We really need a set up assistant of some sort.
It would be great if it can take prompts from the player and adjust the set up for you instead of tinkering with everything yourself.
It will really help dial in a personalised set up and will help newbies do the same. It will make the practice sessions feel more realistic and meaningful.
AI has made great leaps, surely there is an agent for this.
This is something the MotoGP game series has had for the last 14 years and does very well. You basically sit down in the garage with your engineer and click some preset questions/responses regarding how the bike is handling and how you WANT it to feel, and the engineer suggests ways to alter the setup or will just go ahead and make the changes for you!
In these F1 games, I would say that a good 75% of players will simply load up Time Trial on Day 1, copy and save whatever setup is sat at Number 1 on the global leaderboard, or one from whatever eSports driver pops up first, and they will just use that for all modes and then complain about the handling model when they can't drive a lap properly with full assists on a gamepad or get used to the hyper sensitive exploit setup that the fast guys on expensive wheels are using to maximise lap time.
Everyone has a different driving style and feel for the cars depending on experience, response time and input device. But the game offers very little in regards to helping players customise a setup to their needs. The default setup system is generally poor and hasn't changed since F1 2010. They're even labelled based on how much aero you think you should run. Why not at least offer defaults based on suspension settings or emphasise over/understeer?
Having an engineer guide you through this process teaches players the fundamentals of car setup and lets players find their way. I see so many suggestions like this that would go a long way to improving the 'on track' driving/racing experience, but it seems like EA isn't interested in improving that side of the game. So far in F1 25 all I've seen are some fancy new menus for My Team with the same old game mode when you take the car on track. We've got some pretty new trees around the tracks, but the cars will be just the same to drive. It's all cosmetic!! We are not seeing any real steps forward with driving the cars or creating an authentic F1 grand prix experience! I wou dnot care less if the game had an MS Dos black and white game menu, and we all drove plain liveried cars. If the racing experience was good, that's all I'm here for.
F1 championship edition released in 2006 had a really good car and race setup mechanic. During practice sessions. You'd get a good run down of what the track and conditions were and point you towards what kind off setup you'd want. Low downforce for Monza and high for Monaco. But also it help you with fine adjustments to Camber, suspension. Etc etc etc First you would do a couple of laps for a baseline. Then next you would first make adjustment for camber. Do a lap with increased negative camber. If you was slower. It would tell you to try a lap with reduced camber. But it didn't force you to do untold laps fine tuning. Was up to you. It would point out to keep in mind the lap times of the Ai and where you needed to be. But also explain that a fast setup isn't always as good as a setup that best suits your driving style.
My memory is a little fuzzy. So I can't be sure. But I think if rain was forecast for Qualifying and/or race it would also tell you what adjustments you should make.
i miss that game mechanic so much
