The short answer to your question is not alot!
They do the minimum they can and then whack the full price tag on it. This is the last one I'll be buying from them whatever happens. I skipped 21 and 22 and in 23 theres still some issues from 2020 there. You can tell its a copy and paste job every year and now with added microtransactions rubbish.
there is absolutely no reason to be this negative about the entire company. most (if not al) employees are working their * off to make us as good of a game as posible and then there are people like you that blame them of doing nothing which really dissapoints me. thats not to mention that is part of the forum is about the f1 game, not the company so please if you want to complain about the company feel free to but take it somewhere where it's supposed to be.
I don't think an annual release is good for games (obviously, it is good for profit), but we would have a better game if they would re-make the core every 3/4 years with a light update each year for car performance and a few things! People still play F121 or F120. They could have improved over that base each year instead of coming up with a new game every year. (The graphic kind of reaches a level that won't improve tooooo much anyway, not like it was 2014 or 2016)
As you said, it's a lot of work to deal with yearly releases; the problem is that if you see the profit.
- F1 2020 revenue 36.4M
- F1 2021 revenue 41.8M
- F1 2022 revenue 28.8M
How can you justify skipping one year of revenue just to make a better game? If all you need to do is copy 70% of the previous version and work on the remaining 30% and get that much money, obviously, the result tends to be more and more buggy because we all know how hard it is to re-use code without messing up something here and there.
My only advice (but it won't work, obviously) is to make a subscription game yearly @50/60 without the rush to publish a new game every year but planning a progressive update. Obviously, there is the risk of devs sitting on it and doing very little, but I personally tend to buy it every year, and if it was a subscription, I think they could plan the future progression of the game much better if they really love F1gp.
And they should have a department of the devs just to study what can be sold as fluff in the shop as it is now, which is awful, but it doesn't have to be so bad (if the game stays the same for a long period of time!). Honestly, this game deserves a more interesting shop, better livery, better advertisement, and maybe better design of car parts (that doesn't influence performance, just graphics). I think they should rethink the business around the F1gp series, and maybe they will with the new engine and stuff coming out in the next couple of years now that they somehow have a decent handling system.
Take it easy Lee Mather.
The fact that year after year issues persist and there is never an appetite to fix. The fact the game is aimed at things like "pit coins" shows you that this game doesnt focus on the fundamentals. If the truth hurts your feelings, perhaps step away from the PC and go outside and get some fresh air.
The poor decisions come from those at top even if the employees are just doing their job its simply poor. Fortunately the declining sales are not coming home to tell them the truth.
I would personally like all annual sports games to be in 2 year cycles with the off year where they just update rosters etc as dlc for a price of course. It’s not going to happen but it’s part of the reason sports games in general don’t advance that much and are more or less a copy and paste with some minor bells and whistles that are sold as exciting new features.
For this game, I do love the handling and I have been lucky that I haven’t experienced any game breaking bugs yet (knock on wood). I only play single player and offline. I have only had the issue of a safety immediately being deployed after a red flag restart and minor audio problems like the wrong name of driver of the day. Hopefully they fix the game breaking bugs but with lots of them being the same as in 21 and 22, I don’t know if that will happen until they go to next gen only with a new engine.
@movesmoreair wrote:Take it easy Lee Mather.
The fact that year after year issues persist and there is never an appetite to fix. The fact the game is aimed at things like "pit coins" shows you that this game doesnt focus on the fundamentals. If the truth hurts your feelings, perhaps step away from the PC and go outside and get some fresh air.
Not sure what you're aiming at with the Lee Mather reference or "if the truth hurts your feelings..." part.
The franchise is not in a good spot. The sales figures suggest a decreasing popularity, and hanging around on the community looks like Codies is also losing count on the veteran, returning players cohort. Some of the issues are flat out inadmissible, lack the ongoing lack of or inconsistent support for many Logitech and Thrustmaster products and features. Plus current state of neglect of My Team and Career modes.
That said, I think even when we're indignant and deep in dissatisfaction it's better to put up an effort into being accurate. If in your "fundamentals" you include basic gameplay like handling and physics, the difference between F1 23 and any previous title is quite stark. Also Losail and Vegas being present on release day.
