Official GT5 discussion thread

[djskribbles]

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

You're judging the game from a casual perspective and saying PD made sacrifices and compromised the racing. This is what you said a couple of pages back:

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.

Do you realize that to sim racer fans, the most important factors are things like physics or anything to improve the racing simulation, car selection, track modelling, AI, having a variety of different race types etc.; these are all areas that PD have improved. All you're doing is judging the game on its visuals and saying that it's a good budget title only. Quite frankly, I don't think you're in a position to judge the quality of the racing, because you're not a fan of the genre and you've only played a small portion of the game. The fact that you are judging the quality of the racing and that you're claiming things like the AI is the same... those are the things that bother me. I couldn't care less if you like GT5 or not, but I will call people out for saying things that are flat out wrong.

Actually, no one has.

You originally said:

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.

+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.


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.

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

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.

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.

Yes... we have.

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.

Those words never came from my mouth.

Whatever... I'm done arguing with you. I think anyone reading this will take your criticism/opinion with a pinch of salt and there's no need for me to go on.

 

[fearsomepirate]

OK, I guess I was wrong about the AI, in part because I haven't compared it to anything. If Forza is even worse with the WTF moments, then I will retract that complaint. It seemed pretty much the same as GT4 to me, but I never put it through the paces described above.

Do you realize that to sim racer fans, the most important factors are things like physics or anything to improve the racing simulation, car selection, track modelling, AI, having a variety of different race types etc.; these are all areas that PD have improved.

OK, when I complain about the cars, everyone's like "Psh. Only the Premium models matter anyway." And there's only 211 of them. So I wouldn't consider car selection to have improved. Yeah, technically, there are over 1000 cars, but ~800 of them are worthless. Track modeling has improved...but on quite a few tracks, it's only barely. See Laguna Seca. The new ones look good, no complaints about Rome or the other new ones.

The physics and variety of race types are fine. I really have nothing to complain about there. I liked GT4 because driving felt like driving, and GT5 does not disappoint there.

However, I think you need to take into account that the huge sales numbers of GT1-4 show that its appeal extended far beyond hardcore sim enthusiasts. If the idea is for the series to maintain its historic popularity, it has to maintain that broad appeal, meaning that yes, the opinions of people like me do in fact matter. If it's going to tread water on all the kinds of things that gave it broad appeal, its fan base is going to steadily shrink until only the hardcore remain.

 

[Nesh]

We always had more expectations from a GT game than what we did from a Forza. When we thought about GT we used to think about higher standards, about surprises, about top notch visuals, about a huge amount of content, about perfection. This is what the average GT fans wanted even if you dont want to admit it.
Its because you mattered that PD announced 1000 cars, improved physics, day night cycle, weather conditions, rallying, damage, rolling cars etc etc, thats the sequel that we wanted. One title that brings everything every other great racer does separately, now combined into one single high quality sim that does it even better. Sounds nuts.

Is there such a sim in the marlket? No. Has anyone else attempted to create such a large rounded and well featured sim? No. Is F4 that game? No...not even by a longshot. This is why it is so irrelevant when people bring up F4 and ask "why did T10 do it then?". Thats because they didnt. GT5 was the only attempt to bring that sequel we wanted and it didnt reach the goal either but gave us a taste.

And why? Because it was uniquely ambitious and to top it Sony wanted them to have the 1080p checkbox checked eating up a large amount of resources just for the resolution .
In other words GT5's shortcomings are a result of its own ambition as a series, past successes and our expectations within the given available technology and resources.

So yes it has its shortcomings, many of which are driving me and many others nuts (clusterfuck menus, loading times, large inconsistencies in quality) but dont blame this as a result of lazy work or inability to manage, but this is a result of a project that was way too big for its own good and eventually the effort was so spread here and there that it became "thin".

So you wonder what they have been doing all this time? This is what they have been trying to do. Not to mention that more stuff were supposed to be implemented but scrapped.
More content was supposed to reach the final game. There was a track list leaked from the studio that showed more tracks. Karting was going to be part of GT6 originally. We lost Youtube uploads, we lost good implementation of eye tracking due to technical difficulties and limited resources....
It was also revealed that Yamauchi was also originally planning for a free-roam mode which I think was worked on but didnt make it.
I wouldnt be surprised if real life places like Rome was originally modeled as a large area to travel.
But many of the stuff they have worked on but didnt make it will eventually make it in GT6

 

[djskribbles]

7.4m sales as of Dec. 2011 is showing little sign of slowdown. GT5P shipped well over 5m copies as well. I know install base doesn't directly translate to sales, but PS1 and PS2 did have considerably larger install bases. It's no coincidence that the two highest selling GT titles in the franchise were also on the console with the largest install base. GT5 should be able to catch GT2's sales, and possibly even GT1, and doing so with a ~10-20m smaller install base.

I have never disagreed with you in saying that GT5 isn't on the level of polish of previous games. There were definitely a lot of disappointed GT fans, especially earlier on. I was fairly disappointed with many aspects of the game, but the more I played it, and as the patches started coming, the game still turned out quite well in my books. Again, for me, the good far outweigh the bad. That said, I expect more from PD in GT6 and hope that they will release a more polished game. GT6 will probably be a PS4 title, but that is my most anticipated game right now.

 

[tuna]

And why? Because it was uniquely ambitious and to top it Sony wanted them to have the 1080p checkbox checked eating up a large amount of resources just for the resolution .

What do you base this statement on? Anyway, going higher resolution has quite a lot of advantages in a racing game, you can see the road more clearly etc. Compare it to Burnout Paradise, when you are going fast you actually see more (or at least it feels like that) in GT5.

