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Career Mode - Ideas and Suggestions

Discussion in 'Automobilista 2 - General Discussion' started by Dicra, Jun 30, 2022.

  1. Dicra

    Dicra Local Gamepad Ambassador AMS2 Club Member

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    So, as mentioned in the June Development Update 2022, there is a career mode coming for AMS2 at some point, some time.

    Maybe, Reiza are right now planning how they can go about making that career mode as soon as the time has come. Me, myself, I'm an idea guy, I love imagining cool things, but I don't have the tools to make them a reality. I'm sure, some of you have a great many ideas for that upcoming mode, too. And Reiza maybe has the tools to achieve (some of) them.

    So, as a community, let's collect some ideas. Maybe they get picked up by Reiza, maybe they don't, but maybe we can get something we've always wanted to see in this (maybe some distance away, but nonetheless very important) mode.

    I'm gonna start with a few things I find cool and think would add immersion:

    Financial Woes
    The problem of racing is and will always be financing your career. To represent this would mean far more immersion, a personal investment in the career mode, and the opportunity to better connect the different series. Project CARS missed out on that; you just went from race to race there, with some completely useless other events. But what if, like in Grid, the races actually meant something, because you're racing for your very future? I think this would improve the career mode infinitely.

    There are several ideas on how you could include that:

    The Beginning of Career Mode
    I feel like there should be some story behind what's happening, something to kickstart your career. How about something like this:
    You are thrown into a situation where there is a large sponsorship event. You get three laps in a kart (or another low class vehicle, like the F-Rookie) around a certain track. In order to get sponsored for a whole kart season, you have to reach a certain laptime within these laps.
    This could be enhanced with immersion by, say, posters that call this a lifetime opportunity, a little cutscene (if such things are possible within the madness engine) with a young (brazilian) boy looking at said poster, his eyes getting big, a smile spreading across his face, and also a fail bareer: If you don't manage to beat the time, your career is over immediately, maybe with a narrator saying:
    "In the coming years, he would often look back to this moment, wondering what could have been..."

    Money Draining
    If you make the sponsorship, have a defined amount of money per season. If you damage your car, that sponsorship money drains. You could also include the limited tire sets and the new damage system in that: New tires and brakes cost money, so maybe it's more feasible to leave the old, worn parts in the kart/car for another race. At least, that's something to think about for every series that isn't highly professionalized.

    Earning Sponsors
    You should only be allowed to progress to the next series by getting top positions and getting the sponsors you need. Maybe there could be some bigger (fictional) companies willing to make a big investment and finance your next three-four racing seasons in the game?

    In Higher Series: Contracts
    Once you managed to get into the more professionalized bits of motorsports, like GT3 or top Formula classes, or Brazilian Stock Cars, the sponsorship deals should turn into contract offers, where you can actually make money, but also have to perform in order to not be dropped back into some category where you have to spend your own money again.

    Having talked about the financial aspect, here are some more ideas to make career mode more interesting:

    Time Passing
    There has been talk about making career mode into a cohesive journey. You could do that by structuring the historical and modern content: Maybe you can choose between two or three career types, modern and historical. With the Historical career, you start your game in the 1960's mini and work your way up to Formula Vintage and Retro or the Opala 1979. These classes only become available as years and seasons of you racing in these older vehicles are passing in game, just as in real life, not all of these raced together.
    You could, eg, make a "Classic Career", where you start racing in Hot Cars, then, after a season or two, Group A and Group C becomes available, then the GT1 series is created, and finally you get to F-USA or F-V10.
    This could be nicely complimented by some (fictional) historic junior class cars.

    Stakes
    I often fondly think back to my days in F1-CE 2006. I hated and loved this game, because this game didn't allow any restarts in career mode. This made the stakes so much higher, but often lead to frustration after another crash.
    I think, at the beginning of the career mode, there should be an option to remove the restart button. It just makes everything so much more intense and feel like it matters.

    Injuries
    Racing is dangerous. If we suffer a huge crash - tying into the "no restarts thing", why not make us sit the season out for a few races? Why not make us lose a sponsor?

