Team-Based Focus in GT5

[JohnBM01]

Gran Turismo has always been about the driver. One driver. Many cars. It was always the deal in just about any racing game. Why don't we envision team-based focus? I made a comment in one thread about how I feel like part of a race team rather than just one guy collecting lots of cars the world over. I buy cars. I tune them. I upgrade them. I race them. No way possible can one person buy and tune up lots of cars and isn't somehow a one-person team. I personally have my own virtual racing team- which I call Moonlight Motorsports. I have my team colors of blue and gold. As much as I feel like I'd like to modify cars to represent an expanding race team, the feeling of one's own racing team is missing from GT. While not a pure racing sim, I'd like to be able to have at least elements of such a game for a game series like this one. I would love to see Racing Modifications return. And not just pre-determined RacingModify (to use Tourist Trophy speak) schemes and models, but my own cars fully tuned for racing and actually bearing team colors. I even imagine a race shop specializing in making custom race cars. And if I cannot make a car into a full-on racer, at least open the possibility of painting up cars and adding aerodynamic parts (wings and splitters). I just miss Racing Modifications as well as not really feeling like I have a virtual team to campaign in Gran Turismo. There's one more reason for some team focus- online play. I'm sure there will be plenty of online factions taking on other people online. Maybe connecting with buddies online and sharing data can help make larger race teams. But you never really have the feeling you're part of a race team.

Likewise to this, I think of B-Spec as my teammate. Or I also think of B-Spec as my protegé that I'm coaching to be the next grand champion of Gran Turismo. This is simply a functional deal I want to set up. I've expressed in past threads about team-based concepts. What I am NOT going for is something similar to the EA Sports NASCAR games in which you go from one teammate to another to try to have the whole team sweep the top positions. I even think of as many as three different B-Spec teammates that represent a four-driver team. And for endurances, one car could have as many as four drivers to a car. Only thing I wouldn't be sure of is if a 3-car team with four drivers to each car (12 drivers total, counting yourself) would be possible.

What I'm trying to come up here is a look at how we can give some kind of feeling of being part of a race team rather than just being one driver who's going it alone to be the best GT racer in the virtual world. Would a team concept work in this game? How would it be implemented? Could it provide a different GT experience than ever before? Could the series benefit from a model like this? I will introduce concepts to express my visions. This thread is to discuss a GT model that has you part of your own race team rather than some faceless driver with a nonexistant team and lots of cars.



--- Team Model Constants ---
* Be allowed to make a profile and even type in your name.
* Have the option to make your own team. If you don't do this right away, you'll need to try to perform great enough to be part of a new race team. But still, you can still make your own race team, granted you have the money to make it work.
* Still be able to edit names of teammates and any of the team principals. Or, just let there be randomized names.
* You make money in races. The team makes their own money based on success at the track.
* You may choose to leave a race team or terminate your old one. Trouble is, you lose everything you've worked on. B-Spec racers created or "purchased" will be looking for other teams and are up to be scouted.
* The team may be able to purchase cars for you rather than spend your own money. This is only as long as you're not starting out a new game and trying to get a Le Mans Prototype when your team only has 50,000 Credits.
* Team logos and team colors are possible including alternate paint schemes. These graphics will be applied to your cars.
* Cars made by a team can be sold online for other teams to purchase and try to win races with. The auction winner or buyer will be able to modify the paintscheme to make it a new car for a new team.



--- Team Model A: Casual ---
"Ridge Racer V" let you be able to make your own race team. This is what I'm getting at with all of this. Rather than being just one person who has his/her own team, you're part of a race team (and supposedly the most promising driver). This is a casual team model as there is nothing in the way of anything pure. A pure team would have elements of stuff like signing contracts to teams to be their driver and getting paid some amount of money. No. You are still playing Gran Turismo the casual way... only that you're part of a team you can proudly call your own with your own graphics and tuning of cars. Paint up your hard-tuned cars to become your own full-on race cars. This even means Racing Modifications as well as customer race cars that can be painted up and ready for racing across various automotive disciplines. No more of being a faceless racer blessed to have his/her own team in the pits. Past pictures of "GT5: Prologue" have shown pictures of the driver getting into a car and even consulting with the team principal before a race. Potential is there to have your own race team and actually feel like you're racing for a team and not just driving by yourself with a faceless and nameless team. By the way, the team has near limitless money in this casual model.



