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The new features F1 24 needs to entice players in a season of little change

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The official Formula 1 game series, developed by Codemasters and published by EA, has become one of the biggest annual sports franchise releases of the year.

But while the F1 series is arguably up there alongside the likes of EAFC, NHL or even Madden as an annual release you can set your calendars by, there’s one big difference between Formula 1 and many other major sports.

Unlike soccer, NFL, basketball or ice hockey, Formula 1 regularly has substantial changes every year which serve as selling points for the official game. From the venues that host grands prix to the look and handling of the cars that make up the grid, each new F1 game typically requires more than just a roster update to fit the new season, unlike the likes of Madden with its same 32 teams and fundamental rule consistency.

But on paper the 2024 F1 season looks like a copy-and-paste affair compared to last year. Every driver who raced at the final round in Abu Dhabi last season will compete for the same team in this year’s season-opener in Bahrain. Also, while 24 rounds makes 2024 the longest season in the sport’s history, all 24 circuits – plus a handful more – were already included in last year’s game.

The rules are also largely untouched – though it remains to be seen what the latest change to the sprint race format will be. The new identities of Sauber and Red Bull’s second team, plus any coming livery tweaks, are the only changes of note for the new season.

Nor will F1 24 necessarily be able to deploy some of the new gimmicks it has rested on in the past. Its Braking Point story mode has thus far been based on a two-year development cycle, and the latest instalment appeared last year, so we may not see the third instalment of the saga of Devon Butler, Callie Mayer and Aiden Jackson in 2024.

So what enticing new angles could Codemasters add to the game for 2024 to make it a must-buy? Looking at other racing games on the market, there some interesting features that EA could take inspiration from.

Of course expectations need to be tempered by the constraints of producing a new game within a 12-month window. On top of that, EA recently laid off staff from Codemasters. With that in mind here are five elements from existing racing game franchises which could make worthwhile additions to the official F1 racing game series.

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Moto GP 23 – Pre-season testing

Forget ‘F1 World’ and multiplayer – career mode is where any F1 game is at its most immersive. We’ve enjoyed the ability to race as created characters or even as created teams for years, but career mode and MyTeam could do with a refresh to avoid them feeling stale as they have changed little since F1 2020.

One of the ways Codemasters could do this is by taking inspiration from Milestone’s Moto GP franchise. While it has its faults and frustrations for hardcore Moto GP fans, there’s a lot to like about the series and how authentic it can feel at times.

Once you reach Moto GP level and sign with a team, you can take part in a pre-season test that lasts for up to two hours and allows you to run unlimited laps with multiple specifications of bike. You ride both and decide which spec you prefer and that becomes the basis of your machine for the season ahead.

Not only would that be a great way to help F1 24 players get familiar with new physics and handling with a new game, it would also give players greater agency over their car development direction at the start of the season and add an extra level of authenticity to the career mode.

EA WRC – Builder mode

EA took over the official World Rally Championship licence last year, with mixed results. However, one unique feature never seen before in a mainstream motorsports racing game was the ability to design your own car to compete with.

Although quite simple in functionality, consisting of picking from a limited list of pre-designed options for the front, side, and rear of cars and small interior options, it would be great to see a similar feature in the F1 game.

While it would naturally be limited to MyTeam for licensing reasons, it would enhance the immersion of having your own team and car if you could choose from a variety of wings, sidepod designs, diffusers, even steering wheel designs. These could each have different attributes, and your team limited to only the least sophisticated items at first if you choose to begin as a backmarker and not a championship contender.

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Gran Turismo – Livery editor

You can safely file this among the least likely features to reach F1 24, but that does not make it any less desirable. A comprehensive – or even just a largely functional – livery editor would be a dream come true for many F1 game players.

While no one would be foolish enough to expect a Gran Turismo 7-level livery editor, with scheme sharing and decal upload functions, even just the ability to add basic shapes and colours to the multiplayer car to make it look how you want it to look would be an extremely popular revision. With EA’s own WRC game, the Moto GP series, every NASCAR game franchise ever, Assetto Corsa Competizione and pretty much every other racing game franchise you can think of having some kind of livery editor, it’s only more conspicuous that F1 is lacking.

Why is it so unlikely to happen? Adding a livery editor would defeat the point of the Podium Pass system which the game has been built around for the previous five iterations, with pre-designed liveries able to be unlocked through grinding gameplay or by purchasing through PitCoins. But with the most recent Podium Pass seasons not including a single livery, it’s natural that players want more freedom to create the looks they want.

