Career / Story Mode in Sim Racing – For or Against?

[Boby Kim]

Storymode...careermode...im getting too old for this. Just want to selext a car, choose the track, set weather and practice 100 laps.
Storymode...."mom, will you read for me?"

 

[Richard Coleman]

Wow it's been ages since I last posted anything here haha.

Personally I have to say story mode only suits games like the Need For Speed series. If done right (2012 Most Wanted) then they are quite enjoyable. If done wrong, it is a torment playing then (The 2015 reboot comes to mind here). So story mode comes in good with arcade games.

Career mode is a different thing entirely. I quite like the F1 2018 career mode. It has some good aspects to it, some not so also. The PCars games had an interesting one as well. They were the ones I enjoyed the most. Starting off in Karts and progressing..... Most fun I have had in a while.

I can't say about rFactor 2 or anything like that as I am yet to play rFactor 2 since my laptop can't play it since the DX11 only update.

 

[busterwolfeman]

Never was interested in Career modes of Racing games over the last 30 years

 

[AJ McDaddy]

Career progression, yes. Story mode is for when I'm putting my kids to bed...

@Joseph Wright TOCA is when I started PC racing and got my first wheel - Microsoft Sidewinder Precision. Those were the days

 

[Bryan O'Connor]

Some right miserable bastards on here

 

[BorisK]

Storymode...careermode...im getting too old for this. Just want to selext a car, choose the track, set weather and practice 100 laps.
Storymode...."mom, will you read for me?"

Agree, Boby. I not have time to story, only 2-3 hours of weekend.

 

[Antony Snook]

If it's done well then yes not adverse to it.
With an imagination (remember those) you can do it yourself anyway...

Back in the day of Amiga's and Commodores you HAD to have an imagination.
I used to play GC F1 and made up stories and back stories etc..loved it...... i was a kid so not as bad as it sounds...
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You can jump in any car and drive a competitive race that is a sim. I won the tittle in Microprose Grandprix in a Minardi. You can choose any of the cars but i like to switch it up as each cockpit is different. Plus i like blue cars as blue is my favorite coullour.
A arcade game will make you drive peices of junk and force you to score points and get better teams with better airo programs. But for me it is hard, I get penalty's on codemasters for exceeding track limits. This is one of in my opinion dumb rules in modern F1. Drivers slid wide all the time in the 50s-2000s and nobody cared.

 

[Yetch]

Funny, a few minutes ago i asked where the experience mode in R3E went.

For me, the racing itself is most important in a game.
But i also always loved offline championships. I can play them whenever i want. Especially if they are based on a real series. Immersion is the key word.

R3E had that and offered it specifically and advertised with it. Now the experiences are gone. Why is that?


I think they are not a must have, but they are great for the people who, from time to time, want to feel like they are driving with the big guys. Leisure time, playtime.

I dont need a career mode for that, though. Official liverys, names, tracks, on air graphics and a bit of atmosphere is enough. And most importantly: Official rules implemented. SimRacers would benefit from those things, too.

They dissected the sim into a scattering of experiences mixed with an assortment of series, this made everything disjointed. You can still make your own custom championship to the appropriate rules but now without dropping out of one sim and into what seemed like another. Tidied up the UI and not to mention made moving forward simpler. Still an experience, just a different one. Personally if they had to go to aid development then Only ever use single player for practice myself, sim racing is for racing people, not Roberts, Roberts are for doing our work so we can spend more time sim racing, distracting us enough to take us all over................................the end!

 

[David Wright]

A arcade game will make you drive peices of junk and force you to score points and get better teams with better airo programs..

Sounds a lot like iRacing to me

I'm not saying iRacing is arcade, just that the idea that sims can't start you in lower performance cars and make you earn point to get in "better" cars is wrong.

 

[Wayne Hutchison]

iRacing doesn't "make" you doing anything of the sort. From day 1 you can purchase any car/track you want and race it immediately against other humans. Only if you want to participate in the iRacing hosted "official" series do you have to progress through the license levels to be eligible but that is really only about a 2 week endeavor to go from Rookie to "A" class if you're a reasonably good driver.

 

[Jugulador]

It depends on the proposal of the simulator. If it focus on online (like ACC, iR and GTS) you don't need it, but if the simulator is meant to be used offline it can be very cool.