--- Team Model B: Advanced ---
The second team model is like Team Model A, only this one is more detailed as you'll need to find good drivers to be teammates including other B-Spec drivers. The B-Spec crew can compete on the track along with you to try to enhance the team's chances of success. More wins mean more money. Either you can start your own team, or try to work hard enough to join an existing team. These newer teams have their own specially-tuned cars for you to race. Early teams have mostly bone-stock street cars tuned for amateur racing. Better teams have more pure race cars and even lots of exclusive racing machines.



--- Team Model C: Professional/Management ---
So you can't win races or drive cars very well. Next best thing would be to become the team principal. You're in charge of finding driving talent to help your team win races. Really, this is a micromanagement deal that may not appeal to the casual gamer quite well. Elements of Team Model B are included, only that this is about management. The toughest kind of driver for this model is the team driver/owner since you have to win your own races AND manage an independent team at the same time.



Team-based concepts. Now here are some various questions to help you get started in your post. What would interest you about a team-based model? Does it fit in GT's general scheme? Could it enhance the GT experience? What model do you like best? What would you change about any of the given models? Do you think something like this could help make GT5 more interesting and thus have more playback value? This is your team-based Gran Turismo focus. Feel free to offer your comments.

 

[arvin charles]

I wouldn't mind being able to train a couple of teammates and race with them...That could be pretty fun.

I also find the concept of being able to run 2 cars in one race intriguing. It will certainly bring the racing closer to its real life counterpart and I don't know if this has been done before in a video game.

As a side note, I hate the name B-spec Bob. I named my teammates in Forza "Sabine" & "Derek B..." It's also my unofficial name for BSB in GT4.

 

[JohnBM01]

I've hated "B-Spec Bob" myself as well. It's been the generic name given to it. Hell, for all we know, the B-Spec driver may well be Gran Turismo's version of The Stig (Top Gear reference). I think for my model, a team may have as many as 4 cars. I put my early model at a maximum of three cars. A plus is that I'm highly regarding driver changes for endurance racing (and maybe even other series that do driver changes, like FIA GT, Super GT, and some Australian V8 Supercar races).

To me, I just want a real team model and to be able to have my own "batting order" for drivers for my team in an endurance race. I just feel like there has to be some real racing game depth without being too much like a ToCA or GTR game. Those of you who feel a better team model needs to be implemented are welcome to express your thoughts and considerations in this thread.

 

[Ardius]

Would be nice to see, but, unfortunately, we won't. Gran Turismo is driving first, racing second and although I'm sure Kaz would love ideas like this, I'm highly doubtful they would spend the necessary time and effort on such a feature when so many areas of the GT series still need to be improved.

However, I hope to one day see or even create myself a proper racing team management game, as it seems a relatively un-explored game concept.

It would most certainly double up Gran Turismo's gameplay elements, but this is why I dont think we will see it if ever, because its almost an entirely seperate, second game.
Maybe we could see it as a seperate actually? Like Tourist Trophy for bikes, we would have a Gran Turismo for race-management sims.

 

[JohnBM01]

I go back to "Ridge Racer V" for the casual race team. You don't have teammates you race with and all. At least you have an established team of yours. That's the very basics. More extreme elements may never happen. This is at least a start.

Thanks to all of you for your comments. Keep them coming!

 

[JohnBM01]

Here's an emphasis of a team concept... did any of you get to see the Championship Gaming Series on G4 after coverage of E3? The first game featured was Forza Motorsport 2. The North American Finals was a match between the Carolina Core and the Dallas Venom. The two teams had their own team colors and logos featured on the cars. That's one of the things I was exactly thinking of as far as a team concept in GT5. If you can create your own team, you can be able to represent that team in all of your races in GT5 and in online play. It's the casual team model I was envisioning all along.



This could be a long thread. So here is something I'll introduce for my longer posts- a "Table of Contents." So here's the "Table of Contents" for this post:

Section 1: Online Team Model
Section 2: Casual Team Model and What's Needed



I've begun to think a little more about a team model. If you have a team you've created in offline, would you be able to see other members of your team (especially multi-car teams) compete on the track in a race? A maximum of three-car teams is there, but I'd even welcome the possibility of four-car teams. I definitely think teams should be considered if you're going to have online play. It would bring an extra level of fun to online play. This is especially if we can have established teams here on GTPlanet, for example. Think about if a team of GTP folks were formed in GT5.

