Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-31526827-20200110032232/@comment-30967537-20200110120157

I drive in bonnet/hood mode and I think the F1 cars have just highlighted the years-old shortcomings of the game ...
 * No idea what the car is doing. Sometimes it grips through a corner, other times it flies off the track. I have absolutely no idea why. Maybe I’m going a bit faster or using too much steering input, but how exactly am I supposed to know when the game gives me no idea of what the car is doing? I have suggested two different methods of giving us visual feedback of what the car is doing, no response from FM.
 * Awful, aggressive bots. If a bot is within 5y/m of me I know that at any moment I may find myself flying off the track. I drive right to the edge of the track (i.e. off the racing line) to try to avoid this but it still happens all too frequently ... this has definitely got worse with the F1 races where I don’t think I’ve had a single race where a just-passed bot hasn’t blatantly driven off-line or changed line just to smash into me and at least 3 out of 5 races I find myself suddenly flying off the track into a wall. I’m sure this has got worse.
 * Mirrors. I have no real idea where the bot is because FM refuse to give us (working) mirrors ... the F1 cars have mirrors which bizarrely don’t show the cars behind you, only the track, the only reason to have mirrors is to see where other cars are, so this is beyond stupid!
 * No control over the throttle. So often I want to hold a constant throttle through a corner but that’s not possible. If I stay on the throttle I keep going faster which frequently results in sliding off the track. If I lift I grind to a halt. If I tap-tap-tap the throttle I (understandably) induce lift-off/throttle oversteer ... I assume that’s what it is but given that I have no idea what the car is doing I can’t be sure. Years ago I and many others suggested (on EA Answers and Facebook and more recently Reddit) that holding the throttle and brake at the same time should result in a constant throttle ... no response from FM.

Those are just the “features” which have become so much worse since v8.0. Let’s not forget about ...
 * The throttle and brake failures. These were introduced 2-3 years ago. There used to be a throttle failure issue but (on my iPad-3) it only seemed to occur at Le Mans. I never had brake issues. But now we regularly have throttle and/or brake failures at the start of and (repeatedly) during races. Just yesterday I had throttle failure exiting the bus-stop chicane whilst nearly 0.5s up in the WTTT event, no idea it’s about to happen, all of a sudden the car just slowed down, lap ruined, thanks FM. Initially they refused to acknowledge the problem, then they said they’d fixed it, but it still happens, you have no idea it’s going to happen, and it ruins the event/race you’re doing.
 * Track limits. Poorly and inconsistent defined. Which would be “ok” if they told us where the track limits are, but they won’t! Many tracks have areas where you can cut (e.g. Monza, CotA, etc) or exceed the track limits (e.g. Nürburgring, CotA, etc) but (for me) it’s a total guess just how much and where. Years ago I suggested a TT training mode which displays the track limits, of course I received no response from FM!
 * TT ghost. For years this has been my pet hate of this game. The ghost does not help. It distracts and obscures my view of the track. I understand that there are some/many players who like and use the ghost but I’m sure there are an equal number of players who feel like me. I have absolutely no idea why FM refuse to give us the option to turn off the ghost, it can’t be a challenging programming issue to turn it off, somebody recently suggested on here that they spent so much time on it and/or are so proud of it that they can’t (i.e. refuse to) accept that players don’t want it, I questioned that but am now beginning to wonder if it is the case! Whatever their reasons are, it yet again underlines how they’re really not interested in customer satisfaction.

As DB wrote above, I’m already regretting buying the F1 cars when there’s so little I can do with them. I have 4 cars (I purchased one with the recent disappointing festive discount) with the Mercedes fully upgraded. I quickly completed the Mercedes’ Invitational (i.e. Exclusive) Series. Now there’s nothing I can do with these F1 cars. Every day I do 3-4 races with the Mercedes until I hit the frustrating daily limit. Then I have to keep an eye on how many M$ I have lest I hit the equally frustrating maximum limit, if I get close I purchase another pointless F1 upgrade and slowly tick off the weeks until I manage to fully upgrade another F1 car so that I can do another short series. Rather than adding excitement to the game, the F1 cars have reduced my involvement and increased my frustration! All of which is bringing me closer and closer to calling time on this game which promised so much but clearly is not interested in delivering on that “real racing” promise.

P.S. Credit where it’s due. One good thing about v8.1 is the slightly improved Exclusive Series menu. However I think the section titles are rather confusing e.g. Owned Cars ... I own the cars in all of the sections! I think the titles should be something like ... Incomplete, Locked, Completed. But, as I wrote above, credit where it’s due, it’s nice to not have to scroll through 60+ series to get to the one you want.