I’ve been enjoying FM 2023 but I have some complaints and frustrations about the UI and menus.
For one, why is there no simple way to view what division a car is in from the selection menu? In Horizon I can simply use the right stick to view the class/category its in, but here in Motorsport I need to sort the entire list which can lead to some confusion and losing the car(s) I was looking at before. It’s kind of a minor thing, but its just one of those QOL things I would expect to carry over between games of the same franchise…
This may just be a bug, but its been annoying for me. When I do a rivals event, it filters cars by class; this seems correct since you are to choose any car upgraded to the class you intend to hotlap in. However, I have found that when I leave rivals and go back to single player (or even the main menu for upgrades, paint, buying or selecting cars) the car selection menu defaults to the class filter rather than by manufacturer. This feels unintentional.
In the Design & Paint menu I feel like it should be possible to “view car” like I can in the main menu. If I just applied a livery from online or just created one myself, I’d like to be able to preview/view it easily without backing out of the menu entirely. I can do this in Horizon; as soon as I’ve applied a downloaded livery and it takes me back to the paint menu, I can just press the button immediately to view the car.
Along similar lines, when purchasing a car, there is no ability to search for liveries like in Horizon. It feels very clunky to need to re-navigate through menus to apply a livery to a car, and have no ability to preview what liveries are available prior to getting the car. Not everyone would use this feature of course, but its another one of those small QOL things that I would have expected to be in both games…
It makes things very annoying when starting a new builder’s or featured tour series; I have to go into the series to see what cars are eligible, decide what car I want to buy for it, and then back out all the way to the main menu to buy the car from there, and then I can look at any liveries I might want to use (or creating my own) before going back to the career and finally starting the series.
Why can I not skip the post practice cutscene in single player? I can skip the pre-practice cutscene as the car leaves the pits, but I am forced to watch the car re-enter the pits. This seems clunky. Why not let me skip both, or force me to watch both; not a mix of the two?
When using the Upgrade & Tune and Design & Paint menus and pressing the back button, it takes me all the way to the main menu. I believe this is intentional, due to the “Select car” menu item after selecting a car, but it feels very clunky. I did not even realize that there was a “Select car” option for a couple of days. I believe pressing back should return to the car selection menu. However, an alternative if this is not possible or desirable for some reason, rename “Select car” to “Change Car” and move the menu item to the top of the list. “Select” is misleading in my opinion, and could refer to equipping the already chosen car to go into an event.
Lastly, I had the thought that the career series and multiplayer event navigation was clunky, but after revisiting the menus and just moving around in them I think its ok. Perhaps its just something I’ve noticed by playing on PC. I play on controller since my wheel rig is set up for VR games exclusively (no monitor or TV), and often find myself setting down the controller to move my mouse over to my other monitor (for discord, changing music, etc) and these menus go crazy when my mouse moves across the screen. Not a big deal, but figured I might mention it anyway.