~ ~ ~ Section 1 ~ ~ ~​

--- Online Team Model ---
I think a lot of you may like this one. Allow me to make this interesting.

Not that I'm an online gamer, but imagine if there was a team that includes myself, * McLaren *, and RACECAR and come up with a team bearing some reference to Texas. Like... the "GT Lone Stars," "Texas Tornadoes," or something like that. What will happen is that we can all join together and chat or even share some tuning and racing advice. We may even trade cars on the Internet. Maybe [B}RACECAR[/B] builds a solid car to use at Daytona's road course. I could arrange to have him send me one of his cars for me to use. The car trading process is similar to GT2. You don't LOSE cars from another GT file. Instead, a car is "copied and pasted" from the original garage to yours. I just have to make sure I have enough credits to make a transaction possible.

Now let's introduce team rivalries. Let's say that Dave A started his own team. He could get together some of his people from the United Kingdom. And let's say me or one of my team members start to ruffle Dave A's features a bit. What could be arranged is for my team to go against Dave A's in a rivalry series. What we could do is all meet in an online lobby. If there's any team we clearly DON'T like, we'd arrange to make bets or even put cars on the line. A team would have to think about what car to put on the line. You may put a sorry car on the line with all of its tuning, or you can man (or woman) up and put one of the team's hottest cars on the line. So if Dave A agrees to put up a high-powered TVR on the line, if we win, we get we car we wanted to put on the line. However, we could put one of my team's cars on the line. So the pressure is on BOTH teams to win. Money (credits) can be put on the line as well. Both teams have to agree to a bet. The winner takes the money from the losing team. Rivalries can exist between teams and the teammates. My team could have a one-on-one rivalry (or even a 3-way or 4-way rivalry) where we battle for the same things.

This section could be optional. A way to add sports-like feel would be that of sacking and trading teammates. Any troublemaking teammates or underperforming teammates could be sent packing or traded to other teams. Using my team model from the previous paragraph, let's say I'm not the best driver for my virutal team. What could be done is that I could be "traded" to another team. Or I may just decide to leave the team and make my own. This is much like groups breaking apart and making their own music groups or go solo. I can be a driver/owner. Maybe the whole team can disband and just go make their own teams or join others.

~ ~ ~ Section 2 ~ ~ ~​

--- Casual Team Model and What's Needed ---
Back to what I call a casual team model. Here is my definition of a casual team model:

Casual Team Model:
A team created in a racing game that doesn't bear many of the hardcore elements of an actual team (i.e., team management, paying for equipment, contract offers, etc.)

I've mentioned "Ridge Racer V." In RRV, you start out by putting in your name, naming your team, and picking a generic paintscheme for your team to be used in all of your races. As you progress through the game, you'll acquire more options to add custom paint jobs to your cars as well as certain wheel choices. You even have as many as four different alternative paintschemes to use.

An option to make paint jobs come about would be just the simplest way to get team models working. You can identify your cars in some sort of way. Every car you own can be painted the way you wish whether you have a normal car, a tuned car, or a race car. The basis of a paint scheme can come off of a basic pre-made paint scheme and customizing the colors to your liking. Whatever scheme or colors you choose can be mated to your cars to identify your racing machines. You can choose how you put your driver number on the car and even have the option of changing the driver number to numbers 1 through 3 if you like based on championship performance. You may even choose to not change numbers at all, like in NASCAR. You may arrange how to add on team logos to the car. For team cars, you may even choose how to seperate the cars apart. For example, cars can have different-colored side mirrors to tell them apart easier. If you have some B-Spec racers, you may elect to use them in your races to help build up team money to purchase more expensive cars rather than trying to be one driver trying to make 4,500,000 Credits on his/her own. It even helps you to get certain cars to be bought and tuned.

I'd like to introduce a hybrid of A-Spec and B-Spec outside of racing. A-Spec is just you driving while B-Spec is basically a team management role. While this is true for racing, it also helps for acquiring cars. Your race team makes money by simply placing well in races. A certain amount of money is added to drivers as well as the teams. When you win, you make money as does your team. Team money can be used to help a team finance getting cars as well as using team money to go purchase parts for cars. What I'm going for is that you can buy several cars to field a multi-car operation. This is good for AI members of your racing team as well as even using the same car with different tuning dynamics for different kinds of racing. Tuning one car to be able to handle technical road courses while another as a drift car can help ease things as far as owning one car to be used in different scenarios. You can just have a speciality car tuned by the team to be used in various competitions. And of course, you could trade your team's cars online to be sold off to other teams and gamers looking for new cars. That new team can either use that car to repaint it in another team's colors, or just keep the car as is and just go racing.