 

[joker454]

Anyway, going higher resolution has quite a lot of advantages in a racing game, you can see the road more clearly etc. Compare it to Burnout Paradise, when you are going fast you actually see more (or at least it feels like that) in GT5.

It didn't work that way for GT5 because they used qaa in 1080 mode which made it look more blurred than 720 mode, which to me heightened the ridiculousness of even bothering to support 1080 resolution. Of greater issue were the frame rate drops in 1080 mode. Look how sensitive the players on this thread are to the slightest changes in gameplay feel of tire grip, etc. Given that there is no way these same people would be able to tolerate 1080 mode frame drops which totally ruin gameplay feel when they happen. I would manually disable 1080 mode on my ps3 every time I played this game, it was a pain in the ass to do but necessary. 1080 mode was a victory for marketing but a loser everywhere else, it both looked worse than 720 mode and ran worse. I can't imagine the super sensitive hardcore sim drivers here tolerated 1080 mode, I presume they all turned it off as well to let the sim perform correctly.

 

[Arwin]

If I remember correctly, there are actually 3 different AA settings available. And fwiw, for me the increase in resolution is very noticeable, and it looks quite good. These days I always run the game in this mode.

 

[Nesh]

What do you base this statement on? Anyway, going higher resolution has quite a lot of advantages in a racing game, you can see the road more clearly etc. Compare it to Burnout Paradise, when you are going fast you actually see more (or at least it feels like that) in GT5.

I have 42" full hd tv. Tried both 720p and 1080p. Doesnt provide any tangible advantage. Also check neck for neck comparison between display modes at DF. It wasnt worth it. GT5 is generally a clean looking game but not thanks to higher resolution. It more due to track design. 50% more pixels to render takes lot of performance away and leaves less available memory for everything else. And thats quite evident in GT5's low res transparencies and shadows, low polygon counts on various parts of the tracks, some minor draw distance pop in, some not so good textures, some inconsistency in framerate and some tearing. Framerate and tearing werent that annoying and common for me but thats a clear indication the game struggles because of it and some are more annoyed than others to it. Those stick out more like a sore thump than the difference between 720p and 1080p

Take into consideration what they were trying to do with the game and its a miracle they achieved what they achieved with 50% more pixels to render than the common 720p mode

 

[joker454]

If I remember correctly, there are actually 3 different AA settings available. And fwiw, for me the increase in resolution is very noticeable, and it looks quite good. These days I always run the game in this mode.

Must be a GT5 1.0 vs 2.0 thing again perhaps, because at launch 1080 mode didn't look as good. Visually the vertical res bump was lost to blur, and performance was the final nail in the coffin. At the time it didn't even look like everything was being rendered in 1080, you could see large chunks of power lines missing for example, fences that looked too low res to have been drawn in 1080, etc. To me that 1080 mode was the biggest clue that the lead devs were not really in full control of the project, and that non technical higher ups were meddling somehow, which is a shame.

 

[Arwin]

Must be a GT5 1.0 vs 2.0 thing again perhaps, because at launch 1080 mode didn't look as good. Visually the vertical res bump was lost to blur, and performance was the final nail in the coffin. At the time it didn't even look like everything was being rendered in 1080, you could see large chunks of power lines missing for example, fences that looked too low res to have been drawn in 1080, etc. To me that 1080 mode was the biggest clue that the lead devs were not really in full control of the project, and that non technical higher ups were meddling somehow, which is a shame.

Framerate and tearing was definitely more of an issue with 1.0, and then (1280x)1080 made that worse ...

Also, now I play in 3D more often, and then your XMB settings are irrelevant.

It's interesting that GT5 Prologue at some point had an in-game option to change the resolution. That was pretty cool, because easier than messing around with your XMB settings as the best option could vary per-game and application. But this didn't make it into GT5, making me wonder at the time whether this was because PD themselves thought you'd be better off in 1080p mode if your TV supported it. Certainly for the menus and such it did, particularly as those are full 1920x1080 irc.

 

[Arwin]

7.4m sales as of Dec. 2011 is showing little sign of slowdown.

We just got an update today:

http://www.polyphony.co.jp/english/list.html

Showing 9 million for GT5 now.

 

[djskribbles]

We just got an update today:

http://www.polyphony.co.jp/english/list.html

Showing 9 million for GT5 now.

Wow, that's higher than I thought.. 1.6m in less than a year for a game that's a few years old. It's now trailing GT2 sales by a few hundred and has a good chance of catching GT1. Who knows, maybe even GT4 (doubtful though).

 

[V3]

There are many full games on PSN now, is there any date of when GT5 will be on PSN ? It really baffles me at how slow Sony and Nintendo releases their full game on their online store.

 

[Jedi2016]

The game's pretty damned big, I wouldn't hold my breath.

Me, I don't like the idea of filling up my hard drive and not even being able to hold the number of games I have. They're on disc for a reason.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

The game's pretty damned big, I wouldn't hold my breath.

Me, I don't like the idea of filling up my hard drive and not even being able to hold the number of games I have. They're on disc for a reason.

I like having them on the drive, after I installed a 320 gb hard drive. Loads faster than bluray

 

[Arwin]

The difference for GT5 though is the optional install is 12GB already and that's everything but the cars and movies. But that still shouldn't stop them I guess. But in Sony's defense everything that comes out now is day-one digital with only very rare exceptions on PS3 and that includes third party (only a game like Blobs 2 is a rare exception)

 

[jlippo]

The difference for GT5 though is the optional install is 12GB already and that's everything but the cars and movies. But that still shouldn't stop them I guess. But in Sony's defense everything that comes out now is day-one digital with only very rare exceptions on PS3 and that includes third party (only a game like Blobs 2 is a rare exception)

Sadly even with 'full install' GT5 does use bluray quite a lot and makes some menus slower.
It would be very nice to have the game fully in HDD.