◆ SNAIL [Spec] Racing - Join now to win a Digit Racing EDGE Masterclass enrollment!!Open 

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TomMang_68
kinda takes the fun out of it if you know you have a big advantage over someone without a clutch, doesn’t it?

Anyway it all works out in the end, the faster guys will get promoted and the others will not.
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I agree with this statement - in that, the divisions will settle out and it will be what it will be.

As my usual sentiment, I am happy to race those in the division I have been appropriately placed in, with those who have also been fittingly placed in said division - shifter or not.

This is very analogous to the whole wheel versus DS4 conversation, or any other haves versus have-nots situation.

As a matter of fact I feel like there is an advantage for people with PS4 Pros versus the standard PS4! :lol:
 
stelephant
I agree with this statement - in that, the divisions will settle out and it will be what it will be.

As my usual sentiment, I am happy to race those in the division I have been appropriately placed in, with those who have also been fittingly placed in said division - shifter or not.

This is very analogous to the whole wheel versus DS4 conversation, or any other haves versus have-nots situation.

As a matter of fact I feel like there is an advantage for people with PS4 Pros versus the standard PS4! :lol:
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See I disagree with this.
I can race with most people, and on one combo everything is even and fair. Then we switch to a different car and I'm at a large disadvantage on starts and corner exits.
 
Sean Renon
See I disagree with this.
I can race with most people, and on one combo everything is even and fair. Then we switch to a different car and I'm at a large disadvantage on starts and corner exits.
Click to expand...
Understood. I am just saying that it will all level out as time progresses.

They may pull away on certain combos, yet another combo or the next week - if it happens to be same track/new car, or even possibly same car/new track (with different shift points) - you may have the advantage.

That is the nice thing about SNAIL, every week combos are changing and shuffling.

Also, with the other options - enduro, special events, etc. - there are many ways to wet your whistle. Heck, you can even race the dailies and FIA. At least with SNAIL you’re pretty much guaranteed clean fun racing.
 
Marcus Garvey
It's been a long while since I've been active round these parts, but anyone familiar will know that I am 100% about full disclosure. When I used to frequent practice sessions, my time was mostly spent trying to help others improve, both through course 'walkthroughs' and pouring sunlight on various techniques and advantages.

See also; my historical 'pokes' at brake bias, rigidity refresher/improvement, etc. :sly:
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I've made some subtle/not so subtle pokes on Sundays myself about this.

Screenshot_2019-01-03-17-11-56.png

This was my car when we raced it at Myabi awhile back, before I bought the shifter :lol:

Sean Renon
See I disagree with this.
I can race with most people, and on one combo everything is even and fair. Then we switch to a different car and I'm at a large disadvantage on starts and corner exits.
Click to expand...

Like its been said, the shifter only works with certain cars (namely the lower N class)

When people choose one of these cars as a Prize in the future, they now know the asterisk that comes with choosing it.



Practice lobby will be up in about 40 minutes. @racingchamp30 will host and if we get full I will open a 2nd lobby and we'll split by divisions.
 
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SAMHAIN85
I agree. But like I said before if you cant beat em, join em.

In November over half our races were done with cars where the shifter can be utilized. I got smoked, and soon after a shiny new TH8A was on its way to my door.
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I like your ending one liner take away as much as Mang’s.
Preface: I’m saying this light heartedly. You lost 1 position in part due to not having a shifter. You also may have still been blowing out some cobwebs from the hiatus you took. ;) I believe the shifter is an advantage. (here this next sentence in the Trump voice) I also believe you and many others would acknowledge that 1 missed shift easily drops you 5 positions when you try 4 times to get it back in gear - that’s huge. Summation: A shifter, if used without mistakes, will gain anyone 1 position in their division in a given season. For anybody reading this; want to buy yourself a shifter for that gain? I won’t judge.
I bought a shifter before the Abarth 500 race October 7. I did very well in October. But in November and December, I did very poorly. It’s a zero sum game folks.
I do love the realism of the shifter, especially in Dirt 4 and PC2. As for GT Spurt, it’s not wonderful.
 
The way I see it, there are always inherent disadvantages in Motorsports. My brother has about 600 hp in his all iron motor while the guys he competes against have 800-900 hp in their all aluminum motors. People get caught all the time bending rules on weight, tires, carbs, diffs etc. Not to say shifters bend the rules, but I would say competitive imbalances are pretty inherent to Motorsports so that’s a nice touch PD.

