Where is the Gran Turismo spirit?

[eran0004]

The fact that I investigated more into what the game actually was, discovering that it is this new arcade-like platform, in which I have no interest. The wheel and game together is $380, so not something I'd spend just to see if it's worth it. I will be looking over the forums, and I'll likely get the game, if it turns out that future updates will change the gameplay, or add more of the features I am looking for.

80% of that cost is the wheel, which you already bought. If you could return it the same day I'm sure you could return it the next day as well, which is why it seems weird not to wait for a few more hours until you actually tried it yourself.

 

[TheDabbinDave]

Now I understand! I just wish they made it all together instead of separating SPORT and a possible GT7 for the near future. I was dedicated to purchase g29 steering wheel so that I can race with my favorite classic cars.

Get a T300

 

[Nick Bustos]

I seen the t300 it just doesn’t have more options on the wheel rather than a g29 would and also I would like to have clutch pedal as well.

 

[MacBaby]

Sales strategy , PS 5 with GT 7
All to make sales, its a business , all about money.

Well, until now, all the consoles (PS1, PS2 and PS3) have had 2 GT-titles, so if this history continues, GT7 for PS4 will launch just around the same time as the PS5 is released, like it happened with GT6, to squeeze out the last drops of the PS4-sales.

 

[Knukel]

It's bottled somewhere in the Pacific ocean.

 

[EFCMick]

I agree this game is a poor showing!! No excuse nowadays for a £50 game to not have comprehensive online and offline game modes! I agree the mechanics of the game are fantastic, it plays really well, but i found myself looking for things to do and the total lack of offline racing, cars, tracks, and modification abilities makes it feel like an add-on as opposed to a full game. As has been previously said, the lack of overall content in this game is terrible, waited years for this game and got bored of it within a couple of hours.

There are countless amounts of people here that seem to ignore this. It isn't part of the main series - it's a standalone title with the spirit of GT baked onto it.

If this was a standalone online only game it should have been half the price! A £50 game should be COMPLETE and cater for all players.

 

[MacBaby]

UPDATE: My inner GT-fan could not resist the temptation of getting the game with the release-day discount, so after all, I bought the game.

So far I am positively surprised with especially the car sounds, which after 20 years finally is on point, and the MC-steering and the graphics The menus are also very beautiful.

I am still hoping for some future updates with more cars and functions, which would bring more of an old school GT-feel to the game, but let's see..

 

[ynot]

I've been a fan of Gran Turismo since I played GT 1 in my uncles house. What hooked me on GT in comparison to other racing games at the time, was that almost no matter what road car you had in real life, you were able to find it in GT, tune it up and race it. You could decide in detail which kind of exhaust you wanted, and change the parts individually as you liked. You could build a career in different class races, from the most niche British Classic Cars races, FF only, Tour of Japan or whatever you liked. You could take licenses and progress in your career. The game enhanced and developed these features in GT4, GT5 and until GT6.

In GT Sport it seems like everything has changed. Career mode is as good as gone? Until now, only 164 cars are confirmed, heck, even GT1 had more cars than that, and GT6 had over 1,200! Will over 1,000 cars magically be added in future updates? I highly doubt it. The detailed tuning is gone, now you tune the cars like in the most arcade-like games that exist, with a slider! Where is the spirit of Gran Turismo? The features that made Gran Turismo special, seem to have disappeared in GTS, and I am seriously thinking of just sticking to GT6, or move over to PC2, because I feel that GTS is a hit-and-a-miss in many aspects, and that it has developed into something that is very far from the previous GT-titles, and I fear that GTS will make many people abandon the series.

