Thanks PD

[JayRS200]

You have no proof to the contrary. PD do listen. They don't do everything we want and it's ridiculous that you would suggest that. This experiment has replaced what could have been 2 traditional GT games for PS4. FIA seasons are a joke and GT6 already had daily races. If you think GTS is better than 5 and 6 and has been worth missing out on 5 and 6' natural sequels on PS4 that really is your problem and I feel embarrassed at your subordinate attitude to accept anything PD throws at you.

Just look at the numbers of one of the trophies, the route 66 trophy has 14% of players achieving it. That's around 1.5 million out of around 10 million players have played the required 2.448 miles. Include multiple accounts in there and it's way lower. The pandemic has flattered the sales and player numbers too.

You have absolutely NO PROOF that the people who 'spoke up' about GT Sport have anything to do with the way GT7 will eventually turn out. None. The same people 'spoke up' years ago screaming for damage in one of the earlier games (GT5 maybe?), Kaz responded by delaying the game to implement it, and in the end nobody cared. The same people screamed that the penalty system was horrible in GTS, the more PD have responded and tried to fix it, the worse it got.

I'm of the opinion the Kaz is deliberately cryptic and misleading because it irritates those who feel they are entitled to have an input. There are far more examples of Kaz ignoring the fanbase than being responsive to it. The evidence suggests that PD do what they want, period. Most of your points about the same old chase the rabbit career mode are proof of this.

PD flat-out told us GTS was an experiment, and it worked. People are still playing 3 years later, AND with Covid and the huge rise in the worldwide profile of online racing, I'd say they were ahead of the curve and prepared for the future, no? It's far from perfect, but here we all are waiting for GT7, the follow-up to GT6.

It's not called GT8 or GT World or any other title. It's called GT7 for a reason-it's the next installment in the traditional GT series, which GTS was never supposed to be. Love it, hate it-whatever. We will get what they want to make. I have a hard time believing Kaz cares what any of us think, and good for him.

 

[Imari]

PD flat-out told us GTS was an experiment, and it worked. People are still playing 3 years later, AND with Covid and the huge rise in the worldwide profile of online racing, I'd say they were ahead of the curve and prepared for the future, no?

iRacing started in 2008. There has been evidence for years that there is a small but ardent segment of racing gamers who will play a relatively serious and structured online racing game, and that they will go to great lengths to do so. GT Sport was hardly an experiment or a gamble, it was a conscious design choice based on significant amounts of market information and historical data from their four previous online capable games.

A company like Polyphony does not spend nine figures on an "experiment", that's called marketing and it apparently worked very well.

As a game it's unquestionably the worst GT so far with potential and technology taken into account.

I dunno man, I feel like GT6 makes a pretty strong argument for being the worst GT, but that's just my personal preference. I can at least respect GTS for pushing in a different direction. GT6 just felt like the blandest grey distillation of the GT formula that they could produce, with a side serving of extra marketing BS and plenty of lies about what content and features it would eventually contain.

 

[DriveSpark]

As a game it's unquestionably the worst GT so far with potential and technology taken into account. That's why GT7 is back to the way it should be. Again thanks to people that spoke up.

I completely disagree. GT6 was far, far worse than sport in my opinion
Sport has actually given the game a future path. If the PS4 version of GT had just been a prettied up version of GT4/5/6 people here would have bitched incessantly about "lazy PD" and how they never move forwards and all the other stuff that gets posted.

Would you have been so upset if they had called GTS something other than Gran Turismo ?

iRacing started in 2008. There has been evidence for years that there is a small but ardent segment of racing gamers who will play a relatively serious and structured online racing game, and that they will go to great lengths to do so. GT Sport was hardly an experiment or a gamble, it was a conscious design choice based on significant amounts of market information and historical data from their four previous online capable games.

A company like Polyphony does not spend nine figures on an "experiment", that's called marketing and it apparently worked very well.

I sort of agree, iRacing has been around for ages, but I would say GTS is the first console game that has taken eSport seriously.
Also, I think @superwally 's point was that during lockdown virtual racing / eSport has gotten a lot more exposure to the masses and this is on top of growing interest over the past 5 years or so. It really does seem to be gaining momentum just recently.

 

[kjeldsen]

"Many many players"...

That's some accurate numbers there Yes Man!

It's is a success in monetary terms. As a game it's unquestionably the worst GT so far with potential and technology taken into account. That's why GT7 is back to the way it should be. Again thanks to people that spoke up.

What's up with the Yes Man? Add to the discussion or join the ignore list.