Thank you for reading this long and detailed post. I may make long posts, but at least I don't make a career out of babbling a whole lot. Thanks for reading and responding.

 

[Lain]

I greatly support the idea of team racing.

 

[eb]

John, thats really cool !
I like Model A the best, thats really great.

 

[JohnBM01]

For those of you that saw the "Champoinship Gaming Series," it was a race of four identically-prepared TVR Cerbera Speed 12s racing on one track. There were two cars to the two teams- the Carolina Core and the Dallas Venom. Designing custom logos to be used on cars from the PC would work very well when ported over to the PS3. Those graphics could be used to be placed on cars. Or you may just elect not to put on team logos and just simply paint up cars in team colors. Perfectly fine.

An element I'm not sure of is if we could allow manufacturer decals as well as sponsors like in "Forza Motorsport 2." A by-product of this could be franchising team names. Think of Target Chip Ganassi Racing or Red Bull Racing for instance. If I can find it on my computer, I'll show you a sign I created for the Alternate Showroom for rFactor in a later post.

 

[F1KimiFreak]

I like the C model best, the more Specified, the better.

Would love to see this happen, although maybe it should be an extra game or so? as this is so much work to make.

Email the idea to Polyphony Digital!

 

[JohnBM01]

I doubt PD would even take something like this. I'm usually the one who offers the most unique and/or interesting ideas. Just have to hope PD folks or SCE folks have secret agents that are on GTPlanet who want to relay this idea to PD.

A bit interesting I have a supporter of Model C. Any other things to take into consideration?

 

[91hondawagon]

Section 1: Online Team Model

Hi John, you have some great ideas for the online mode in your thread, and I have a concept to add to it. Having online team members take turns racing instead of having the computer driving is great. However, your post doesn't offer any ideas for what the team members who aren't driving are doing.

Perhaps the other members of the team could function as the pit crew instead of doing nothing. In an old PC racing game, Automobili Lamborghini, the player would not only drive but would also have to manually change tires and refuel the car during a pit stop. Instead of having the computer automatically perform tire changes and refueling, the other team members could be tasked with these duties. Perhaps the other players would have to input a certain button combination, or maybe they would have to manually unscrew each bolt on the tire; I haven't thought this out very well yet. However, making the online team members perform these duties would do several things:

1) Would provide a more immersive and realistic racing experience
2) Would make pit stops more competitive - skilled pit crews would get the car out of the pits more quickly
3) End the monotony of watching and waiting for team members who aren't driving

My idea is just a concept, and all comments/further development are welcomed. Next on my list is figuring out a way to get team members involved when the car is not in the pits. Thanks again to all of you who have suggested ideas for the online mode of GT.

 

[Lain]

Hi John, you have some great ideas for the online mode in your thread, and I have a concept to add to it. Having online team members take turns racing instead of having the computer driving is great. However, your post doesn't offer any ideas for what the team members who aren't driving are doing.

Perhaps the other members of the team could function as the pit crew instead of doing nothing. In an old PC racing game, Automobili Lamborghini, the player would not only drive but would also have to manually change tires and refuel the car during a pit stop. Instead of having the computer automatically perform tire changes and refueling, the other team members could be tasked with these duties. Perhaps the other players would have to input a certain button combination, or maybe they would have to manually unscrew each bolt on the tire; I haven't thought this out very well yet. However, making the online team members perform these duties would do several things:

1) Would provide a more immersive and realistic racing experience
2) Would make pit stops more competitive - skilled pit crews would get the car out of the pits more quickly
3) End the monotony of watching and waiting for team members who aren't driving

My idea is just a concept, and all comments/further development are welcomed. Next on my list is figuring out a way to get team members involved when the car is not in the pits. Thanks again to all of you who have suggested ideas for the online mode of GT.

Interesting, but I don't think quick-time button events would fit in too well with a simulator, and I think anything besides quick-time events for pit stops would be too clunky to be enjoyable or to be executable in a timely fashion.

I think that the driving team member shouldn't have any HUD. Instead, he should rely on the non-driving team member to relay information such as his place, his lap times, etc. This way, both members are always busy and are both focused on the race at hand.

