Official GT5 discussion thread

[joker454]

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.

I agree, but I would not expect the car next to me to keep scraping against my car to get to the correct driving line, unless it's nascar I suppose.

The only time that's not the case is at the beginning of the race where everyone is fighting for position.

I also agree there, but that's where I also saw how the ai cars in GT5 always jockeyed for position the exact same way every time at the start of a race. That let me simply restart the race and have the advantage because I knew what they were going to do and where they were going to go. That didn't work in F4 because they didn't always do the same thing. It was like Pac Man ai vs Ms Pac Man ai, the former being totally predictable and I could pattern my way around it, whereas the latter added some unpredictability to the ai where my patterns did not work.

Umm, in that situation, you could quite easily avoid that car. That's a low speed, open corner... you would have loads of time to see a car there. If it was a high-speed with a somewhat obstructive 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..

I don't really agree there. Even when going in the same direction and seeing a car spin out in front of them people still bash into it, it's a very unexpected event and I don't think the results would be as easy to avoid as you say. Give it a try, next time you are on a race track, park around the corner and sit there and have a picnic on the hood of your car. Do you think every driver, even with you in full eyesight, would avoid you? I know Arwin has driven the ring before so he can be our test subject to prove who is correct. Pick a corner with high visibility on the ring, park and enjoy the sun, and we'll see what happens.

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

Yup that's exactly right. I would also criticize Call of Duty ai if every time I stepped out from behind a wall a sniper hit me in the dome every single time right away. That's not good ai, I expect it to be realistic to be considered good ai hence the sniper should miss sometimes. When you are driving and want to change over to the left lane, if there is a car to your left what do you do? Do you just change anyways and scrape against their car until they yield, or do you not change lanes? Or if you drive around the corner and there is a trash can in the middle of the road, do you always avoid it or do you hit it sometimes? If the car in front of you slams the brakes, do you always every time slam on your brakes in time and never rear end them? That was my issue with GT5's ai at the time, it played out in a predictable robotic manner.

Truth is, GT5's AI is not the best but neither is F4. 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

I only played GT5 at launch so I can't comment past that. I do remember ai at the time standing out as a weak point in the game though, and it's also the version of the game I presume reviews were based on.

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

You completely missed the point.

 

[djskribbles]

I agree, but I would not expect the car next to me to keep scraping against my car to get to the correct driving line, unless it's nascar I suppose.




I also agree there, but that's where I also saw how the ai cars in GT5 always jockeyed for position the exact same way every time at the start of a race. That let me simply restart the race and have the advantage because I knew what they were going to do and where they were going to go. That didn't work in F4 because they didn't always do the same thing. It was like Pac Man ai vs Ms Pac Man ai, the former being totally predictable and I could pattern my way around it, whereas the latter added some unpredictability to the ai where my patterns did not work.

Well all I can say is that I have rarely, if ever, experienced these things since the 2.0+ patches. It's been too long since I've played it pre-2.0 to remember. And ultimately, the debate here is judging the game in its current state and whether the AI is bad or left unchanged since previous GTs, and I disagree with both.

I don't really agree there. Even when going in the same direction and seeing a car spin out in front of them people still bash into it, it's a very unexpected event and I don't think the results would be as easy to avoid as you say. Give it a try, next time you are on a race track, park around the corner and sit there and have a picnic on the hood of your car. Do you think every driver, even with you in full eyesight, would avoid you? I know Arwin has driven the ring before so he can be our test subject to prove who is correct. Pick a corner with high visibility on the ring, park and enjoy the sun, and we'll see what happens.

Both situations are unexpected, but a car spinning out of control in front of you vs a car parked in the middle of the road in a low-speed corner are completely different situations. When you approach a low speed, almost unobstructed corner, your eyes are already looking at the apex of the turn. Your eyes will already be drawn in the direction of the parked vehicle, and you'll be traveling at a relatively low speed that would give you several seconds to react. If your reaction time is too slow to react to such a situation, you shouldn't be a pro race car driver. A car spinning out in front of you can either be avoidable or unavoidable, depending on how fast you're going and how close you are.

"quite easy" is probably stretching it, but there is sufficient time to avoid the car in the yt video Nesh posted, IMO.

