Older vehicles in traffic

[LeakyLine]

Do you think older, classic vehicles should be a rare sight in GTA 6's traffic patterns? I always found it strange to see four or five Oldsmobile 442s sitting behind wach other at a stoplight. Vintage vehicles are a rarity in the real world, they should be rare in GTA as well. They already go the mile with realistic traffic patterns - you don't see Infernuses in Davis. Classic vehicles being a rarity could make car collection quite rewarding. By rare I don't mean only spawning parked in out of the way areas, I mean just spawn in traffic rarely. 

 

Discuss?

[GTA-Biker]

I think they should make older vehicles more rare,vehicles from the 50s and 60s should be rare,and so should vehicles from the 70s, 80s and 90s in mint condition.For the sake of fun they shouldn't be so rare that looking for them becomes annoying,but they should be more rare than they were in previous games,it looks weird to see like three Peyotes and four Vigeros in one street (they should actually do something about multiple vehicles of the same model spawning in one area,regardless of how old those vehicles are).

[Lioshenka]

They should make older/unique vehicles appear more often. This is what I liked about the older GTAs (and GTA 4 to some extend) - you could find a street sweeper, ice cream van, properly shaped Perennial, Hotknife etc with a relative ease.

 

All cars in GTA 5 look the same. I'm sorry, but that's true. There's no character, no incentive to steal another car, because you get the same shape, same handling, same performance. There's only a difference in size between MPVs, normal cars and lorries.

 

To this moment I don't think GTA 5 has any unique cars. They all look the same to me.

Edited February 21, 2019 by Lioshenka

[Willy A. Jeep]

The vehicle variety in any GTA game has never been realistic, which is a shame. Even back in the 90s, you wouldn't find many of San Andreas' cars on the streets, and seeing how common cars like the Infernus or Turismo are in GTA IV is... laughable. GTA V's traffic variety is better, but its improved density and lack of focus ruins it. The games don't have enough normal "filler" vehicles or analogues to common cars, and it shows. You sit behind five 1974 Plymouth Fury Wagons every time you drive through GTA V's Davis, but you'll never see a Volkswagen Beetle of any year, and every gangster in SA's Los Santos owns a 1961 Dodge Dart, but nobody drives a new Chevrolet Caprice. It's a much broader problem than Rockstar's odd decision to make some cars far more common than they should be - they need more cars, better focus on what cars go where, and a closer match to what you'll really see on the roads. As much as I love my obscurities and classics, I'll take a road clogged with boring cars over one populated solely by AMC Pacers and Citroën SMs any day.

 

Of course, I understand it's a video game. They (usually) want it to be fun, and they're probably trying to cater to that by having all of these specific cars be readily available, but it's just pushing the sense of uniquity away. My personal idea is, aside from continuing V/Online's purchase system, to have uncommon cars spawn in the world in specific places only - showrooms, museums, garages - and only very rarely on the streets. Still easily accessible, but not unrealistic in their dispersal. The Roosevelt in V already follows this pattern, and why they let the likes of the Pigalle spawn like it's a Corolla is so beyond me...

 

48 minutes ago, Lioshenka said:

All cars in GTA 5 look the same. I'm sorry, but that's true. There's no character, no incentive to steal another car, because you get the same shape, same handling, same performance.

How patently untrue. Certainly, while the handling in V can be very samey between many of the day-to-day cars, the variety of vehicles in V is rather impressive compared to older GTA titles. You can hardly say the Voltic looks or handles the same as the Futo, or the JB 700 the same as the Roosevelt, or the Rhapsody the same as the Journey. To this date, there's 300-some vehicles in GTA V, and over 600 if we include all of what's been added in GTA Online. Some are similar or, indeed, variations upon another, but that's a minority. There were different kinds of vehicles in older games, of course, and some regression in later titles is strange, but it doesn't mean the older title had better diversity - it was just different. Remember, your bias is hardly reality.

[Aquamaniac]

On 2/20/2019 at 1:31 PM, LeakyLine said:

Do you think older, classic vehicles should be a rare sight in GTA 6's traffic patterns? I always found it strange to see four or five Oldsmobile 442s sitting behind wach other at a stoplight. Vintage vehicles are a rarity in the real world, they should be rare in GTA as well. They already go the mile with realistic traffic patterns - you don't see Infernuses in Davis. Classic vehicles being a rarity could make car collection quite rewarding. By rare I don't mean only spawning parked in out of the way areas, I mean just spawn in traffic rarely. 

 

Discuss?

 

I think you're right, in general there exist too many classic cars in my opinion (and many of them look the same anyways) whereas some iconic cars like Pontiac GTO or older Ford Mustang are absent.