I don’t necessarily enjoy being left in the dust by the shifter guys but if I want to do something about it I can have whatever I need shipped next day prime to my door. As more people get shifters I’ll get pushed back down to D2/3 and then I’ll be with non shifter users like me and be competitive again. To me, no big deal really.
 
I usually stay out of stuff like this but I guess I’ll weigh in on the shifter discussion considering I found out about it over the last few days and saw firsthand the difference it can make. I have two main issues with it, the first being much more problematic than the other imo.

The first issue is that the advantage a shifter gives completely goes against the idea and spirit of a “spec” league in my mind. It’s a major variable that has a noticeable impact, and it creates a situation where there’s two tiers/classes of racers. It’s fine if the league wanted to go in that direction, but that isn’t spec to me. I know a lot of people will have the opinion that the difference isn’t that great and that others could easily get a shifter if they wanted to, but the difference is clearly there and I don’t think it’d be right to make people decide between not competing or spending money just to even the playing field in a virtual racing league that is supposed to be spec

The second issue is that this isn’t a skill that drivers use to improve their times. What I mean by that is that it’s an extremely low effort thing that literally requires drivers to set the shifter in one position and then press a pedal. That’s essentially it. It doesn’t show any level of skill or ability. I don’t mind things like brake balance since that, in my opinion, comes down more to feel than anything else and everyone will be different and can use their preference to their advantage, but this is just blatantly using a flaw in the game to ones advantage, and the advantage is fairly big as I said earlier. I ran some tests after learning about it and the difference between when I used the shifter vs. not using it ranged anywhere from 2-5 seconds per lap. That could easily be the difference between being promoted up a division or not over time, and we should be promoting people based on skill rather than whether or not they have a shifter.

All in all, I hope I won’t have to start using my shifter because it honestly just doesn’t sit right with me. I want to race fairly and my placement doesn’t really mean a ton to me so I don’t really have a reason to use it, but if it starts affecting things in major way then there might be no choice.
 
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soundtiger95
I usually stay out of stuff like this but I guess I’ll weigh in on the shifter discussion considering I found out about it over the last few days and saw firsthand the difference it can make. I have two main issues with it, the first being much more problematic than the other imo.

The first issue is that the advantage a shifter gives completely goes against the idea and spirit of a “spec” league in my mind. It’s a major variable that has a noticeable impact, and it creates a situation where there’s two tiers/classes of racers. It’s fine if the league wanted to go in that direction, but that isn’t spec to me. I know a lot of people will have the opinion that the difference isn’t that great and that others could easily get a shifter if they wanted to, but the difference is clearly there and I don’t think it’d be right to make people decide between not competing or spending money just to even the playing field in a virtual racing league that is supposed to be spec

The second issue is that this isn’t a skill that drivers use to improve their times. What I mean by that is that it’s an extremely low effort thing that literally requires drivers to set the shifter in one position and then press a pedal. That’s essentially it. It doesn’t show any level of skill or ability. I don’t mind things like brake balance since that, in my opinion, comes down more to feel than anything else and everyone will be different and can use their preference to their advantage, but this is just blatantly using a flaw in the game to ones advantage, and the advantage is fairly big as I said earlier. I ran some tests after learning about it and the difference between when I used the shifter vs. not using it ranged anywhere from 2-5 seconds per lap. That could easily be the difference between being promoted up a division or not over time, and we should be promoting people based on skill rather than whether or not they have a shifter.

All in all, I hope I won’t have to start using my shifter because it honestly just doesn’t sit right with me. I want to race fairly and my placement doesn’t really mean a ton to me so I don’t really have a reason to u
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Reminds me of the one fist fight I ever got in over video games. In my 20’s I was living with a buddy of mine and we would resolve differences best of seven in nhl94 on genesis. Once I found that wrapping around the back of the goal to the front was an easy way to get a goal I spammed that move and came back from 0-3 to win the series 4-3 one time. My buddy immediately whipped his controller across the room after I won and tackled me yelling that I was cheating by using a game exploit. To this day the topic makes him salty.

Thing is, it’s a game and it’s not perfect. There is no way to police it and the only reason we know who has what is the integrity and honesty of those who do have it. Gran Tursimo Sport has some bugs and oddities and we are stuck with them as far as I see. There will always be some type of advantage in certain situations in these games. I can’t brake or turn as well as the wheel guys with the DS4. It’s a limitation I am stuck with as long as I am on a pad. In the FIA finals Logitech and DS4 users were at a disadvantage to those familiar with Thrustmaster. There’s always something.
 