 

[Nesh]

Yup that's exactly right. I would also criticize Call of Duty ai if every time I stepped out from behind a wall a sniper hit me in the dome every single time right away. That's not good ai, I expect it to be realistic to be considered good ai hence the sniper should miss sometimes. When you are driving and want to change over to the left lane, if there is a car to your left what do you do? Do you just change anyways and scrape against their car until they yield, or do you not change lanes? Or if you drive around the corner and there is a trash can in the middle of the road, do you always avoid it or do you hit it sometimes? If the car in front of you slams the brakes, do you always every time slam on your brakes in time and never rear end them? That was my issue with GT5's ai at the time, it played out in a predictable robotic manner.

No its not right because my point was people dont know what they are complaining about. GT5 was criticized that AI is robotic and oblivious of your existence but it was false and was debunked. Now that there is proof its not the case it is robotic for being aware....irony. More ironic that if in the video the games were switched F4 would have been considered to have better AI for demonstrating awareness while GT5 the bad child for the bad mistakes the AI did. Further more in the video I posted there was nothing robotic in GT5 and it was natural that the car would have been avoided in that specific area of the road. Some responded realistically too and not in a fixed AI behaviour. Check the video again more carefully. Place the car in a different part of the road or on a different track and some could hit you. There are other occasions that the AI may appear robotic but thats not it. Adding random parameters that can cause random stupid AI mistakes like hitting head on towards a stopped car on an open wide road with full visibility while going 70km per hour without the slightest effort to avoid is also flawed and unrealistic unless the game scenario is that its not a professional driver behind the wheel but an easily confused and panicked 40 year old woman going to the supermarket to get her groceries. The Forza 4 segment in the video showed far from realistic AI responses, but a confused AI that did stupid mistakes often giving the impression that it wasnt sure what to do. It even hit the stopped car multiple times to make room. A similar mistake that also occured to me some time ago in GT under other circumstances but not sure if fixed now

 

[joker454]

No its not right because my point was people dont know what they are complaining about. GT5 was criticized that AI is robotic and oblivious of your existence but it was false and was debunked. Now that there is proof its not the case it is robotic for being aware....irony. In the video I posted there was nothing robotic and it was natural that the car would have been avoided in that specific area of the road. Some responded realistically too and not in a fixed AI behaviour. Check the video again more carefully. Place the car in a different part of the road or on a different track and some could hit you. There are other occasions that the AI may appear robotic but thats not it. Adding random parameters that can cause random stupid AI mistakes like hitting head on towards a stopped car on an open wide road with full visibility while going 70km per hour without the slightest effort to avoid is also flawed and unrealistic unless the game scenario is that its not a professional driver behind the wheel but an easily confused and panicked 40 year old woman going to the supermarket to get her groceries. The Forza 4 segment in the video showed far from realistic AI responses, but a confused AI that did stupid mistakes often giving the impression that it wasnt sure what to do. It even hit the stopped car multiple times to make room. A similar mistake that also occured to me some time ago in GT under other circumstances but not sure if fixed now

You're taking this way too far. I'm not saying add if rand() >0.5 then do a KITT Turbo jump over all other cars, but they need to look more human. When I played GT5 the cars behaved the same way every time, it was beyond predictable which tossed any illusion of ai out the window. If someone debunked it then they played a different game than I played at launch. It was the single biggest flaw in the game to me personally, more so than the horrid ui/load times. I can wait a bit for stuff to load, but knowing what a car will do before it does it does not ai make to me. If that was the case then every single F1 race on tv would look the same everytime. This car goes there, that one goes there, they all avoid themselves the same way, I'm basically watching the same race all over again. It doesn't work that way in real life, which is why the ai in GT5 so jumped out at me as being bad. If it's changed since launch as dj says then fine, but it wasn't that way at launch which is when people reviewed the game and why the robotic comments came to light.

That Forza video may show unrealistic behavior but it's also an unrealistic scenario that the user created to prove some unknown point. A far smarter approach would be to play the actual game and then see how the ai responds, then do the same with the competition and compare. That's what the far more sensible websites do rather than determine ai quality of a racing game by placing four cows in the middle of a track and seeing how the cars respond. When played at launch, the ai in F4 to me simply felt better.

 

[Acert93]

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

That has very little, if anything, to do with the "racing" examples given. 99.99% of the time I interact with cars in a racing game it is, you know, racing. Driving the line the best I can, timing passes, seeing if I can take an inside route, avoiding tight binds by going wide, blocking cars from the rear from passing, etc.

What I don't spend my time doing: Squatting, stalled, at a sharp corner trying to break the AI.

