Amen. GhostOne, you speak right out of my mind.
The general ghost + opponent system was very simple in TMUF and it worked very nicely.
In MP4, it seems they butchered some valuable game mechanics for some "pretty-looking" design.
It does look good on the surface, but has so many bugs, and lacks most of the features it used to have in previous game versions.
I simply do not understand the reasoning behind this. Maybe I am just ignorant, can a Nadeo Dev please open my mind about this?
It is a incomprehensible disaster to remove the "Best Ghost", that everybody always play with, for no reason, and replace it by a ephemeral "Last Ghost" that no one could have imagined exist, so much that it does not make sense.
Also, it is impossible to imagine not more having informations about our "Final Differential Time" that separates us from our target, at the final checkpoint.
How to remove the only thing that counts?
All this can not be explained by technical difficulties, but only by wish.
Yes, a big step forward, but it's buggy for me on the 3 environments that I tested:
All WR ghosts are displayed well, but my PB Ghost is only displayed during the very first run after selecting the opponents.
As soon as I restart the run, finish it, or beat my PB record, my PB ghost is gone while all the others are there.
I have to manualy select the opponents again.
I don't doubt that Nadeo will correct this in the next months.
However:
-It is still not possible to display the name of the opponents, very impractical to recognize his own PB ghost, and it's impossible to know who is who among the others.
-It would be nice if our PB ghost be slightly more transparent, because it's a representation of ourselves and not a classic opponent.
-Opponents selection is not saved, and asks for more than 25 clicks each time. (Down, Down, Down, Down, A, Right, Right, Right, A, Down, A, Down, A, Down, A, [...], X)
-The last run ghost has no reason to exist, even if it is deactivable, or someone would have to give just one reason.
-Always no display of the differential time at the last checkpoint / end of run.
It is still impossible to know how much time we have beaten our PB, or is separating from our PB (unless we take out our calculator), nor still less from our best opponent / target.
-The HUD always has a very casual appearance.
The chronometer is not symmetrical (due to the useless "race time" writing) and encroaches on the car. (MP3 was perfect)
The intermediate time is not symmetrical and moreover with a "filled" (ugly and incoveniant) off-center colored rectangle. (MP3 was perfect)
Everything takes too much space on the screen. Especially at the 4K era, and more and more gigantic screen sizes.
A compromise might be possible to get closer to the discrete minimalist and professional LCD aspect as before.
-The flames during boost are ugly and don't match with custom skins, which create visual aberrations. (exhaust locality, and its depth too)
The possibility to disable would be really welcome.
Noted the new possibility to choose to display the ghosts in solid aspect (as I love!) or in transparency, for the roller coster for example, even if it would be much better to be able to be constantly in external camera (especially in camera 1, high and distant, as I play).
Also the game has never been so well optimized.
There is still a lot of improvement to bring (to see my fat MP4 dicovery topic), but big congratulations to Nadeo for the real progress and the intensions.
