Early Experimental Preview of Career Concept

yeah the UI feels so slow, like everything else runs so smooth but i feel like the UI runs at 1hz

 

The career looks promising, but in my opinion it needs a money system ASAP, as well as forcing you to use your own vehicle for every mission, so that players are prompted to buy new cars or upgrades

 

Nah. Money right now would be a waste and hurt bug finding. Same thing with forcing player car for each mission, balance would get thrown out the window, unless they did some sort of Forza/GT7 style Performance Points and classing. I’d be more open to more player car missions if what could be drove in each of the missions was limited like (D Class, Utility Vehicle, No Forced Induction) etc. Plus I still feel like the cop missions and stunt challenges should be forced cars. As well as a way to “Rent” a car for each mission that would cost cash, plus extra for any damage on your final try.

 

Oh my God, it finally here. Over 10 years of development and the final product is shaping up. I love to see it, and I'm so glad to have been a long for the journey since year 1. I've played almost 8 hours of the career mode already, and am enjoying it. I'm not sure if you have a final product in mind, or if you are still taking suggestions, because I have some thoughts to share.

Now, I understand it is extremely early in development, and we are only getting a very small glimpse of the finished product. This post is in no way meant as a criticism, it is merely constructive feedback at an early stage in development to hopefully give you some ideas.

As it stands, there's really not much sense of progression. The vehicle you drive and your level is largely inconsequential. Since every mission I've played provides you with a vehicle, there is no point in buying and upgrading personal vehicles. I just drove ve from mission mission with the starter Covet with no desire to change or upgrade my vehicle. I'd love it if more mission required you to bring your own vehicle. That way you have a reason to buy and upgrade vehicles. One way to tie this in to the already existing progression system would be to lock certain vehicles behind a related level requirement.

For example, take delivery missions. You can only start out with a basic pigeon. Some missions could be completed with that, or any vehicle with a tow hitch. As you complete those missions, you gain the laborer XP. Say at level 2, you unlock the ability to buy a basic D series, allowing you to do more missions. Some may still be restricted due to bed size or towing capacity, but at level 3 you can buy a still nicer D series, with a bigger bed and more towing capacity. Finally, at some level, you unlock the ability to buy the T series and complete missions requiring the T series. The H series and some variants of the roamer could be locked behind the laborer level as well.

Same goes for sports cars. Complete races to unlocked nicer and nicer cars, allowing you to beat more races and further your level and bank account. Aero cars and drift cars could be locked behind their respective skills, and offroad cars could be locked behind the adventure skill.

A system like I described above would create a very rewarding sense of progression, as you can have specific goals you are working to. If you want the top trim Scintilla, you'd need to be a perfect racer and level that skill all the way up. If you wanted a nice offroad truck, you'd have to master the crawling challenges. The system would also give the unique mission XP rewards a purpose. I haven't seen any other game do that yet, and I think that system has potential.


The only difficulty with implementing the system would be balancing the events. I can tell that each mission has been very carefully tested and balanced around the selected vehicle. Perhaps instead of time challenges, the stars for missions like races could be awarded for no damage, and having consistent lap times (i.e each lap time is within x seconds of each other) or a certain amount of drifts or airtime in each race. Challenges like those would encourage you to bring unique vehicles to master. A car with upgraded suspension to take some jumps, a RWD car to make drifts easier or a precise performance car to easily nail consistent lap times.

I'm so excited to finally get a glimpse of career mode. It's been an amazing decade, and I cannot believe how far the game has come. Y'all have made excellent decisions regarding the game development so far, and I'm certain the final career mode will be fun and eganging with or without my suggestions.

 

This is what i mean, right now career is hardly any different from playing scenarios
I know it's a very early version, just explaining my point

 

I love the career mode, I'm enjoying the maps a lot more being brought to all the different parts and feeling a sense of purpose in the game is a big difference. The new AI has added hugely to this experience, the added traffic and parked cars make the environment feel much more alive.

So far my only criticism is in the specific time slots to finish the chase missions (apprehend suspect between 50 seconds and 1 minute etc.) What ends up happening for me is I just disable the car as instantly as I can and then park and wait to arrest them in the correct window. I feel like otherwise the skill level / luck to get it right would be too high. I am thinking maybe this reward should just be taken out altogether, it feels a little redundant. Or to make it so you are not allowed to simply park and wait to force the player to get creative and stop spoilsports like me :-D.

 

Hey, I made a feedback / suggestions thread in regards to the career mode.
Wanted to post it here but it got a bit too large for a simple post.

Check it out here!

 

I am wondering how future proof the team is making the branch XP system. Will you be leaving yourself room for any future additions, like a story mode branch XP, or splitting up the competative racing into multiple branches (IMO this ought to be considered. At minimum an on road/off road/drag racing split). Even at release it would be beneficial to allow future additions for later additions.

Any reason why the economy currency is called "money" and not "Beam Bucks"?

I really look foward to a future pre-release with a sneak peak into the economy system. I'm sure that's going to be a huge gameplay addition with a lot of game balance considerations, but it'll add a ton to playability

 

For some reason, my game crashes whenever i try to load it.