When do we need to make new threads with the current season that is about to begin. I looked back a few days and haven't seen anything just double checking that I havent missed it
 
This whole shifter thing feels like a first world problem to me. I run with DS4 and that is not changing anytime soon unless I win the lottery. I don't expect to keep pace with D1 one drivers, hell I don't know how I keep up with some in D2. But as a DS4 driver in D2 I really see the difference at combos that suffer the 2nd-3rd shift. I can use a sundial to time the gap. I know I haven't raced much in the last couple of months (not because of this), but I saw the change start before that.

I understand you play with what you can pay and I am not currently planning on stopping racing completely because of this. Borrowing on what someone else said, it will mostly balance out and we will deal with it.

Hell, you never know, I might win the lottery. :gtpflag:
 
The steward summary for the final night of racing in 2018 is completed and posted and points have been adjusted as necessary. Thank you to the stewards for their work over the course of the year. @TomMang_68 @vsfit @Raw10_2u

In other news, the SNAIL OLR has received a clean up of sorts and a new version will be posted later today. Once that is completed, other posts in the SNAIL OLR P&G thread will receive a sprucing up as well. This process will probably take a couple of weeks to complete so if you see anything strange in that thread, don't worry, it's under reconstruction.
 
MajorBlixem
To shift or not to shift...that is the question

You shift you go faster you go up a division... you don't shift you don't go faster you don't go up a division...

That's the beauty of Snail....we match skill levels
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I don't get why this is the mindset.
Race 1 could be completely unaffected by shifter
Race 2 could be unnoticeable
Race 3 could be drastically affected by the shifter
So you have good fair racing 2/3 of the night, but then on the last race they leave you in the dust.

So it's easy to say you can move up a division if you're racing faster and using a shifter, but then you have situations like this.

Driver A is a D3 driver, get's a shifter and now has an advantage using certain street cars.
We happen to race a lot of these older street cars in February and driver A moves up to D2.
March, we mostly race with newer models, or race cars - where the shifter makes no difference.
Driver A is out of his element in D2 and get's relegated back to D3.

Or you get situations like what I'm in.

Races are fair when shifter isn't an advantage, but as soon as the shifter has an advantage you get a split pack in D1 of "shifters" and "non-shifters"

I will say the most frustrating thing is the start of races - especially the second race of a combo where shifters are strong.
I can start midpack, but all the drivers behind me are using a shifter.
I'll be last before turn 1 because the launch from the shifters is insane.

These are the situations that just make me avoid racing sometimes, especially when the combo's favour a shifter.
 
With all the #shiftgate talk I decided to do an experiment in practice last night. Since the BMW can be exploited, I would use the shifter in R1 and strictly paddles in R2. Here are my laptimes and optimal times:

Shifter:
Screenshot_2019-01-04-08-11-03-1.png


Paddles:
Screenshot_2019-01-04-08-12-57-1.png


This gives you an idea of how much time you gain using the shifter. A more accurate test wouldve been running solo laps since this was done in a race with other people.

And heres what it looks like in action

Shifter:


Paddles:


Big difference
 
SAMHAIN85
With all the #shiftgate talk I decided to do an experiment in practice last night. Since the BMW can be exploited, I would use the shifter in R1 and strictly paddles in R2. Here are my laptimes and optimal times:

Shifter:
View attachment 790493

Paddles:
View attachment 790494

This gives you an idea of how much time you gain using the shifter. A more accurate test wouldve been running solo laps since this was done in a race with other people.

And heres what it looks like in action

Shifter:


Paddles:


Big difference
Click to expand...


Where is this combo from? Was in something we did in snail?

I thought we were using the gr4 McLaren at Bathurst. What BMW is this?
 
I think the crux of the #shiftergate issue isn’t the shifters or the drivers, it’s the asinine implementation of the shifter physics on PD’s end. I like GTSport but let’s be honest, the physics aren’t a benchmark in any regard. I’ve been playing PCars more and that’s better but it has its own physics problems in my opinion. AC is better yet but no one plays it. Console sims are improving but we aren’t there yet so there are issues and the blame is squarely on the devs. I don’t see any solution to this problem outside of an official patch from PD, it simply isn’t policeable nor do I think it should be policed.
 
Well I don't have a shifter, and honestly I'm sick of getting passed like I'm standing still from the launch, but a shifter just isn't in my near future, and it sounds like even if I do get a shifter, I have to figure out the weird, not realistic, glitches to get an advantage!!:banghead:
I guess like others have said, the divisions will eventually sort it all out, and likely see the top couple divisions with shifter racers, and the others the rest of us.:boggled:
 

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