 

[91hondawagon]

Interesting, but I don't think quick-time button events would fit in too well with a simulator, and I think anything besides quick-time events for pit stops would be too clunky to be enjoyable or to be executable in a timely fashion.

I think that the driving team member shouldn't have any HUD. Instead, he should rely on the non-driving team member to relay information such as his place, his lap times, etc. This way, both members are always busy and are both focused on the race at hand.

Right, the button combination idea was just something I thought up quickly, just as a starting point. But I like the no-HUD idea for the most part; of course, the speedometer and tachometer would have to stay. But the map, position indicator, and timer could be done away with.

However, the problem is that non-driving team members still don't have much to do. Relaying lap times is hardly any work at all, and the same goes for relaying position information.

Perhaps splitting up responsibilities would work. For example, one person monitors oil pressure while another monitors tire pressure, etc., and each member would be responsible for relaying problems with the information they're observing. This would help to keep team members involved more. Of course, all this would be for only the most hardcore players only. Casual gamers would get disinterested and frustrated quickly. Any other ideas regarding this?

 

[DustDriver]

Instead of button combinations to control the pitcrew, 1 of your teammates could be responsable for choosing the tires and amount of fuel.
+ he has to send the pit crew out when the driving teammate has to pit.

 

[JohnBM01]

I think other online teammates can help with pit strategy. The team has as much responsibility as the driver piloting the race car. The team can encourage the driver while also thinking about pit strategy. I even imagined if there was another teammate that doesn't do any racing, but just be a race strategist. Imagine if four people were in a race. Three would be drivers while the fourth will assume team principal status. All the team principal can do is continually monitor lap times and even chat with the driver. The team principal can even chat with the driver or drivers about pit strategy as well as discussing lap times.

Online play and racing has many different caveats to those hardcore online gamers. I always think of offline in addition to online, so keep the ideas coming!

 

[F1KimiFreak]

I doubt PD would even take something like this. I'm usually the one who offers the most unique and/or interesting ideas. Just have to hope PD folks or SCE folks have secret agents that are on GTPlanet who want to relay this idea to PD.

A bit interesting I have a supporter of Model C. Any other things to take into consideration?

Finding sponsors and partners (tyre's, oil company's etc)
Maybe take a LM car and make it better (at large cost) or engine improvement etc. Design department? But this is maybe little bit to much manager-game?

*hopes for new F1 manager game by codemaster* 👍

 

[91hondawagon]

I was playing GT4 tonight and had another idea. Listen to this:

I had just finished practicing at the 'Ring when I saw the "Analyzer" tool. When I pulled it up, I was reminded that this tool recorded telemetry, which is almost always recorded in real race cars. I was able to see my speed, acceleration, and braking points at any point in time for an entire lap.

It hit me: why not include this for online team events? If a driver is having trouble on a track, another team member can simply pull up the telemetry data from earlier in the race and identify problems with the driver's acceleration and braking points. Perhaps the driver is braking too early for a corner or is slamming the gas before he should. In high-intensity, high-speed races, just watching what a driver does can make it hard to pinpoint the exact problem. With telemetry data, it's possible to exactly identify where a driver is having problems and what he is doing wrong; knowing this precise data can help another teammate coach the driver into performing better.

If GT4 has this too, GT5 is almost certainly going to have it as well. If it is available for online races, it would greatly help drivers learning to compete in intense races.

Thoughts? I think this would greatly help teams and drivers figure out how to be as fast as possible in online races.

 

[JohnBM01]

That would be a very interesting idea, 91hondawagon. I think it's best that the online team members do their part to assist the driver by utilizing the Analyzer. It's been in GT since GT3. It would do great service for racers to be on their game when it comes down to something like this. The team members of an online team have one as a driver and at least one team member looking at the race action and telemetry. If a driver change is requested, one driver will give up watching the race and report for duty. Everyone needs to work together to win the race. And yes (for the doubters)- racing is a team sport.

I've lobbied for customer race cars in hopes that we get some kind of paint shop feature as well as being able to paint up and race our own cars. You can still purchase real race cars, but I'm open to the possibility of having customer race cars to be taken and raced. I mostly had LMPs in mind. Cars made by race constructors and even automobile makers for the general use of having turn-key race cars is what I'm going for as far as customer race cars go. I think even the fantasy LM race cars should get some love as well. Even imagine if you can have one of those Ford GT LM race cars to be used for your own race team.



