Official GT5 discussion thread

[Acert93]

And also no DLC ...

And GT-PS3 also had great prologue demo sales as well. But the point was just adding up sales doesn't mean much. Go back to the launch window (first 90 days) and look at the sales and compare that as well as first year sales of GT2/3/4 to 5 and there is, undoubtably, a decline in sales in addition to the GT5 sales being backloaded.

Sure, DLC helps offset some of the decline in revenue--but GT5 also had a huge development window/team. Not to mention that DLC, while making money, also costs money to make.

Obviously asking PS3 owners in a GT5 fan thread their opinion is going to have some very heartfelt and deep convictions but broadening the view to the market response show GT5 did not fair as well critically, in sales, and the gap in metacritic and sales data compared to the competition has changed substantially since GT2/3/4. GT5's sales decline cannot simply be explained as a smaller PS3 install base alone. That is an impact, but the fact other platforms have competing products that have grown in sales and consumer awareness also have a role.

And as hard as it is to believe, having a game perpetually "on the horizon" doesn't help, either. A couple years back I worked for a major company that had an ever struggling balance of "product quality" "product features" and "product availability." The last point was important because even if you had quality and features if your product was not in stores ready for walk in/walk out sales it serious diminished the brands and sales.

GT gearhead affectionados will be sympathetic to the long development cycle but there is a negative market impact of this approach as well.

GT4 and GT3 also had price drops. And GT4 had prologue version and GT3 had some other special versions.

Yes, but my point was GT3/4 had more front loaded sales at higher ASP.

 

[Arwin]

Almost nobody is sympathetic to the long development cycles. It is very clear that at some point Sony drew the line and said 'enough is enough, you'll put it out even if you think it's not perfect'. And right they were - two years of patches later the game is much improved, and you can imagine that it's only now starting to become a game that PD wanted to release.

I've personally said long ago though - they should build a good framework, and then modularly fill it up with cool stuff through DLC and make that available on PSN, allowing people to get things piecemeal, but get them early, all the while saying 'or you can wait until we've got a decent BluRay package and buy that brick and mortar'. They did something inbetween with that, with GT:HD, GT5 Prologue, etc., so they did learn, but it could have been better. I think GT5 Prologue was also the first to be released in the US. And now there are new versions of GT5 out in stores with all the DLC up to a certain point included, and/or themed with the GT Academy stuff.

Mind you there is also a lot of really good stuff in this game, as I've said before - the list of good is better than the list of good of any other game, and that's why the game still has so many fans, not because people are stupid, as you don't intend to suggest perhaps, but please be careful.

I have and play basically every half-serious racing game and have done so for 25 years, and I have all platforms (PC, PS3, 360 - I also bought all big racing games on the original Xbox, incidentally), except anything Nintendo, who have still to convince me that they do anything for me personally as a gamer (as opposed to, say, me and my son ).

I think personally I would be pretty good at redesigning the game by this point. Perhaps I should write an article on it and try to have it noticed, you never know in these modern times, Sony would actually end up reading it. (love Yoshida for that stuff) I actually wrote a few columns for IGN Cars back in the day.

 

[Acert93]

Mind you there is also a lot of really good stuff in this game, as I've said before - the list of good is better than the list of good of any other game, and that's why the game still has so many fans, not because people are stupid, as you don't intend to suggest perhaps, but please be careful.

Be careful not to put unspoken words in someone's mouth and then warn them of possibly doing such and we will be a.o.k.

 

[tuna]

Yes, but my point was GT3/4 had more front loaded sales at higher ASP.

Do you have any data to back that up?

 

[djskribbles]

Because GT3 and GT4 were the highest selling GTs in the series (which were also the two released on PS2, the console with the highest install base), there's a good chance that they did have a higher ASP.

