status / career intuitiveness idea

[zPhoenix]

One of the things that took a beating in GT4 because of the addition of so many tracks, cars and one-brand races is what I'd call "natural progression". What I mean, in GT3 it was fairly obvious what race to do next, what car to use, and what races one missed. In GT4 it isn't.

So here is one possible to solution to this and other GT4 problems.

Remember the "status" screen of Arcade mode in GT3? Imagine one for Simulation mode as follows:

A) Basic Listing
- One line per championship, a subscreen or maybe an indented line per race.
- For each championship/race, show a gold cup for those won, or a position number for those attempted, or a checkmark for races you have license AND at least one car that can run it, or an X if you are not yet able to race it.
- For each championship/race, show the license required.
- Since all we have so far is 2 columns (name and status icon) there is room for more columns... whatever turns out to be most desirable.

B) When clicking on a race
- Show the requirements and limitations for the race.
- Show the margin of victory/loss from your best run (good if you want to pick your challenges).
- Show A and B spec points for the "current car".
- Show a list of all cars owned that "could" run in the race, with A and B-spec points. Allow switching car by clicking on one of these.

Those are the basics... I'm sure you get the basic idea... and it can clearly be expanded quite a bit.

Benefits:

- You would know easily what races you can run next.
- You would know what cars to use and the associated difficulties.
- If you got to 99% you would be able to identify what you missed easily.

 

[paddworth]

If we are talking about a career mode, we need to also address in addition to your good comments the subjects of:

- A CALENDER - here you dont have to decide which races you wish to do, there will be races on the calender, the basic beginner ones can run every week, and the endurance races can run on a less regular basis. This would be somewhat similar to the way the used cars work.

- A CAREER - as a driver in a career, a driver is taking under the wing of a team who will look after him and provide him with a car. There could be a team that will give u a buget to spend on cars and ask for you to put their logo on you car. Other teams would give you a car. This would work well for example with all the several million credits cars that are sponsered primarily by one team.

 

[Dave A]

^ First point, yes, second point no.

The calender would be great, but they'd have to limit the events that appear every so often. Beginner events should be as and when you want to join, then as you go through the game you have to start planning what series you'll do to get to certain ones ni time. I like that idea, but they'd have to keep it so your always able to enter a seriies at whatever level your currently at, so spot races and such would be every day and so on.

Secondly, GT isn't about you joining a team, you ARE the team, it's your money thats spen on the cars YOU want that are entered into the races YOU want to do. If they turned it into a yor just the driver they'd have to take all that away. You'd get given a car and told what series to do or find another team. Sponsors can be added sure, but a sponsor isn't the team.