The following is something I've wanted to post from a few days ago:

Take a look at this picture as far as painting up cars go:

http://ps3.ign.com/dor/objects/9497...ran-turismo-5-prologue-20080528102211389.html

I've noticed the GT Academy deal. This is my first time seeing this picture. A picture of a car like this Skyline should get even the most discriminating GT fan a bit excited. You can start thinking "a car this intricately-painted could be one of my own cars." To the right is a GT Academy 350Z/Fairlady Z. This reminds me of an idea of something similar to "Need for Speed: Pro Street" where you race specially-prepared cars provided by sponsors. The best news? You don't have to supply your own car.

Imagine this concept as something similar to being part of a team. Not that I'm fully aware of GT Academy as I lack having a PS3, but just the idea of specially tuning (or just simply painting) cars to represent teams or be used for some other functions.



I think it's possible to make your own team colors if PD really wants to give gamers the opportunity to purchase and race with racing team suits. I'll use a past picture of GT5 in a future post to demonstrate. Stay tuned.

 

[TeamStig]

Pit strategies should definitely be implemented, and so far all of the ideas are really good! I think a good example for Model B is Race Driver Grid. Grid's team system was good as a starting point (there was no team manager or B-Spec), but if GT5 is going to have a team-based focus, it needs to be much more fleshed out. This would make GT5 the perfect racing sim.

As for team liveries:
In Grid I liked getting sponsors and choosing team colors. However, the game only featured preset paint schemes. I have Forza, and I enjoy using the livery editor to make a road car look like a race car. But I am not very good at using the game's livery editor, and as a result most of my designs are very simple. I think a perfect way to do a livery editor in GT5 would be to allow the player an option: would they like to create their own livery completely from scratch (Forza) or would they like to use a preset design and add sponsors to it (Grid)? This would allow enough freedom for expert designers and would be easy enough for amateurs - like me - to use.

 

[P1]

Team would be great but how many people do you think would be willing to sit and watch someone else drive round a track, not many.

 

[JohnBM01]

The model of sitting in the pits (I admit) was for some of the longer races. You can still have a multi-driver team with their own entry on the track. You can still have that. So you can enjoy circuit racing as well as endurance racing with a team model.

 

[91hondawagon]

I've lobbied for customer race cars in hopes that we get some kind of paint shop feature as well as being able to paint up and race our own cars. You can still purchase real race cars, but I'm open to the possibility of having customer race cars to be taken and raced. I mostly had LMPs in mind. Cars made by race constructors and even automobile makers for the general use of having turn-key race cars is what I'm going for as far as customer race cars go. I think even the fantasy LM race cars should get some love as well. Even imagine if you can have one of those Ford GT LM race cars to be used for your own race team.



The following is something I've wanted to post from a few days ago:

Take a look at this picture as far as painting up cars go:

http://ps3.ign.com/dor/objects/9497...ran-turismo-5-prologue-20080528102211389.html

I've noticed the GT Academy deal. This is my first time seeing this picture. A picture of a car like this Skyline should get even the most discriminating GT fan a bit excited. You can start thinking "a car this intricately-painted could be one of my own cars." To the right is a GT Academy 350Z/Fairlady Z. This reminds me of an idea of something similar to "Need for Speed: Pro Street" where you race specially-prepared cars provided by sponsors. The best news? You don't have to supply your own car.

Imagine this concept as something similar to being part of a team. Not that I'm fully aware of GT Academy as I lack having a PS3, but just the idea of specially tuning (or just simply painting) cars to represent teams or be used for some other functions.



I think it's possible to make your own team colors if PD really wants to give gamers the opportunity to purchase and race with racing team suits. I'll use a past picture of GT5 in a future post to demonstrate. Stay tuned.

Uniquely painting cars would be great JohnBM01, but I'd be concerned about how gamers would go about creating their own paint jobs for online use.

For example, in PC games like MS Flight Simulator, liveries are created through an image editor, like Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop, and are then mapped on to featureless car models. Would we have to create GT5 paint jobs on a computer and then load them into GT5, or would GT5 have it's own built in editor?

If Polyphony ever does decide to let us create custom paint schemes, I would imagine it would be somewhat similar to Need for Speed games. Race teams would be able to choose base paint, racing stripes, decals, etc., instead of having to use a third-party editor to create paint jobs. If they do follow this path, hopefully they would allow us to upload custom logos and images that could be applied to our cars as decals.

