Apologies for re-posting things I'm sure you've already posted here (I've just poked around, 100+ pages is a bit to read) but my wishlist would be:
- Damage: I'd love to be held accountable for what I did to my cars. Preferably everything from total writeoffs to partial damage that affects handling, maybe even go so far as normal wear and tear. If I screw up I want to be slowed down, booted from the race, and required to repair the car if I want to keep using it.
- Time of Day & Weather: Time of day interests me a lot more then temperature or weather but all would be nice. I can't imagine what it'd be like to drive the ring by your headlights, it would be nice to find out. When just running laps it would be neat if it based itself on your current local time. (but obviously would be overridable)
- Mid-race Saves: Saw this idea earlier and it's great. Running a PS3 for days to complete an endurance race is less than ideal, they're loud and hot and probably chew up a lot of power.
- Better sound would be nice. I've found it a little bit lacking in GT4 (is that what an M3 really sounds like!?
) but I don't really play any other racing games and I sure as hell don't know what most of the cars I drive sound like in real life, so I'm glad to see it's a common complaint and I'm not just crazy.
Then what I expect will be GT5's crowning glory, online play:
- Ability to form teams. (i.e. clans)
- Elaborate individual and team based leaderboards, seasons, series, whatever. All-time stats and some kind of season stats would be cool. Incentive to "progress" makes any game that much more enjoyable and now that we're playing online for the world to see it's just that much more enticing.
- Ability to host private races and series (naturally). So many options here and they really just have to pick the right subset to give us enough flexibility to really have some fun for years to come.
- Severe online penalties for foolish racing. Damage would be a good one provided it wasn't possible for idiots to enter cheap cars in races just to mess up other drivers. Lots of ways PD could mitigate this ($ limited, experince limited, reputaton limited) and it should all be backed by a proper moderator system for reporting people who abuse so no matter what bugs or glitches are discovered, there's a way to get rid of the idiots. Personal blacklist would be nice to block anyone from a race you were hosting, or warn you if you entered a race they were already in. (mind you on PS3 they can probably easily release updates for glitches)
- Ways to just "hang out" online. Running laps is all well and good, and with tracks like the ring it's not bad for just cruising because it's huge and scenic. Something like this for single player or online with friends would be awesome. Even if it were just massive stretches of computer generated road + scenery I'd be pleased with it. Throw in some voice chat and you've got a great way to just hang around with your buddy list.
- Piles of downloadable content! I'd be very unhappy to see the original game limited in the number of cars and tracks, but if PD delivers a solid original edition and then in the years to come just keeps updating with new models and new tracks, I'd probably buy them all.
- Seamless transition between career and online mode. I don't know how GT5P works but I'd like to be playing the same game whether I'm racing/tuning online or in career mode.
- Spectator mode? If the online community takes off as I'm sure it will, it would be sweet if a set number of people could spectate online events. That'll pose obvious bandwidth concerns and probably won't make the cut but just incase someone from PD ever reads these forums maybe they can give it some thought.
I'm somewhat impartial to the body work and elaborate paint jobs / decal area. If it was there I'd use it and probably enjoy it, but I admire PD's focus on keeping things real as they do and wouldn't feel much pain if the cars were limited to their stock colors. (although repainting them to another color after purchase would be nice)
Can't wait to see what PD has in store for us.