Career mode

The problem with the career mode is that it is just one big grind at the moment. The races are super easy so finishing the career doesn't seem to take anything more than just sitting there for couple of hours winning everything on the first try. I did not do many races but I did something like 3 or 4 (plus some time trials) and each one of them was easy to win on the first try. Only race I did not win was when I went into the sand in one race and when coming back to the track I spun again because the 5 second slow down kicked in. And I drove without abs/tcs and without even touching the ai cars or cutting the track. With little practise I could go much faster.

I wish you could start from last position on the grid (not from last place, from last position on the grid) or start with damaged car to make it more challenging.

Gran turismo is the worst in the business imho. The ai in gt is utterly worst, the races are repetitive easy mode and the career is the exact same as in the first gt (no innovation at all). Gran turismo is just one big grind and imho every game developer should look at it as cautious example of what happens when you make grinding the only objective in the game. But still in gt5/6 you can choose to use slower tiers or detune your car for less hp.

What I was hoping is more races and much less unlocking (=less grinding) by having to drive easy to win races to get to the bigger cars. Why is there even a need to unlock anything? Why not just have all races open so people can race what they want? If someone still wants to finish it all he can still do that and get all the achievements.

I understand it is an early version of what to come but because how grindy, repetitive and boring it is now I'm really worried if such basic things are going to be the defining things of the career mode.

EDIT: so how to fix it?
1) remove the grinding aspect. All races open at the beginning. No need to drive cars you don't want to drive to get to race cars you want
2) difficulty adjustment. One size fits all doesn't work. That approach will only make it super easy and boring for one group and impossible and frustrating for other.

 

Difficulty obviously gets harder the further you get, last event AI does 1:32:xx with formula abarth at vallelunga which I think even Greger would find competitive, that is if you couldn't just overtake the whole field at the start . IMO for career to make sense in terms of difficulty the slow starts caused by AI not knowing how to drive in group and the fact that their performance varies dramatically from track to track needs to be sorted out.

Also after watching a lap of AI driving in Vallelunga I'm fairly certain it doesn't quite play by the same rules player does anymore.

 

There is always going to be variation. To get the difficulty levels very close the same or rising slowly during the whole career mode is really really difficult. And in the end it is futile. Difficulty is not really the only problem. It is combination of super easy and grinding. For someone else it is super hard and grinding. For some obscure person all the difficulty levels happen to be perfect

It really isn't rocket science. Difficulty levels. Allow players to ramp up the difficulty as high they want. Just like with the challenges with alien/etc difficulty levels (those races were too easy too though). I'm not going to grind dozens of super easy races hoping it gets challenging at some point. I'm sure there are lots of people like me. Just like there are lots of people who wills struggle to proceed in the ladder because for them it is too difficult. There just is no benefit doing it that way.

I really don't see any downside at all having all the races open from the beginning. If someone wants the achievements from winning all of them he can still do that. Just because it is called career it doesn't mean it should always be the exact same thing. Start with underpowered easy car and win some easy races. Then continue doing that until you have reached the fastest cars. Or races you can't win. Forza 4 had a nice thing where you could just race whatever cars you wanted and not be forced to follow some kind of ladder which forced you to drive cars and races you simply did not want to do for whatever reason.

 

I think this is a very bad idea, why a career mode than anyway? I like the progression aspect, else i could just drive in free mode.

 

The way the career mode is set up is that the only rewards are the achievements. In all other games that have career modes you earn exp/credits/cars/items and your progress is not limited by the available races but also by the cars you have and can buy/get. In ac we already have all the cars and tracks, there is no reward content at all (which is fine). Only thing there is is the achievements. Having it freemode instead of career mode doesn't change anything. The achievements are still there for you to win and get. Except make it better for people who do not want grinding.

 

Id prefer a championship mode. By that I mean you have a different comps (formula abarth/gt3/f1 etc) and you can race in whatever comp whenever you want.

Grinding doesnt interest me. Competing in a 8 race championship with points and getting to the last race and having to win while your rival only needs a 5th does interest me.

Each to their own I guess.

 

I agree with you the fact that we have all cars and track available at the beginning makes the rewards (cars, XP, ...) pointless. Having all the races/events available could be a good thing - BTW that is what I liked in Forza 4 also.
That's why, if we could have a way to set difficulty it might help some people or at least not discourage them

 

Unlockable skins are a good idea imho - cheap to implement and provides tangible rewards.

 

Did you guys read what @Aris wrote?
We can make our own career, have some patience and people (me included) will make some events/championships.

 

I did and was more than happy with it (see my comment )
Nevertheless, about that difficulty thing that bothers me a little there is one step between a cfg file and UI slider (or else). But I do agree the cfg file is already cool
It's just that if it's in the UI you might touch a much wider public, don't you think ?

 

That's for sure, but for now we have to use what we have.

 

Agree with th OP, my ideas of a career mode would be testing against 2-3 A.I drivers for a race seat, full championship with practice, quali, race, contract offers from teams/manufacturers, sponsorship etc, etc

 

There are already mod-made championships out there available for download. In less than 1 day.
Soon there will be many.

I think the included career is a nice simple introduction for newcomers to sim racing.
Most simcore players won't even bother with it anyway, too busy out licking the tarmac to check humidity before their 72 hour race.

 

Best is where the AI adjust to how you drive.

BTW does anyone like the way "Time trial" works? I can't stand it.

 

What i dont understand is that people look down on career modes in some games. Especially i played Grand Tourismo 4 on PS2 and it was the most amazing thing for me. I did some races and drove them in real time for hours. I think thats pretty hardcore. Saying that is grinding.. idk. Unless you have an open word racer you pretty much grind around a few tracks anyway. GT4 had gameplay for month and month, that is why it became as big as it is right now. Well besides the fact to be a system seller. Its physics where also pretty nice

But as long as you are able to drive your own races and even choose every car, which ac will always have i guess. you cant call it grinding because you get nothing from it, just pleasure maybe.

After all you learn a track by repetition, so having a 2 round race with 98% ai is not fun for me because i need at least 10 rounds back to back to learn the track halfway good.

 

I read it is better to be slow at first.. the outrage is real. if its true, lets not talk about it and wait for a fix..... and blame alpha
There should be a bug report in the forums for that too then

 

I for one like a carear mode as I don`t like MP..

 

well you can still make it with some progress .. having championships for example ... separate for openwhellers (you start with Abarth and move up if you finish in some place (higher difficulty higher you have to finish, or based on your results you could skip some classes) with retro sideline or something) and the same with other cars .. and you could choose which car in that class you wanna drive (there could be mixed class championships)
Imporatant thing is that you are not racing 5 laps races but full champs where you could catch up if you had bad race or track that doesn`t suit you and you are not force to drive mp4 if you preffer z4 ..
Nothing new or original model but simple, easy to implement and working well ....

 

i guess i'm in the minority - i like the career mode. Been doing that all the time since RC was released.

 

It could be difficult or time consuming to implement. First you need to store the skins in such way that users can not just copy paste them and use easily. 2nd some kind of unlocking mechanism needs to be coded. 3. And even then you can't even use them online properly because of how poorly the ac online system works atm. It doesn't even allow you to choose the skin for your own car.