Gran Turismo 7 Custom Race thread

[Nebuc72]

Sure, that's niche, I agree. But still someone had to make the decision for Sophy to use AT in a low powered car at a track with steep grades.
And how about the whole A110 one make @ Spa thing I wrote about earlier? The freight train in front of you, the non working difficulty settings, the insane pace of every single Sophy?

It's all very likely these are part of the reason why we never got Sophy in custom races to begin with. I don't know what influenced them otherwise, but they've done something that's given the player a bit of freedom to set things up to have some more fun with them.
It's not refined, but neither is Sophy, and quite frankly if it's all down to player discretion in the first place, I'd rather have the option to both make good and bad races, than to have no option at all.

 

[Sir Crashalot]

It's all very likely these are part of the reason why we never got Sophy in custom races to begin with. I don't know what influenced them otherwise, but they've done something that's given the player a bit of freedom to set things up to have some more fun with them.
It's not refined, but neither is Sophy, and quite frankly if it's all down to player discretion in the first place, I'd rather have the option to both make good and bad races, than to have no option at all.

Yeah, sorry, forgot once again that this a PD/Kaz fanboy forum. My bad!

 

[Nebuc72]

Yeah, sorry, forgot once again that this a PD/Kaz fanboy forum. My bad!

If agreeing that a feature is unrefined but liking the fact it gives the player more options, is being a fanboy - then the bar is below the floor with you mate.

 

[NekoPufferPPP]

Sir Crashalot's Alpine Challenge completed. Took 3 tries, it's hard, but fun.

Fastest lap was a 2:46.480

While Sophy doesn't seem to like racing against itself, it will race against you, defending corners and such.

 

[hawkeyez]

Imo it takes a little too much effort on the users behalf to get a good race going. Some people are really into it and that’s why they should allow users to share their custom races and have people rate it out of five stars. Untapped content right there. I personally don’t have the patience for it, I barely have the patience to copy tunes off of three settings page screenshots let alone repeatedly race a custom race and tweak cars and the tunes until I land on something fun. Rinse and repeat per track and per car class, not to mention tuning a group of cars equally or having to buy 20 Camaro’s and paint each one differently so you’re all not in the same damn car. lol

 

[UnkaD]

Tried a sophy race with my '08 Gr.2 1999 JGTC replicar collection and I've never felt so fulfilled to start 11th and finish 7th. So much fun! Noticing where specific AI will pull moves and adjusting the next lap. Seeing where they enter a bit deep and doing the cutback, and without crahing into a parked car on the apex no less. I can drive so naturally without worrying about crashing into the car ahead of me every corner. And the best thing is that the cars don't all look identical anymore.

Now if they can just fix the tire choice issue, because the next race I tried with all my tuned classic street cars was a real doozy.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Did a 30 minute race at Bathurst last night in Gr4 cars (RWD only, boost weak, BOP on) and it was amazing for me. It's nice to have AI run this track that aren't slow across the mountain. However there was one quirk: once I got past the 4th place car, the rest of the AI got bottled up behind that car and just wouldn't go around it. So it left me trying to chase down the two leaders that had pulled a big gap, and the rest of the field stuck behind 4th place. Managed to pass the leader going into the chase with just over 1 lap to go.

Also did an oopsie last night too. Saw that Maggiore had Sophy, so set up a race at East Reverse with FWD Gr4 cars. Race started and the AI were all running into each other and braking hard for no reason. And then it hit me that I wasn't racing with Sophy. I guess only the big track is available with Sophy right now. And unfortunately standing starts are not available with Sophy.

 

[tonidavid5]

@Sir Crashalot , for the MX-5 spec race you could try to set an event around different versions of the Roadster cars, TC, NA, ND and tune the lower powered ones to bring them up the Touring Car version performance. Not strictly one-make but I remember this as a special event from the Weekly Challenges and I had a blast.

Same thing with a Honda Civic EK spec event, there are the EK Touring Car, the EK 98 and the EK 95 versions you could mix up giving Sophie more variation (assuming Sophie can run all 3 types)

 

[05XR8]

Obviously not as simple as adjusting a difficulty toggle, but I’m curious if you can just power-up your own vehicle in the pre-race screen to create favorable difficulty conditions? I’d think Boost Weak with a little more oomph in your own car could work…it’d be a little more like racing the old AI, wherein the player has a horsepower advantage.

Now, we’ve seen how Sophy can cheat to keep up with faster driving, so maybe it won’t have an effect, but I’d think that could be a better experience than Boost Off.

