Career Mode Overhaul

I really like the potential of Career mode. There are some solid ideas that could serve as the foundation of an excellent and endlessly replayable career mode. But the mode is currently bogged down by too many issues and needs to be overhauled, either as an update or for the next game. I want to lay out the issues and potential solutions below.

1. More Stage Variety

I was flabbergasted once I started playing quickplay and realized how much of the game I was missing out on because Career mode never presented those stages or conditions. It was so frustrating to ALWAYS end on a night stage as well (which is very unrealistic). More stage variety would go a long way to elevating the mode.

2. Better AI

This would help more than Career mode. The AI is both too inconsistent and also not inconsistent enough. They are inconsistent as a group from stage to stage and rally to rally, sometimes not being a challenge at all even when I crash, other times beating me by a wide margin and competing with world record times even though I nailed the stage. But it's always the one guy who's top of the AI, especially in non-WRC events. They never crash out or just have a bad rally. Individuals are FAR too consistent. It's practically impossible to win a championship without coming in first the majority of events AND making podium on all but one or two at most.

3. Tire System Overhaul

The tire system in this game is less than barebones. I'd consider it THE biggest pain-point that impacts the entire game and every mode in it, and Career is certainly no exception. Being able to select the tires you bring, per tire degradation and selection, tire rotation between stages, and reusing tires are required for the game and this franchise moving forward.

4. Get rid of the Benefactor System

I liked the idea of a benefactor when I first heard of it, but getting hands on with it has been a terrible experience and I can't think of a way to solve the issue in a satisfying way other than getting rid of it. His demands are ridiculous and make career feel so suffocating. Let us be our own benefactors and own cars. Engineers and Teammates should still be salaried (maybe co-driver too), and maybe make us pay to upgrade the Chief Engineer, but I far prefer having to pay for my own repairs and having a sense of ownership over my car collection, plus what is the point to having all of these choices for events throughout career if our choices are practically being dictated to us by a lunatic who NEEDS me to come in first in every event in a championship? 

Heck even car upkeep can still be a thing (though not as expensive as current) since getting new tires and keeping the car race ready does have a cost. Just have a restriction be the "free" restriction like the Fulvia was in DR2.0 to prevent a fail state, or make regularity rally the event you can still do while "in the red".

If you want to motivate people to try new things and get out of their comfort zone a little, have certain events highlighted as having bonus prize money.

5. Change the Schedule between Seasons

Having one schedule for a season or three is fine, but playing that same schedule 5 or 8 seasons in is really killing the longevity of career mode.

6. Multiple Careers and Career options

I want to make it clear that having a modern career with historical side events should be the focus and the primary mode. But maybe let us start a new career without deleting the old one. I'd like to be able to run both a more forgiving career with shorter events and an ultra-hardcore full length events with no restarts career at the same time. 

Also, having the option to do a historical career, where you can choose your own restrictions as the tier 3, 2 and 1 options for the WRC events would really make running multiple careers appealing. Speaking of the tier levels...

7. Let Us Select our Tier level per WRC event

This ties into multiple points above, but without a benefactor we are free to decide what tier to enter into per event, as opposed to per season. This could allow for situations where we might be struggling financially to keep up with the repairs on our Rally 1 car while performing poorly (and therefor not getting the prize money to keep in the black), so we "demote" ourselves mid-season to Rally 2 in order to stabilize. It might kill our chances at championship prize money but it will stop the bleeding so to speak. Even cooler if we get to choose this for our teammates as well, where one is struggling so the pair gets sent down a level but another gets "called up" to take their place in the car.

I'm sure there is more that can be done to improve the mode, but I really do think the foundation of a flexible schedule with potential choices about conflicts is a good basis for a strong and highly replayable career mode. Thank you for reading and your consideration.