Looking for breakdown of racing game career designs

Is anybody aware of some article or discussion about career modes in racing games?

Stuff like, how many races in different tiers before unlocking X, etc. Graphics would be especially helpful. Like a flow chart that breakdowns races into brackets, suggesting how much time player invest, when skill checks come, etc.

 

Or, if anybody knows a thing about it and wants to discuss, here is what I am trying to do:

My game is much liek a racing game, though it takes place on foot/bicycle. But you have to get from A to B within a time limit.

The basic game has been made but now I am designing a career mode to make it have more interest and replay value. The premise is that you complete progressively longer/harder races, and then at the end there is a big boss event.

Ideally the big boss event necessitates that you have unlocked a certain amount of gear otherwise it would be almost impossible to complete. It also necessitates that you are competent at the game.

This is a skill based game but I want to consistently reward people so long as they continue playing. So whether they win or lose a race I want them to get XP for it, and XP can be used to increase passive perks (like make you run faster). So in other words, if you just keep playing the game, you can grind to get better stats which will help you do better. The hope is that even if a person is struggling to increase their actual skill, they can still get a sense of progression.

Another thing I want to accomplish is that the player should have a clear picture of where they are strating, and where they are going. I mean in meta-game terms. So the player can easily understand, "okay, I have to compelte a number of short races, then I'll do some bigger ones, and for those ones I'll need X amount of money to buy certain gear to make it easier, and then finally when I've got X gear and I'm confident enough, I'll do the big boss race.":

I guess the way to illustrate all that pretty clearly is just like a flow chart? Kind of like sports brackets.

Anyway, there is some survival elements mixed in as well that make choosing which races to do a strategic matter, but I'd just like to help prime my brain for this by seeing what genre norms exist. I haven't actually played very many racing games.

I think the key things I want to accomplish is:

• Always something fruitful to do in the game - should never feel stuck.
• Grinding should be rewarded.
• Skill checks are defined clearly.
• XP increases passive stats, making the game easier. XP is earned simply through play.
• Gear is bought through money - money is earned based on performance. In other words, the better you are at the game, the faster you get perks.
• Player can endlessly grind similar but slightly different races, and this contributes towards the overarching meta-goal - to pass the big boss race.

 

I found something obliquely related here:

Jamey Stevenson

 

Well I didn't find exactly what I was looking for, but a few GDC videos and some other random articles scattered around gave me some ideas how I can use math formulas to visualize game balance prior to testing.

Now, I am a moron with math, I only got ten fingers to count and that's about as far as I can go with it. But luckily my wife is an excel guru so I described some measures I wanted to watch and she was able to translate that into excel functions.
Nothing super fancy, basically I get a few averages, a few percentages, but the basic idea is that I can see how the prices of in-game gear relate to time played at different difficulty levels, and I can plug this into a graph for visual representation as well. So I can see how long you need to play to be able to earn X or Y item, and as I iterate on numbers the corresponding values update so I can find a steady curve without having to literally play the game for 500 hundred hours.


This is sort of like a racing game, so I've broken my race events into tiers and am making sure that the reward for playing harder, longer races is slightly more than playing many short races - trying to reward skill play but also ensure that even at the low end of skill, rewards are metered out appropriately. Ideally, some sort of reward is always on the horizon.

 

I think you should just do your own thing. Many of these racing games, excluding the heavy microtransations part, have a grind factor to unlock stuff, that not everyone likes, but others do seem to enjoy it.

 

Hmm... I can't remember the last time I had to grind to progress. That said, I've not played a "freemium" game significantly in ages.

"Career" structures I recall:

Linear sequence
Pretty much like levels in any game. Usually you need to place on the podium to unlock the next championship, and each one is three to five races, so even if you do badly in one you can often make up for it in others.

Examples: Mostly just old arcade racers. I don't recall anything even remotely modern sticking to this.

Non-linear sequence / Score to advance
Events are laid out in some kind of map-like manner. Each event is worth some number of points depending on where you place in the podium. To unlock the next event on a path you have to place in the podium, but each event (potentially) also has a point requirement. So players need to do well overall, but depending on balancing they may not have to be good at everything to keep unlocking new events.

Example: Sonic Team Racing, Steep

Arbitrary
There's a selection of events. You can do whatever you want. Often there are cosmetic unlocks or similar, but mostly you just race what you want, when you want, with no particular progression.

Example: Mario Kart 8? Maybe in single player it's different?

Simulated career
Player is somehow given a choice of a few "upcoming" events to attend, typically in different categories. If you do well in similar categories multiple times in a row you start getting invites to higher level championships. Lose too many times in a row and you drop down.

Typically this is mixed with winning income from the races, and you need to either pay for repairs or buy entry into events, as well as spending on upgraded gear. Certain gear may be required for entry in some events.

For a twist, you can also have others occasionally challenge the player instead of having everything chosen by them.

As another twist, I loved one of the TOCA games where the career objectives weren't to win the races. You started out as a rookie with second-rate gear and were treated like it. Your early objectives were to prove yourself against other rookies to earn improved sponsorship, invites into more prestigious events / teams, and so on.

Examples: Dirt Rally, some of the TOCA games.

Blended example: The original Need for Speed: High Stakes

"Open world"
Mostly works per one or more of the above, but instead of showing it to a player that way, it's hidden behind events in a world which you participate in. Commonly equivalent to "non-linear sequence" behind the scenes.

 

thanks @angrypenguin .

funny coincidence, I have been refactoring project and actually just today I am starting to sink my teeth into the career progression system.

What you've layed out here has helped me conceptualize some ideas better. I don't have much experience playing games with these sorts of systems so this is really helpful.

Originally I was thinking of something much more complex, but I've decided to boil the game down a lot. My thinking now is to go with something similar to what you've described in Non-linear sequence / Score to advance.

Basically, each "week" you'll get a list of races you can choose from. If you win in top 3 positions you get some score value. You got to have a certain score value to advance to week 2, and so on. I should be able to balance score value so that a person who is doing well should feel like they are skipping ahead, but a person struggling should not feel stuck. Like as long as they are finishing, they should still get some points.

Eventually you finish all the races and I'll try to make it so that then you'd have enough points to unlock the next map. So this way I am just locking off game content and the player has to put in a certain amount of time and demonstrate a certain amount of skill to get to further content.

 

Test Drive Le Mans on dreamcast. This one is not freemium though.

You have a 1 hour race.
A 5 hour race.
A 10 hour race
A 15 hour race
And a long 24 hour long race.

After doing each of those long grindy races on the Le Mans track, you unlock and get more fancy, real life Le Mans racing cars.