The spirit is alive and well. Out of the 1,200 cars that were in GT6 how many did you actually use? All 1,200 were not really race worthy. You may have bought them all but no one really raced them all. We all had a few cars that we liked and raced them over and over. As for career mode. It seems the same as GT6 to me and a little better. I agree that it is not really a career mode like PCARS 1 had but I got bored with that real fast and stopped. I like completing the challenges in GT, trying to get gold and posting a better time than my friends. As for tuning it is the same as it has been in GT5 and GT6. Maybe your missing something. No, you can't seem to buy parts to upgrade your engine and suspension but I'm OK with that. But you can just buy a better performing version of the same car. Take the Mustang, there is a street, rally, Gr.4, and Gr.3 versions. No need to buy a street car and try to make it a race car. Now just buy the race car. I agree there is no Tour of Japan or Britain anymore but I'm OK with that too. Don't stay too long on GT6 and be stuck in the past. I am sure the GT6 servers will be shut down soon anyway like they did with the GT5 servers as soon as 6 came out. The future is GT Sport. It is still Gran Turismo. It is a beautiful game with great looking cars, graphics, and tracks. I for one will get used to not having some features from the past and will OK with that. I race online with my club and club friends anyway. Best racing I have done since GT5. For me that where it's at.

Loving my Gran Turismo

 

[AMGholics]

Well, until now, all the consoles (PS1, PS2 and PS3) have had 2 GT-titles, so if this history continues, GT7 for PS4 will launch just around the same time as the PS5 is released, like it happened with GT6, to squeeze out the last drops of the PS4-sales.

What happened with GT6 launch near PS4 is was not any sort of sound business strategy to milk gamers but just more of PD's incompetence. Thus it did a mere 5 million in sales compared to every previous Gt near ten million or higher.

Neither GT2 or GT4 came so close to a new consoles launch for a very logical reason, a franchise like GT sales into its second year.

 

[MK500]

The spirit is alive and well...I race online with my club and club friends anyway. Best racing I have done since GT5. For me that where it's at.

Loving my Gran Turismo

I think it's clear that if online racing in a private lobby with your friends is what you want exclusively; then this game is good. I won't say excellent because I would think a game with a massive well funded development team that was making an online exclusive racing game would have developed a LOT of different online game modes to cover a broader audience. Think of how many different ways you can play say COD online; for example.

It would also have incredible matchmaking for lobbies -- so you can make new friends, tons of leaderboards, amazing spectator systems showing the most exciting current races going on; and cool innovative stuff we've never seen in an online racing game before. Maybe some of this stuff is there and I missed it (I don't really race online much; as I'm not that good...and repetitively losing while trying to race clean -- and getting bashed into walls -- is un-fun for me).

But what about those of us who would like to play Gran Turismo? I mean, you seem to be saying we should throw out everything that is Gran Turismo and focus on "the future"; which also seems to be what Polyphony is telling us. Let me try to draw an analogy that begins to demonstrate how weird that sounds to me: Let's say I was just sold a new Ferrari. As it turns out I need a flat bed to get it home. It doesn't have an engine. BUT it has the most amazing entertainment system! It is internet connected all the time; and lets me connect to all my friends in their engine-less Ferraris! It isn't the most perfect analogy; but it does perfectly sum up my emotional state right now.

When Kaz and company made it clear that GT Sport IS the new Gran Turismo; that's what I thought he meant. I guess what he might have meant is that Gran Turismo is discontinued and replaced with Sport; which eliminates 80% of Gran Turismo features. If so, it should just be called Polyphony Sport or something.

I want to fill my virtual garage with a NB Miata, last gen NSX race car, Toyota GT ONE, modded Tesla Model S, modded Tesla Model 3, and one of those new E series race cars. I want to modify street cars with things like rims, turbos, intake and exhaust, fins, you name it. I want to drive them against really smart AI -- that can be adjusted to be smart enough to challenge me but not make my life hell.

To be honest; I'm not all that excited about most of the cars in GTS. They are mostly what I would call "transitional" cars between ICE history and E future. I think the really interesting cars are the older ICE cars where there was MUCH more variety and the futuristic cars; which are all E or hybrid.

Sorry, I know. I'm ranting. I'm just frustrated and sad. I'm a big fan of this series.

 

[rono_thomas]

When Kaz and company made it clear that GT Sport IS the new Gran Turismo; that's what I thought he meant

There was a tagline - they were going to burn the other format to the ground and build a new one. That's pretty definitive that GTS was never going to be anything like its predecessors.

