Is car damage important to you in racing games?

If we're talking games with realistic(ish) cars, then absolutely. But if we're talking Mario Kart, then nah.

Yeah, that pretty much sums up my thoughts exactly. It varies from title to title.

I guess I didn't really consider kart racers. I thought it was pretty obvious that I was talking about racing games which are grounded in reality.

Kart racers are not inherently not grounded in reality. Did you not see Drew playing Arma III Karts on the last UPF?

Kart racers and racing karts are not the same thing. Gran Turismo has karts and it sure as hell isn't a kart racer. (karts are actually some of the most difficult cars to drive in GT6.)

Did you even read what you wrote? If you are racing karts, it is, by definition, a kart racer, because you are racing karts! It's simple English, man!

But Karts are real life things which people race professionally. Where as Kart Racer is a sub-genre of racing games. Its just different meanings for the same word.

For example there is a Kart racing sim coming to steam. I don't consider that to be a Kart Racer its a Racing sim focused around Racing Karts.

I stand by everything I have said.

If you want to say that there is a difference between Arcade Kart Racers and Simulation Kart Racers, I will agree with you. But if you are saying that a racing game where you drive karts is not a Kart Racer then you are a crazy man.

Only if it's relevant to the racing style, like having to choose between minor repairs during a rally. Damage in race types where accidents basically end your race? It's entertaining in appearance, sure, but having it mechanically affect the car only serves to deter people looking to get into racing, and drains a lot of fun from all but the top levels of sim racing.

Hell, it's not even that important to me in rally games anymore. Most multiplayer matches don't last long enough or simulate enough variety of damage to make it worth any while.

I am saying there is a difference. That those two things are totally different genres of racing game. I would never suggest that a fan of Mario Kart or Mod Nation Racers to go play Arma 3 karts or drive karts in Gran Turismo 6 because they are totally different things.

All racing games should have softbody physics damage. It's merely a question of how the game handles the aftermath, if it's any fun. Honestly - all games should implement more realtime physics based dynamic destruction and deformation. Ideally, everything should react to the forces the player exposes the material to in a believable manner.

In the terms of racing games, if the car can't flip over, or go off the track in some crazy manner, then it's never been all too realistic in the first place. It's a shame most racing sims do a horrid job with wrecks, especially the console variants like Forza and Gran Tourismo.

Car wrecks are fun. At least in videogames (or if you live through one unharmed, like a stuntman). I don't know why so few arcade racers do collision well either. Why, oh why is Burnout dead?

all racers should have this level of destruction.

They're Kart Racers, because you RACE KARTS in them!

I'm not super into racing games myself, without destruction it seems really bland and boring to me. Granted this is my personal opinion.

Like granted i know GTA5 isn't a real racing game, but in cop chases its always fun seeing my pristine sports car basically just be a bent up frame and seat at the end.

Yeah I cant wait to see what come from that Beam.NG thing. I think for a game to use that kind of damage, fixing the damage also has to be a major mechanic of the game too.

I guess I do enjoy seeing some kind of feedback if I race poorly. I think Forza does it right where I can have it on cosmetic or limited if I feel like it, and full "simulation" for times when I want more realism.

@mooseymcman: I continue to disagree with you on this.

@seppli: I dunno, that truck kinda looks like it was made out of tissue paper. I get that most video game trucks are tanks compared to real ones, but I think that was taking it too far.

And I disagree with you!

Yeah game like burnout would be nothing without damage. Where as more simulation type games are more about the sensation and skill of driving a perfect lap.

Agreed on that point. Forza uses damage pretty well. But it ultimately just leads to a fail state. Which is bad IMO.

Any word if Bugbear plans to bring out Next Car Game on PS4 and Xbox One?

they say in their faq that console release is dependent on how well the PC version does.

I just get completely taken out of the experience in racing games when my car slams into a wall/barrier and doesn't even get a scratch nevermind lose a bumper.

I get you but for me just making a mistake like that is punishment enough. People don't seem to realize how insanely fragile racing cars are. A crash like that would render a car undrivable and in a video game it would make the game not much fun if every time you bump into something you have to restart the race.

Fun gameplay design vs. realism.

I put full damage on any racing game that supports it. But I'm just crazy.

My view on car damage in racing games is as follows:

If the damage is purely cosmetic, I'd rather not have it, if the damage affects the capabilities of the vehicle you are driving, give me simulation damage all the way.

I made essentially this same statement when Forza Horizon came out.

I stopped playing Burnout Paradise because of car damage.

I love it when cars get all bashed up and damaged aesthetically, but I hate it when cars actually perform worse after getting damaged. Realism doesn't matter to me if I have to hobble across the finish line, engine sounding like shit and my car constantly pulling to the left.

My favourite racing game of all time is NFS: High Stakes. In the career mode you need to pay to fix your damage. It forces you to either use a cheaper car that's upgraded and cheap to repair, or save up for an expensive car and drive it clean. And then you could lose it in a high stakes race.

In most games damage only affects a vehicles performance, but once you're paying for repairs it's a much bigger incentive to drive clean.

Stuff like Mario Kart, Sonic All Stars, <insert mascot name> Kart Racing, etc don''t need it. I like seeing it in other realistic racers though. I understand that some of these games have issues putting car damage into their game because the modelling is difficult or the manufacturers of those cars won't let you put them into your game if you depict what will happen if you crash their cars at 100mph but it's a real drag to play something like a Gran Turismo, crash your Ferrari at 200mph into a barrier and nothing happens to it*

*Haven't played GT in years and never played the newer ones so I don't know if this is still true.

