Week 29 Daily C: Suzuka Circuit GR.3

There would be dozens of good solution to this problem (and to improve the game a lot with other things). But the most important thing to make it happen is just the willingness :)

Ok, OT closed. It's been nice chatting with you too, alla prossima!

Yeah, I don't expect much to change with the single player campaign. Personally, I like it. I understand that PD is in effect condensing time to make the game more accessible. Also pandering to the largest common denominator. And Gran Turismo can't take all the blame for the general public's poor understanding of what racing is about. For decades the most popular series, with the help of the media, have dumded down the coverage of the sport.

Maybe Sophy AI could be trained to retaliate against dirty offline drivers to teach them a lesson... But then again that might make things worse, I don't know. Maybe if the very worst of the dirty drivers could be identified reliably, they could then be put into lobbies populated with only Sophy controled cars. Of course without telling them they've essentialy been shadow banded. That would keep them busy wasting their time trolling bots, away from actual humans trying to enjoy their hobby in each other's company.

Ok, that's enough. I'm sure eveyone here has already spent too much time thinking about all this. At this point what is there left to say? Its been nice chatting with you. Ciao!

I totally agree with you and we talked about this a lot on Discord. The real big problem is just one: that the person who play online to compete are a tiny part of all the playerbase so I don't know if PD is willing to completely rehaul the SR and DR system and to change the offline game so that it become a kind of "driving school" to teach people how to properly race.

We can only hope PD tries to make this aspect of the game better. At the end of the day, car control is the basis of clean racing and currently SR does a poor job of tracking how well drivers can consistently remain in control of their car while the overall ranking system fails at incentivizing players to prioritize SR over results.

Its a tricky problem to solve no doubt. How can competitors be tought that sometimes falling back is in all probability the better outcome? That they can't take the start of every race and expect to win, or even finish near the front. In essence, how to tell players that in a race there are many competitors but only one winner? And that they'll do better once they accept the fact that more likely than not, at least statisticaly speaking, they're bound to loose the vast majority of their races. I'm not certain how PD could manage this but I suspect its not by having players start from last place in single player and engineering the unfolding of races to provide them with the means to fulfill their fantasy of being the heroic driver overcoming all adversity to clinch victory. Every. Time.

Its a tough pill to swallow, I know. But it has huge benefits to those who come to terms with this truth. In racing sims but also in every aspects of our lives. Thats why I find racing so interesting. If we look past the glaringly obvious aspects that define racing we find that its really about individuals that subject themselves to the pressure of competition and how they manage to cope. IMHO the racing environment excel's at releaving its participant's true character. In this respect racing shines a light on human nature that is as entertaining as it is enlightening.

This seems a great idea, I really like it. But I don't think that PD will never do something like this unfortunately. 

I wasn't sure if it was and couldn't find confirmation about this. I'm glad its the case, thanks for clearing that up.

I was under the impression that DR is calculated in a weighted way...

     80 +/- (DR difference / 500)

...for each driver you finish ahead of (usually for the top-8 finishers)

You're onto something, for sure.

I'd like to see DR progression be weighted in such a way as to reflect the rank of the competition in any given lobby. So doing better than a higher ranked driver is worth more than beating a lower ranked driver. Same principal should apply for DR loss.

For SR, I whish it concidered more than just penalties for collisions between drivers and track cutting. I'm in favor of tracking how well drivers stay in control of their car. So going off track anywhere or any contact with other cars and barriers should cost SR. Penalties aren't a strong enough deterent IMHO. And only taking penalties into account for SR(plus quitting lobbies) leaves way too much bad behavior unpunished. 

And finaly, SR should be a sort of modifier to the amount of DR gained or lost. So at the end of a race, DR and SR would first be calculated seperately. Then the amount of DR gained for the event would be multiplied by a value determined by your SR rank. Something like: S=1, A=.9, B=.8, C=.7, D=.6 E=.5. This way two drivers that are deemed initially to have earned the same amount of DR could in practice recieve different final DR gains due to their respective SR rank.

So imagine two drivers have scored an initial DR gain of say 100 points. The considerate driver that always prioritizes staying in control of his car and racing clean has an SR rank of S and so his final DR gain is calculated like so: 100*1=100. His DR is raised by 100 points. Our second driver, who might be a beginner or the dirtiest driver in GT7, with his SR rank of E would have his final DR gain calculated like this: 100*0.5=50. So his DR is raised by only 50 points.

That covers DR gain but what about DR loss? It should work more or less the same way but turn it on its head. In the case of DR loss, it should still be the high SR ranked drivers that enjoy an advantage. This way maintaining a high SR rank would reduce DR loss while a low SR rank would increase it.

I believe the impact of SR on DR progression like this could be a strong incentive for drivers to be more careful on track and urge them to prioritize SR all the time, at all cost. A driver's rate of progression would depend on it. Indeed, it just might trap the very worst drivers in the lower ranks for good. At least until they see the error in their ways and come around to what racing is truly meant to be.

I would race that for sure. A better system would be nice. But we play the game the most the people that make it don't have the insight that comes with 2000hrs of racing and dealing with the system. 

Imagining Cup-like races as Daily Cup Races, starting every hour with its own independent ranking system, means you can only rank in Daily Cup Races and only if you are driving fairly. Harder consequences like: Deliberate takeouts result in immediate disqualification.

Agreed, the standard of driving in a strong top split lobby really is exceptional, clean and enjoyable

Exactly that. The DR system has to be changed and adapted to the new 150k cap. Tha range inside the A+ rank is too big now. They should definitely raise the points needed to reach A+ and adapt the other ranking too.

The ranking system has a major problem.  You get to A where drivers could have 30k-50k DR points, and A+ is worse (50-150k+).  If the As you're matched with are 15k-nearly 20k lower than you, but still A, I would expect you'd find them immensly less adept than you, despite being "ranked" the same. 

I personally think PD should have created a few additional tiers for DR because at least in lower ranks (like myself, C) the drivers I play against are all within 5k DR of eachother, so yes, we ARE similarly skilled and paced for the most part.  I can't even imagine going up against someone with 20,000 more DR points than me, assuming it would be equal! 🙃

I don't know how many races you did in the EMEA region, but you need to have a minimun amount of races to be statistically relevant. A tons of guys who race in the EU regularly, have a totally different experience. 

Also, keep in mind that a larger pool of drivers means that statistically there are more people that doesn't have better standard as the majority of EU drivers have (at least in A/A+ lobbies).

Honestly I just won't bother with that region any more. I'm in Oceania/Asia and I race mostly Japanese drivers and the consistency level and race pace is just a better standard. It's not always the cleanest but it's normally isolated to one driver and reputation precedes people in such a small pool of drivers so you can prepare for it. The EU servers/lobbies are just a mess from my experience. It didn't take long to get to a A dr in those lobbies so I think it's just a case of a lot more higher rated drivers with a lot less experience. At least that what it appears to me.