In my opinion, however, I don't think Polyphony will allow us to create unique paint schemes or decals. for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, car manufacturers are very protective of their image, especially in a realistic game like Gran Turismo. Also, in my opinion, it would be very easy to make the cars look very arcadish and unrealistic. For example, it took years for Ferrari to allow Polyphony to put its cars in a GT game, and I doubt they'd approve of a lime green F430 that looks like it came straight out of 2 Fast 2 Furious.

Secondly, and more importantly, not everyone would create an acceptable scheme for a car; while there are players who would love to create a realistic paint scheme, there are some people who are bound to create stuff that is horribly obscene, gross offensive, or just plain illegal. Unless Polyphony/Sony filtered the uploaded skins in some way (which would take time, manpower, and money), there would be no way to catch inappropriate stuff. If a young kid saw a car emblazoned with swastikas or a Playboy centerfold, it would be a huge PR nightmare for Sony.

I might just be cynical, but this is why I think custom decals and images are out of the question for GT5. The system would be too easy to abuse and too hard to monitor, and I don't think Sony will take that chance. There are some great ideas floating around this thread, but too many morons would be able to exploit this one.

If you have any ideas on how to keep people from creating stupid schemes, I'd be happy to listen; I would love having unique team paint schemes as much as anyone. Hopefully I haven't misunderstood what you're trying to say.

 

[JohnBM01]

The most common thing I've read on the "Against" side of this issue is "12-year olds painting (genitalia) on the cars." This could even be graphics of something like a fist held up in the air with blood. There is no way to judge even remotely what's considered acceptable team logos or non-offensive graphics. People would know what's best for them in making graphics for teams as well as for cars. The recent Need for Speed series is a bit "ricey" for me as far as paint schemes go. And I'm mostly talking about stuff like camoflauge paint, gangster-like paint schemes, and that sort of thing. You never feel like you've designed a real race car with the graphics you choose. It's why I think basic paint schemes should be allowed. Think back to default paint schemes like in "Ridge Racer V." PD would need to study some of the most popular paintschemes of cars, and then try to offer the opportunity for other gamers to simply change up the colors of the paint scheme to their liking. That's even if you choose certain colors to be color-shifting (I have seen some race cars and street cars with color-shifting paint. One example was a drag car in Summit Racing livery with this one band of color-shifting paint).

So what if there's a concern with potentially offensive logos? Next best thing to do would be coming up with generic customizable logos. These are logos that can be used to represent the team. Everything from simple shapes to mudflap girls can be used. Japanese kanji and hiragana symbols can also be used. If a team can create their own logo on their computer to be used in GT5, that would work well too. It may eventually come down to "policing" car and logo designs by Moderators and Server Administrators. Logos can also be the team name printed in certain lettering. The really advanced level of this would be people who make their own paintscheme and their own logos. This is truly the advanced level of this whole thing.

I haven't thought that far ahead, but I've given you most of my own thinking.

 

[nd 4 holden spd]

I've been thinking about creating a team called TLD-R, (The Lion's Den Racing), and I think that having 2 drivers in the one car for an enduro is an awesome idea. I also like the prospect of having custom paintcheme for TLD-R cars. However, focusing the entire game on teams might take away from the experience a little.
Having Teams: 👍
Focus on Teams: 👎

 

[Ardius]

Its impossible to police logo designs, so theres no point trying to moderate them.

However, I dont think the minority should stop the rest of us from making our own designs, although I can see why if some car manufacturers might not see it as such a good idea.

Ridge Racer V's team element was extremely basic, basically non-existant, I dont think its a very good example of how teams in a racing game should be done. I agree that its a good example of just putting a basic element into gran turismo, but I personally would prefer it to be taken a lot further than that.
In RRV, you basically named and coloured your team and that was it, you didnt enter team championships, you didnt get sponsors, you didnt really have a teammate to work with...basically, the whole "team" aspect of it was, well, not much like a team and more just "paint your car and name your design".

If they put a team element in, Id like it to be taken the whole way, maybe even so far as to make it a seperate game mode? You have arcade mode, simulation mode...how about team-simulation mode?

I agree with Holden though, if teams are incorporated into the game, it needs to be a slight presence in the same fashion as Rally events, where only certain events are team events and the vast majority are solo events. The higher up the events go, the more the team elements come in, as you cant really race without your own race team when you get to Touring Cars level and beyond.