But hey, if that is how GT5 gamers play the game, then yeah, that is a great point. But that is a perfect corner case of breaking AI irrelevant to the gameplay.

A great example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0WqAmuSXEQ

 

[djskribbles]

It's not a completely useless video; it demonstrates the awareness of the AI drivers -- something that adds quite a bit to the experience for me. When I play racing sims, I usually use similarly or slightly underpowered cars to challenge myself, so I go through a lot of tight race situations where the enemy AI's awareness of other vehicles is important. This is one area that previous GT games were terrible at. That said, there are plenty of videos out there showing how the AI in both games can be broken at times. But this is straying away from the original debate, and that was whether or not GT5's AI is bad and if it was left "virtually unchanged" from previous GT titles. And in my eyes, someone who has played GT1, 3 and 5 from start to finish and GT4 to near completion, I can say that's definitely not true, and I'm sure any GT fan can attest to that.

 

[Arwin]

AI in GT5 improved immensely in what for me is the most important area: awareness of other cars in corners and of you. As per GT5, they will go to quite a ways to avoid colliding with you. If you drive next to them and you move in their direction laterally, they will go to the side to avoid you, to the point where they'll get their wheels of track rather than collide with you. This is a great help in what is the most frustrating AI behavior to me in realistic games, which is mid-corner collisions caused by the AI sending me off and basically ending the race (if the race is competitive). Forza 3 was particularly offensive in this area, especially combined with the slightly broken rear-grip, and in Forza 4 I wouldn't recommend close racing with AI in corners either.

As for avoiding collisions, it's extremely hard in real life. That is why the yellow flag exists, and I fault games like Gran Turismo for not implementing a yellow flag option first and foremost, to be honest. Since joker454 asked, yes, on the Nurburgring it is extremely dangers, and any car on the track that will force you off your ideal line greatly increases your chance of crashing even if you manage not to hit that car. Incidentally, since you guys already posted plenty of videos showing progress in the area of passing and overtaking and avoiding cars on track, I can only add that Forza 4 does a pretty good job here (though so does GT5 these days), BUT it is important to note it also cheats. It allows cars to break the laws of physics for grip and braking speed to avoid a crash. There's something to say for and against that, it's just a choice.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Thanks that's a perfect example.

I read your post and thought that GT5's cars would all be making a hash of it. But having watched the clip, it seems obvious to me, undeniably, that GT5 has better AI for dealing with stationary objects in the roads. The corner isn't particularly fast, the cars have plenty of vision of the route ahead, and they move around the obstruction. In the F4 example, the cars either stick to their line if its clear, or crash. And after crashing, they don't turn out the way but just keep driving forwards along the line, in total contradiction to how I thought the two games handled AI based on your accounts with GT5 fixing cars to their racing line.

What this means for actual in game racing, I couldn't say, but my expectations would be that GT5 would adapt to a car swinging out etc. more realistically, unless reaction times aren't properly factored in and it's too accurate. Of course, there shouldn't be much of that going on, and I'd have to see comparisons of actual races for a fair comparison which I couldn't find on YouTube.

 

[Arwin]

What this means for actual in game racing, I couldn't say, but my expectations would be that GT5 would adapt to a car swinging out etc. more realistically, unless reaction times aren't properly factored in and it's too accurate. Of course, there shouldn't be much of that going on, and I'd have to see comparisons of actual races for a fair comparison which I couldn't find on YouTube.

It is very important to realise that last bit - there are almost no fair comparisons out there. Both games have areas where they will and won't cope, and many of the videos out there currently were made to try to get the other game put in a bad light, and then counter that. It takes quite some skills as a judge to learn anything objective from it. Proper, honest tests under similar conditions would solve the problem sooner, but is a lot of work of course, also considering various other differences in the two games. You even have to make sure tires used are similar (tirewear comes into play, cars get lighter with fuel consumption), the difficultly level in the game is similar, etc. Then you'll probably run into situations where the AI may be programmed to more specific behaviour to deal with certain corners that the generic routines can't manage to deal with properly, etc.

I still occasionally see cars in both games brake at bad locations, or slow down when they shouldn't have to, and since you have a fixed number of tracks mostly, that can be dealt with - for GT5 you can test the limits of that a little because there is track generation. Even there there are limits to what you can do with the 'track generator', but you can still see that there are limits to what the AI can deal with that are sometimes crossed (resulting sometimes in a wonderful ballet of fying cars )

 

[Shifty Geezer]

For me, the take-home point seems to be that GT5 is a different beast in 2.0 then when it started, and those whose experience stops at GT5 v1 won't appreciate how different things are. If cars were effectively on rails in v1 as described by joker, that doesn't appear to be the case any more. A video showing the new AI might be all that's needed to show GT's improvement - this isn't really a GT vs. Forza thread after all. Forza's only raised as an example of how the rest of the genre has improved and how the standards to which GT5 is to be compared have changed.