 

In GTA 5 I noticed that often the type of car spawns that you already sit in, this should be changed. Traffic should be plausible but not too realistic, I think 2/3 of cars sold in the US are Pick-Ups, I don't want to be 2/3 of cars in a GTA to be Pick-Ups.

[Collibosher]

Yes, collecting them would feel more rewarding if classics were more rare and some of them wouldn't even spawn in traffic. They could be scattered around random garages, etc. and from junkyards you could find beater variants for restoration...

 

Traffic in GTA V enhanced version:

 

[KingAJ032304]

4 hours ago, Aquamaniac said:

 

I think you're right, in general there exist too many classic cars in my opinion (and many of them look the same anyways) whereas some iconic cars like Pontiac GTO or older Ford Mustang are absent.

 

In GTA 5 I noticed that often the type of car spawns that you already sit in, this should be changed. Traffic should be plausible but not too realistic, I think 2/3 of cars sold in the US are Pick-Ups, I don't want to be 2/3 of cars in a GTA to be Pick-Ups.

This has been a thing since gta 3 not sure if gta 1 or 2 had it however

[Lioshenka]

On 2/21/2019 at 2:17 PM, Willy A. Jeep said:

How patently untrue. Certainly, while the handling in V can be very samey between many of the day-to-day cars, the variety of vehicles in V is rather impressive compared to older GTA titles. You can hardly say the Voltic looks or handles the same as the Futo, or the JB 700 the same as the Roosevelt, or the Rhapsody the same as the Journey. To this date, there's 300-some vehicles in GTA V, and over 600 if we include all of what's been added in GTA Online. Some are similar or, indeed, variations upon another, but that's a minority. There were different kinds of vehicles in older games, of course, and some regression in later titles is strange, but it doesn't mean the older title had better diversity - it was just different. Remember, your bias is hardly reality.

To be fair, I don't remember seeing most of these cars in traffic or ever.

 

Granted, Journey will handle different from cars, but it will handle more or less like a lorry, which falls into my initial 3 categories. It is actually one of the unique cars in GTA 5 that I remember, the other beeing that Beetle-like banger that you see in the countryside. But then almost everyone drives it, which defied the purpose of it being unique.

 

I stand by my initial claim that GTA vehicles, 300 or not, all look the same with a very small number of exceptions. GTA 3 features a tiny number of different models by to-day's standards, but you could tell Stinger from Perennial, Manana from Kuruma, Blista from Stallion, Cartel Cruiser from Landstalker. GTA 5 doesn't have that - whether it is because the developers are too lazy to think creatively when designing cars, or whether this is due to how the lights and colours work on the cars - I don't know. To this day I don't know the names of any GTA 5 car (I can guess the Journey and a couple of others), but it's not my problem. It's the fact that they are not memorable. As much as I hate GTA 4, it had a classic, easily distinguishable range of vehicles.

 

Oh, and also - R* can't make car badges. I mean, they look like something a junior designer would draw during his first week in a big company, how can these be car logos? You only need to look at the real life logos and what they have in the game. Brrr.

[Willy A. Jeep]

3 hours ago, Lioshenka said:

To be fair, I don't remember seeing most of these cars in traffic or ever.

The only two which don't spawn in traffic are the JB 700 and Roosevelt, all of the others are relatively common. Each of those cars handles uniquely, too, which is the other half of why I chose them as examples. The Futo especially is an outlier, with slippery handling unlike most other vehicles in GTA V (and IV, where it first appeared). I'll also disqualify the Journey from handling like the game's larger trucks and vans - the Benson, Mule, and Boxville - as the Journey is far softer and floatier in its handling than the much heavier trucks.

 

3 hours ago, Lioshenka said:

I stand by my initial claim that GTA vehicles, 300 or not, all look the same with a very small number of exceptions. GTA 3 features a tiny number of different models by to-day's standards, but you could tell Stinger from Perennial, Manana from Kuruma, Blista from Stallion, Cartel Cruiser from Landstalker.

Again, patently untrue. I can link the Wikia's entire album of the game's vehicles, and individual pages as above, to illustrate. Out of the hundreds, of course some (unrelated) vehicles look alike, and that's to be expected because that's realistic. Sedans, coupes, cabriolets, trucks, et cetera, follow the same profile by design, and the stylings of any era are going to be shared across manufacturers. But GTA IV and V both, in their increased vehicle count, do retain variety. From the Voodoo to the Coquette to the Sabre Turbo to the Patriot, it's absurd to say that all the cars "look the same". The Renderware titles had their own share of look-alikes, notably including GTA III's Idaho and Esperanto, Vice City's Virgo and Greenwood, and San Andreas' Super GT and Turismo. Certainly, the RAGE games are less diverse simply for their larger budget allowing many filler cars, but playing either IV or V for more than an hour, you'll see many totally different cars on the streets. It's silly to argue the point of samey aesthetics (or a better diversity in older titles) when there's evidence aplenty against it.

