I've been playing the game for about two weeks now (first experiences since the Beta), and I have a few thoughts that I think I can add to the overall list.
- F1 World. Now, this may be an unpopular choice, but I actually don't mind it. Still, locking the AI early to an easy level (35) is not a good choice by far. Tech Level Compensation doesn't help when the AI just back out of all moves because they are on Easy difficulty. Just give us an option to play against Easy (35), Medium (60), Hard (90) and Ultimate (105) opponents. Maybe even tie it in to Safety License level. Would be such a simple fix IMO, and you might not even need to use Tech Level Compensation.
- F1 Life (the wardrobe stuff) - just leave it for Driver Career. For Driver Career, you could spend your earned Career money to make your character more stylish for certain cutscenes, or your house where you hold all your stuff look a bit different. You can even keep the paid options there (buying certain stuff with PitCoin, if you wish). Nobody really cares about it in general, we're here to race in our cars and driving suits and helmets, not stick around trying to show off... something.
- Customization overall. Severely lacking this year. Also, not a fan of unlocking "real" helmets, I feel no real benefit of using someone's helmet online - I would rather use my own, but... I only have 1 option available without Podium Pass... And I have no PitCoins because I bought the Standard version of the game. I miss 2020-2021 days when we had a ton of customizable helmet designs... And we can't even use our custom gloves when using real F1 cars...
- Career mode. Nice to see a fresh coat of paint, but underlying issues are still there. R&D also seems to be rubberbanding somehow this year... Give us back the R&D tree (because the current menu is quite confusing...), remake some car upgrades, introduce new car upgrades, introduce more practice programmes (or even make different practice programmes for different sessions, for example, FP1 could have acclimatization and ERS tests, FP2 could have tyre wear and race strategy tests, FP3 could have fuel and qualy sim tests), make progression slower so that we could actually last 10 seasons, a more varied calendar is also a possibility. With the current progression, I think you can finish up with Career Mode after 7 seasons max, even with the modifiers. And also, I think it would be a rather quick fix to add F2 drivers from current season for Season 2 Driver Market of Career Mode.
- Handling. Oh boy. Where to begin... Well, it IS better than it was in the last Beta (speaking from gamepad experience). But still has some very weird moments. Slides feel way too easy to save. Steering input is sometimes weird. Oh and don't even mention the hidden countersteer assist... Can we tune it back for F1 25? That hidden countersteer assist is just not fun, and F1 23's version was better. I do like some changes, like the tyre model upgrade or the brake change. But the handling needs SERIOUS work for next year.
- Gameplay. At this point, feels dated. Weather system needs an upgrade with more variety and flexibility (bigger variations of weather, possible shorter bursts of rain, more slots for custom weather settings, more "Dynamic" options like "Dynamic Dry" (changes between clear, light cloud and overcast) or "Dynamic Wet" (changes between light rain, heavy rain, storm) and just overall more detailed weather), Safety Car is still not 100% reliable (and also still no unlapping after all these years), Red Flags need to be able to choose between Standing Start and Rolling Start (and also needs "Formation Lap" again), we still want a Cooldown Lap, and so on. We really need some major improvements to all the primary gameplay systems here.
- AI. Still feels very robotic. Some other sims have made AI feel much better and less robotic. I'm not sure what way would be the best to improve here, but the AI certainly needs to start being less robotic.
- ERS. Not necessarily a bad change this year (though I'm not a big fan of this). Qualifying should only have "None" and "Hotlap" (optimized for a track) though, to prioritize driver's skills instead. Race could have your usual "None", "Medium", "Full" (current hotlap, but renamed to make more sense) and "Overtake", with the "Hotlap" for qualifying unavailable during race. Also, should probably tweak regeneration for each ERS setting also.
- Online. Virtually unchanged from last year, which isn't good. More flexibility with lobby settings would be useful, like having specific rules settings, forcing certain assists for all people, using FOM car with 2024 liveries for Equal Cars to actually have Equal cars, more slots for lobbies (up to 24)... These are just some ideas.
- Bugfixes. I won't get into details but... So many bugs. QA needs to improve a little. Maybe your QA testers are low-skilled players at this point? No offense, of course - but some obvious bugs pass by way too easily.
- Improvements. Improvements to existing features are necessary. Spectator Mode feels way too limited, with not enough camera angles choices and limited data output. Replays are still unable to show other drivers in Multiplayer Replays (also can't even save them in MP if you don't finish, which is not good; also maybe you guys could add switching to other drivers in MP Race Replays if the drivers used "Public" Telemetry mode?) and Replays could benefit from Spectator Mode options like Leaderboard toggles or telemetry stuff. Highlights seem to be hit and miss since 2021 and this would be useful if improved. Voice Commands would benefit from improvements also, they like to not give the information necessary.
- Slight EDIT: I forgot to add - Modding. PC players would really thank you guys if you could actually start providing at least SOME modding support, as Modding keeps your game afloat for a bit longer. I'm not asking for much - but maybe some official documentation or some official file editing tools would be a good start.
I could probably write more... But I choose not to. All I can say is - time to do better. And finally, time to rethink what is your target audience, because this game feels like it was made with people who never played racing games in mind, hoping to bring new audience in. I would say that the target, first and foremost, should be current F1 fan audience and current F1 game enjoyers. F1 is not your generic Need for Speed game. With your current choices over the past few years, you have not only not brought new audience, but you have made most of your old audience say "enough is enough".
Community Manager