Regardless, GT5 shipped 7.4m before it dropped to 39.99 exactly a year ago. With the XL/Academy Edition released early this year, it's probably close to GT/GT2 numbers, which is still impressive to say the least.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Because GT3 and GT4 were the highest selling GTs in the series (which were also the two released on PS2, the console with the highest install base), there's a good chance that they did have a higher ASP.

Regardless, GT5 shipped 7.4m before it dropped to 39.99 exactly a year ago. With the XL/Academy Edition released early this year, it's probably close to GT/GT2 numbers, which is still impressive to say the least.

GT + GT2 was 20m units. No way will GT5P and GT5 come close to that.

 

[Nesh]

GT + GT2 was 20m units. No way will GT5P and GT5 come close to that.

I think he ment clise to either GT1 or GT2 hence the / and not the +

 

[djskribbles]

I think he ment clise to either GT1 or GT2 hence the / and not the +

This.

To be clear, I meant GT5 alone is probably close to GT/GT2 numbers by now.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Oh. Well, I think you also have to consider that they're working so slowly that not only are they not producing very much material per game any more, but they're not even producing as many games as they used to.

I find it hard to express how unimpressed I am by how detailed the few new car models are. To me, I don't find it impressive that someone made a model that you can take screenshots of. It's what CAD guys do every day in the jet engine industry. Quite the opposite. The part I find "jaw-dropping" is that someone was modeling radio buttons on a VW hippie van when Laguna Seca looks like dog crap and the Lamborghini Countach has only 4,000 polygons. To me, that's a complete waste of time, because maybe 1% of the users will stare at the radio, but 100% of the users will do a lap around Laguna Seca, and 100% of the users will get an old GT4 car as a reward for completing a sequence of challenges.

The problem is everything has an opportunity cost---do one thing, and it means you can't do some other thing---and PD has been sacrificing the quality of the racing in order to improve the quality of the photo mode. If they had billed the game as Car Photographer 2010, that would have been okay, but this was GT5. This review sums up how I feel about the actual "game" part of the game.

 

[Nesh]

The problem is everything has an opportunity cost---do one thing, and it means you can't do some other thing---and PD has been sacrificing the quality of the racing in order to improve the quality of the photo mode.

This is kind of misleading depending on how it is interpreted. Quality of the visuals have been sacrificed in many areas yes. "Quality of racing" is a very generalized term and vague. Someone can argue (and rightfully so) that racing experience in terms of gameplay is better and improved in many areas.

 

[fearsomepirate]

This is kind of misleading depending on how it is interpreted. Quality of the visuals have been sacrificed in many areas yes. "Quality of racing" is a very generalized term and vague. Someone can argue (and rightfully so) that racing experience in terms of gameplay is better and improved in many areas.

In terms of gameplay, the AI wouldn't have been considered particularly good last gen, as it's virtually unchanged from GT4. Since most of the events have you racing against AI cars, that's a big deal.

 

[tuna]

In terms of gameplay, the AI wouldn't have been considered particularly good last gen, as it's virtually unchanged from GT4. Since most of the events have you racing against AI cars, that's a big deal.

Doesn't the AI get better as you level up? I think I read something like that....

 

[djskribbles]

This is kind of misleading depending on how it is interpreted. Quality of the visuals have been sacrificed in many areas yes. "Quality of racing" is a very generalized term and vague. Someone can argue (and rightfully so) that racing experience in terms of gameplay is better and improved in many areas.

+1. I realize opinions differ, but how a casual racer fan can judge the quality of a sim racer is beyond me, especially because he hasn't come close to beating it. That's like me judging an RPG when I've maybe played 1 RPG in my life, and I've only played it for 4hrs.

To me, the gameplay is one of the biggest improvements, mainly because of the improvements to the driving model/physics.

In terms of gameplay, the AI wouldn't have been considered particularly good last gen, as it's virtually unchanged from GT4. Since most of the events have you racing against AI cars, that's a big deal.

Ask any longtime GT fan and they will tell you the AI has considerably improved. And the AI in GT5 is at least as good as the competition.