 

[P1]

Its impossible to police logo designs, so theres no point trying to moderate them.

Its not impossible Forza managed to do it as they had a massive problem with naked woman but they managed to stop by using a report system and if you got caught using a offensive paint job you would be banned for a certain amount of time.

 

[Ardius]

Its not impossible Forza managed to do it as they had a massive problem with naked woman but they managed to stop by using a report system and if you got caught using a offensive paint job you would be banned for a certain amount of time.

Ok, perhaps I worded that wrong, I meant it was impossible to completely get rid of all "offensive" artwork all of the time. But I suppose a report system works well enough. 👍

 

[JohnBM01]

The team-based "focus" is just a general term for "let's FOCUS our attention on team possibilities. So don't think you're having a team prescence much like NASCAR's "Total Team Control" feature.

Ridge Racer V was my example of a casual team. Even though you just name yourself and your team, you still felt like you were part of a race team. Your own team going up against others. That was just a casual and simple model as far as building a team. If there's a report feature, that would work fine. There's a problem with that- any offline team isn't going to be docked for offensive material. For now, I'm still leaning a bit towards non-offensive logos. Just like cars in the game, there should be just enough logos and variations to give any team any kind of team logos that are livable. That's even if you're part of a fraternity or a soroity (for any of GTPlanet's femmes of Gran Turismo). Don't you want your own team name and colors (for example: Alpha Kappa Sigma as a team logo) to be used? I even thought of a college-based team logo scheme. But for this to happen, you'll need to hit the Internet and take in a sample of the team logo.

Again, I don't want to make GT5 into something it isn't. I'm just looking to add a little spice and involvement with this team model. So feel free to continually contribute if you like.

 

[91hondawagon]

It's why I think basic paint schemes should be allowed. Think back to default paint schemes like in "Ridge Racer V." PD would need to study some of the most popular paintschemes of cars, and then try to offer the opportunity for other gamers to simply change up the colors of the paint scheme to their liking. That's even if you choose certain colors to be color-shifting (I have seen some race cars and street cars with color-shifting paint. One example was a drag car in Summit Racing livery with this one band of color-shifting paint).

This I agree with. I'm not opposed to being able to choose team colors; like you, I don't want paintschemes in GT5 to become like Need for Speed. I'm sorry if I misstated myself. Unique paintschemes should be allowed, but not offensive ones. Then again, everyone has a different opinion of what "obscene" and "offensive" mean.

So what if there's a concern with potentially offensive logos? Next best thing to do would be coming up with generic customizable logos. These are logos that can be used to represent the team. Everything from simple shapes to mudflap girls can be used. Japanese kanji and hiragana symbols can also be used. If a team can create their own logo on their computer to be used in GT5, that would work well too. It may eventually come down to "policing" car and logo designs by Moderators and Server Administrators. Logos can also be the team name printed in certain lettering. The really advanced level of this would be people who make their own paintscheme and their own logos. This is truly the advanced level of this whole thing.

I haven't thought that far ahead, but I've given you most of my own thinking.

It appears I've misstated myself again; let me clarify. Personally, I'm not opposed to custom logos and the like; I would love to design my own logo or have a big GTPlanet globe on my team's car. What I'm worried about is the potential PR nightmare that could result from the few users who create questionable stuff. While most teams would be fine, there are invariably people who would stick pornographic images on their cars.

My main fear about this is that it will end up like the rep system that used to exist here. I wasn't around when we had it, but from what I've read, 95% of users used it properly while 5% abused it. That small number of abusers managed to get the entire system taken off this site. If enough people abuse the custom logo feature online (if Polyphony even decides to do something like this), I fear that it will be taken offline completely - no more custom logos for anyone just because a few morons abuse the system.

Perhaps the "policing" by the server mods could be done before the custom logos are posted online. What I mean is that you upload your logo/paint-scheme, and a moderator approves it before it appears online.

Those are my thoughts on that. Now, here's something different:

Sponsorships - No racing team can survive without them, so why not have them online? What I'm thinking of is that a team places decals from a sponsor (real or fake companies) on its cars, and in return, they receive credits. The number of credits would depend on the location of the decal and it's size. Here's what I'm thinking of:

http://www.so-net.ne.jp/s-taikyu/tmprf/htm/c4-94-p1.jpg

A couple of decals on the car to help teams afford tuning parts and the like. Any thoughts on this?