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New to the forum. Here's a few humble ideas.

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Hello, everybody. Zaphod here. New to the forum!

I would like to discuss with you guys a few things about F1 2016/2017 and let our minds wander about what the future has in store for us.

I really like F1 2016. It has its issue, sure, but it’s such a good game. The career, of course, is the where it shines but I think there’s room for improvement.

My feeling is that the F1 series is at a turning point. From where it’s at, the game can go one of these three ways (or a combo, but still paying more attention to one or another).

-       More career details. This means turning the career into a sort of “RPG” experience where the player can pick up more parametres at the start and these parametres have a meaningful impact later on. For example, picking a nationality from a big market should help get good contracts. Say, for a German driver should be easier to get a contract for Mercedes than for someone from Malta (of course, it should be possible to turn this off). There’s lots to be done in terms of relation to the team, the teammate, the sponsor, the rival etc… it’d be cool, for example, if the player could choose simple statements about the rival that would effectively work as multiplier. Say, you get player X as rival. Between practice sessions you’re asked what do you think of him. If you go all say-what-you-think you get a X2 multiplier on the Rivalry (meaning you get twice the points – same for him ofc). Or you go more politely and you get a 0.5X multiplier.

Another thing would be personalize part of the team staff. The more influence you have the team, the more you get to pick R&D stuff and the more you can have one engineer sacked/hired. For example you could prefer an engineer that gives you more R&D points over another that give you setup tips or better in-race info (yes, this is a bit unrealistic in some regards, but you get the point).

-       More “cool” stuff. I’ve seen quite a few people asking for better graphics or deeper customization of the helmet. I personally don’t care one bit for it but I understand this might be important for the casual market. There’s potentially lots to be done here. As it has been said, deeper customization of the helmet (possibly using a webapp), face recognition, better boxes (personalized for each team!), more cams (helmet cam ftw), better sound… you get the point

-       More Sim. The thing I’m most disappointed with is the driving model and the force feedback (I use a T300 on PS4). F1 2016 is nowhere close to, say, Assetto Corsa. It’s simply not communicative enough. There’s lots to be done here, improving the physics but keeping it accessible to a vast userbase with good assists and all that.

 

Personally, I hope for a combo of career details (40%) and more sim (40%). But I’d like to know what other players think. If you had to allocate time and resources to these three areas, how would you split it and why?

And a couple of minor suggestions for CD:

Difficulty level names are very weird. If I remember correctly, it’s something like easy, medium, difficult, master, legend, ultimate. And somewhere in between there’s an extreme, maybe?

Make them more intuitive. As in: Very Easy (1), Easy (2), Medium (3), Difficult (4), Very Difficult (5), Extreme (6), Realistic (7). Or whatever. Just keep in mind that stuff like master, legend, ultimate, extreme make no actual sense and it’s impossible to know which is which. On top of this, some people play the game in another language, so it gets harder to relate to other players. I saw a british player winning the race at master difficulty. I want to do the same. Oh wait, I usually play at Extremo. Which is harder? So, names in a meaningful order and with a number between brackets. Not very elegant, but hey.

 

And another thing is the Italian localization. I’m Italian and the translation is remarkably bad.

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for example, if the player could choose simple statements about the rival that would effectively work as multiplier. Say, you get player X as rival. Between practice sessions you’re asked what do you think of him. If you go all say-what-you-think you get a X2 multiplier on the Rivalry (meaning you get twice the points – same for him ofc). Or you go more politely and you get a 0.5X multiplier.


Would be cool, but there would have to be something to counter-balance the 2.0X multiplier. Otherwise everyone would go for the 2.0X multiplier no matter what.

Difficulty level names are very weird. If I remember correctly, it’s something like easy, medium, difficult, master, legend, ultimate. And somewhere in between there’s an extreme, maybe?
The difficulties are very easy to understand in F1 2016, in all languages, thanks to the universal Star ratings. Easiest level has one Star, the hardest has all Stars. The more Stars you see under the difficulty name, the harder it is.

More “cool” stuff. I’ve seen quite a few people asking for better graphics or deeper customization of the helmet. I personally don’t care one bit for it but I understand this might be important for the casual market. There’s potentially lots to be done here. As it has been said, deeper customization of the helmet (possibly using a webapp), face recognition, better boxes (personalized for each team!), more cams (helmet cam ftw), better sound

I like the webapp idea. It could be much more than customization, too. You could maybe use it for telemetry, it could include a game specific E-mail service where you get team updates, contract offers etc.


Yeah, some good ideas. Codies will however never add so much in one game because they need to release these games annually, which means artificially holding on to great ideas and then adding them little by little every year, making the games seem more progressive than they really are.

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Thanks for your reply @peyt0n89

In regards to the multiplier what I mean is that the 2X is valid for both the player and the rival. So, if you lose a race, the rival is getting 2X points.

Difficulties have stars at the beginning of the career, that's true, thanks for reminding me, but not if you change it during the season.

I know CM will never do all of it, that's why I was wondering what you would give more importance to. 

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@ZaphodCortez
Hi Zaphod, welcome to the forums.

You have some interesting ideas which CM should definitely look into. 

 - Nationality: I do agree this should be an option which can be turned off, however, I think it's a great idea, and I would also add something along the lines of being able to bring sponsorship of similar nationality, for example, a Malaysian driver who exceeds expectations can be approached by 'MalayPetro' (invented name, so CM can avoid using real company names for legal reasons) who back the driver with 'X' amount of millions a year, and are more likely (say, 5-10%) to earn a Mercedes drive, by having to outperform the lesser of the two Mercedes drivers (given the championship standings), taking car performance into account. So, if I'm a Sauber drive regularly achieving P8 - P10, I'm 'outperforming' Nico Rosberg who has been achieving P2's and P3's, but only 1 win in 10. Natioanlity can also be used by CM to 'invent' other AI rookie drivers of similar or higher sponsor backing, so your chances of getting the drive are slightly lower. This can then bring a 'Testing' like weekend in Career mode, where effectively you and the AI rookie are both driving Mercedes (or whichever team), and the faster/better of the two, wins the drive. 