Forza Motorsport – Accessibility

The latest entry in the Forza Motorsport franchise has not enjoyed the best reception from players on Xbox and PC. Naturally, there’s not a huge amount from the latest title that would necessarily enhance the new F1 game – except perhaps when it comes to its accessibility options.

EA and Codemasters have made big strides in recent years to try and make the game more accessible to all players regardless of their age, ability or if they live with accessibility requirements. However, Microsoft have invested a lot more than most in the gaming industry to open it up to everyone as much as possible. Their comprehensive suite of accessibility options for Forza Motorsport, from blind driving assists to audio narration and text size adjustment, deserves praise and should be adopted by other games.

As the most popular form of motorsport in the world, Formula 1 naturally has a lot of fans who live with disabilities, and many of those will be gamers. Making the official F1 game as open as possible to allow all fans to live out their racing driver fantasies in the real world may not benefit most players, but is no less worthwhile for it.

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Assetto Corsa Competizione – Driver rating

In recent years, Codemasters introduced a superlicence system for multiplayer which gave players a rating based on their speed and their safety. Those who are the quickest in races are grouped together with players of roughly similar ability, while those who take care to avoid accidents are – in theory – matched with other racers who are equally as clean.

However, Assetto Corsa Competizione takes things to a greater level by running a far more detailed ratings system across everything a player does in the game. Over every lap in every session, the game analyses your performance from your car control, how often you find yourself spinning or running off track, how consistently you can keep your lap times together in the race, as well as how closely you can race your rivals without causing accidents.

Your ratings for each area are constantly adjusting depending on how you do and contribute to your overall rating which can limit the multiplayer options available to you. As a serious racing simulator, this system helps to make sure you treat every session in the car like you’re a genuine racing driver with a genuine team relying on you. Something similar in the official F1 game could help to encourage players to be a little more careful out on track, or motivate them to improve their skills and get even faster.

Over to you

Are there any elements from other racing games – simulation, arcade or in between – that you would like to see added to F1 24? Let us know in the comments below.

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Author information

Will Wood
Will has been a RaceFans contributor since 2012 during which time he has covered F1 test sessions, launch events and interviewed drivers. He mainly...

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20 comments on “The new features F1 24 needs to entice players in a season of little change”

  1. RandomMallard
    15th January 2024, 14:14

    I think this is the best opportunity in quite a while to bring some different tracks into the series. We saw them add Portimao, Imola and Jeddah at relatively short notice in 2021, and Portimao and Paul Ricard still being in the game despite not being on the calendar shows there might be more room for expanding the track selection than was previously thought. Give us Istanbul Park, Malaysia, Mugello etc and maybe people might be interested. Definitely would help break up the sometimes monotonous long career mode saves.

    Or bring back classic cars. Not really a good way of implementing them without having a few older tracks, depending on the age of the cars, but could be interesting at least (can’t be worse than the supercars). In fact, I think the MotoGP game had a mode a couple of years ago based around the 2009 (I think?) season. A similar one for F1 with 2008, 2010 or 2012 could be very interesting for F1!

  2. José Lopes da Silva
    15th January 2024, 14:24

    Start the career mode in F3 and make the player win it in order to go through. Include Macao.
    Make him go through F2 and make him win it.
    Include as many years in the career mode as years Alonso is predicted to race. If the player starts now, he’ll be around in 2047. Put 50 or 60 tracks and change them over the years. Include futuristic cars from 2040 onwards. New looks. New engines. New sounds. Include new teams. Expand to 26 cars. Or maybe to 30 cars on race days and 40 cars overall.

    1. Include Macao.

      Oh yes please.

  3. After immersing myself in Gran Turismo 7 with PSVR2 I highly doubt I’ll buy another serious racing game that doesn’t support it.

    Didn’t buy F1 for the first time in a good few years this year because of no support. Can’t go back to flat screens!

  4. Having the ability to change the calendar more without mods, so if you want say Brazil as the final track once more, you can either by setting dates for the weekends or if the game is smart enough, based it on the order that the player chooses the tracks in the menu. Change of the sprint races as well which can be a similar mechanic to normal choosing of the tracks, also maybe more choices in the number of races.

    1. With you 100%!!

      I’ve also never understood, like in some of the GT races, why we can’t reverse the tracks.

      And never mind vintage cars. Let’s have back the old Hockenheim, Silverstone, the 6 mile Monza and Spa (i.e. the 8 mile one!!)