Yes the AI drivers follow a pretty strict path, but that's how real life racing is for the most part. There is an optimal race line that most drivers follow; they will draft/slipstream and attempt to pass at an opportune time, depending on how aggressive the driver is. In GT5, the AI is much better at detecting their surroundings and will avoid crashes much better than previous games, whereas previous GTs, they would pretty much just run into you. For example, this wouldn't happen in previous GTs:

I still find it extremely funny that you're judging a game when 1. you've said yourself that you're not a hardcore race fan, and 2. you haven't even got to the latter stages of the game, let alone complete it.

 

[Nesh]

Yep
Regarding the AI thats one of the areas that reviews have been extremely unfair with. I felt there wasnt a proper playthtrough by most reviewers. Its like they got the review copies late and tried to write the review by skimming through it. They didnt descripe the actual product faithfully and made assumptions by comparing other games that were doing it wrong assuming a fault in the AI for following the optimal path. And it appears fearsomepirate thought the same too because the cars naturally should follow the optimal line to lget the fastest possible lap.
The packed cars following that optimal line is also true in real life events. This is how professionals drive and this is how F1 pilots see the path for best accuracy. It becomes nothing more than math. People wont notice that much in F1 though because a second behind equals bigger distance between opponents and thus less apparent. Check though other racing events and thats what you sre going to see. GT5'esque path unless they come too close and they have to avoid each other. And thats also true for GT5 too

 

[joker454]

I still find it extremely funny that you're judging a game when 1. you've said yourself that you're not a hardcore race fan, and 2. you haven't even got to the latter stages of the game, let alone complete it.

I presume that means you completed Forza 4 then? Honest question, since you are saying GT5's ai is comparable to the competition, hence I presume that means you finished Forza 4 as your basis for comparison. I also ask because back when I played GT5 it would do stuff like an ai car would just turn into me, and keep pressing into my car because the ai was trying to get back to it's fixed path. So the ai car would just keep scraping against mine over and over, reality be damned. Or another example is when you'd start a race and every car would take the same path every single time, you could see it happening. I literally would be able to restart a race and know exactly where to go because the ai cars would always take the same paths. Contrast that to Forza 4 where you would see the ai cars not always take the same path. It's stuff like that which shattered the ai illusion for me anyways, although maybe they patched that out since I last played it. When I last played both games F4's ai seemed more human to me than GT5's.

 

[Nesh]

I presume that means you completed Forza 4 then? Honest question, since you are saying GT5's ai is comparable to the competition, hence I presume that means you finished Forza 4 as your basis for comparison. I also ask because back when I played GT5 it would do stuff like an ai car would just turn into me, and keep pressing into my car because the ai was trying to get back to it's fixed path. So the ai car would just keep scraping against mine over and over, reality be damned. Or another example is when you'd start a race and every car would take the same path every single time, you could see it happening. I literally would be able to restart a race and know exactly where to go because the ai cars would always take the same paths. Contrast that to Forza 4 where you would see the ai cars not always take the same path. It's stuff like that which shattered the ai illusion for me anyways, although maybe they patched that out since I last played it. When I last played both games F4's ai seemed more human to me than GT5's.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdXriG8P31E&feature=youtube_gdata_player

 

[joker454]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdXriG8P31E&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Thanks that's a perfect example. If you were racing on a real track, came tearing around a corner and suddenly saw a parked car in the middle of the track looking back at you, what are the odds you would be able to avoid it and not smash into it? In the real world on a real race track it would be chaos with some avoiding it and some hitting it. You can see in that video how un-human the GT5 ai is compared to F4's. There is simply no way that in the real world a situation like that would act out how GT5's ai shows it, basically being executed in a robotic manner. Someone should try that on the Nurburgring, park a car around a corner and don't tell any of the drivers that day, then tally up how much carnage ensues.