 

After some time playing i got a random bluescreen. Now i can not use my old save nor can i add a new one. Somehow the UI is gone in the career selection

 

Loaded up career today to find my beloved car gone. I now drive a 1.5 covet. Which is what I think I originally chose maybe. Willing to share the files you need to investigate if you can instruct me how. Or perhaps you're not chasing up every fault in the WIP. I just said I'd let you know. All my mission progress is still there

Edit : so I figured out what it did is replaced my career car with the car I am currently using as my default in freeroam.

 

I love your ideas, I hope the devs will have a look at it

 

First off I want to commend the times set in the time trials. I had a great time learning the track layouts to get the high scores, a good balance where it was challenging but not unnecessarily difficult. Probably the most fun I've had in the game, especially trying to wrangle the barstow at high speed with its brakes starting to fade and radiator beginning to overheat on the final lap.

I am struggling with the drift challenges however and I might suggest that the throttle input be accounted for in the score calculations. Because it feels to me like the best way to score high points is just to swing the car to the side and let it skid, even if completely off throttle which isn't really drifting. My nicest and most controlled drifts don't seem to score as well. I feel like currently the system rewards a controller player more who can access max steering lock on a whim and is focused primarily on getting the most angle at the cost of the other components that would score in a real competition.

Perhaps I just need to git gud.

 

I agree that missions should be able to feature forced vehicles (though the player should be using exclusively their own car for at least half of them), but I don't agree with the idea of issuing a penalty on players who wreck a provided vehicle. After all, A. many of these events could have a stunt or destruction focus, where damage to the vehicle is basically inevitable, B. the player should feel free to have fun and experiment, not fear reprisal (a player short on cash should not feel dissuaded from police chase missions, for example), C. many of these events will be labor tasks, which are the very events players would likely play to make money in the early-mid game, and D. missions with traffic, or otherwise reliant on the AI may punish players for events outside their control. At best, I'd say damage to the vehicle in the final successful run should be subtracted from the total earnings, with 0 being the minimum reward.

 

It makes sense that they provide vehicles for everything being that this is effectively a demo and not a full product intended for proper gameplay. For full release I imagine it will be mission dependant, with certain missions (such as tutorials and most of the specialized career branch) giving the player a car.


As for damage penalty: I hope for full release that is a difficulty setting. It's certainly an interesting extra challenge for those who prefer that playstyle. Hopefully there's plenty of difficulty settings to suit everyone from casual players to those whose idea of a good weekend is finishing Get Over It.

 

That’s what I was saying. It wouldn’t apply to every run just your successful run. Maybe give a bonus for a having a clean car rather than a penalty for having a damaged one? That way it can’t cause you to go bankrupt from damaging a car but still encourages you to keep the car clean. (Btw I would turn the damage cost off for extreme stunt missions, but I also feel like those extreme stunt missions feel very out of place. I’d love to see beam try to replicate the stunt missions from the stuntman games. It make perfect sense with the movie studio in west coast. Start out with small jobs and odd stunts at the dirt oval and slowly grow to blockbusters etc)

 

OOOOOO I can't wait for this!!! Especially to use my Dodge Charger DD

 

Just noted a bug when you enter career mode having just done a scenario from the main menu when you press your reset physics button (or whatever the name of the button that just teleports you to your home point) it tried to put me back in the scenario I had just attempted (in this case it was slithery drift short.)

 

As a long time Career advocate I felt compeled to contribute, so:

What I like:
- The confidence to launch a non finished, experimental, but crucial part of the game in order to get feedback (I would like more of this because after all, isn't the whole BeamNG an alpha?)
- A great reason to keep playing this gem
- Promising garage mode integration
- Fun missions with AI (races and pursuits)
- Traffic (scarce but ambiental)
- General cleverness of it all

What it lacks (for now)
- After doing missions and coming back to your car I often can't keep going unless I do some weird pedal stomping.
- Replay when on a mission does not play back (CTD).
- No continuity, lack of effect of your choices/results/etc.
- The different progress parameters are a little confusing at the moment.
- Most missions could be customizable after vanilla completion but some are not.

What I'd like
- A cache replay mode that saves (and continuously erases) the last x seconds so you can watch/save your best moves and crashes.
- A hardcore mode where the beamng damage model not only shines but also brutally affect your career with persistent and (at least financially) punishing car damage (would make a totally new/different/realistic racing experience, for example)
- Some kind of story/roleplaying (never thought I would say this)
- A more central role of the car/s you have in the garage (generally not giving you a car for each activity)
- Obviously, money system, progression and so on.
- Related with all of the above, some pararell but not central soft grinding (taxi, hauling, bus driving, etc.) so you have to sweat a little to support your (offroad, drifting, racing, cop, etc.) career, repairs and improvements.
- An option to change the default intrusive/arcadey navigation and mission markers with something more inmersive and sim like such an ad hoc in cockpit portable GPS (based in the current one).

Overall, this career iteration it is a great thing to look forward (even more than remasters ). Thanks very much!