The best career mode I ever played is NASCAR: Dirt to Daytona (PS2/GC). The game was a pretty decent simulator (even comparing with PC games back them) and the career was centered on a team manager and league divisions system that was near perfect. The thing is: DtD career was all focused on racing and driver/team development that you can put your own pace over. I hate intrusive story modes (specially on RTS games... but on racing games it's annoying too). I don't want to have my gameplay interrupted by teen-level babbling.

Other game that had something very cool was the first two Road Rash for SEGA Megadrive... all AI riders had a name and some of them use to interact with you (by small texts and the end of races)... if you go agro against a character it changes it's attitude against you during the races.

My ideal career mode is a mix between DtD and Road Rash. I'm tired of Gran Turismo like careers. I prefer that the game give me some real track feelings, with real series (or, at least, something based on) and/or real track-day feelings.

But I know that most of race sim developers don't have a huge budget... but if they are short on money at least they can deliver a good AI (more organic... don't need to be too fast. DtD had an amazing AI, specially if you set the game to run 100% race length)... if the game can't have a good AI, it doesn't matter if have a single player mode.

For most of us, racing sims are videogames, not training tools. Even them, it must have it's videogame elements. Even the iRacing boards, match-up and rating is a full-fledged videogame concept. If you take it all over and deliver only the tool, your consumer base will be very reduced. So, as I said, I understand the budget issue... but producers can think the singleplayer videogame like mode as a NECESSARY investment. Or they go full online... that must have a lot of videogame concepts implemented to work, as iR and GTS have proved.

Making simulators is no cheap... if the developers don't have the money is better they go for other genre.

 

[Icky427]

im not really for a story, so much as the classic career mode where you start with an empty garage and a few thousand bucks to buy a car, then win money in races to buy more parts and more cars and so on and so on. ive never been a fan of the cheesy cut scenes with characters you dont care about because its not a movie. nfs comes to mind, much cringe. but i have always loved the progression and the sense of earning the cars you drive that comes from having to unlock and/or save up money (in-game of course) for them. sega gt 2002 comes to mind, and even forza did it well in fm2. i also think of street rod from the 80s where you could buy and sell used cars/parts in the newspaper and even race for pink slips.

 

[Patrik Marek]

Eurotruck simulator 2 is considered simulator, although it's more about simulating the experience of driving the truck, rather then hardcore physics

and if you didn't own your own company, buy new trucks, hire drivers, .. I would be super boring

career mode can be many different things, from just some unlocking new cars, to something fully fleshed out as the F1 codemasters

now, is it necessary ?? not really, not for the hardcore simmers

but if the game want's to appeal to masses, it has to have it
compare Richard Burns rallye sales figures to something like Dirt Rally2

 

[David Wright]

but if the game want's to appeal to masses, it has to have it
compare Richard Burns rallye sales figures to something like Dirt Rally2

Its years since I drove RBR but I seem to remember you unlock cars or tracks.

 

[ivanalesi]

Yeah, of course. Especially when the scenarios are real racing situations that happened! And of course the AI should be good, otherwise it's pointless.
Every racing season there are amazing performances by drivers up and down the grid... why not recreate them in the sim?

 

[Damage Inc]

I don't like a story mode as I don't want to be in a story about someone else. But I mainly play offline so a career is a must for me. Although as long as a game let's me simulate an entire season I'm happy with that.

 

[Animod_Autoneko]

i think it could work..in a initial d or wangan midnight like scenario and idk maybe throw in a visual novel like interaction to the mix,simracing jdms in the mountains or highways with some of that weeb story ****...eureka! simracing difficulty + story or background lore = dark souls of racing games.

 

[KittX]

Wrc8 career is very nice. Interesting and well thought-out, even things like team orders/objectives that sometimes ruin your positions in rally, therefore lowering your manufacturer relationship anyway. Fairly realistic id say
Wish the driving on stages was as enjoyable.

 

[Steve Worrell]

Wrc8 career is very nice. Interesting and well thought-out, even things like team orders/objectives that sometimes ruin your positions in rally, therefore lowering your manufacturer relationship anyway. Fairly realistic id say
Wish the driving on stages was as enjoyable.

Interesting