 

[djskribbles]

I presume that means you completed Forza 4 then? Honest question, since you are saying GT5's ai is comparable to the competition, hence I presume that means you finished Forza 4 as your basis for comparison. I also ask because back when I played GT5 it would do stuff like an ai car would just turn into me, and keep pressing into my car because the ai was trying to get back to it's fixed path. So the ai car would just keep scraping against mine over and over, reality be damned. Or another example is when you'd start a race and every car would take the same path every single time, you could see it happening. I literally would be able to restart a race and know exactly where to go because the ai cars would always take the same paths. Contrast that to Forza 4 where you would see the ai cars not always take the same path. It's stuff like that which shattered the ai illusion for me anyways, although maybe they patched that out since I last played it. When I last played both games F4's ai seemed more human to me than GT5's.

I don't have a 360 so I haven't played it from start to finish, but I have played the latter part of the game for roughly 6-8 hours at my buddies house. To avoid sounding hypocritical, I have not once judged Forza 4 as a whole claiming that I know everything about the game. I have only judged things like visuals (not saying anything negative) and physics.

I swear I've had this same debate with someone here. Again, real life racing is, for the most part, following a strict line and passing at an opportune moment. The only time that's not the case is at the beginning of the race where everyone is fighting for position.

Thanks that's a perfect example. If you were racing on a real track, came tearing around a corner and suddenly saw a parked car in the middle of the track looking back at you, what are the odds you would be able to avoid it and not smash into it?

Umm, in that situation, you could quite easily avoid that car. That's a fairly low speed, open corner approaching a chicane... you would have loads of time to see a car there. If it was a high-speed corner with a somewhat obstructed view, then yes, it would be difficult.

Yes, a car standing in the middle of the road facing you is rare, but crashes do happen.

edit: Not sure if that's the same track. Admittedly, the Forza track looks like it has a slightly more obstructed view, and I can't tell what kind of turn that is (high or low speed). If it's a low speed corner, then I stand by my words saying that it would be quite easy to avoid the car. Judging by the cars and the speed they're coming in, my guess is that it is a low speed corner.

I agree with Nesh below, neither are the best... there are examples of bad AI for both games, but neither game is bad overall.

 

[Nesh]

Thanks that's a perfect example. If you were racing on a real track, came tearing around a corner and suddenly saw a parked car in the middle of the track looking back at you, what are the odds you would be able to avoid it and not smash into it? In the real world on a real race track it would be chaos with some avoiding it and some hitting it. You can see in that video how un-human the GT5 ai is compared to F4's.

Only difference the stopped car is visible and cars dont come at full speed on that specific corner. Also there is human like variation in how the players car was avoided by the AI. No fixed way. Secondly there are other videos supposedly demonstrating that AI cars are always unaware of you but there the players car was placed on a more dangerous corner where the AI cars were coming at full speed and harder to spot the players car sooner. Result? Colision.
Either the AI is being criticized for being unhuman for avoiding the players car either its being criticized for being unhuman for not being aware and always hit you. Go figure

Truth is, GT5's AI is not the best but neither is F4 but they are both good. There are plenty of videos demonstrating AI fails and highlights for both but GT5s AI is better than what is claimed and was further improved through the updates

 

[RDK]

Thanks that's a perfect example. If you were racing on a real track, came tearing around a corner and suddenly saw a parked car in the middle of the track looking back at you, what are the odds you would be able to avoid it and not smash into it? In the real world on a real race track it would be chaos with some avoiding it and some hitting it. You can see in that video how un-human the GT5 ai is compared to F4's. There is simply no way that in the real world a situation like that would act out how GT5's ai shows it, basically being executed in a robotic manner. Someone should try that on the Nurburgring, park a car around a corner and don't tell any of the drivers that day, then tally up how much carnage ensues.

sorry but how are you old? thats a joke post? ... watch some motorsport like F1 please .. there would be tons of flags to avoid the car or slow car on the track ... every driver wants to crash lol