Yeah I agree, Achievements and even steam trading cards are a big thing now, because the achievements seem to be regarded as a sign to show your prowess to all. (Don't see the point about trading cards in all honesty.)
Totally agree, the key thing about achievements is that for them to be good, they need to be an achievement!
Not something everybody gets for getting X amounts of wins, but for something that is hard to achieve. And gives the player a proud feeling upon reaching it, similar to what your first win in Monacco or the Nordschleife must've felt in GPL.
To give you an example, in the DLC " LNER Peppercorn Class A2 'Blue Peter'" (a steam locomotive) for Trainsimulator 2017 there is the Pole Position achievement, for which you have to reach a speed of 100 mph in that loco, which is where the loco is running at near it's absolute limit. It's a tough one to get, so that so far only 0.1% of the total Train Simulator 2017 playerbase have reached it. I know of ten others that have it. Ok it's a bit of a niche DLC
Took me 50 out of the 75 miles between London and Peterborough to reach it, and felt like a true achievement. Well I chose the harder option, and did it while dragging 11 Mk1 Coaches behind the loco. Would've been boring and no challenge otherwise.
To take that into the racing world, the equivalent would be trying to beat Stefan Bellof's Nordschleife Record in a Group C Porsche 962, or trying to repeat Sennas Brands Hatch lap.
I also like AC's approach to it, that you have multi-tiered Achievements, for going up against different AI difficulties, which I think is a great idea, given that if you for example had an achievement like "equal Mclaren's wins tally of the 1988 season", which would be easy to achieve against weak AI but quite a challenge against hard AI. (Something I would've liked for the TS 2017 Achievement, as that treats reaching it with the loco alone the same as doing it with 11 Coaches behind it, and the latter is certainly harder.
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And I can see the issue of a Career mode if it's done to the level of Codie's F1 games, namely that it doesn't take away the people who make tracks, physics etc. but that it might take additional people and more importantly time and resources, aka money.
I mean we need 3D models of people, animators, and we need voice actors, and good ones aren't that cheap. Though one can make some significant savings by not going for celebrity voice actors.
Which has been a worrying trend in games outside simming, that they try to go for the star power of big movie or TV stars and spend loads of cash on one voice actor which could've spent elsewhere.
And yeah I don't like Crofty, he's way to partisan for me.
And while I like that mode, it doesn't need to be built as fully fledged as it is in the Cody F1 games, you could take the base contents, like the R&D, and the team members, and maybe team members, without the voice acting and 3D actors as well, and apply that to a game.
Maybe with a fake Twitter/Facebook wall like in PCars 1.
Interviews could be handled similarly.
I know it's less immersion and atmosphere, but sometimes you don't need the full production and leaving the players some room for the cinema in his/her head* can actually work quite well, as for example the Mount & Blade Games have shown. They have next to no story, and the whole "story" is in your head.
* Sorry, the german term "Kopfkino" that is hard to translate, it basically means the story that your imagination spins.
A developer should decide prudently based how to make it, based on the expected income, and err on the side of caution.
If they aren't sure they might offer a basic career mode and if there are calls for a more fleshed out career mode, with 3d Models and voice actors, it could become a payed DLC that people can buy.
That would allow them to cover the additional cost.
If anyone of them is reading, that is not an allowance for certain devs to cut core features from the game for an extra buck, it's intended as a solution for small teams that have no big budget and are unsure if such a mode and such an expense is warranted.
Your thoughts?
Again like in Both Pcars, keep the cars unlocked outside the Career mode. If you want unlocks, they should be limited to maybe a special car reskin for the career mode, like having your Championship winning car livery availlable for MP.
But the racing game should also offer a championship or custom championship mode, where the players can decide what series they'll race and what tracks.
For example a 2002 F1 season, but with classic Hockenheim instead of the new one.