So I recently thought to myself, since simracing only has your typical championships modes (if it facilitates any sort of career at all), why don't I play something that actually has an engaging SP career mode? Well, nope, it's an exercise in disappointment. I started off with the PS2 classic Gran Turismo 4. It wasn't perfect, but it was hitting all the right marks, despite the dated physics (which are still impressive for it's time and considering this is a console "sim"). GT4 has it all. You have enough cash to buy a used sports car, then you slowly grind to upgrade it, be faster, win some rookie races, get a license and get something more competitive. You really learn to love your cars BTW. Each upgrade is an important choice - that small turbo will give you and edge early on, you need to maintain the ride - wash it, change the oil and tires. It's not simracing, but you get a descent set of physics and a great sense of progression and achievement. I was looking for something close in terms of engagement that is more modern and... everything just fall flat. The closes being Race Driver Grid (first one), where you actually build your team by earning cash through race wins, but not at the same level of caring for your rides as in GT. Forza would be something that I thought would come close, but no. Money and cars are thrown at you in spades and there is no incentive to upgrade your ride or buy another, since the races are always tailored to how quick your car is. Horizon 3 is easy as hell, you can just drive a stock ride, which is no challenge to keep on them roads and all the opponents drive something similar. I also tried Grid Autosport, and while it does give you a good challenge, the whole economic aspect of running a racing team is gone. Probably the closest thing to the way you manage your garage in GT4 are the Need For Speed games - you do require those upgrades and better cars and you don't get to afford all them part the easy way - you have to work for it, but then there is the handling, which even for and arcade race, mostly has its downs rather then ups (nothing came close to what Underground 2 had). And then we come to simracing... Something like Assetto Corsa makes me want to drill my eyes out when it comes to SP career progression. Other sims, though having something more of a progressive career mode, still lack any sort of economic aspect that would make some sort of bond between the driver and the car. You don't need to take care of it, you don't need to upgrade it and all them rides are available at your fancy. And it's like that with all them games. There is no proper campaign that would keep you engaged for long period of time. Progression boil down to either slow grinds which incentivise spending money on the game (here is looking at you, The Crew) or you just get showered with money and awards for just launching the game! What the hell happened?! It's either the way of the buck, when you are forced to do the same things over and over until dying of boredom, before getting anywhere (unless you pay real moneyz on top of them base price of 60 doritos), or you have everything at your disposal from the get go, because multilayer... I would probably not be bothered by this and just play GT4 for kicks, but I only have the DVD and no console so emulations is the single way to play, and it's not perfect, but I am really shocked how no developer afterwards learned anything from this perfect career mode.
Different strokes for different folks. If anyone tried the GT4 approach on PC, I'd give it a week before someone had cracked it to allow full access to all vehicles. And they'd have my full support. If there is one thing I truly loathe in video-games, it's having to 'unlock' anything. It's a game, and I'm an adult. Thus I unlocked it with my credit-card, thank you very much. Besides, what happens if you're not good enough to unlock the top tier cars? Do you get some of your money back? Maybe it's because I've always been a PC gamer and never had a console, but it truly annoys me whenever I run into it. Same thing goes for the whole maintenance thing. I come from flight-sims and a few years ago A2A sims made a fantastic model of the Cessna 172, complete with maintenance schedule and everything. Windows fogged up, sparkplugs could get fouled and so on. The problem for me was, I honestly couldn't be arsed. My sim-time is limited, and if I want to fly, I want to fly, not tinker around with submenus, or do virtual walk-arounds. I do agree that career-modes can be fun, but IMO they should focus on the driving-career, not the economics or technical sections of it. The one in AC is horrendously bad, and frankly looks like something they stuck together at the last minute so they could claim they had a career-mode in the first place. I actually liked the one in pCars (one of the few things I liked about that game). Having the ability to start wherever you choose and go from there was brilliant. NASCAR Heat Evo also had a few interesting ideas on the subject. Unfortunately the game wasn't good enough to keep me interested for long enough to give it a real try. But a career-mode a la GT4 on PC? No. Definitely not for me. The grinding needed alone would get the game deleted after a few races.
Well, all the cars are available in arcade mode, same goes for Forza. It wasn't any problem as well to import saves downloaded from the internet onto the PS2, but you know, the majority of people prefer to make an effort to get rewards in a game without resorting to cheat. I am not saying that this sort of career mode is the best, or even fitting PC racing simulators, but car games in general tend to throw money at you and make it easy to get everything you want without having to work for it. I still believe everything should be unlocked in quick race mode and multiplayer, but if you get a career where after 2 hours of playing you already have something like 40 tuned cars in your garage, what's the point of playing the career? Make sure you don't spread those heretic views on any flight sim forums. This is funny by the way, since few people actually bother with pre-flight checks or even doing a full rampstart procedure, if they have an option to skip it. Same goes for landings, most dudes just declare an emergency to get clearance ahead of the line not have to fly the full pattern, but at the same time, these things are something the community always strongly advocates for. Anyway, with A2A Accusim, you are missing out, all that stuff is the whole point of their products, because it's useless to nag them for topless version of Heidi.
Sports Car GT. Old. But the economics is pretty sweet. Away from standard track racing, Colin Mcrae 1 and 2, and Fuel (off roading extreme), might be worth a look - definitely going to be pretty cheap. Otherwise, I think you both have valid arguments. Every lap you do in R3E, put a penny in a jar, pretty soon you'll be able to afford a new car or track. Edit : the physics are definitely arcade, but the 2 test drive unlimited games are also good for farming races for cash.
Same reason people do custom championships, to have each race mean something other than just that one race. I get the thinking behind having to earn something, but here's the thing; I already earned it. I worked, that resulted in a cashflow, which in turn resulted in me buying the game. Making me do even more work in order to drive a vehicle I already paid for smacks of insulting the player, IMO. But again, to each their own. Yeah, I know. Going online in a flight-sim forum and trying to question either A2A or PMDG will inevitably end in a flame-war. I've long since made my peace with that. And it's not that I don't think the A2A stuff is neat, it's just not for me. I'm one of those simmers (cars and planes) who don't believe 100% realism is necessarily a good idea, or for that matter even possible. While it might be realistic to sit and wait for the IRS gyros to spin up after a cold-start, basically what you're doing is sit there and stare at your screen for 6-8 minutes. Realistic, yes. Fun, not so much. The funny thing is that some of the people I know from my virtual airline who do exactly that, are also the ones who use the cruise-portion of the flight to e.g. practice their guitar-playing while the auto-pilot does its thing. Which leaves the whole 'realism' thing kinda moot.
Totally forgot about SCGT. Such a classic. Colin McRae was awesome, but that actually reminds me that the career in Dirt Rally has some good ideas, like team management that actually influences repair times and such. With Test Drive, I only played the first one, I think the servers are dead now though. Great map as well, too bad modern open world racers have such small maps, Forza Horizon 3 seem to have a smaller area than the last NFS. Falcon BMS... It takes 8+ minutes to align the nav system, but I never really felt it was boring, I usually had lots of other stuff to set up, plus I only fly this in MP - always someone to talk to on the comms. Personally I stopped playing study sims, because it costs too much money and you need to spend too much time learning, before you get any proper fun, and there is only so much one brain can handle. I sort accepted my limitations and only play IL-2 Battle of Stalingrad - you always have your hands full with these WWII birds. Coincidently, this sim has probably the worst career that was based on unlocks I have ever seen. People used to call it the Unlock Gulag.