Deal all,
I have been playing Formula 1 games for 2 years now and I absolutely loved them! F1 2021 is a great game with superb graphics and its gaming mechanism is brilliant, however I do see a room of improvements as well! Here's are some personal suggestions of how to make F1 games for fun and realistic.
1. Larger Driver Market
As we all F1 fans know, driver market changes frequently and you will missed out some details in a blink of an eye. However, drivers who exit the current grid are no doubt one of the talented drivers in the world, such as Nico Hulkenberg, Kimi Raikkonen, Roman Grosjean, Alex Albon etc. These drivers left the grid perhaps no because of retirements or F1 team's financial struggles, but could also be a near miss of luck. Despite of the cruel reality of F1 driver's market, fans would still love to see them back in the grid as a driver and perhaps a driver with "My Team"! So I do believe if the driver market in the F1 game could include current F1, F2 drivers and some well known drivers to choose like Nico Hulkenberg or even recently retired drivers like Kimi Raikkonen, the fans would be absolutely excited.
2. Driver's personal benefits
Under the circumstances of the modern F1 world money is and has always been playing an important role of the sport, which is why I believe all F1 fans are familiar with the term "Pay Driver". Disclaimer: Not being disrespectful to those drivers who some fans would call them "Pay Driver". Despite the fact that there are some well known drivers so called "Pay Driver" do exist, financial backing or personal sponsors to bring a certain degree of benefit to the team in order to raise their competitiveness. Which is why I do suggest the F1 game to insert these facts to some drivers such a Nicholas Latifi, Nikita Mazepin, Lance Stroll etc. In the early season of "My Team Career", players can choose to sign drivers who got some financial backing or personal sponsors which can bring the team some extra weekly income, hence to provide more upgrades for the team.
3. More realistic Driver Demands
From the recent F1 games we acknowledge that when we were about the sign a driver, there will be certain driver requirements or demands for us to meet in order to begin the negotiation, but these demands are mostly limited to certain level of facility specs, championship stands, development comparison stands, money etc. I understand these requirements do fit the current gaming mechanism, but here's are some driver's demands suggestions in order to the make game more realistic.
3.1 Minimum years of contract deal.
AI drivers should be able to sign with "My Team" only if we agree to their request of a multi-year deal. For example, Lewis Hamilton will only sign with "My Team" if we sign him for 3 years and meet all the other requirements he demands.
3.2 Exiting Clause.
Part of the contract of AI drivers can and not limited to involve some exiting clause, such as "Team needs to achieve Top 3 in the constructor's championship", "Team needs to finish on top of a certain team in the constructor's championship", "Team needs to help the driver to win the driver's championship". If players are unable to achieve these driver's requirements of demands, AI drivers could leave you team before the original contract expired, which gives players more fun, more pressure and more fighting spirit while playing the game.
3.3 AI bonus.
Well, Kimi Raikkonen gets bonus for scoring points or podium while he is in Lotus, so the game..why not? Certainly, the AI driver bonus do come off from your weekly income if the driver did achieve the conditions given. It can give the player more financial things to consider, just like a proper F1 Team Owner.
4. Reserve Driver
I do understand in the current game there is a mechanism where you will get a reserve driver to drive with you if you are unable to sign any driver before the season ends, but the driver is more like an enter level driver, which is worse than F2 driver. So I do think players are required to sign another driver for "My Team" as a reserve driver from the expanded driver market (If developers do read this and agree with me).
4.1 Associated with Department Events
Part of reserve driver's duty is the help the team to develop the team continuously throughout the season. Some breakthrough or discounts on parts' upgrade can be acheived by the reserve driver and given through department events. For sure, reserve driver can also brings PR disaster to Marketing Department which costs players' resource point or so.
4.2 Super-Sub
If we did follow F1 closely for sure we witnessed how strong a reserve driver such a Nico Hulkenberg a.k.a Super-Sub can be. So, in order to make the game even more realistic and feature the reserve driver function, there can be a message from the team saying "Pierre Gasly has reported to the team that he is not feeling well after a meal and team medic has suggested he should rest and do not take part in the race weekend. Hence, our reserve driver Nico Hulkenberg will be racing this weekend". This can bring more uncertainty but also excitements for the player!
4.3 Be an owner
Players can have an option of not taking part in races in the F1 calendar yet only limited to 2 races. Players can let the reserve driver to take part in the race for us perhaps we players don't have fully confident with a particular race track, or we simply wanted to skip a race or two. This function not only allow players to skip a race or two, but could also evaluate our reserve driver's performance, which helps to make the decision if we would like to sign another driver from the grid as a reserve driver.
Hope some of you would agree with me and hope the developers would see and consider these suggestions. Thank you for your time.
Paddock_008