 

[Gubbi]

Forza's only raised as an example of how the rest of the genre has improved and how the standards to which GT5 is to be compared have changed.

Sorry for going off topic.

Forza's A.I. hasn't improved since Forza 2, IMO. It still has the overly aggressive bumper-car feel to it which is fine when you race ordinary road cars, but is an endless source of frustration when driving the race class cars (R1-3), where even a slight dent in the bodywork will cost you a second or more per lap.

The A.I. is actually least frustrating on Pro setting. Random driving errors are inserted with increasing frequency for Hardcore and Normal settings, as well as braking in all kinds of weird places as Arwin points out. On Pro the A.I. generally don't make trivial driving errors.

For fun, try the high speed challenge cup for X999 class cars and race the Sedona oval with damage on. Within two laps, you'll be racing against one or two other cars with the rest having wrecked themselves. - Or try to get through the first two corners at Suzuka in a R1 race without hitting an opponent. - Not fun.

Cheers

 

[Nesh]

You're taking this way too far. I'm not saying add if rand() >0.5 then do a KITT Turbo jump over all other cars, but they need to look more human. When I played GT5 the cars behaved the same way every time, it was beyond predictable which tossed any illusion of ai out the window. If someone debunked it then they played a different game than I played at launch. It was the single biggest flaw in the game to me personally, more so than the horrid ui/load times. I can wait a bit for stuff to load, but knowing what a car will do before it does it does not ai make to me. If that was the case then every single F1 race on tv would look the same everytime. This car goes there, that one goes there, they all avoid themselves the same way, I'm basically watching the same race all over again. It doesn't work that way in real life, which is why the ai in GT5 so jumped out at me as being bad. If it's changed since launch as dj says then fine, but it wasn't that way at launch which is when people reviewed the game and why the robotic comments came to light.

It depends what you call predictable. If what you call predictable is the optimum line the cars try to follow then you are wrong. The optimum line is always always the same, so the path will always be extremely similar each time. Thats what makes real life events intense because when you are dealing with professional drivers that follow accuracy it is extremely hard to take over and there are only two things that can get you to the first position. Being extremely accurate to minimize distance and error, and the opportunity to exploit the rare opportunity that a rival will make a mistake.
Where GT5 needs to improve to make the racers more believable IMO are the following:
1) the AI reactions to danger while competing closely. Remember in real life a small mistake can take you out of the race, adrenaline and fear are prevalent in real life
2) strengthen AI effort to close gaps and make attempts to confuse you. Not simply be aware of you, but be aware that you are trying to get a better position than "him" and must protect its position
3) 1) and 2) exist in GT5 but not strongly enough, and I am not very sure about 2) if it was coincidence. These two points will become more crucial if when a car touches another they lose easier control and will be more integrated to the racing strategy by player and AI that resembles human like behavior. Cars dont lose control as much as they should in GT5 when they collide or touch and thats what makes the race feel less realistic since danger is minimized. More emphasis on damage will further strengthen this too. Small contacts cause great damage in reality.

That Forza video may show unrealistic behavior but it's also an unrealistic scenario that the user created to prove some unknown point. A far smarter approach would be to play the actual game and then see how the ai responds, then do the same with the competition and compare. That's what the far more sensible websites do rather than determine ai quality of a racing game by placing four cows in the middle of a track and seeing how the cars respond. When played at launch, the ai in F4 to me simply felt better.

Most AI comparisons I saw from sites (if not all) were using a different track for each game under different scenarios to compare the AI in a not Like for Like situations where it was unfair for GT5. This one is even more accurate as it uses the same track, but as I pointed earlier the AI fails in both games under different scenarios.

 

[djskribbles]

As for avoiding collisions, it's extremely hard in real life. That is why the yellow flag exists, and I fault games like Gran Turismo for not implementing a yellow flag option first and foremost, to be honest. Since joker454 asked, yes, on the Nurburgring it is extremely dangers, and any car on the track that will force you off your ideal line greatly increases your chance of crashing even if you manage not to hit that car. Incidentally, since you guys already posted plenty of videos showing progress in the area of passing and overtaking and avoiding cars on track, I can only add that Forza 4 does a pretty good job here (though so does GT5 these days), BUT it is important to note it also cheats. It allows cars to break the laws of physics for grip and braking speed to avoid a crash. There's something to say for and against that, it's just a choice.