"Pit Coins" and other microtransaction shenanigans do take a significant portion of the marketing push for the franchise, but for once we actually got an entry where the reworked fundamentals actually show.
To me that's not enough though, mind you. I still don't feel like recommending buying F1 23 at full price to anyone who's gotten F1 2021 or F1 22 until they properly fix the more egregious FFB issues. It just happens that, despite all that, Codies can't be accused of skipping on the fundamentals with F1 23.
EA has been evolving a general framework model to hang their sports titles on. I’ve been recently been playing PGA tour along with F1 23. This year’s big addition, in line with their model, was the F1 world set of features and its structured very similar to PGA tour’s modes. These “worlds” are there to generate continuing gameplay, which generate user data and purchases, and heavily depend on backend infrastructure and connectivity.
The goal they seem to have is to offer a range of experiences and entertainments, from quick “snacks” to full up “meals” so a wide range of gamers can play. They favor a grind model to acquire “skills” so players can feel they are progressing and competing by earning enhancements for the avatar or car or whatever. But they do not do as well at rewarding real skill development versus acquired enhancements so the goals are skewed towards winning to obtain upgrades, not just for better competition. I’d like to see rewards/progress tuned more to recognizing improving at higher difficulties/fewer aids vs just winning on easier settings.
This framework is complex and soaks up a lot of dev resources, in competiton for resources for the core gameplay. This is very evident in the F1 23, where all the new stuff is in F1 World, and the core gameplay/simulation has been mostly unchanged for a number of years, and just carried over along with bugs that have persisted despite user identification. I’m guessing F1 World was at least 50% or more of the dev budget. So now lots of new bugs along with the old ones.
I play these to get some taste of the real world experience from both these sports. I appreciate the effort put into the handling and new tracks, and have found some of the F1 world stuff fun (and tedious as well) but QA continues to be lacking - the list of major fails like wheel support - ouch. Clearly EA has been overly ambitious with both features and schedules and have only applied limited resources. Reputation and sales have suffered. A better code & QA management system is needed to track and fix all these bugs - its the same story in PGA tour.
Unfortunately not as much of what we want will be likely be fixed for F1 23 soon if at all. And by the time they get some of it prioritized and done, peak sales have passed and the negatives get hyped. EA needs to do a lot more with their overall dev strategies to get passionate fans back on side for all their titles, not just rely on gamefication alone to gen sales. I hope they can get the F1 series back on track but there’s a lot to do for a seasonal title and they need to get better processes in place asap.
@Neil_RS60 that's a solid write up.
I'm curious as to what @Ultrasonic_77 have to say on that PGA parallel. It's been a while since I extricated myself from yearly franchises and I have never been one for MTX, so my eye has usually does a good job of glossing over all the engagement generating loops and designs.
Codemasters seemed to be heading down this direction even before news of the EA acquisition - and TakeTwo's bid prior to that. I'm not confident a course correction is coming any time soon.
The core experience doesn't feel enough to retain veterans anymore.
Multiplayer has this massive anti-cheat hole in its fabric and the soon™ spiel could use a boost that I'm not sure the divisions feature is capable of delivering.
The list of recurring issues also suggests that whatever positives the acquisition brought to the table, not enough of it has impacted their main routines.
@mariohomoh Thx
Forgot to mention multiplayer and cheat - Tour has the same issue, mostly from the PC side but console cheats have been mentioned lately. Don’t do much multiplayer as really don’t like the bashers.
The social players on both though are equally disadvantaged tho - like the devs never bothered to look at how social groups like to play, even on their own previous titles where it more or less worked ok
EDIT ; BTW have a lot of sympathy for the devs working in the trenches on this - having done time there in the past, I know the QA schedule/budget is the first to go so its really on the mgrs to put some upward pressure to change the culture
Fairplay on your comment its well written and thought out. I guess my comment to the other poster was direct response of their defensive stance. The Lee Mather thing was really that he rolls out just before the launches, offers vague things and then disappears under the wood work.
Anyway, when I talk about fundamentals....
For how many years has the actual weather system not changed? Play every F1 game for at least the last 3 (maybe more?) years and you'll see the same static raindrop textures appear on the car. That means its time for inters after the rain drop textures reach a certain point. That means no dynamic track/tyre/grip system is in place and they have left it untouched. If this was actually proper and functioning where different tracks and different conditions have varying cross over points it adds hugely to the overall gameplay experience.