    Customization and Immersion
    I hear there is suit and gloves customization coming. There should be an opportunity to design your very own avatar at the beginning, especially helmet, overall and gloves. If there are victory celebrations added, just something easy like the avatar climbing out of the car, that would be excellent.

    Summary
    Oftentimes, career modes like these, and especially the one in PCARS 2, suffer, because there just aren't any stakes and it feels like what the player does and achieves does not matter at all; it's just driving races. But with these parameters and groundworks I just suggested, I'm very confident you could make a realistic, true to life career mode one day.

    I'd love for Reiza to read this thread and take some ideas from it. Maybe you guys have even more great suggestions and opinions concerning this topic?
     
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  2. Jugulador

    Jugulador Well-Known Member

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    Just go full Dirt to Daytona and it will work very fine.
     
  3. TronLi

    TronLi Well-Known Member AMS2 Club Member

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    Even with a PC2-style career, things would be so much better in AMS2. They already mentioned that they will focus on keeping things fair between the ai and the player, that is what ruined PC2 for me tbh. Watching the ai fly through puddles that spin you out immediately was frustrating to say the least...

    Add in the ai personality traits and you have something special. Start in karts and the top drivers progress with you to the next level. When you make it to the top you should recognize a lot of the names and how they race. It would add a nice touch of reality.
     
  4. Gabriel "Pai" Legnini

    Gabriel "Pai" Legnini Well-Known Member AMS2 Club Member

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    I think it would be great if you have an initial difficulty choice, from rookie to GOAT, where not only AI becomes more competitive, and laptime targets are tougher (with the possibility of suggesting a difficulty level based on the perfomance of that mentioned karting test) but also to activate those systems as a higher level is chosen. Plus, a custom difficulty choice, where the user can choose AI competitiveness, plus which extra systems are active (this could be hard to implement based on coding issues).
     
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  5. rmagid1010

    rmagid1010 Well-Known Member AMS2 Club Member

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    Cutscenes are possible in madness engine, as fast and furious crossroads had them. Unfortunately they look terrible, for cutscenes.



    But Reiza aren’t a AAA game studio like codemasters, they don't have the resources to create cutscenes like in F1 games or grid legends. Ams2 is 100% gameplay focused.
     
  6. Shriukan

    Shriukan Touristenfahrten Community AMS2 Club Member

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    We should all just volunteer to do shockingly bad acting for early 90's style FMV's xD

     
    • Funny Funny x 4
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  7. Marius H

    Marius H Internal Beta Tester Staff Member AMS2 Club Member

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    • Video's a la NFS Undergroud featuring Renato wll do it for me.
    • Downside of a career is that it pingeonholes people in racing on pole always thus never build up their skill.
     
  8. Gabriel "Pai" Legnini

    Gabriel "Pai" Legnini Well-Known Member AMS2 Club Member

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    Later point is a great way to open an alternative Single Player mode, Challenge. Put the user in scenarios that get progressively more difficult. Including winning from the back of the grid.
     
  9. FS7

    FS7 controller filters off please AMS2 Club Member

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    -Please no scripted weather in career, that's something I disliked in PCars1/2 career. Make weather random but realistic (eg: no racing in weather that would cause red flag irl such as heavy thunderstorm with aquaplaning conditions and zero visibility, snow/ice, race at night with cars that don't have headlights, etc). And make the number of weather slots compatible with race length, having 3 weather slots and having to pit twice in a 10-minute race is simply stupid. Also make weather forecast reliable, I get really mad if forecast says it will start dry, I set tyres to "automatic by weather", it puts me on dry tyres, but the AI starts on wets and starts raining in the first couple of laps.
    -Multiple race lengths for all career events would be nice (eg: 100%, 50%, 25%).
    -Personally I don't care about things such as story or any management stuff (manage teams, sponsors, budget, etc), I just want to drive the car, please make all the non-racing stuff optional.
    -If career has either money or xp system design it so that each assist you disable gets you some bonus money/xp, higher AI difficulty gets you more money/xp, choosing longer race length gets you more money/xp, enabling damage gets you bonus money/xp (and money deduction at end of the race to pay for any damage your car has), money/xp deduction for each restart, bonus xp for clean overtakes and clean laps, bonus money/xp for completing a clean race, xp for completing clean laps in practice and qualifying.
     