This pre-race adjustment concept also has a hand in maximizing your payouts - if you create a ‘sandbag’/lowest-PP tune sheet and launch your Custom Race while it is active, you’ll set the payout even higher due to the apparent relative disadvantage. Before you jump into the actual race, while on the pre-race screen, adjust your tune (change to your ‘good’ tune sheet) at no impact to the AI or payout.

Should let you get the best experience, I’d suspect!

That’s what I did last night. Just tried my RS 500 at ATCC specs with 540BHP/1185kg at Spa. All other RS 500s were at 390BHP/1035kg. Usual start from 20th. Of course I blew by SOPHY on the straights. I’m using SOPHY driving lines and not over driving to defend. I’m jjust being smooth and making sure I don’t leave the door open. Not blocking aggressively, but my trajectory corner to corner keeps SOPHY honest while behind.

The furthest I’ve gapped SOPHY in the 10 lap race was 1.1 seconds. Had a train of three M3 EVOs and the pole position RS 500 battling me for first the whole race. Finished the race 0.3 seconds ahead of a SOPHY M3 that divebomed the P2 RS 500 at the final corner. The Boost weak was definitely keeping SOPHY on my tail.

Next race, I jumped in an M3 EVO 320BHP/983kg. Set one M3 EVO to ATCC specs 340BHP/983kg(all other M3s are same spec and my car). While having a SOPHY in the 540BHP/1185kg RS 500. The M3 is so good, I was able to battle for 17th(yay) with no problem. Making up for the RS 500 straight line speed advantage. Both SOPHY is the ATCC spec cars had checked out.
Meanwhile, there was plenty of overtaking for positions just like at Spa.

As pointed out a few pages ago, if taking yourself out of the race, as I’ve done many times to spectate, the AI will gradually make moves. With SOPHY, they’ll say in the procession and hold station for the race.

 

[Sir Crashalot]

Put the boost on it's default setting of off. That puts boost on and you'll find that at the halfway point in the race Sophy will slow down to let you catch her.

So I just tested this, again at Spa and again one make with the A110.
Good news, the difficulty setting actually works here!
I started with intermediate and shot from last place to 12th before Les Combes. Nah, too quick, exit.
Next try on Professional. Much better but still not extremely hard. Took P1 on lap 4 but Sophy kept the pressure. Driving error by me on the last lap and I finished P3.

So, for one makes, boost off and professional difficulty seems to be the way to go when you use Sophy. In terms of pace it's about the same as regular AI on Professional with boost weak. Maybe a bit slower but therefore you get the benefit of a more predictable and fairer driving style by AI.
Still, there seems to be no setting that allows for a real competitive and realistic type of race, at least not for one makes.

 

[BadBoomerang]

Anyone else noticing Sophy cannot figure out fuel/pit stops?

Set up a race where everyone needs to pit around lap 6/7 of 9. Whole field pits together which is annoying but not as much as the back 6-10 cars deciding they didn't take enough fuel during the pit stop (they only need a half tank to finish at most), and so decide to pit again just before the final lap... Even though they've got the exact same amount of fuel (or more) that the rest of the cars.

The entire pack is split by about 8-10 seconds going into the last lap, but the last group putting puts them 30 seconds behind for absolutely no reason.

Tried adding laps, changing the multiplier,changing the refuel rate, and none of it changes that behaviour.

So guessing put stops are still pretty much pointless.


Its crazy how much difference "boost weak" makes to the Sophy races too.
With it on I'm lucky if I can go from the back to the top 8 in 9 laps.

With it off I can be at the front in 2-3, gain a 5 second lead without any sweat.

Same cars both races, and my car is by no means faster than any of them.


Love the Sophy option generally but feels like it needs some bug fixing/polish.

 

[Tired Tyres]

I did a 300KM race at Dragon Tail for gr3 cars. The GT3 cars pitted after I did at around an hour, but the faster cars, McLaren F1, Viper and Mazda VGT all pitted before me.

That was will fuel and tyres at 1x.

These faster cars pitted again towards the end of the race. They clearly didn't put enough fuel in as they had either 0 or 5 litres left when they pitted. This lead to me winning by 16 seconds. The fact that the other GT3 cars including a Ferrari 458 GT3 just like the one I was driving all pitted after me indicates that Sophy was fuel saving when I was struggling to keep up at full fuel.

This means endurance races against Sophy will be harder....