Early Experimental Preview of Career Concept

Is it maybe an idea where, if you do want to use your own vehicle. You will get extra reward for doing it.
This could be achieved via a pre-ticked box where if you want to de-select it, it'll give a warning.
I feel like this would about double the content. Especially for the people who are sitting in endgame with escobar amounts of money.

 

Oh that's amazing to hear!
Btw i hope this isn't too off topic, but how does the team feel about this project? Since this has been probably the most long awaited feature since its been on the menu for so long.

 

I understand this, though being more on the roleplayer side, I'm not sure I fully agree with the idea of *every single mission* having a proposed car that you have to use the first time. When I first tried Career Mode out, for example, I was genuinely surprised that to find out I wouldn't be using my starter Covet in most races & time attacks, upgrading it in between, etc. While I enjoy seeing what kinds of cars the devs choose for each mission (and would love to see a description of the selection process), it's going to feel a little immersion-breaking if each race or time attack throws another different car at you and using your own always requires a do-over.

The only solution I can think of is to let real life be the guide, and scale the difficulty of each mission type from "use what you have" to "full specialized setup required" over the course of the game. In real life, a factory-fresh car, even a fairly sporty one, is usually a generalist to some degree, simply because it has to be, and a lot of enthusiasts' daily drivers remain so indefinitely. Especially in the hands of a poor teenager, the same car might be used to rip mountain passes, challenge other enthusiasts' dailies on the freeway, run low-end stoplight/street drags (to the extent that stoplight racing is even a thing anymore), do stupid stuff on dirt backroads, or casually enter autocross events and run-what-you-brung drag racing nights, all with few/no changes in between. But if you want to be truly optimal at any given type of... anything, you'll have to make changes to the car that will make it unsuitable for others. By scaling the difficulty of each event type, it may be possible to "ease" players into building and tuning their own car, especially as greater resources available late-game will make owning multiple vehicles more feasible.

 

afiak theres now a tool that can get performance from your car like top speed and accel. So why not compare the players car against the pre-set racers and then give the player an estimate of easy medium hard depending on if they're quicker or slower.

 

If it's the devs' performance tester, it doesn't test cornering grip and gives inconsistent results for off-road ability.

 

Why wouldn't they then like, remake it?

 

im kinda agreeing with this. after reading through the past few pages im very very excited and think the ideas so far have been great, i just feel like it'd be better if instead of giving the player a car for every event i think it should default be their own vehicle (with restrictions that dont allow vehicles that wont work, such as "you cannot enter this event as you do not have a towbar") but players also have the option to rent a car which will limit them to one star. that would incentivise using your own cars when you can, and personally id much rather do every event possible with my own vehicles, as well as building up your garage to be able to do as many events as possible but when necessary you can rent a vehicle and come back to the event at a later date once youve bought or built something that fits. just my two cents

 

Forza Horizon (1, don't know about the others) has this mechanic. The player uses their car for the event, but of course there are restrictions on which car can come to an event, ex. can't use an S-tier in a race with B-tiers, need AWD for off road, etc. For specialty events (racing a hot-air balloon), a car is provided, and winning the event grants the user the car. I really like this method, as I can build my own car, even changing it how it's needed to suit different events, rather than just being a freeloader picking up random events.

To solve the "what about breaking your car in the event, that would deincentivise players from using it" argument, we can look at DiRT Rally, where repairs are taken from the winnings, incentivizing a cleaner finish, but the user will never have to pay "out-of-pocket" for a repair. For certain events where destruction is the goal / inevitable, the event can pay the user off any damage on top of winnings, I believe there is a game which does this but I don't recall which.

 

Agree to the agree. It's basically what every street racing game has. I'd just prefer to use my own car if that's possible and to build it up. It always gives you a sense of pride in your car, and I feel like it would be better in Beam than in any other racing game due to the more realistic physics and better customization.

 

Oh the memories you unlocked... shame they got rid of that system and just let you pick any car in the next games.

Going back to BeamNG, I'm sure a proper performance rating system is already on some to-do list, but i'm afraid it will take some time to balance correctly. Personally i believe we could have a simpler system like in Gran Turismo, where the main restrictions are on power, drivetrain, year, etc.