  10. Jugulador

    Jugulador Well-Known Member

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    Please, nooooooooooooooooooooo... lol

    Racing games started to became unbearable at the moment that developers had the idea that storytelling is more important than good races and the best way to do that is coping all of the Fast and Furious cringeness.

    If it would have to be story, that be like this:



    Yet I still prefer a copy/paste of Dirt to Daytona CM.
     
  11. SaxOhare

    SaxOhare Well-Known Member AMS2 Club Member

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    None of this is necessary for me,
    but it did make me think.
    Maybe it is something to ban driving aids step by step during the career so that you can only participate at the highest level without driving aids
    Then the career might have a positive influence and perhaps fewer "Arcade" lobbies are hosted
     
    • Agree Agree x 1
  12. Roar McRipHelmet

    Roar McRipHelmet Well-Known Member AMS2 Club Member

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    I'd like to see a gradual increase of the severity of the consequences of failure. For example:
    • In the beginning of the Career, not only are there little or no consequences of failure, but the game even encourages the player to fail. Player could for example simply switch to a different amateur series mid-season. The player would still gain experience and reputation, even if that reputation contains many failed attempts.
    • In the middle of the career, financing becomes a major factor, and should be a constant worry for the player. Crashing has a major financial impact, but sponsors are generally patient with the player. Sponsors provide different kinds of bonus rewards, essentially giving the player different game modes, e.g. one sponsor may prefer "No time acceleration", another prefers "Last to podium challenge", "100% AI skill", "No racing incidents", et cetera. The risk of failure could be that advancement into higher tiers is impossible until the next season is successful. Severe accidents could leave the player unable to race until the next season.
    • At the top tiers of the career, sponsorship bonuses become strict requirements, so a bonus for "competing in all races" instead becomes requiring the player to not skip any races or else there will be a fine or risk losing the sponsorship deal for repeated offences. In order to get a different sponsor, player must complete another season at a lower tier. Sponsors hold grudges forever at the top tier, so if the player burned bridges with all possible sponsors, the player can then only compete at amateur level and has to start over in order to build trust.
    While permadeath from accidents is a great concept that leads to more of a simulation mentality, it can be a bit too strict of a punishment at amateur level. That's why I think sponsors labeling the player persona non grata can be a way to introduce a permadeath-like concept that only applies for higher tiers in Career mode.

    A second ting I'd like to see, perhaps more of a Showcase than a Career, is a Historic F1 mode. Starting in the 1950s and chronologically going through the classes from each era ending in the 2020s.
     
    Last edited: Jul 4, 2022
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  13. bobbie424242

    bobbie424242 Well-Known Member AMS2 Club Member

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    What about reliving Ayrton Senna's career as was rumored at some point ?
    I can't be the only career mode as it is very specific, but would still be great.

    In a rally game most of you never heard about let alone played (Sebastien Loeb Rally Experience, or SLRE, from Milestone, released in early 2016), there was a mode called the Loeb Experience where you could relive some events from Loeb's career, in period accurate cars and tracks. Stages are intertwined with Loeb 2-3 mins interview segments where he reflects about each era. I found this mode fantastic and completed it.

    Now imagine such a mode with Senna's career. In-between videos may be stretching it a bit, but photographs + text could be a worthwhile replacement.
    There's everything in AMS2 for such mode, including period accurate date / weather.
    Speaking of which, I strongly suspect "real weather" and seasonal foliage were also added with the specific goal of recreating past races in a comprehensive career mode (whatever it turns out to be).
     