 

[dylpro]

Out of the 1,200 cars that were in GT6 how many did you actually use? All 1,200 were not really race worthy. You may have bought them all but no one really raced them all.

THIS! I really grappled with whether or not I was going to preorder and then the day before release I bit the bullet. I too was one who was at first disappointed with the lack of cars in GTS. Then looking back on it, I thought about how much I really used any of them. I would say that 95% of the people who played GT6 drove more than half the cars in the game. I get that the apparent "spirit" of Gran Turismo had become collecting cars, but was that really what the game was suppose to be?

What really made me buy this game was that I had to open my mind to new possibilities. My PS3 died less than 3 months after GT6 came out so I hardly played it. I made the decision to invest in a PS4 instead which came with Far Cry 4, thus expanding my genre of gaming. Since I've owned my PS4 I haven't owned a single racing game. On PS3/2 I was playing almost exclusively racing games, more so exclusively GT series games. There are so many great games out there that I wasn't giving a chance because I was only utilizing 1 genre. After having expanded my gaming experience so much over the time I've had my PS4, I can go into GTS knowing it won't be the same, but willing to be open to the new experience it offers.

The old GT format is dead. For the time being at least. You can't keep living in the past guys. PD realized this and is broadening their approach to their games, something I respect. I'm not going to let the fact that the game different from older GT games take away from what I think will be a great game in its own right.

Briefly played the demo, just not much because I didn't have the time. I'm sitting here surfing GTP until the game comes in. According to the tracking, it's out for delivery!

 

[ynot]

THIS! I really grappled with whether or not I was going to preorder and then the day before release I bit the bullet. I too was one who was at first disappointed with the lack of cars in GTS. Then looking back on it, I thought about how much I really used any of them. I would say that 95% of the people who played GT6 drove more than half the cars in the game. I get that the apparent "spirit" of Gran Turismo had become collecting cars, but was that really what the game was suppose to be?

What really made me buy this game was that I had to open my mind to new possibilities. My PS3 died less than 3 months after GT6 came out so I hardly played it. I made the decision to invest in a PS4 instead which came with Far Cry 4, thus expanding my genre of gaming. Since I've owned my PS4 I haven't owned a single racing game. On PS3/2 I was playing almost exclusively racing games, more so exclusively GT series games. There are so many great games out there that I wasn't giving a chance because I was only utilizing 1 genre. After having expanded my gaming experience so much over the time I've had my PS4, I can go into GTS knowing it won't be the same, but willing to be open to the new experience it offers.

The old GT format is dead. For the time being at least. You can't keep living in the past guys. PD realized this and is broadening their approach to their games, something I respect. I'm not going to let the fact that the game different from older GT games take away from what I think will be a great game in its own right.

Briefly played the demo, just not much because I didn't have the time. I'm sitting here surfing GTP until the game comes in. According to the tracking, it's out for delivery!

Send me a friend request. Lets race. Lobby opens tonight around 8:00pm central

 

[ynot]

I think it's clear that if online racing in a private lobby with your friends is what you want exclusively; then this game is good. I won't say excellent because I would think a game with a massive well funded development team that was making an online exclusive racing game would have developed a LOT of different online game modes to cover a broader audience. Think of how many different ways you can play say COD online; for example.

It would also have incredible matchmaking for lobbies -- so you can make new friends, tons of leaderboards, amazing spectator systems showing the most exciting current races going on; and cool innovative stuff we've never seen in an online racing game before. Maybe some of this stuff is there and I missed it (I don't really race online much; as I'm not that good...and repetitively losing while trying to race clean -- and getting bashed into walls -- is un-fun for me).

But what about those of us who would like to play Gran Turismo? I mean, you seem to be saying we should throw out everything that is Gran Turismo and focus on "the future"; which also seems to be what Polyphony is telling us. Let me try to draw an analogy that begins to demonstrate how weird that sounds to me: Let's say I was just sold a new Ferrari. As it turns out I need a flat bed to get it home. It doesn't have an engine. BUT it has the most amazing entertainment system! It is internet connected all the time; and lets me connect to all my friends in their engine-less Ferraris! It isn't the most perfect analogy; but it does perfectly sum up my emotional state right now.