Then lets talk about tyres, again failure to have something reflective of the real sport. Every track its the same where as in real F1, track and weather dependent the soft might be a no go and perhaps the hard is best (never happens in the game)
Jeff/Marc - advertised as "we have a new engineer!" but was just someone else saying the same lines from previous years.
I dont play My Career/Team/F1 world but the argument over rights on the car design cant be used for people who enjoy that mode. Surely there should be a number of model/parts that can be added to the car and visually change it?
I play singleplayer race weekends and F1 world championship. Somebody at EA/Codemasters made a conscious decision to nerf this mode and remove the option to have a race weekend and a seperate world championship weekend. Why? perhaps to push people to pitcoins and multiplayer?
People say 1 year isnt long enough for them to fix but if they do have 2 teams working in then I challenge the notion. They could level with players and be honest and say we havent changed much this year but next time out we will give you a f1 game to be proud of. I am not a hardcore sim racer but the simcade offering has to atleast try to replicate the excitement and variableness of real F1.
Higher up in EA/Codemasters is someone sat there with no idea who only cares about things like reoccuring revenue during the lifecycle of the game and that person or people will ultimately lead to the continued declined.
@mariohomoh wrote:That said, I think even when we're indignant and deep in dissatisfaction it's better to put up an effort into being accurate. If in your "fundamentals" you include basic gameplay like handling and physics, the difference between F1 23 and any previous title is quite stark. Also Losail and Vegas being present on release day.
"Pit Coins" and other microtransaction shenanigans do take a significant portion of the marketing push for the franchise, but for once we actually got an entry where the reworked fundamentals actually show.
Agree. Although my big worry is the handling model of the next game. I think they have hit a 'sweetspot' right now with the driving model it seems to match up with what real drivers say in terms of putting the power down etc, it's not ridiculously slidey or insta spin on throttle now.
I have a bad feeling they will change the handling like they do every year and it will not be for the better, especially since the driving model dev is now gone.
I would rather they keep this years handling in the next game since it seems to be in a good place and focus that dev time on bringing the other things up to the new handling standard such as track accuracy, weather and features etc.
But I can already see what will be touted on next years game as it sounds good on the box, NEW handling model, NEW game engine.......(and in small writing: about 20 features we had before being stripped out)
So the cycle begins again
Honestly, I think even if they try to keep the driving model exactly the same due to the code as it is right now, it will get F*K up
Look at what is ALREADY happening between myteam/career and F1 world.
There is a post on how the car runs on ice in the slow curve in myteam/career, and you get the exact same track and car(for my career, at least) in F1world in a time trial, and the car behaves very differently on a slow curve
so abandon any hope of having "the same" model the next year; they can't even have the same model in the same game
just hope it's as good as this year while obviously being different.
the more they lose sales the better hehe if we want to hope for a breakthrough ....... yesterday a new bug before the race the time in the strategy drops ... we buy a game for 80 euros to never work until the last few months .... you have to fire the marketing and for sure you have more sales if you updated liveries and physics by paying half price ... I stress I repeat and subscribe they must create the things people want ... multiplayer first of all ..... the weather the asphalt the replays a dg live a real setup to do .... that's enough with livery helmets coats of arms that gives freedom of inventiveness on the part of the players..concentrate on bugs playability....no brakingpoint...we want to pay for a game that works, it's not nice.
@mariohomoh wrote:@Neil_RS60 that's a solid write up.
I'm curious as to what @Ultrasonic_77 have to say on that PGA parallel.
I honestly enjoyed the player progression aspects of EA PGA Tour but I've not got into F1 World in the same way. I think a key difference is that the PGA Tour equivalent was much simpler/cleaner. There are basically two strands: XP earned just through playing whatever you want than unlocked 'skill points' to improve your player's performance and 'club specs' you could buy with in-game currency (and playing from launch I was able to earn all I needed to buy these through gameplay, but it's harder for new players now). The Skill Points have a system where you can choose how to develop your player, and reassign the point to make changes later. Crucially for me, through all of this it was always totally transparent what the reward would be for doing anything in particular, and it was all easy to understand.
