I would love to explain, since I can touch on many of GTS' problems
First my stats
Pretty messy at first glance, but you got to take the way I race into account.
Those are snapshots of 14,113 race over 1044 days played, an average of 13.5 races per day. When I race, I race a lot. Sometimes marathon sessions of over 30 races in a day. The longer the pause between races, the more races I can do in a day as I can do everything else I need to do that day in between the races. Hence don't take it wrong when I don't respond to greetings in the pre-race chat as I often don't show up until auto-drive has started. And also often leave quickly to get back to what I was doing.
You've probably also heard me talk about dirty hour a lot on here. I exclusively race on one account in the Americas. A clear pattern is that races get dirty from 5pm EST, reach terrible levels between 7 and 8pm, then start getting better again from 10pm.
PD takes those snapshots at UTC 0, which is 7pm EST in winter, 8pm EST in summer. Right after the dirtiest races of the day.
All those data points are for the worst case of the day on the Americas server. For example, I did a marathon session on Monday on Sarthe, was SR.S all day until 5:30pm when I got taken up in the start shuffle over and over and ended as C/D in the 6:30 pm race. reset to 7K, SR 13, PD takes a picture, those are my 'scores' for the day.
That's where my motivation to reset DR comes from. The trouble I had on Monday is, I don't qualify, neither do a lot of people at first. I was starting as high as 8th due to my high DR, with a horde of people behind me not planning to brake for Dunlop. (or far too late). Problem is, the people I start behind are the slowest in the room. I take great care not to run into them, yet with a horde starting behind me I simply get pushed into them. High DR often gets blamed for any contact, and down my SR goes.
This was what reset me on Monday, no further contact during the rest of the race
On the Nordschleife and N24 it's even worse with only 2 or 3 qualifiers sometimes on Monday. So to start last I manually reset DR/SR by driving back and forth out of the way. Drive the wrong way until the DQ timer is down to 15 sec, turn around until the DQ timer disappears, repeat. That triggers a (now invisible) SR Down. Do that for 2 races (or one C race) and you're D/E. Hitting the pit wall while turning adds more SR loss, and I drive the wrong way into the pits to avoid the field when they come around, car pinging around in the pits taking more SR hits. Quit right before the end of the race for an additional -5 SR. And voila, now I get start last.
That also gave me the opportunity to map out the SR boost like this
Those are all races with CRB on the Nordschleife from the back at different starting SR. To compare how much SR you get for a CRB at different starting SR. in SR.E you get 3.2x as much SR for a clean race than from SR 50 onwards. Hence it's so difficult to stay in SR.E, a daily C worth 20 SR is worth 64 SR in SR.E. The record is 124 SR in one race on Tsukaba. How much SR you can gain depends on the number of laps (actually total number of sectors), which can be many on Tsukaba's little track. We used to have actually long daily C races, 24 laps on Tsukaba.
SR is track dependent, I still have this compilation thanks to
@jasguer
What that shows is avg SR gained or lot per player per race entered. Monza comes out the worst where an N800 race would on avg take 6 SR for every player entered. With the huge boost in SR.E, overall -6 SR per players means more like avg -20 SR for entering it at SR.S...
I don't avoid races for being SR loss leaders. I actually like to test myself there and beat the odds. Monza was actually the first track to drive me to DR.S (before it was renamed A+) although that data point was never stored. (Reached it Saturday night, was gone by Sunday 8PM in dirty hour lol)
Then there's bump drafting. It's not popular anymore, PD has bred it out with the penalty system. Where you see a consistent dip in my SR that's likely Blue Moon Bay, Tokyo East or Sarthe when bump drafting was still popular. Every bump was SR Down, -3 SR. Ridiculous but that's how it was, but people rather raced than worry about SR. What's oval racing without bump drafting? PD didn't like it and introduced disqualifications for too many hits. Result, people were bump drafting people into disqualification on Blue Moon Bay. The car ahead always got the SR Down, bump the leader until he gets thrown out of the race
The DQ was abandoned again but it still got worse. A bump from behind would net the car ahead a time penalty next to SR Down. It was abused by many, tap the car ahead, tap the wall, car ahad gets 3 sec penalty and 10 SR loss. It even became a tactic to steal the win on Tokyo. Draft tap the leader before the finish (not enough speed to overtake) then tap the wall before the finish line. Leader gets 3 sec penalty after the line and gets pushed to second.
Nowadays you find very few bump drafters anymore and most people see it as an attack if you bump them on a straight
Oh yeah, I stopped qualifying quite early when the penalties got ridiculous the first time. 10 sec for any touch, usually not your fault, just your fault for having higher DR than the player that touched you. T1 was always 10 sec penalty for you when the car behind didn't brake in time. Hence I chose to start from the back and stuck to it.
I admit I sometimes retaliate as well. I can be very patient, but I have my limits with certain people. Then I gladly take the SR hit to take them out, force them to last or even to quit. Rest of the field can race on without problems. It's usually a non qualifier starting with me from the back that can't behave and thinks it's seal clubbing time. I hate to see that and will gladly take them out if I can, of course taking care not to create more incidents with innocent bystanders.
Anyway most of the drops are from the ridiculous way PD dishes out SR downs. -10 SR for whatever registers, no nuance. You can punt someone to the moon, bump draft or fail to avoid a crashing car / bad track re-entry, it's all the same to PD. And while racing from the back you meet half the pack or more during the race. On average I gain 7 positions per race on Sarthe according to my stats, this week it's more like 14 per race
People can not handle that car.
Some examples of the horror the penalty system was
Enough rambling, time to go race!
Maybe that was the plan after all, make it really bad, then turn it off and people are happy
(they were for a while, now 1.55 has been forgotten, not so much anymore)