When Kaz and company made it clear that GT Sport IS the new Gran Turismo; that's what I thought he meant. I guess what he might have meant is that Gran Turismo is discontinued and replaced with Sport; which eliminates 80% of Gran Turismo features. If so, it should just be called Polyphony Sport or something.

I want to fill my virtual garage with a NB Miata, last gen NSX race car, Toyota GT ONE, modded Tesla Model S, modded Tesla Model 3, and one of those new E series race cars. I want to modify street cars with things like rims, turbos, intake and exhaust, fins, you name it. I want to drive them against really smart AI -- that can be adjusted to be smart enough to challenge me but not make my life hell.

To be honest; I'm not all that excited about most of the cars in GTS. They are mostly what I would call "transitional" cars between ICE history and E future. I think the really interesting cars are the older ICE cars where there was MUCH more variety and the futuristic cars; which are all E or hybrid.

Sorry, I know. I'm ranting. I'm just frustrated and sad. I'm a big fan of this series.

I get your frustration. But 80% gone from the game, that's not realistic. Try using the Arcade and then Custom. Some good racing there. As for online, yes it can be a bear to find the right people. I have been working on that since 2011 and we have some good regulars that are very competitive. Send me a friend request and come race with us. No one will wreck you on purpose. All skill levels welcome. We'll make you better. Will online tonight and every Wednesday from here on out. Other days of the week too. We will be racing all the categories in the game. Join my Ready Or Not Racing community on PSN.

 

[D_M]

MacBaby,

I'm happy to hear that you are enjoying the game. I think some of the other posters just can't relate. It has a lot to do with how each of us experienced the older games. The older GTs allowed each of us to create many different alternative individual playing modes. I was never interested smoke, livery editor, car sounds, rain, fog, track editor, missions, etc. I thoroughly enjoyed online and believe that there is nothing like playing against real players. The idea of tuning the yellow bird or the F40 to see how hard I could push those cars online before I wrecked, was one of my mini game modes. It wasn't about adding gobs of horse power. I enjoyed tuning the suspension, brakes, and the differential of the hard to tame older models so that they could compete online. Plenty of better drivers would leave me in the dust. But once in a while, I would run into a clean driver who's skill level was inline with the most I could get out of one of those cars. The result was entertainment at its finest. Me feverishly trying to keep the yellow bird on the green hell and the other player would be dying with laughter, while predicting my demise with every tank slapper.

Comments from some of the other posters reminded me how much I enjoyed GT5 prologue, which was sparsely populated as well. For me, GT was just missing a refined penalty system and a great damage model. Maybe it's a hardware or a resource issue. I am not a programer or a game developer, so I don't know what the limitations are. I view GT has an entity to be expanded, where stuff is added to the game without removing the elements that was already in GT5/GT6. I even enjoyed the random used car lot that annoyed the heck out of some people. I am on the sideline for now, but will probably fold with holiday deals.

 

[MK500]

I feel like I must be missing something. If I review the posts in this thread that are positive about GTS; this is what I'm seeing:

1) It's quality over quantity.

Do you really feel the quality of this game is better than the earlier entries in the series? Have you played the earlier games (say GT3 and GT4?). Is the quality better than their competitors? I don't feel the physics are especially accurate or better. For cars that exist in this game; in real life I've driven various 911-esque Porsches, a Ferrari 458, and my daily driver (Mazda MX-5); I don't feel their representations in the game are especially accurate. The MX-5 stands out as especially poor. The game version is spinning tires and sliding all over the track; and I assure you the real one is way more "stuck". If anything the tire physics feel like a step down from say GT4; and all the cars feel somewhat "normalized" or averaged out. All the cars in a class seem to handle similarly; which is maybe a sacrifice they made to make it more online competition friendly. Yes the graphics are phenomenal; but honestly...it's 2017. There are MANY racing games with phenomenal graphics. What this game is supposed to be about is driving, right?

2) What's the point in having 1200 cars when you really only play with a handful?