    Last edited: Jul 4, 2022
  14. Dicra

    Dicra Local Gamepad Ambassador AMS2 Club Member

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    Yeah, some absolute fundamentals were wrong there, no doubt about that. I still feel like there was no sense of progression in that career mode though.

    Actually that would be a very, very nice touch, I like that idea.

    You could add to that by having a statistics section where every driver in the game has the championship he's won to his name, and the wins and podiums divided by each series. That way, when you enter a new series, you'd even have something like a current "GOAT" that you can race against, giving the career a sense of actual motorsports with history.
     
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  15. Dicra

    Dicra Local Gamepad Ambassador AMS2 Club Member

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    That's also a good way to get some sense of progression into it. I went for the "money" idea not because I want to have a management mini game in my simulator, but because money is regularly THE issue why a racing career doesn't come to fruition, so having it play a part would feel less game-y than an XP based system.

    As for the story thing, it would only be the career start, because that's where I feel you can do a lot by providing emotional investment. Story bits later are both unrealistic and regularly obnoxious.
     
  16. Dicra

    Dicra Local Gamepad Ambassador AMS2 Club Member

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    What I'd go for is a sort of "introduction story", certainly no story for the whole career, because it's simply impossible to do that well, as Codemaster's resource-intensive "the journey" very well demonstrated; cutscenes are just too static. But for starting such a mode, it could be a nice touch.

    And of course, you should be able to skip everything.
     
  17. Dicra

    Dicra Local Gamepad Ambassador AMS2 Club Member

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    That's a very interesting concept, one that also has grounds in reality, as with increasing exposure comes increasing scrutiny. It's also gradually getting more difficult, which is great. Of course, the performances in between the fails should also be important - there should be less consequences to three retirments in three races if you've won all the races before.

    Of couse, you absolutely need to have no way to restart a race if you go that route, because that option is what makes or breaks the stakes.
    Redemption arcs are nice things, too, though. Being dropped from a high tier series and racing GT3's for a few seasons could be another way to introduce a concept not quite as harsh as permadeath - make the player able to return once he has fallen from grace.


    Thx to all you guys for participation in this thread up till now; maybe there's one or two things for Reiza in here - and keep the ideas and opinions coming!
     
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  18. Jugulador

    Jugulador Well-Known Member

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    Noooooooo, please nooooo story, just copy Dirt to Daytona (with more championships to join overtime, no need to buy car parts, but would be fine if we can) and things will work. It's realistic, engaging and 100% gameplay with no interruptions. Interruptions suck... leave story to RPGs.

    Cheers!
     
  19. Roar McRipHelmet

    Roar McRipHelmet Well-Known Member AMS2 Club Member

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    This is a convoluted way to present a simple but still a bit controversial idea:

    TL;DR -- I've been playing Project CARS career mode, and I felt like the ability to set AI difficulty, Race length and even championship season length in Career made the whole experience less fun for me. It felt like I was being guided through a pre-determined set of championships instead of my racing merits having real consequences for the rest of my career progression. In this post, I'm trying to work out an alternative.

    Statement:
    Don't let Career mode just be Championship mode with extra features!
    Let each mode have unique core features which are only available in that mode, or else the overlap makes both modes stand out less.

    The core features of Championship mode, compared to Single Race:
    • All the customization of Single Race (race anything, anywhere, and anyhow)
      1. but takes away customization of scope for the sake of responsibility (committing to a full season)
      2. and adds gamification by having greater consequences of failure (losing points overall, or having to start over)
    Given how Championship is an extension of Single Race, it's easy to imagine a Career that is simply an extension of Championship, where instead of making our own championships, we get a pre-defined list of championships to choose from, and packaged in a context to resemble the progression path of a race driver.

    ...but don't fall into this trap - we already have a pre-defined list of championships to pick from, in the Championship mode itself! So instead of having the Career mode extend this functionality, extend this functionality within the Championship mode, playing to its strengths. Example: Refine and extend the existing championship presets with additional realistic championship seasons and scenarios. Instead of having me play as "Senna in 1988" in Career, give me presets that do this in Championship mode - The player statistics screen can even be extended with a "Championship history" section...