  5. What I would love to see (and I have no idea if it’s possible licensing wise) is a proper historic F1 game, rather than a couple of tacked on cars and tracks. Why not have a separate “F1 1980s” game, with the cars and tracks from that era, but using the same game engine as F1 2024? You could even have the tv-broadcast style graphics from that era. Then in a couple of years, do a 1990s one, a 1970s one, a 2000s one, etc. Or for that matter sell each historic year as paid-for DLC.

    1. Hell yes, I’d rather this idea than a yearly updated game.

  6. As EA already did in the mid 2000’s maybe this is the year where they can finally Concatanate all the previous Codies games into one game and make the best and most realistic career progression in history. Maybe they could even call it F1 Challenge – 2009-2024.

    1. Agree with this 100%. Even if was just a lazily done career progression copy and paste of say 2020-2024 that would be an exciting proposition. I don’t see why it would be that hard to do, they already have the track and car models on file obviously would need some updating but that would be great.

  7. Never found the ‘build a car’ features compelling; either there is one optimal choice (which means everything else is a ‘loss’ and thus feels bad), or they’re all so similar it renders the feature rather irrelevant.

    Having a more curated multiplayer experience is a good thing, but there’s a downside to tying everything to performance. If every race becomes a race against your equals, it can quickly become quite stressful. Not only are all races very close, requiring full attention, you also have that constant feeling that losing will make you ‘lose internet points’. Separating performance from keeping it clean would allow one to be grouped with people who also race seriously, but aren’t necessarily as fast. That way, one race could see you race for the win and another struggling to keep up – but always in a game with people who aren’t just messing about, cutting corners, etc.

    1. Yeah, especially with a series like F1, what would be the point of NOT copying Red Bull like most of the grid already did last season, right.

  8. Forget structural stuff. They even took away simple things from a handful of games ago. They need the more talkative and context-bound engineer dialogue (and the driver agent character who gave you proper rollickings) of a few years ago. Hearing a dry “race over, pick up rubber and bring it home” for any race result other than a podium is extremely dispiriting.

    Though they have to fix the wild fluctuations in AI level from track to track first. It’s game breaking for me.

  9. I would love to see some older tracks like PC games have. The original Spa circuit, Monza with the oval included, the Nordschlief or the original Silverstone. F1 history is filled with great tracks to choose from.

  10. Just put some 50’s era cars and tacks , make them hard to drive like in assetto corsa with the 250F. There you have one big feature to attract and pay tribute to that era.

    1. Or … “welcome back to Grand Prix Legends”. :)

      PS. Maybe now that David Kaemmer & iRacing got the Indycar contract back they might have enough resources to develop more historic mods for iRacing. One can hope…

  11. Macao : oh yes !

    I regularly play F2 along with my bro and the local offline multiplayer mode is to be improved.
    Qualifying is only a single lap format, the split screen is not ideal in qualy to make the best out of the laptime as you get distracted by the sound of the other car, you can’t have a real season , you can’t save it so to play back another day… I mean these games were made originally to play with some mate but nowadays it looks like nobody’s ever playing alongside friends but only remotely : sadly for me and my bro.

  12. Livery??!! Please give us a break.

    One of the things I dislike about GT7 is how ‘platformy’ it is – the last thing we need is F1 to deflect away from the important sim quality that all these games need to improve on.

    Nothing beats Project Cars 2, my favourite game of all time.

    Having said that the F1 franschise is fairly good. I’d say the one thing it needs is for teams to be more intelligent when it comes to pit stops as opposed to the obvious 2+2=4 predictable approach they have currently.

  13. I’ve been saying for years that F1 needs to give the license to two different game companies like a lot of other sports have done in the past, such as the NBA with NBA Live and NBA 2K. One can be the Driving/RPG game that EA/Codemasters make, and the other can be a racing simulator. iRacing, Studio 397, or Kunos Simulazioni would all be good options, but maybe even Reiza, Straight4, The Last Garage, or Rennsport could be considered.

  14. Some tweeks,
    We have driver acclaim, but team mate acclaim would be good, having a good relationship with your team mate increases chance of resigning with team, poor and team might consider not resigning you or them.
    Actual team orders, how many times do you get held up by team mate on different strategy, this would build into the top point.
    When starting my team, if you chose championship challenger the chance to sign a top driver not F2 driver as this doesn’t make the team championship challenger.
    When signing for a new team this happens after the season has finished, always shows your comparison to new team mate.

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