let pcgamer know how you feel about GP4's dissapointing news of missing items

I second that morbid but do you think we should wait for gp4 to come out first, then start with letters, complaints, suggestions e.t.c. Rememeber "our" site has the .com so if they're gonna listen to anyone its gonna be us

Or maybe he'll take you're petition, send it to Crammond, who will sue you all for slander.

i think that you morbid should craft the letter when we're ready, we saw how good you are creating well written and concise thread during your venture in to car set-ups.

after we have all had a game a few weeks, we should open up a thread, post our thoughts and then submit the results to morbid and then let him work his literary witch craft on it

any one wanna second me on that?






LS's Tip of the week
ESSENTIAL OILS aren't essential unless you're an engine, a gearbox or a twat

But you gues have to remember, although getting a pc gamer answer is one (huge) step forward, Crammond is still a tight bugger when it comes to his fans

yep seconded

Something worth remembering when bemoaning content/quality/releasing of new titles:

Typically, a game's development is entirely funded as an advance or salary by a publisher - in the case of GP4, it is Infogrames, as they bought out Hasbro and all their rights. Such publishing deals usually involve significant control by the publisher over the content and release date of the game in question: if developer X is being paid by the month, why not take your time and be lazy? Hence publishers usually have rights to withhold payments if targets are not met, and so a developer is often put under pressure to omit certain features in order to ship a game on time.

Please note that I am not saying this is necessarily the case with GP4. There are many other possible explanations to your complaints. With any luck, when you have established precisely what those complaints are, we'll all get some answers.

Ross
PC GAMER

Good point Ross,

Unfortunatly for the GPx fans, the talk about a five year plan and implementable content seems a bit too convient an excuse for Nick Court to justify leaving out stuff his customers wish to see.

i wonder if in any other industry, the manufacturer constantly ignores his customer base goes ahead with what they think we would like?

Companys spend thousands on customer research to find out how to improve their product for the consumer.

Yet when its in abundance where their product is concerned they seem to "chuck a deaf un"






LS's Tip of the week
ESSENTIAL OILS aren't essential unless you're an engine, a gearbox or a twat

Good point Ross,

Unfortunatly for the GPx fans, the talk about a five year plan and implementable content seems a bit too convient an excuse for Nick Court to justify leaving out stuff his customers wish to see.

i wonder if in any other industry, the manufacturer constantly ignores his customer base goes ahead with what they think we would like?

Companys spend thousands on customer research to find out how to improve their product for the consumer.

Yet when its in abundance where their product is concerned they seem to "chuck a deaf un"






LS's Tip of the week
ESSENTIAL OILS aren't essential unless you're an engine, a gearbox or a twat

Good point Ross,

Unfortunatly for the GPx fans, the talk about a five year plan and implementable content seems a bit too convient an excuse for Nick Court to justify leaving out stuff his customers wish to see.

i wonder if in any other industry, the manufacturer constantly ignores his customer base goes ahead with what they think we would like?

Companys spend thousands on customer research to find out how to improve their product for the consumer.

Yet when its in abundance where their product is concerned they seem to "chuck a deaf un"






LS's Tip of the week
ESSENTIAL OILS aren't essential unless you're an engine, a gearbox or a twat

goddamn refresh and timing out message GRRRRRRRRR






LS's Tip of the week
ESSENTIAL OILS aren't essential unless you're an engine, a gearbox or a twat

Yo Sup

Well someone is listening, finally

After all our bitching someone important is taking notice!!!! This is a big step forward cos normally we have been disappointed with no being listened to!

:D




Racing Is Life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting
Jesus may be able to heal the sick and bring the dead back to life, but he can't do shît for low fps

I agree with rosss and ste, but its true, when games are doing well and selling money, manulfactorers tend not to listen to their fans as much as we would like. I remember Geoff once saying, when asked if he was aware of user made creations, that he was, but did not approve of them. Fair enough, why should he, his game is the best F1 sim and selling well. In fact everyone here will buy it.

But, one day, others will catch up and indeed "overtake" (nice pun there} geoff so he will then have to listen to the community and take note on what we want

Well, I won't mind being the typing force behind the final version of the letter. But I will need loads and loads of help. First of all, I think it would be a very wise move to follow the excellent advise of the man, MeanMM himself. So I prepose this:

1) We get the game and play it. We need a big sample here, so everyone is invited to contribute here. The more inputs the better.

2) Read the PC gamer review. It would be a good move to put out letter in direct continuation of the review. Alas, since I am in Denmark, and a lot of other forum members are even further from the UK, we will need some help here from the brits.