 - Statements about team/teammate/rivals: 100% agree on this. The immersion would be great if this could be added in. Not sure about the multipliers, but maybe if the drivers (as well as yourself) are given additional attributes such as 'Team Player', 'Awkward Rival' (I can't think of good names off the top of my head), which are rated from 0-100, and then these scores go up or down over different weekends depending on comments you make about your team, teammate, and rival. If you have a high 'Team Player' score, you are more likely to receive an offer from the big teams, but as a 'solid #2' (Irvine, Barrichello, Webber, Kovalainen, etc), whereas, if you wait it out longer, if you're good enough (and self-centered enough), you can gain offers as a #1 driver.

 - R&D / Staff: This is a great idea also, I think personally CM need to slow down the R&D upgrade rate as currently you can max out in 3 seasons (for a 10 season career, that's poor). Once this is sorted, then I think it would be great, once as a driver you gain #1 status for over half a season, that you can have major input in the R&D, as well as engineers - you should also be accounted for these decisions too. If you recommend an engineer, who gets hired, and does a fantastic job, then your team (and other teams) recognise this and you are seen as highly intelligent. If you recommend a guy who turns out awful, that should impact you somehow too.

 - Cool stuff: Like yourself, I'm not overly bothered about this, but I would like to be able to customise the helmet completely at my own will. Some people out there are fantastic web designers, and could make amazing helmets if given the platform to do so. Face recognition similar to what EA Sports have would also work fantastic too. 

 - Sim: More sim is always better in my opinion, especially for a game like F1,  but I understand CM are trying to attract a large casual fan-base too, as that's where the money is at for them. This I can understand, so apart from a few minor things, I'm quite happy with the physics of the car. My main gripe is the non-assist users not really being rewarded for not using any assists, but that's a whole different debate altogether!

 - Difficulty levels: I agree, when using terms like "Legend", "Master", and "Ultimate", it's very easy to not know which way round they go. 

Personally for CM, without longing the post out even more than it already is, in a nutshell what I would like:
 - More immersion in Career mode with regards to communications (and this having knock-on effects), sponsors, testing weekends (where you're basically on trial), and this is a serious push but... GP2 in season 1! That would be amazing!
 - Multiplayer netcode needs to be as solid as ever. There also needs to be a league option too, where the host can define all parameters, possible entries, cars numbers, (and anything else league-related), and then let it fly. Also, I think if there was a gameface feature, similar to what you mentioned before, this would work brilliant hand-in-hand with league racing, or multiplayer in general.

Thanks.

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Great post @ahmednoor99

I agree with you on everything but I have a couple of doubts:

-Sponsors. I was thinking about Sponsors but then I realized a lot probably depends on how much freedom CD has. And I suspect very little. I don't think they can introduce new names (even if they're fake) and they're probably very limited in what they can do. 

-GP2. This is obviously a great idea, but I wonder if it's really worth going though the trouble. I mean, hardcore fans would enjoy it, but either it's done properly or not at all. And I imagine most people would prefer the extra effort being spent on the actual F1

-Sim. My understanding is that CD have changed their approach (take a look at Dirt Rally, for example), where they're trying to find a good compromise but keeping well in mind where their core audience is. This is happening through the whole industry actually. In order to sell, games have to be praised on the tube, and they're succesful there if they're cool to hardcore players. I mean, look at what happened to Hitman. It was a rather niche genre, then they've gone casual and screwed up the franchise. They went back to niche and everybody loves it. And they post videos on the tube. So, yes, I agree with you. The average CD player is casual, but a tiny bit more of Sim wouldn't hurt (especially if assists are done properly).

I'm curious to know your thoughts about this. 

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Terrific piece - my personal preference would be career mode 40% and sim 60%. The setups could be more realistic and thorough. While those that don't want to get that deep into the game can use standard setups, those that want to have that option.

Also if the UDP could significantly increase the number of attributes it exports so that third-party telemetry software could give a more complete picture of a lap - that would really improve things. Of course if you could have in-game telemetry - that would be best.

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@dwin20 Agree on the set-ups. They should be clearer and more specific in my opinion.

Expanding on the R&D, I'm sure you guys have lots of ideas for specific R&D tasks but I'd like to know more about some more general things:
- Should R&D tasks be the same for each race or should they vary depending on track? Ie:

Case 1) Always the same R&D stuff at all tracks, but not all mandatory. Say for example we can choose 5 different tasks but R&D points are capped at (the best) three tasks. So I can choose between Track familiarization, Tyre run, Qualy run, Aero run (ie reaching a minimum time with some weird wing), Fuel economy (doing x laps with x litres)... whatever. The point is that not all of them are necessary. So out of those 5, I pick 3 that I like the most and do them. This way the player had some choice, but not so much novelty.

Case 2) R&D changes for each track (maybe Track familiarization should always be there?) and they're all "mandatory" if you want to max out R&D points. Good thing is that a player wouldn't know 100% what to expect in the next race, but you will have less things to choose. 


- Should R&D tasks be compared against your teammate's? I think it'd be cool if the tests you do were compared against what your teammates did. This would make things more interesting for the player, especially in the worst teams (when maybe the race is not that engaging). That would work well in terms of immersion as well. As in: "yeah, in the races I'm last but one and my teammate is last, but I do such a great -off screen- work and the insiders know that and the bigger teams want me".

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