing against mediocre (at best) AI with little personality? After racing online in a club or organized event, I really don't even bother with offline anymore.
500 A-Spec events or 2000 A-Spec events doesn't make a difference when they're not fun to race.
Give me decent AI with different driver personalities, tendencies, and tighter car limits on entering A-Spec events, and maybe I begin to see your argument about # of events.
My point is, in past GTs the only real fun offline racing that hasn't felt like going through the motions has been the same-make or tight car restrictions races.
I wouldn't get your hopes up for a bigger focus on offline, to be honest. One only need to look at the trends in FPS gaming this decade to see that racing games are headed for online-focused or online-only gameplay. CoD or Battlefield regularly feature 10-15 hour singleplayer campaigns, the rest is online.
Well, I agree with what you say about the AI, and the lack of restrictions (mind you, GT4 had much tighter restrictions, and so did GT5p), but I'm prepared to tackle one thing at a time!
I guess the primary gripe is the grinding. 400 more events means you make the same money, but you do it by RACING. Plus, 400 more events is 400 more cars that can be won rather than bought (actually, 1200 if you want different cars for bronze and silver), further reducing the NEED to grind.
You see, I think most people are grinding because they want the cars. They aren't doing it for the privilege of doing the 24hr Nürbergring without a save! You give them a path to the cars that doesn't involve Like the Wind for days on end, a great deal of unhappiness goes away (and the need for exploits like duping). I think I read that you need to make something close to 130M cr to buy every car in the game. Might be more...
That's insane!
But give a path to earning them all that involves racing, well, once people see that a goal IS makeable, rather than some unattainable treat deliberately held out of reach, they are willing to race. In fact, I bet they would be willing to race without an absolute guarantee that they would win every time. I played Shift, and many of those races I simply could NOT get first time, or second, or sometimes third! BUT... It was easy to see from the game structure, and you didn't read incessant posts online about how impossible it was going to be, that stick with it and you WOULD progress.
But when players realize that they have been involved in an elaborate game of bait and switch, once they see the game is deliberately stacked against fair play, cheating, exploiting, and just simple overpowering the game becomes inevitable. "If the game cheats ME, well, I'll cheat the game!".
400 new A-Spec events, with tighter restrictions, even, and as long as there was a nice easy to see upwards path - you complete this, this and this, and that gets you to be able to do this, this, and this... all the way to the end of the offline game - and people will once more start to WANT to play the game, rather than 'cheat' it.
And yes, better AI (Shift managed this, why can't PD?) is part of the equation.
But baby steps! One thing at a time! You have to make that first step, before a second can be made...
And I almost forgot about the course maker.