 

4 hours ago, Lioshenka said:

whether it is because the developers are too lazy to think creatively when designing cars, or whether this is due to how the lights and colours work on the cars - I don't know. To this day I don't know the names of any GTA 5 car (I can guess the Journey and a couple of others), but it's not my problem. It's the fact that they are not memorable.

But almost none of the vehicles are original designs. It's not Rockstar being more or less creative, they're simply taking real-world designs and reinterpreting them in almost all cases. Their decisions are sometimes questionable, but never lazy - with that mindset we could argue that the entire GTA III+ series is lazy, being a facsimile of real-world locations, people, vehicles, et cetera - a whole lot of researching, conceptualizing, modeling, texturing, and testing has to go into this stuff. And, again, it is your problem - your memory and your bias - because, clearly, for other folks, there's plenty memorable and enjoyable elements of the newer GTA games. I understand it's easy to forget things you don't like or care for, but goodness gracious, it's not fact.

 

4 hours ago, Lioshenka said:

As much as I hate GTA 4, it had a classic, easily distinguishable range of vehicles.

Many of the vehicles in IV are in V, sometimes with a new appearance. Including only non-service land vehicles (and not accounting for variants), about 50 of IV's 80-some vehicles are in V and Online.

 

This all still comes around to the topic at hand, thankfully. The games do need more diversity, more common cars, and more care taken in defining the make-up of everyday traffic. It's bizarre to see so many of any one car, much more so when it's what would be expected to be an uncommon or rare car. Not to say all of the vehicles on the road need to be normal, because that's going too far the other way, but there should never be a 1955 Thunderbird at every stoplight and no 90s Volkswagen Jettas in the entire state.

[Lioshenka]

3 hours ago, Willy A. Jeep said:

Many of the vehicles in IV are in V, sometimes with a new appearance. Including only non-service land vehicles (and not accounting for variants), about 50 of IV's 80-some vehicles are in V and Online.

I don't really care what you think, I don't care what a million other people think, because I think the vehicles all look the same. I'm happy for people who like GTA 5, Rage engine and it's varied traffic, but I'm not one of those people. I don't find it enjoyable, I don't find it fun, they don't make me go WOW like older games. Luckily other aspects of GTA 5 to some extend make up for it, but this is the first GTA where I don't really care what I drive, because it doesn't really matter. I just help myself to the first car available, because I know it will go fast and that it will climb the hills. Driving Tornado or any of the modern cars doesn't feel any different. All MPVs have a modern sleek design and handle very much the same.

 

Whether it's to do with the models, the game engine or anything else I don't know. Either way the traffic looks boring and same compared to the older games. It could be that because every car is rendered the same: a shiny, off-the-conveyer model of dark red or black colour. I mean, this screenshot pretty much summarises how I see traffic in GTA 5. I don't know what GTA 4 did differently, but I did not have that problem there.

 

Edited February 22, 2019 by Lioshenka

[Aquamaniac]

Well modern cars somehow look all quite similar, so what do you expect? Just have a look on real life traffic in LA:

 

[/img]



 

[KingAJ032304]

23 hours ago, Lioshenka said:

I don't really care what you think, I don't care what a million other people think, because I think the vehicles all look the same. I'm happy for people who like GTA 5, Rage engine and it's varied traffic, but I'm not one of those people. I don't find it enjoyable, I don't find it fun, they don't make me go WOW like older games. Luckily other aspects of GTA 5 to some extend make up for it, but this is the first GTA where I don't really care what I drive, because it doesn't really matter. I just help myself to the first car available, because I know it will go fast and that it will climb the hills. Driving Tornado or any of the modern cars doesn't feel any different. All MPVs have a modern sleek design and handle very much the same.

 

Whether it's to do with the models, the game engine or anything else I don't know. Either way the traffic looks boring and same compared to the older games. It could be that because every car is rendered the same: a shiny, off-the-conveyer model of dark red or black colour. I mean, this screenshot pretty much summarises how I see traffic in GTA 5. I don't know what GTA 4 did differently, but I did not have that problem there.

 

HAS ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with game engine problems its quite obviously game design and pretty realistic at that.

[FoxSites]

Huh something I never really thought of, no big deal if it doesn’t make it in gta 6 but it’s still interesting.