It depends. Outside of rally games, most of the better racing games have had irrelevant damage. I like to have it for sim style games but I think it can go for arcade racers. In some cases I would prefer the taint of the Burnout games to be eradicated. Im looking at you, NFS. I am so sick of crash cams and extended car resets.

It feels wrong when something fucked up happens and there isn't something shown for it.

In a kart racer there are power ups and level designs that are only limited by the imagination. While racing karts is the same thing as any other racing simulation but with karts.

That's the difference. How about it? Deal?

Obviously, some games are all about spectacular crashes and the chaos and destruction that results from that. Gran Turismo and games of that ilk are totally different though. To have an appropriately realistic damage/deformation model would require sooooo muuuch work and really be a potential detriment to the rest of the game, if it takes development resources away from other areas etc. It all just seems silly to me, putting in so much work for simulating something that everyone should really be trying to avoid as much as possible.

Bad driving performance is punishment enough itself. If I'm striving for a good line, but then brake late and understeer or whatever the error may be, that is punishment enough in itself, because the lap time will be slower. I don't need to be able to snap an axle and have both doors hanging off to give me feedback about the quality of my driving.

Also, put me on the side of saying Kart Racer is a genre name that doesn't just apply automatically to any game that has the racing of karts. If you play a role in a game, it doesn't automatically make it an RPG :P

Nope. In fact, I wish it was abolished from all racing games so I can sloppily and skilllessly weave through the packs of cars, sideswiping everyone in the county, at my leisure without ramification. That's racing, bitches!

Visually yes, I like how car damage looks.

I think most games should have exterior damage. Esp games like Forza, and GT. Though I dont like realistic damage, where my car is ruined after hitting something making wining a race impossible.

I think Flatout games do this best: lots of visual damage, slight effects on gameplay.

I feel it comes down to implementation. If the damage modelling is only going to be super minor then I don't see the point and it's more disappointing to me that they went to the effort but didn't go far enough. Burnout Paradise was fantastic for car crashes. They were a visual treat to behold if you crashed, almost like a reward. But now, with NFS titles using real cars and car manufacturers being very protective of their image, the damage model has been reduced significantly to the point where crashing just ends up in frustration. The same goes for the GT series and even a game as most recent as Watch_Dogs where damage modelling exists but to the bare minimum and doesn't really effect anything. Even a game like GTA V manages to have some pretty tremendous car damage where paint work with scratch off, the body crumples, small parts fly off and even tires can become misaligned and this is in an open world game that's already doing so much to begin with.

For me it depends on the kind of racing game and what I'm looking for in that particular genre. Any simulation type racing game F1, rally etc should have a proper damage model as its very much a part of the real life counterpart, ideally as most of these games have a slider were you can adjust the damage to your liking. For arcade racers have I no opinion, make it over the top, non existent or purely cosmetic. I'm not going to arcade racers for realism. For the Forza and GT series with their literally hundreds of cars and tracks were I content with them modeling tire wear and fuel consumption. The idea of damage modeling sounds great in theory but I would rather have the developers focus on what makes these games great, the scope.

For sims: absolutely, 100% necessary.

For arcade racers: it can be fun, but not in any way needed (unless damaging cars is the entire point of the game)

I'm not a very serious racing-sim player, but in every semi-realistic racing game I've played (Forza 2, the old playstation Gran Turismo games, even games like GRID), if I have a bad crash and come off the track then it's pretty much the race over. Damage modelling would be nice, but it really doesn't make much difference, since any significant crash is basically game-over anyway.

Of course, for arcadey racers, they can make it as crazy (burnout) or as non-existant (trackmania) as they want, so long as the mechanics are thought through.

The original Grid had car damage and I really thought that made the game better. It added another layer to the race since you couldn't just use banzai turns to get ahead. However, online it ruined things IMO. Everyone knows what happens on the first turn of a race and with all of us bunched up together and no one giving an inch people's races were ruined since there was no spacing. People would drive the wrong way just to ruin someone else's race. It depends.

I think its's pretty important.

I came for the destruction, I stayed for the semantic argument.

Just like other sports game, I think this drive to create an "ultra accurate simulation" has ruined the genre. It isn't that I hate "car damage" in driving games but I hate how it ruins any fun you could have left in a race because part of the suspension is bent due to the stress you put on it trying to dodge something on the track.

Car damage can be fun and offers dynamic game challenges but if it makes you DNF because your tire blows out driving over a piece of metal then what fun is that?

For sims, I don't really care. The crashes in Forza have never looked very good and GT only has bad-to-mediocre cosmetic damage, and yet I still love both series. Real damage in a sim almost always means you've lost the race, and there really aren't any, as far as I'm aware, that expect you to place in the middle of the pack. You can still easily finish a race in Forza if you knock your wheel alignment out of whack on Medium, but if you're playing on Expert without rewinds generally things are a lot tighter than that (unless of course you've placed yourself in a significantly more powerful car). I think really great looking damage models can add to the excitement of the more sim-y racing games, but unless they actually start implementing very nuanced and realistic damage modeling and its impact on your vehicle's performance, the games are fine without it. The other problem is that for some reason most of these games don't have a "black flag" option in the settings, so griefing is a major issue when playing multiplayer.

In something like Flatout though, I think the damage modeling makes those games a lot more fun. They're arcadey so the performance impact doesn't have to be realistic, but the spectacle of it all and the "bumpin' is racin'" attitude are typically pinnacle in that style of game.

I'd rather not play at all if I can't at least try to wreck someone's vehicle (usually my own) at the start of a race.

The racing game I've enjoyed playing that didn't have car collision/damage is Trackmania 1.