3) I try to pick up all points, arguments and opinions in a letter. Since the more of is that pitch in the better, the crafting of the letter will take a couple of trials. I will make a version and post it in the thread, and then the forum should point out strong points, weak spots, missing stuff and possible inprovements. I will then make a new and improved version, and we start again.

4) When we think we are finished, we all electronically "sign" the letter with our real name, country and a valid email address, and send it to the Man.

On a final note, I want to say that we MUST keep a very clear agenda. That is to say that we must have a definition of our objectives and how we are going to achieve them, and most importantly, we can decide when the campaign is over. Our objectives must be explained in very clear and clean english. I have seen, many times indeed, people make fusses about games before. Even if you are just adamant on reminding the developers of their own statements in the past, and what those statements mean, they can come pretty hard down on you. If anyone doubts my words try finding a dude on apolyton named Libertarian and ask him what he thinks about Firaxis' "we don't acknowledge your existance" policy towards him. This is the penultimate stratagem of the industry and believe me it works very well indeed, whether it is applied to a single person, a magazine or a company. We don't want them to continue or increase the usage of this weapon...

Speaking of Firaxis, they got into the same situation of publisher squeeze(it is almost as big a classic in the industy, as the "tunnel" is in soccer, or slipstreaming is in F1) as the Man describes above. Infogrames runs a pretty tight leash on their developers, and when they launched Civ3 it was very far from finished. Libertarian was one of the people that pointed this out to the public. Anyway, the community succeeded in getting Firaxis to do some pretty heavy post release development of Civ3. And that means patches in created on the basis of input from the community.

I think that this is the best thing we can get here. There is not gonna be any giant freebies, like some of you thought GP3-2000 should have been a free patch. While it would be nice to get them to create a carreer mode with testing sessions and R&D and things like that "for free", we got to keep our demands real if we want to be heard. Its just not gonna happen. They have to be able to afford creating the patch, and we have to realise just how much energy we are willing to put into this.

I think that we should push on for an open forum, either at the development team or at Infogrames, where we can discuss development of patches and further products in the series, with the people who make the decisions. Our biggest problem right now is that we don't even have an email address to the team or the publisher (Infogrames does not support GP3-2000). Secondly I think we should develop a top 10 (20 or 50) of features we want in the game. Then we at least we have something to negotiate with and can reach some sort of agreement with Geoff and Co. We probably won't get everything we want, but with a bit of determination and a lot of effort we might just get a good chunk of it.

So what do you guys say? Shall we dance the tango with the big guys, or crawl back into our dens?

---

It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

Yep, as always, i second it

"You da' man" as they say

We probably also want to enlist the services of the mighty Vader. He is a Uni graduate in English, and has a very sharp mind too... Plus I always seem to be able to do better when he is around. It must be the treat of that Force Grip, you know, Choking Throat and Co.

---

It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

LOL- Morbid

Yeah lets go for it!!

I think the fact you're from denmark, vader from germany, ozzie mika etc are from austrailia etc etc should hopefully give an insite in to the global popularity of the GP series.

Hope fully when we construct a letter to the relevant people that govern the decisions as to what goes into the next installment of the GP saga, we can count on Ross from PCGamer to give us a few pointers in what to say.

I agree on a unified opinion as to what suggestions the GP community in general would like. And would further suggest that a offer of input from our communtiy would be good in both cases.


We understand now that pressure from infogrammes to get the next chapter of the GP franchise has a deadline as such, but we could perhaps point them into a direction that would increase their sales as opposed to alienating the current user base of GP buyers.

perhaps if Ross visits the forum again, he could give us some advice as to how best approach a big software company and get the co-operation flowing between the designers and the users.






LS's Tip of the week
ESSENTIAL OILS aren't essential unless you're an engine, a gearbox or a twat

Vader and Morbid you should start the letter with Ls tip:

"Boba LS's tip of the week

Make loads of money by releasing the same version of a game that you know people will buy because of your reputation, but with small updates"

then they will become interested straight away!

cheers

jordangp2001

Wow, I go away for one day, come back and I've missed all of this!

This is very good news, I'm in full support of Morbid's plan...and if we can get Vader on board then that is a huge boost too.

Thanks guys!

Chris J

Although I don't necessarily agree with the reasoning behind this *hides behind desk as tomatos fly past* I think you guys have done a great job - Morbid's right, hopefully this could lead to something of great significance for the community!




HISTORIC BTCC VIDEOS