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Suggestion: A more sandboxy F1 game with a focus on career mode

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This idea was born out of frustrations with the career modes of the recent games. It works well for the first season, but after that nagging issues begin to come up which reduce immersion:

-No driver changes (other than for your driver)
-No driver ability changes (younger drivers should get better)
-No new drivers
-No significant changes in relative strength of teams
-No rule changes ever

You get the idea. As far as I know these are due to the licensing, of which FOM is rather strict about. 

Because of this, I suggest a parallel F1 game, which instead of trying to recreate the current season as accurately as possible, would move to a more sandbox-type of concept, possibly set in a fictional world. Think Motorsport Manager. What would be the potential of this? The possibility of creating a far more expansive, dynamic career mode with emergent narratives and far greater variety. Here's an elevator sales pitch-type of scenario of the possibilities:

When you start your career, you can pick a preset ruleset or customize your own. You liked the cars of 1980s so you pick a ruleset where the cars have extremely powerful turbo engines but rather inefficient aero. But you also liked the refueling races of the 90s and 00s so you also set refueling to allowed. You start at a midtable team, paired with an experienced teammate, and you match his performance in your debut season and surpass him in the next. Come third season, your teammate chooses to retire and the team hires another young driver who's touted as a new superstar and known for his mercurial temperament. However, your relationship turns sour quickly after you clash on the track early on the season, and the mood in the team turns toxic. There are disagreements on who gets certain upgrades first, the crews stop sharing data with each other, hampering overall development. The team is eventually forced to choose between you two, and they choose him. You need to find a new team. 

Your exploits have sufficiently impressed a well-known, well-to-do upper-midtable manufacturer team and you agree to join them next season. Next, drastic rule changes are announced for the upcoming season. Turbos are banned and engine power reduced. At the same time, aerodynamic development is opened up. There's no telling how this will shake up the field next season. As you join your new team in the winter, you find out that their aerodynamic team has produced a fantastic package and the winter tests reveal that the old giants struggle. But meanwhile, your old team has changed ownership and also secured a very lucrative sponsorship deal that has almost doubled their resources. On top of that, your seat has been filled with a pay driver of moderate ability, giving them even more spending power. As the first race of the season commences, it soon becomes clear that there are only two championship contenders: you and your old rival...

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Summa summarum: with the current F1 game series, the career mode is only a shadow of what it could be, missing all the potential of narratives, political intrigue and personal rivalries that the sport produces on a constant basis. The potential of a "spinoff" game is huge in my opinion. The demand for games that can produce compelling emergent narratives is massive.







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I like the idea of a fantasy F1 game but the problem with that is that has to have a good narrative. It should have a good story. The F1 games have a very good storyline and Codemasters doesn't have to write one line of story because it plays out in real life.

We all know the stars in the F1 game series. When Verstappen tries a move you are more on guard than when Palmer tries this. One of the reasons I did not buy PCars2 is because their career is so immense but lacks any story. The championships are very anonymous, there is totally no rivalry and I don't mean the implementation of codemasters rivalry system. At the end of the championship you still don't know the name of the driver that comes in second 

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I like the idea of a fantasy F1 game but the problem with that is that has to have a good narrative. It should have a good story. The F1 games have a very good storyline and Codemasters doesn't have to write one line of story because it plays out in real life.

We all know the stars in the F1 game series. When Verstappen tries a move you are more on guard than when Palmer tries this. One of the reasons I did not buy PCars2 is because their career is so immense but lacks any story. The championships are very anonymous, there is totally no rivalry and I don't mean the implementation of codemasters rivalry system. At the end of the championship you still don't know the name of the driver that comes in second 
Easily fixed by adding more variety to the AI, which so far I've only really seen in GRID Autosport with the Ravenwest drivers. It's a CM game, so it fits even better.

Story-wise, you can easily get that with fake drivers. That's why Motorsport Manager is good - it quickly teaches you what the likes of Godrigues are capable of and you often end up caring about the field as you go along. You don't need to see Verstappen crashing into you or a Ferrari to get that.

All in all, it certainly wouldn't hurt to get a new GRID game. So long as it's competent like the original or the TOCA Race Driver games, that is.

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