 

I really hope they take inspiration from the Test Drive Unlimited games when it comes to buying cars, it would be perfect with all the factory configurations you can get in beam

 

Still sort of existed as of FH4, albeit it was barely used outside of the cross country races that pretty much all restricted car category just to make you use stupid buggies as often as possible

I could still see the occasional time attack giving you a car for that mission only, and letting you keep it if you can beat the gold medal time while simultaneously meeting some sort of fairly difficult bonus objective (meet a certain drift score in a Bolide 320GTT or Covet MR-Turbo, jump a Scintilla a certain distance without damaging it, that sort of thing). Could be a callback to the showcase events in Horizon 1, the car-delivery events in Hot Pursuit 2 that unlocked the car upon successful completion, etc.

 

To be clear, I'm not opposed to providing (or occasionally forcing provided) vehicles. They're inevitable, and offer the player variety. Some missions (like bus routes) strictly call for certain vehicles, and many, like Knock Away, are simply better to give the player a temporary vehicle for.

I'm just not sold on each and every mission, though. At the very least, I feel time trials would be better to just have (or allow from the get-go) the player use their own vehicle. It's a relatively simple mission type with no failure state, typically taking place on roads that are large enough to facilitate virtually any vehicle, minimizing risk of the player being forced to DNF. Scoring could be based on vehicle classes/player progression, rather than tuned for just the default vehicle. Thus, as the player's vehicle gets better over their career, so does their score. But if they want to bring their racing Pigeon to the circuit, there's no penalty.

I admire the dedication that would come with that, but I think that might have been a bit excessive BeamNG is beholden to the real laws of physics, but the intricacies of real-world economics might need to take a backseat to what the player will find fun and intuitive, ahead of being realistic.

This is an interesting point, and one that I hadn't factored in: some people will be interested in the events, but not the tuning. Perhaps the player could just select a configuration of their vehicle that they'd like to adopt, and just be charged for the parts without having to choose or tune them? Y'know, cost vs convenience?

Okay, that does sound cool. Dynamic, random gameplay events that have a small effect on the career? Sign me up It sounds nice that there will be some major events based upon the player's vehicle, it's just that it seems like too much is reserved for the late-game. Early-game player vehicle missions don't even have to be competitive, just have the player slap an off-brand Papa John's sign on their roof and deliver pizzas!

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and concerns about the systems in play in career mode. There's a lot to do, and you've got a good picture of what you intend to accomplish. I'll admit, I'm a little leery about some of the details, but career mode seems to be in good hands

 

This man has good ideas

 

I would still like to see persistent damage, even in the free-roam areas of career mode. I also wouldn't mind seeing the freeroam mode stay as it is to be honest, that way it can become much harder to acquire the appropriate cars, and actually getting a scintilla can feel like an accomplishment - not an impossible one - but one nonetheless, rather than Forza, where you're spoon-fed supercars.

 

Just adding my opinion to the pile: I agree with others above that you should be able to use your own car first time in events, provided that the vehicle meets a set of rules or guidelines for the event. Otherwise your own car, or car collection, feels sort of pointless; Part of the fun with a career mode in a freeroam racing game is building up cars for a goal, and then being able to use them to achieve that goal; If the goal (i.e the race, or whatever) has to be completed with a pre-provided vehicle before you can use your own, building your own vehicles suddenly becomes detached from progressing through the career, and thus kind of pointless beyond appearances. Beam, with its customizability and range of vehicle selection, is probably the most well suited game of the modern era to provide the experience of making your own car for you to accomplish a goal, whether it be for racing, crawling, or hauling. It would be a shame to make those that want to chase that experience take the most tedious route through the career, having to repeat every event.

To finish with a comparison, think about some of the most beloved NFS games from the 2000's that heavily permitted and featured car customization, such as the Underground series, Carbon, and Most Wanted. Imagine if those games forced you to use a predefined car before you had to repeat the race to use your own car. They probably wouldn't be as well remembered as they are today if so.