[Bloodytears1666]

That Rstar idea that other players actually those rare vehicles drivers in traffic.

 

21 hours ago, KingAJ032304 said:

HAS ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with game engine problems its quite obviously game design and pretty realistic at that.

Totally agree, usual traffic jam anywhere.

Edited February 24, 2019 by Bloodytears1666

[Lioshenka]

On 2/23/2019 at 11:04 PM, KingAJ032304 said:

HAS ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with game engine problems its quite obviously game design and pretty realistic at that. 

I'm happy that you think so.

[universetwisters]

They should be a very rare occurrence because the only old car on my streets was my 1985 Skylark and I deliver pizzas all day/night, so believe me, I look at the roads a lot.

[Marciliojunior01]

That is something i havent thought about, but looking at the pictures above showing the real traffic in LA i agree that you see only car with less than 10 years, i dunno how vehicle spawn works in GTA V but i dont think they follow some kind of " complex probability", they all seem to be pretty much equal in terms of spawning. Of course, there are some vehicles that are specific from certain places but when you see or (mainly) steal a specific model, a lot of them appear afterwards. I would really like that old vehicles would become more rare, would add that special factor that any classic car deserves to be honest. 

Remember when it was a pain in the ass to get the phoenix ? That is the kind of thing that makes people interested. The less amount of people who have a car the higher amount will want it and this brings more people to the game, i know gta is old and when something appears on the files every single player knows about within hours, but they should have tried to keep this idea.

But to make all this spawning thing work, we would need way more filler cars than we have today, otherwise we would see 20 asteropes in a row on s single street.  

[Captain Kekistan]

I keep seeing an awful ton of Tornadoes in LS, more common than Grangers.

[Aquamaniac]

7 hours ago, Marciliojunior01 said:

That is something i havent thought about, but looking at the pictures above showing the real traffic in LA i agree that you see only car with less than 10 years, i dunno how vehicle spawn works in GTA V but i dont think they follow some kind of " complex probability", they all seem to be pretty much equal in terms of spawning. Of course, there are some vehicles that are specific from certain places but when you see or (mainly) steal a specific model, a lot of them appear afterwards. I would really like that old vehicles would become more rare, would add that special factor that any classic car deserves to be honest. 

Remember when it was a pain in the ass to get the phoenix ? That is the kind of thing that makes people interested. The less amount of people who have a car the higher amount will want it and this brings more people to the game, i know gta is old and when something appears on the files every single player knows about within hours, but they should have tried to keep this idea.

But to make all this spawning thing work, we would need way more filler cars than we have today, otherwise we would see 20 asteropes in a row on s single street.  

 

I have an idea how it might work, don't know how much efforts it would take though.

 

There should be a specific numbers of cars in the game (talking about singleplayer). Let's say 1000 private cars plus commercial traffic and law enforcement

 

From these private 1000 cars

 

50% are midsize to fullsize sedans and wagons

30% SUVS, Jeeps, vans

10% are small cars

10% are sports cars, classical cars and other special vehicles

 

only 1 or 2% are super cars, among the 1000 cars, there is only one Bugatti e.g.

 

All cars in the game have their routine, they travel all the map or parts of the map (invisible as long the player is not within reach) at certain times, if you steal a car or destroy it, it will take let's say a week of gametime until they respawn, so if you destroy the only Bugatti, it will be gone for a week.

 

There might also be a routine that changes cars, so that let's say at some time the Bugatti randomly changes to another super car for a week and at that time there is no Bugatti in the game at all.

 

Some cars should not appear in traffic at all or only very rarely but be parked somewhere, e.g. a classical police car somewhere in a barn. Would be odd if they drive around, but if you find one, the player could use it.

[Marciliojunior01]

1 hour ago, Aquamaniac said:

 

I have an idea how it might work, don't know how much efforts it would take though.

 

There should be a specific numbers of cars in the game (talking about singleplayer). Let's say 1000 private cars plus commercial traffic and law enforcement

 

From these private 1000 cars

 

50% are midsize to fullsize sedans and wagons

30% SUVS, Jeeps, vans

10% are small cars

10% are sports cars, classical cars and other special vehicles

 

only 1 or 2% are super cars, among the 1000 cars, there is only one Bugatti e.g.

 

All cars in the game have their routine, they travel all the map or parts of the map (invisible as long the player is not within reach) at certain times, if you steal a car or destroy it, it will take let's say a week of gametime until they respawn, so if you destroy the only Bugatti, it will be gone for a week.

 

There might also be a routine that changes cars, so that let's say at some time the Bugatti randomly changes to another super car for a week and at that time there is no Bugatti in the game at all.

