what is going on with this game?

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.

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@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.

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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