what is going on with this game?
it seems like every single player mode seems to have a big bug involved in them besides gp mode and im just getting more and more annoyed by it. it has come to a point where pretty much every time i ...
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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
- @Neil_RS60 Sir! Sir! I believe you dropped this 🎤
@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 🙏
- @Neil_RS60 I certainly wasn't trying to suggest PGA Tour was without issues or aspects to be improved on. I may have missed something recently but I think the bugs are more of the minor inconvenience type compared to people not being able to use their wheels with F1 23 though. Add in some improved online options and sort the tournaments entry fee / rewards problem and I think they'd likely get more players back to what I think is fundamentally a good game. Oh, and I also personally appreciate 60 fps eventually coming to console.