Is it a huge success when 82% of your player base don't play the mode you named your game after? Like, at all. Not even once.

https://www.kudosprime.com/gts/stats.php?stat_preset=sport_play_ratio

When you get 1.5 million new players in 2020 from a game that was launched in 2017? How can that now be a success..?

 

[Samus]

What's up with the Yes Man? Add to the discussion or join the ignore list.



When you get 1.5 million new players in 2020 from a game that was launched in 2017? How can that now be a success..?

But they're not playing Sport mode. The game may be a commercial success but the online focus Sport Mode has not been, broadly speaking.

 

[kjeldsen]

But they're not playing Sport mode. The game may be a commercial success but the online focus Sport Mode has not been, broadly speaking.

Or something crazy is going on that everyone is ignoring, maybe because we are so focused on sports mode.

Could it be that the game provides so much offline content that it's actually worth buying for that?

Your numbers seem to indicate that

 

[DriveSpark]

Or the players are quite happy racing in online lobbies against friends/randoms and don't feel the need to enter competition?

 

[Samus]

Whatever they are doing, the fact remains that they are not doing Sport Mode. The thing the game was named after and centred around.

 

[MaxAttack]

The "Most people don't play sport mode" argument has always been dumb, and will always be dumb.

Whether you bash sport mode dailies, don't bash dailies, only use livery editor or whatever else, you paid the same amount for the game as everyone else. That's still a sale and that's what PD are after.

No one at PD is jumping off a bridge because of the percentage that play sport mode. They all got paid regardless.

 

[DriveSpark]

Whatever they are doing, the fact remains that they are not doing Sport Mode. The thing the game was named after and centred around.

What does that matter, people are clearly still playing and enjoying the game, so whats the problem ?
Every time I log on there are lots of lobbies and players.

I fnd it weird that as racing sim/game fans who frequent this stie people are still determined to paint GTS as a failure, even years after release. You don't have to like the game but its disingenuous to suggest that no-one is playing it because they diddn't enter a competition.

 

[Nielsen]

The "Most people don't play sport mode" argument has always been dumb, and will always be dumb.

Whether you bash sport mode dailies, don't bash dailies, only use livery editor or whatever else, you paid the same amount for the game as everyone else. That's still a sale and that's what PD are after.

No one at PD is jumping off a bridge because of the percentage that play sport mode. They all got paid regardless.

Many Gran Turismo fans held off buying GTS at launch in part because it was almost entirely centered around competitive online multiplayer. Then later PD added GT League as damage control, but at this point the game was frequently on sale with huge savings. Revenue has been lost, no doubt.

Long term the risky move may pay off for PD. GTS has established PD on the e-sport scene, and that’s definitely not a bad thing as they’re back developing a classic GT title, ideally combining the best of both worlds.

 

[Samus]

What does that matter, people are clearly still playing and enjoying the game, so whats the problem ?
Every time I log on there are lots of lobbies and players.

I fnd it weird that as racing sim/game fans who frequent this stie people are still determined to paint GTS as a failure, even years after release. You don't have to like the game but its disingenuous to suggest that no-one is playing it because they diddn't enter a competition.

I never said nobody was playing it. I merely questioned whether you can consider a product truly successful as an experiment if 93% of your customers don't use it in the way you intended.

Success can be looked at and measured in many different ways.

The "Most people don't play sport mode" argument has always been dumb, and will always be dumb.

Whether you bash sport mode dailies, don't bash dailies, only use livery editor or whatever else, you paid the same amount for the game as everyone else. That's still a sale and that's what PD are after.

No one at PD is jumping off a bridge because of the percentage that play sport mode. They all got paid regardless.

Nobody said they were. As above, success can be looked at in several ways. Financially, GTS probably was a success. In terms of pure sales numbers, it was probably a success. But in terms of their vision, what they set out the game to be, has it been a success?

If you set up a shop called A Products R' Us but also sell B and C products inside, would you deem your shop a success if 93% of sales come from product B and C?

No, you'll probably rename the shop B's and C's R' Us but let the minority who did buy A that you still sell them as well.

Not the best analogy but evidently that's what PD have done, returning to the old formula for the next game because the formula they set out in this one wasn't a success. It hasn't transformed their 10 million userbase into hardcore online racers.

 

[DriveSpark]

I never said nobody was playing it. I merely questioned whether you can consider a product truly successful as an experiment if 93% of your customers don't use it in the way you intended.

How is playing in online lobbies not using the game in the way it was intended ?

Its a feature of the game, no-one installed a hack or mod to make the game do that, therefore people are using it in the way PD intended, to suggest otherwise is plain daft.

There is no decree that says every time you start GTS you must enter a daily race or do the FIA season races etc.