 

Some cars should not appear in traffic at all or only very rarely but be parked somewhere, e.g. a classical police car somewhere in a barn. Would be odd if they drive around, but if you find one, the player could use it.

Wonderful, this would work in my oppinion. Imagine how excited we would be like "hey look a nero i need to grab it" 

[HOW'S ANNIE?]

I think what Rockstar's trying to go for is a mix of variety. Granted they've proven (as with the pictures posted above) that they're capable of creating semi-realistic vehicle patterns in traffic.

 

But at the end of the day GTA is all about giving the player freedom. Not every player wants to be limited to a fleet of Karumas, Aseas, Oracles, Cavalcades, etc. If I want to it shouldn't take me hours and hours of searching for a 70s muscle car or to find some 80's/90's ricer. The best way around this I think is to make most of the 30+ year old cars on the road beaters (like the Sabers or Vigeros in IV), with rare spawns of the cars in pristine condition.

 

All that said though it's strange to think that maybe in 2050, when GTA IX is on the horizon, the series staple cars (e.g. Stallion or the Mananna) will either be long gone from the series or updated so much they don't resemble their original selves.

[Lioshenka]

41 minutes ago, HOW'S ANNIE? said:

2050, when GTA IX is on the horizon

You're quite an optimist! I bet R* will be still squeezing the last juice from GTA Online in 2050.

[Aquamaniac]

46 minutes ago, HOW'S ANNIE? said:

I think what Rockstar's trying to go for is a mix of variety. Granted they've proven (as with the pictures posted above) that they're capable of creating semi-realistic vehicle patterns in traffic.

 

But at the end of the day GTA is all about giving the player freedom. Not every player wants to be limited to a fleet of Karumas, Aseas, Oracles, Cavalcades, etc. If I want to it shouldn't take me hours and hours of searching for a 70s muscle car or to find some 80's/90's ricer. The best way around this I think is to make most of the 30+ year old cars on the road beaters (like the Sabers or Vigeros in IV), with rare spawns of the cars in pristine condition.

 

All that said though it's strange to think that maybe in 2050, when GTA IX is on the horizon, the series staple cars (e.g. Stallion or the Mananna) will either be long gone from the series or updated so much they don't resemble their original selves.

 

I think 10% of classical cars and sportcars is plenty enough for the player to find one. The average cars needn't to be sh*tty cars but contemporary Mercedes, Audi, BMW, Dodge Charger, Chevrolet Impala, Mitsubishi Lancer, Honda Accord etc., if you find a Porsche 911 or 68' Mustang at every corner it soons gets boring, the past GTAs weren't that way either, I suppose it's difficult to find a car with less than 200 HP in the US, this shouldn't be a problem then as long as GTA is set in the US. In GTA V way too often only SUVs seems to drive around.

 

It would also be cool to store cars at public parking spaces with a little chance of them getting stolen and if the future GTA features various characters all should be able to access them, similar as the parking lots in front of the Strip Club in V, only on a much larger scale like you could store dozens of tuned cars at the parking lots near Del Perro Pier .

Edited February 26, 2019 by Aquamaniac

[drscot]

I think this is one area that'd really improve my playing experience, also in terms of vehicles spawning where they look like they belong. This already exists to an extent, i.e. gang cars, country vehicles etc, but it'd be nice to see some more complex spawning patterns, e.g. rough neighbourhoods having rougher looking traffic. This might already be a thing in V and I've just not noticed, though, to be fair.

 

But you could extend it further; obviously the way vehicle spawning is programmed means that many of the same vehicle spawn at any one time (I assume to decrease processing load?), but the same principle has been used since at least the first 3D game. Aquamaniac is right about the same rare car ruining immersion. I guess it's not an area worth investing massive amounts in rewriting algorithms when, in reality, its just me being picky. 

[DexMacLeod]

I guess it depends where the game takes place. Miami (and Florida in general) has a pretty big classic car culture with car shows happening all the time. In Miami there are several companies where you can be taken on a tour of the city in classic cars. There's also a lot of companies that rent out classics and exotics.

 

Either way, I agree it'd be nice if they could find a way to get rid of the cars similar to yours spawning thing from previous games. Not sure how feasible that is or what kind of strain having a wide variety of cars all on screen at once would put on the game, though.

 

I can deal with seven of the same classic or exotic cars spawning at one intersection if getting rid of that harms a much more important aspect of the game. I'm generally driving too fast to care what else is on the road anyway. I'd settle for them just improving the A.I. traffic. Maybe have them use their blinkers and understand how right-of-way is supposed to work.