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.