Why are you so desperate to "prove" GTS has been a faiilure ?

 

[Samus]

How is playing in online lobbies not using the game in the way it was intended ?

Its a feature of the game, no-one installed a hack or mod to make the game do that, therefore people are using it in the way PD intended, to suggest otherwise is plain daft.

There is no decree that says every time you start GTS you must enter a daily race or do the FIA season races etc.

Why are you so desperate to "prove" GTS has been a faiilure ?

I'm not trying to prove anything. I'm not sure why you're being so overly defensive. I'm asking questions.

The game is called GT Sport. It was named so because they wanted the focus to be eSports, with the primary mode of the game being Sport Mode. That's what they wanted everyone to be playing. They went all in with big marketing slogans, "Designing the next 100 years of Motorsport".

When 82% of your playerbase don't use that mode, not even once, you surely have to ask yourself if that experiment has been a success? Don't you? I'm just being realistic here.

I absolutely 100% commend PD for trying something new. They needed to do that after 18 years, and I acknowledge them for that even though the direction they went wasn't for me (and seemingly most others). It's why I'm also not keen on the initial appearance that they've just reverted back to the same old tired formula for GT7, but it's early days yet with very limited information.

As someone once said, why not both? I'd love to see a combination of Sport aspects combined with the old single player experience for one cohesive, modern game that incorporates the best of both. Let's see what they deliver.

 

[DriveSpark]

I'm not trying to prove anything. I'm not sure why you're being so overly defensive. I'm asking questions.

Really? do point out the quesiton in your posts:

Is it a huge success when 82% of your player base don't play the mode you named your game after? Like, at all. Not even once.

https://www.kudosprime.com/gts/stats.php?stat_preset=sport_play_ratio

But they're not playing Sport mode. The game may be a commercial success but the online focus Sport Mode has not been, broadly speaking.

Whatever they are doing, the fact remains that they are not doing Sport Mode. The thing the game was named after and centred around.

I never said nobody was playing it. I merely questioned whether you can consider a product truly successful as an experiment if 93% of your customers don't use it in the way you intended.

No questions there.

You don't like online racing games, we get it.

 

[Samus]

Literally the first line in the first quote. The rest were follow ups to your responses.

 

[DriveSpark]

Thats called a rhetorical question seeing as you answered it yourself.

But anyway, you continue on moaning about anything to do with the GT series, seems you're pretty good at it.

 

[Samus]

No, it wasn't a rhetorical question, I was questioning the person who said it was a success, and whether you can consider it a success based on those stats. Do you think Sport Mode was a success based on those stats?

Like I said , you seem overly defensive for no reason and now resorting to the usual defence of calling anyone not praising everything as "moaning". I've already said GTS was a success in many other ways.

 

[DriveSpark]

I'm not being overly defensive, your statements suggest the game is a failure because not everyone enters the online competition, I disagree and pointed out that plenty of people just race in online lobbies - you seem to think that isn't playing the game in the way PD intended, which is bizarre.

Even more bizarre is you don't even own the game and presumably haven't played it for any length of time yet have repeatedly called it a failure - how would you know ? you just went looking for a stat to fit your narrative.

No-one said you have to like it but to mark a game that sold well and still has an active userbase as a failure is somewhat disingenuous

 

[Samus]

I'm not being overly defensive, your statements suggest the game is a failure because not everyone enters the online competition, I disagree and pointed out that plenty of people just race in online lobbies - you seem to think that isn't playing the game in the way PD intended, which is bizarre.

Even more bizarre is you don't even own the game and presumably haven't played it for any length of time yet have repeatedly called it a failure - how would you know ? you just went looking for a stat to fit your narrative.

No-one said you have to like it but to mark a game that sold well and still has an active userbase as a failure is somewhat disingenuous

Your last sentence suggests you haven't read my posts properly at all. I said many times that success can be measured in several ways, and that in many ways GTS was a success.

So I shall clarify yet again, I was questioning only whether the choice to move towards eSports and the Sport mode had been a success and used the stats to back up that question.

When I mentioned the way PD intended people play it I thought it was obvious I meant the primary way people play it, I didn't think I needed to clarify that I didn't mean people using the livery editor were "playing it wrong". PD put their chips in the online Sport mode, and clearly wanted most people to use that mode. They wouldn't have named the game after it otherwise.

P.S. the only person who has typed the word 'failure' to this point here is you. Not me.

 

[DriveSpark]

Nice backtrack.

 

[kjeldsen]

No, it wasn't a rhetorical question, I was questioning the person who said it was a success, and whether you can consider it a success based on those stats. Do you think Sport Mode was a success based on those stats?