No doubt avoiding any collision isn't fun, especially in RL driving. Again, saying 'quite easy' was probably stretching it. However, in the video example above, I think there's sufficient time to avoid the parked car in that situation. While it is a fairly low speed corner, the cars in the video are still traveling at a fairly high speed, but slow enough to give you time to react, IMO.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

No doubt avoiding any collision isn't fun, especially in RL driving. Again, saying 'quite easy' was probably stretching it. However, in the video example above, I think there's sufficient time to avoid the parked car in that situation. While it is a fairly low speed corner, the cars in the video are still traveling at a fairly high speed, but slow enough to give you time to react, IMO.

There's a clear view from the entry into that corner to the car at its end, so I'd expect any driver to avoid the car just fine. The Forza footage shows drivers either oblivious to the vehicle's presence until it was right in front of them (maybe the 'look ahead' of the AI is pretty much a straight line?) or unable to adjust their course to accommodate the obstruction. The GT example looked pretty natural to me. It may not be true to life, but it looked like there was intelligence behind the wheel. The Forza example looked computer-game false with the lack of course correction in the cars. That proves in at least some cases GT5 v2's AI is competing well with rivals and PD aren't just recycling last-gen AI routines.

 

[Arwin]

No doubt avoiding any collision isn't fun, especially in RL driving. Again, saying 'quite easy' was probably stretching it. However, in the video example above, I think there's sufficient time to avoid the parked car in that situation. While it is a fairly low speed corner, the cars in the video are still traveling at a fairly high speed, but slow enough to give you time to react, IMO.

The only time I almost ran off track at the Nurburgring was when I was going off my line to allow a car to pass (that had more than twice my speed). Some turns are very hard to keep your car in check if you break your ideal line, especially down-sloped ones.

The comparison video above is definitely one where Forza does see the car in most cases, but some cars don't, and the most important difference with GT5 is that the Forza 4 cars accellerate at pretty much full speed past the car that stands still, where the GT5 cars detect an incident and slow their pacing. This I think makes sense, as GT5 did already have this logic built in for multiplayer in Prologue and 1.0, providing an option to making your car into a ghost if it was detected that you are in a crash situation, driving in the wrong direction, standing still on the driving line, etc. and were on a collission course (which was a great feature, preventing people from just trying to crash into you). This same logic could apply quite well for detecting what basically amounts to a yellow flag situation and adjusting the drivers speed until they've past the incident location.

 

[fearsomepirate]

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.

Your defenses of this mediocre game get more and more desperate with every post. I find this quite entertaining. If you have no valid defenses against my criticisms other than to try to disqualify me from having a legitimate opinion, just stop.

Laguna Seca has shitty graphics, and the AI likes to give me little love taps on the turns.

Again, real life racing is, for the most part, following a strict line and passing at an opportune moment.

By contrast, GT racing is putting you at the back of a pack of 12 cars with only 2 laps to make it to the front, which can only be achieved by abusing the bumper-car physics and/or bringing a supercharged Corvette to a race where the AI is driving cars with < 110 hp.

I've gotten rather bored with the career mode, since the rewards are worthless, and have switched to doing seasonal events. Many of them are hilariously bad from a simulation standpoint. The time trials feel fairly authentic (not interested in drift trials), but the "pass a half-mile-long pack of cars in two laps" events are just silly...and that seems to be a good chunk of them.

I don't care for the drift events.

 

[djskribbles]

Your defenses of this mediocre game get more and more desperate with every post. I find this quite entertaining. If you have no valid defenses against my criticisms other than to try to disqualify me from having a legitimate opinion, just stop.

Laguna Seca has shitty graphics, and the AI likes to give me little love taps on the turns.

I don't really have to discredit anything... the fact that you said yourself that you're not a big race fan and you've played all but ~10hrs says it all. I don't have a problem with people hating GT5... I know many people hate it. The problem I do have is that you're speaking as if you're some racing sim/GT guru and that your opinion and skill level is ultimately what determines the quality of GT5. Some of your opinions aren't legitimate for the simple fact that you've only played a small portion of the game.