Well, I guess I'm paying $60 for a AAA title from an extremely well funded large development team; so I have certain expectations. They have had many years to focus on this title. They also have a HUGE archive of existing high quality 3D models and years of car and track data and analysis. There is no reason they shouldn't have at least 400 to 500 cars and every single track any prior title contained. Car enthusiasts have really wide ranging tastes; and having a lot of cars available is about making sure everyone has the option to drive the cars that they are excited about. Maybe I only play with a dozen cars; but my dozen cars probably will be a lot different than yours. This whole line of reasoning feels like making excuses for a clearly poor showing in terms of depth of content.

3) This is all about the best online experience! At least Polyphony is trying something new/innovating.

So is this the best online racing experience possible? I mean, given my points above; they must have poured ALL their substantial resources into the online portion of the game right? It should be incredibly good. It should be fun for all levels of drivers. It should have tons of features. It should have a great progression system to ease you into online racing. It should have awesome spectator features and a place to see a list of all you can watch and learn from.

I've been playing online racing games for a really long time. Example: I've spent hundreds of hours racing online with a Sega Dreamcast over DIAL-UP MODEM 20 years ago. There have been really fun online racing games in existence for over 20 years.

So how does GTS compare? So far it feels pretty meh. I would rate it a 3 out of 5 at best for online. There are very few races available. The matchmaking is extremely limited. The lobbies have limited social aspect so far (no voice and I haven't seen a single person text chat yet on the core series races).

There are dozens of AAA online games to learn from if you want to make the most amazing online game ever...did the Polyphony developers take the time to examine these games and pull the most fun aspects together into something amazing? Just go play something like Overwatch or COD to get a sense for how a fully online focused game should work. Does it feel to you like they did their due diligence here?

Also the servers/network have gone down for about 15% of the races I've entered; and I've experienced multiple hour "maintenance" periods when playing what I thought was the offline portion of the game. When this happens you are literally "locked up" until the maintenance window ends (assuming you don't want to lose your progress). Is this the kind of showing we should expect from a Sony studio with massive funding and decades of experience? My wife just about killed me last night when I had to leave the PS4 running for almost 2 hours at a black screen (with fans running high) just to allow my 30-lap race to save. It took me an hour to finish that race and I wasn't going to shut down the PS4 and lose that progress. I had to leave it run until 11pm PST and she wanted to sleep. Luckily the progress circle came up and it saved promptly at 11pm when the servers came back online :-/

4) X Y Z feature will be coming in DLC/regular free updates.

How has that worked out for you in the past with Polyphony? When you buy a game you should review it based on the game NOW. Not hypothetical future updates.

Look, I'm not a hater. I love Polyphony. I LOVE the Gran Turismo series. I have owned every single game they have produced on the original system they were produced for (including Japanese only titles I had to import). I truly want them to succeed here. Giving them a free pass isn't going to help them improve though. They shouldn't get a participation trophy for just showing up. We need to be providing honest critiques.

What if this was the first Gran Turismo game you ever played and you were new to Playstation. How would you come away from the experience of buying this game?

I think the reviewers are being far too kind with this game.

I have an open mind. I'm still playing GTS several hours per day. Please help me get more excited about it by showing me what I'm missing.

 

[MacBaby]

1) It's quality over quantity.

I agree, it seems like everyone agrees that the premise of "less is more" is always true.

2) What's the point in having 1200 cars when you really only play with a handful?

I agree. 1200 cars are not necessarily needed, but at least 10 different cars per manufacturer or something like that. The gist of Gran Turismo which has always set it apart of other racing games, was the fact that you could race normal road cars. Especially the absence of the classic cars, and cars older than 2010, is a mistake to me.

3) This is all about the best online experience! At least Polyphony is trying something new/innovating.

Not to mention, that the level for players completely new to online racing, would be very high. Although someone has a driver rating of E, doesn't necessarily mean they are good/bad drivers (so far I have experienced). I think the difficulty level of the daily races is pretty high.

4) X Y Z feature will be coming in DLC/regular free updates.

I agree. I'm a big optimist for updates, but the bottom line is, that you can never take it for granted, that all the stuff we want will be added, and most likely not.

 

[De Goeiste]

It died with GT5