For me at least, F1 World is an overcomplicated and rather messy by comparison. For starters PGA Tour has no equivalent of the very grindy Goals feature. I also don't like the apparently random earning of car parts from gameplay, largely cluttering my garage up (although yes then can be got rid of but that still takes time/effort). The club specs in PGA Tour were much harder to come by. There was also no equivalent of the multiple different types of in-game points that we keep earning to be able to then buy parts/team-members. Finally I say the golf club-specs were very easy to understand whereas I'll be honest I don't fully 'get' all of the car part aspects. For example, I have an engine component with some sort of tech-level related rating of 105 that it says gives +9 engine power, whilst a different one with a rating of 216 only gives +4 engine power. There also doesn't seem to be a clear division between the different rarity categories, in that I have Legendary components that have tech levels lower than others that are rare etc. Now to be fair I haven't played that much F1 World but all of this unclear and to me unwanted complication is something that has put me off doing so.
Where I think F1 World is markedly better though is the 'Events'. The PGA equivalent are Tournaments that I really enjoyed at launch but the reward system has broken them. The issue is there is an in-game currency cost to enter and most people lose more from entering than they win, and so over time participation numbers just keep dropping. I predicted this early on as it was clear to me it was going to happen but unfortunately nothing changed.
I’m in agreement with all that. I was not trying to bag on PGA tour which I generally enjoy playing, or directly contrast the features so much as compare the EA “corporate” approach to these two sports games.
The courses are beautifully done for the most part with new ones added since launch, and the game mechanics are ok given the limitations of controllers. Some of the assists are overpowered and the hazards too forgiving.
But the strange feature omissions (no replay??), lack of anti-cheat and the ongoing bugs (it feels futile and tedious to even report them sometimes when there are so many - maybe add an in-game instant report feature? VC for bug reports?) are where EA’s overall strategy and shortcomings in coding practices has dented both games reps and frustrated core gamers, especially those who pre-ordered at full boat only to see both have markdowns fairly soon after launch
I know its tough to make the release schedules for complex titles but if we’re going to do the QA after release then EA needs a better strategy or incentives to keep users coming back. End of rant 🙏
@ERT_Timo wrote:there is absolutely no reason to be this negative about the entire company. most (if not al) employees are working their * off to make us as good of a game as posible and then there are people like you that blame them of doing nothing which really dissapoints me. thats not to mention that is part of the forum is about the f1 game, not the company so please if you want to complain about the company feel free to but take it somewhere where it's supposed to be.
clearly you have never heard of the EA and or Codemasters antics and how much they "care and listen" to their community.
All they care about is QUANTITY not QUALITY!
Like already said, it's copy paste each year, and this year is full of microtransactions. You can't even get enough pitcoin on the free season pass anymore since there's only 1! pitcoin reward in the whole 50 levels of free pass, where last years at least you could get even more. And don;t get me started about their "service" since that is non existent because I still haven't received my 5000 pitcoin which is standard on the normal version ( https://www.ea.com/games/f1/f1-23/buy#Playstation ) and if you read my mail correspondence with their "service", it's infuriating!
I have stated more then enough that as long they don't build the F1 series from the ground up with a complete NEW engine (which there are more than available within EA) and ditch last gen consoles, there's no hope for a better quality release, and you will encounter the same bugs and issues as previous years. The netcode for online is so outdated that it originates from 2010 or around that time, and they try to "improve" it with ductape and bubblegum, and we see the same * happen again in lobbies with the weirdest bugs and glitches.
IF they would listen to their community for once, they would build a new game, new engine, good netcode, and make sure that 1 thing is SPOT ON and that's the DRIVING experience. Not some worthless addition in braking point, supercars, whatever. They keep adding crap and that crap isn't anything the majority here asks for. People buy a F1 game for what it is. F1! If i want supercars, I will play GT7 or something, if I want a story I play God of War.
If I want to race F1 cars, it's because the cars a insane quick, stick to road like glue, on the most iconic tracks. But the tracks are hopelessly outdated, at least most of them, and it's just waiting for them to destroy the FFB with some patch again like every year, and then that fix takes months.
Don't think for a moment that they will take you serious, because time already has proven that they will never do that. They simply don't care.