Disqualifying your 'legitimate opinion' was not my only defense. I, as well as others in this thread who ARE racing sim fans, have called you out on some of your BS with proof; such as the AI being re-hashed from previous GTs.

By contrast, GT racing is putting you at the back of a pack of 12 cars with only 2 laps to make it to the front, which can only be achieved by abusing the bumper-car physics and/or bringing a supercharged Corvette to a race where the AI is driving cars with < 110 hp.

You would only play this way if you're terrible at racing games. Tell me, how did I manage to beat the game using only similarly or under-powered cars?

And FWIW, not every race has you starting at the back. I haven't played it in a while so I can't remember how many races have you start at the back.

 

[Arwin]

It's usually still pretty easy to win, but not always. There's a classic race on Monaco that often gets an old racing car that was very hard to beat, but would sometimes have stupid crashes and that eventually did the trick. Most of the time I can win with slower cars. But A-Spec mode is, imho, too often weak, and where GT games before it had qualifying sessions (optional), this one doesn't. Fortunately I personally do enjoy all the other stuff a lot, especially the special events. But I was glad that Forza does have an optional Qualifying session.

 

[fearsomepirate]

The problem I do have is that you're speaking as if you're some racing sim/GT guru

Since I don't speak like that, responding to me as though I do is pointless.

Some of your opinions aren't legitimate for the simple fact that you've only played a small portion of the game.

No they aren't. Laguna Seca will still have shitty graphics no matter how much of the game I play, 75% of the available cars will be rehashed last-gen models no matter how much of the game I play, customization options will still be extremely limited no matter how much of the game I play, AI definitely has bumped me multiple times, and it will still be possible to win by playing bumper-cars no matter how much of the game I play.

I, as well as others in this thread who ARE racing sim fans, have called you out on some of your BS with proof

Actually, no one has. You've mostly just declared that none of the game's shortcomings matter because 211 of the models have realistically modeled knobs on the interior of the car. And you've made rather laughable claims like, "No one could be expected to create so many new track and car models in a mere six years and for a mere $80 million," when in fact Turn 10 did exactly that.

You would only play this way if you're terrible at racing games. Tell me, how did I manage to beat the game using only similarly or under-powered cars?

Because the career mode races don't do the BS that the seasonal events do. Even in the events that have you start at the back, the field isn't as long as some of the more ridiculous seasonal events, where you start ~45 seconds behind the lead car and have 2 laps to beat it. At least not that I've seen.

 

[Nesh]

Since I don't speak like that, responding to me as though I do is pointless.

No they aren't. Laguna Seca will still have shitty graphics no matter how much of the game I play, 75% of the available cars will be rehashed last-gen models no matter how much of the game I play, customization options will still be extremely limited no matter how much of the game I play, AI definitely has bumped me multiple times, and it will still be possible to win by playing bumper-cars no matter how much of the game I play.

The glass is always half empty isnt it?
Regardless wether you are a guru or not there others who have played the game longer. If you consider the game having too little for you then this may not be targeted for you. There are obvioulsy people in here who got to the depth of it and find ahe big positives that make up for the shortcomings for them.

Actually, no one has. You've mostly just declared that none of the game's shortcomings matter because 211 of the models have realistically modeled knobs on the interior of the car. And you've made rather laughable claims like, "No one could be expected to create so many new track and car models in a mere six years and for a mere $80 million," when in fact Turn 10 did exactly that.

I believe you are confusing him with me. Regardless I doubt anyone said that, you twist meanings and our words through exaggeration and I cant understand why. Your related argument about T10 managing has already been answered and I dont understand why should we backtrack

Because the career mode races don't do the BS that the seasonal events do. Even in the events that have you start at the back, the field isn't as long as some of the more ridiculous seasonal events, where you start ~45 seconds behind the lead car and have 2 laps to beat it. At least not that I've seen.

AFAIR at the start of the race you start around the middle? Cant remember since its been some time since I played it due to my busy schedule. Its kind of strange to complain that you start at the back. You dont expect drivers at the back in races complain why reality places them at the back at the start of a race...:s
Many of the Seasonal events are simply various challenges designed for fun or to test your skill further, not all are necessarilly based on real life events and they dont have to. You are complaining about something optional that one time it exists and another its not there. Lastly he is kind of right, if you cant beat events without cheap tactics you just arent good enough yet. Try a race with damage on and everything set to realistic and we shall see if you can beat a race with cheap tactics
You can beat those challenges like you should if you learn to play well and know what to do