For F1 2019, Codemasters gave us a multiplayer car with a static and unfortunately meaningless sponsor offering.
While this really was welcome, and laid some framework for the My Team offering in F1 2020, there is a lot that would be welcome from My Team in terms of sponsorship and customising options!
Compared to the “real” teams, customisation really is limited. The liveries that are there are great but adding sponsors is boring. I think they are boring, because the sponsors are still meaningless.
I have a few ideas of how to expand the sponsor offering, and ultimately (and hopefully) improve My Team. These ideas ultimately link in with each other to let the player choose a more real make up of their team.
Unless it explicitly says “oil” or is blatantly a knock-off Italian fast-fashion brand, there is no way of telling who or what the sponsors are. So, my first idea!
I will use a sponsor from the game’s offering to show my examples. Since my first title sponsor on my My Team is Equinox, I will use them!
Flesh Out the Sponsors!
Big list of sponsors there, but who are they?
I would love to know more about what and who the sponsors are. That way, on top of the sponsor goals we can have a bigger say over who we stick on our cars. They could easily be split into categories like these:
· Fuel/Oil
· Clothing/Apparel
· Food & Drink
· Technology
· Telecoms
· Suppliers (companies that supply teams with infrastructure like Hewlett Packard and Microsoft do for Red Bull and Renault respectively etc etc etc)
Sponsor locations too would be a nice addition to this too. If we fleshed out “Equinox” in this way, they could easily be a French Telecoms company. Lets run with that into the next point.
Customisation, Liveries and Colours
In Formula 1, there are plenty of past and present examples of Title Sponsors ruling the roost on the liveries and colours of cars, and ultimately the team itself. BWT changed the Force India/Racing Point cars Pink, Rich Energy destroyed the Haas with whatever that idea was, just to name a couple…
So, what if some sponsors if you sign them as Title sponsors, had a larger say in the colours of your team?
It won’t be mandatory if you sign the sponsor, but there could be “perks” (mainly financial and/or acclaim) if you did so. It might also help some players who maybe struggle with ideas for their liveries.
If “Equinox” (the French Telecoms company, remember) was a company whose colours were Green and Yellow, your livery could be adapted to those colours and you could reap the rewards!
There could be different ways of applying a Title Sponsor’s influence on your team:
· Team name space – the sponsor would become a part of your team name. For example “Equinox Racenet F1 Team” or “Racenet F1 Team Equinox”
· Team Colours
· Livery Colours
Ethics
This one might turn some heads, but I think this might be a really good option when considered with the points before. If the sponsors are fleshed out then the ethics of the sponsor could come in to play and effect the money it pays out and/or the acclaim of your team.
Let’s take our Green and Yellow French Telecoms company “Equinox.” They offer you:
· X amount of money for title sponsorship
· X amount of money for you to use their colours
· X amount of money for them to take over your livery
Sounds great so far, but actually (hypothetically, obviously) Equinox is very well known for horrendous working conditions for their staff. You sign them anyway, so:
· Your team generates X% less acclaim
But you make lots more money out of them for the pleasure!
You get more money at the start, but it’s a little bit more difficult to generate acclaim so you won’t get new sponsors as quickly.
This might also have an effect on media questions saying “how could you blah blah blah” but that’s getting quite deep into gameplay mechanics and I won’t dive into that.
This could easily work the other way –
“NOVUS” is a British Energy Company, they want you to use the colours Red and Blue. Lets say they are offering you less money for title sponsorship, colours and livery use than Equinox, but they have an incredibly safe environmental record. This could make you look very good!
· Your team generates XX% more acclaim
More acclaim means the quicker you can get extra sponsors and ergo more money. You just get a little less money at the start of the season than you would have if you signed Equinox.
At some point in your team you can be so successful that none of this will matter, but the difference to your first season, and seasons afterwards as you team progresses could be beneficial.
There are other ways that Codemasters could help us feel like our teams are a bit more real and fit in to the structure of the game.
Limited Licensed Branding
· We should be able to have Pirelli logos on the nosecone as the official teams are made to have as per the regulations, much like the necessity of having your team’s logo on the front of the nose. This would be easy to implement and made part of the liveries like the logo space is.
· Apparel sponsors like Puma and Alpinestars that provide racing suits to teams. These would be very nice touches to the game.
· F170 and “We Race as One” logos. We see Williams as one example have these logos on their cars. It would be a nice touch if we were able to also, instead of having them as static team logos.
We can’t use any of the already licensed sponsors on our cars, and that makes sense. But there should be more options for us.
More livery customisation options
· Literally just give us shapes and flags and random decals that we can put where we want on the livery
· Please Please Please give us editable car numbers because the current “font” is not nice.
Now, I know its very unlikely any of this will be implemented in 2020, but maybe even for 2021, it would be a massive improvement! What do you think?