Like I said , you seem overly defensive for no reason and now resorting to the usual defence of calling anyone not praising everything as "moaning". I've already said GTS was a success in many other ways.

I think you can call it a success with the sale numbers and active players. And that includes sport mode.

If the game only sold 200.000 copies but 95% was playing sports mode we would not be discussing if it was a success, right?
It would be a failure.

The number that played sports mode indicates that the game ended up selling huge numbers to people that want to race, just not online.

And it makes sense with the enormous amount of races that are available offline.

Completing and getting gold in all those races takes a looong time. That is serious value for money.

 

[Peter.]

But they're not playing Sport mode. The game may be a commercial success but the online focus Sport Mode has not been, broadly speaking.

I mean, considering the game has clearly established itself on the eSports scene, which was the objective from day 1, I'd call it a success. When you really think about it, the ~20% of all the 8 million people who bought this game that actually bothered to touch sport mode, is still a LOT of people. Competitive online gaming is a small segment of most games' player base anyway.

 

[GTFan24]

*Sigh* Even in a thread with a positive topic.... there always has to be a debate...

 

[Imari]

What does that matter, people are clearly still playing and enjoying the game, so whats the problem ?
Every time I log on there are lots of lobbies and players.

I fnd it weird that as racing sim/game fans who frequent this stie people are still determined to paint GTS as a failure, even years after release. You don't have to like the game but its disingenuous to suggest that no-one is playing it because they diddn't enter a competition.

GTS pretty clearly wasn't a failure, but it's unclear that Sport Mode specifically had the success that it was planned to as an esport. To be fair, there's a lot of games that saw the success of LoL/DotA/CSGO and wanted a piece of that action. Most of them straight up flopped, which can't be said of Sport Mode. I suspect that Sport Mode did about as well as could be expected in what is a pretty niche section of esports, but I also suspect that Sony and Polyphony wanted to be seeing six figures of concurrent players.

In an age where analytics are guaranteed, it would seem that Sony and Polyphony looked at GTS and saw that while it sold very well indeed the pieces of the game that players most engaged with were the more "traditional" Gran Turismo elements. Hence why we see the design direction taken for GT7. While something like iRacing may be happy with serving 150,000 users in a niche corner of the market, those numbers simply don't work for a game with the budget and financial model of Gran Turismo.

 

[Cssgareth]

*Sigh* Even in a thread with a positive topic.... there always has to be a debate...

I tried, I really did

 

[Nielsen]

*Sigh* Even in a thread with a positive topic.... there always has to be a debate...

It's an attitude like yours that ruins it. It's what makes a positive thread negative.

Discussion is what forums are for and always have been, but there's always the usual loud suspects who cannot handle it and immediately point fingers and put insulting labels on others simply because they disagree.

 

[Garland]

I was always under the impression that Sport was something like HD Concept or a Prologue. Right after Yamauchi talked about GT7 being in development for the PS4 all those years ago, what did we get? Sport. Maybe that's not exactly what GT7 will end up being, but I'm sure it'll at least have most or all of Sport's content.

I am incredibly upset about the return of used cars. GT3 and GT6 did a lot of good by abolishing the system. I just hope the GT7 system is not like the system from GT5, where certain cars disappear forever if you don't buy them in time. With the Seasonal Events long gone, I doubt you can even make enough money with any regular GT5 event to actually get one of every unique car, and I am not looking forward to puzzling it out if you actually still can.

I'm hoping for the return of certain game-exclusive tracks and cars, such as all the GT2 stuff: Red Rock Valley, Grindelwald, the Super Silhouette, that weird ZZIII prototype, etc. I'm hoping the shoutout to GT2's intro in the GT7 trailer is a nod in this direction.

I'm also hoping we get music more like the older games, particularly menu music. Jazz fusion is extremely important.

 

[HarVee]

I am incredibly upset about the return of used cars. GT3 and GT6 did a lot of good by abolishing the system. I just hope the GT7 system is not like the system from GT5, where certain cars disappear forever if you don't buy them in time. With the Seasonal Events long gone, I doubt you can even make enough money with any regular GT5 event to actually get one of every unique car, and I am not looking forward to puzzling it out if you actually still can.

I thought I was alone on this. My concern with the UCD is the same as yours, that if done wrong, it'll restrict what cars appear in the Brand Central for purchase. GT5 did this, GT2 did this. I don't want to have to hunt down some car and/or forever potentially lose access to it due to arbitrary restrictions. I'd rather have all cars available in the Brand Central and the UCD merely for getting discounts on cars.

 

[Faultier]

I thank them when the game is finally here