F1 Game Community Suggestions Hub

I think the Career mode development could use a revamp. One of the things I find quite annoying is how a ‘rules reset’ basically just means that the development tree gets set back to a previous state, and how easy this is to game with your resource points through the rest of the year to start the following season with a mega car. As we’ve seen in real life, a rules reset can really shake up the order of the field and devoting a bunch of resource to next year isn’t always a guarantee of success. We also see that major rules shakeups can be a great opportunity for for divergence in design philosophy.

At a high level, I think a cool idea would be for a rules reset to come in two types: major and minor. These could be across engine, aero, and chassis (or you could combine aero and chassis). Taking the 2022 rule change as an example, as a player you’re presented with 3 options as part of the major rule change:

Red Bull undercut philosophy

Ferrari bathtub philosophy

Mercedes zero sidepod philosophy

Each one of these could come with a variety of strengths and weaknesses, with stats against the normal upgradable areas (front and rear downforce, tire wear, drag etc), and stats related to development (how many resource points to deliver upgrades, what the ultimate ceiling of the philosophy is). All of these stats should be at least partially hidden to the player with perhaps the addition of a technical head staff member, where employing a better staff member gets you a clearer view of what the best philosophy is against each stat (but doesn’t provide absolute certainty). This way, you could devote lots of resource to ‘next year’ when you get word that a rule change is coming, but there’s no guarantee you selected the right philosophy. By implementing a ‘major’ rule change in engine or aero/chassis (or both) once every 2 or 3 seasons, this would essentially provide a more interesting soft reset to career mode by resetting the order and perhaps making the player have to work their way from the back or the midfield if they select a poor development route.

For years where there aren’t ‘major’ rule changes, I’d suggest implementing a minor change, which has varied effects on the various different development paths (think the 15mm floor edge rise this year that was nominally supposed to be worse for Red Bull, or some of the rule changes over the past decade designed to slow Mercedes down). This would provide a mini reshuffle every season, that might hit certain teams harder than others, adding another wildcard aspect to the development race.

As I say, I think you could do this across the current development categories, and F1 history provides loads of examples of where teams coalesce around 2-3 design philosophies when there is a rule shakeup. The sidepod thing we currently see is just the latest iteration of this (I’m pretty sure there’s a few engine philosophies in the current rule set, I seem to remember some talk about the turbo placement and how Merc and Ferrari have done this differently for instance).

Anyway, this has become an essay now, but in essence the development tree is just a mini game that spits out a successions of stats (like front and rear downforce, component reliability, tire wear etc) that impact the car you drive on track. I think with a bit of thought, the game could make this a much more dynamic and engaging part of the game that feels closer to the real life development war and order reshuffles we see every year

@BewareTheHare 

I love your idea! Thanks for sharing that - so creative! 

I agree - this would add a lot of life to career modes, particularly ones that are continued into further seasons. 

Perhaps another idea on the topic of regulation resets could be the have a limit to how many resource points a team can have, meaning that when a regulation change does hit, teams can’t save every upgrade because they’ve been stockpiling resource points for a long time. 

Like you said, having different car philosophies would be so cool, and having them alter your R&D tree with some allowing for deeper development (leading to better performance overall) would be so good. From the get go of a career mode, it would be out you on a journey, developing and getting a better understanding for a certain philosophy. And, if you decide you don’t like a particular philosophy, or if it’s time for something new, you could always change to another one at the expense of lots of resource points. 

And the idea of having minor regulation changes too is also really good, because it would just keep things feeling fresh and interesting going into every season. Because at the moment when you get to later seasons (even seasons 3/4/5 face this problem), the development almost completely stops, and it leads to the same drivers/teams going for the championships every season. 

EA and Codemasters, you need to be listening. 

Thanks! I’ve been mulling that one over a little while and I think it gives way more scope to keep a career fresh through multiple seasons.

Just whilst I think about it you could have a v2 of this that contains things like ‘silver bullets’. Maybe it’s like one of those staff interaction things where someone comes to you and says ‘we think we’ve found a loophole that might gain a lot of performance, do you want to pursue it at a cost of x resource points?’. Then you either get an f duct or DAS that’s a really cool upgrade, or you get something that’s less good like that Aston Martin rear wing from last year (I think from memory that didn’t do much).

Once you or another team launches it, then every team gets a chance to try and copy it or ignore it and carry on your own thing. I don’t know, I think there’s loads of scope to make the development mini game a lot more engaging

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@BewareTheHare wrote:

Thanks! I’ve been mulling that one over a little while and I think it gives way more scope to keep a career fresh through multiple seasons.

Just whilst I think about it you could have a v2 of this that contains things like ‘silver bullets’. Maybe it’s like one of those staff interaction things where someone comes to you and says ‘we think we’ve found a loophole that might gain a lot of performance, do you want to pursue it at a cost of x resource points?’. Then you either get an f duct or DAS that’s a really cool upgrade, or you get something that’s less good like that Aston Martin rear wing from last year (I think from memory that didn’t do much).

Once you or another team launches it, then every team gets a chance to try and copy it or ignore it and carry on your own thing. I don’t know, I think there’s loads of scope to make the development mini game a lot more engaging

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@BewareTheHare 

I definitely agree with you.

And yeah, that further idea you suggested would be amazing, with having those really cool upgrades (like DAS)  being presented to you to delve deeper into for a development path.

Also, you mentioned making a V2 containing silver bullets. Just wondering what you mean by this?

Here’s today’s 5 ideas for the suggestion hub:

• Split-screen career mode
• More track limits options (e.g. Free track limits, low stringency, medium, stringency, high stringency, etc.)
• Ability to add/remove penalties post race in career mode (if players misuse this feature, that’s on them - doesn’t matter)
• Option to do Pre-Season testing in Bahrain (opportunity for resource points to be earned - there could even be the option to do just a larger version of quick practice for pre-season testing)
• Ability to sign drivers who retire after seasons during the career mode (e.g. Daniel Ricciardo, Sebastian Vettel, Fernando Alonso)

• Wider range of improved and unique race engineer lines
• Scanned tracks for realism
• Ability to do practice starts with clutch in pit-lane or start/finish straight at the end of practice
• Return of classic cars
• Track map outlining where you’re faster/slower than your teammate

@ScarDuck14 

No, that’s 8.