    What does that leave us with for Career mode?
    Here comes the controversial proposition:
    • Career has the same "play through several races/seasons" structure as Championship
      1. but takes away customization within a championship, even preventing us from setting race length or AI difficulty (but main menu options still affect the game: Assists help us overcome AI difficulty, Damage scale helps us overcome bad weather such as rain or intense heat, and Time scale helps us overcome race length)
      2. and adds gamification by letting my results determine what teams I can race for, and thus what leagues I can choose to race in next (each with its predetermined race length and AI skill span)
    An example Career progression: Start with a 5 minute tryout race in GX390 Race karts.
    • Finish last or aborted => Unlock full season of the rookie league - GX390 Rental karts. This league has lower max AI skill and significantly wider AI skill spread. Doing well in this season will earn me reputation as if I had finished better in the tryout race. Team-specific perks(*) may also apply in order to unlock other rookie leagues even if I'm a complete novice.
    • Finish in middle of pack => As above, but also an option to choose between two types of championships within the same GX390 Race class that I had the tryout race for: One championship focusing on a few longer races, or another focusing on many sprint races. This choice is a compensation for being unable to choose race length in Career.
    • Finish first => As above, but also with an offer to participate in tryout race for 125cc karts or an offer for a tryout race in another racing discipline.
    (*) by "team-specific perks" I mean that one team may reward racing without incidents, another team may reward having three consecutive similarly-paced laps during practice, or finishing all races, etc.

    In addition to taking away our ability to set AI difficulty and race length in Career, the idea of increased consequences of failure with higher leagues as suggested in my previous post still fits this system, IMO.

    Some advantages of having less customization in Career than in Championships, and instead having to choose our paths wisely based on previous race results:
    • No more "setting AI difficulty slightly lower than myself, then skipping qualifying and doing last-to-first, gathering enough championship points through a season to be able to skip the events at boring track/weather combos and still end up on top at the end of the season". If that's how you enjoy playing (and there's nothing wrong with that), that is one of the many use-cases for Championship mode, not Career.
    • Reiza can focus their time on optimizing Career AI performance with just one skill level per league in Career mode and not have to worry about making all steps of the Career mode work at all AI difficulty levels - if you're not good enough to drive something that fast, you simply won't be able to. Result: A more reliable Career experience.
    Some disadvantages:
    • Players hate getting locked out of content, and will struggle accepting that they can simply use Championship mode if they want an easier path to victory - especially if this means that a player will be unable to get specific Steam achievements unique to Career mode.
    • The time Reiza saves by not having to calibrate AI performance through every step of the Career at different AI skill levels, will instead be equally spent on calibrating the opponent skill level within a specific league in Career. So this doesn't really save any development time - more likely the opposite, since it's a new game mechanic.
     
    • Disagree Disagree x 1
  20. Jugulador

    Jugulador Well-Known Member

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    There is a third party career mode for AMS2 available:

    Racing Life - AMS 2 Career Mode Companion App

    It's kinda crude, but in the right way.

    Something that would be cool, independently of choosen format, is that the AI drivers are persistent, as if they are real people doing their own career at the same time as you, as happen, for example, with EA's Fight Night series, that you have other fictional boxers (as long as some real ones) and they do their own fights in the background, evolve in the ranking, and eventually some rivalries arose.

    This kind of stuff still lacks even in the best career modes around (with exception of Codemaster's F1 series, but that simulates only one championship) and would be a huge differential for AMS2. An old game that does something in that direction (even if in a primitive way) is Road Rash (the original first two for the Megadrive), that an AI rider will hold some grudge if you attack him during a race, in the future being more or less prone to violence to you... some of them even got different "dialogues" (or monologue, because only they talk, but as if in a dialogue) depending of how aggressive you are against that individual AI.

    The option to interact with other drivers, crew members, media, fans and etc, as in a RPG would be a dream.

    But no story... If must, do as in Race Lagoon, as I already told, but overtelling it is no sin
     
    • Winner Winner x 1

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