Can anyone explain to me the point of racing cleanly? Don't give me "personal satisfaction of not being a jerk" because that's not going to be enough.
There's zero reward for being a clean driver if you're not also an A or higher in driver rating. Regardless of account, regardless of trying to leave space, regardless of courtesy I am punted, shunted, and otherwise moved out of the way so the car behind me can pass.
I know, you're going to say "HK just go faster/improve qualifying/same old tired excuses for why sport mode is utter *****" and they just don't cut it any more.
I have reached the approximate limit of my skills. I am between a C and B driver by skill. I don't have the time or inclination to grind out practice or qualifying laps to sit on pole just so that I can run the risk of going from front to back instead of going from mid-pack to back.
PD doesn't give a **** about their players, whales are spending the money PD anticipated and the rest of us can rot is the impression that I get.
The Penalty system rewards aggressive driving and punting more than it does clean driving and yielding space when required to do so. I get hit harder by the "binned it into the wall" penalty from being shunted than the person who hit me gets for doing it.
Had a race today, qualified in 8th, kept it clean through the bus stop and into the loop afterwards but a pack of GT-R drivers ran me over on entry to the boot loop area. None of the ones that hit me, and there were three, got penalized for doing so, but me, the guy pushed off track and into the wall drew three seconds because I hit the wall twice.
To me that says "be aggressive, push to pass, the worst that happens is a half second contact penalty".
So fine PD be that way, but when sport mode dies because it's either Aliens who can't be beat or Wreckfest don't come crying to the community because we'll have hoisted the black flag and begun slitting throats ourselves.
Pretty much sums up my experience today. Sad, because I had a day to race. I mostly focused on race B in the Ferrari. I made a mistake and received an appropriate 1 sec penalty. Outside of that, my races were clean, even receiving CR bonuses at times. Second to last race I was in, there were three of us staggered but close into the bus stop - the three of us had raced cleanly for at least a lap but one of the other drivers braked late, punted the other guy, and I went through unscathed - looked at the replay a dozen times from a dozen angles, I did not swap paint.
But I was given a 5 second penalty and lost my S rating. Next race? You guessed it, I am now mid pack with a very unsavory group of drivers. The only thing I can guess is some sort of code issue, but damn this game is hard to tolerate at times. The last time I lost S rating was for passing under a yellow, not for murdery activities. Today, I was negligently murdery once, received a 0.5 sec corner cutting penalty, but outside of that, I was Mr. Clean until the 5 sec penalty. It's difficult to stomach that when I can watch replays of drivers who gain multiple positions in a race, but every positioned gained results in the other driver off the track, and no penalties...
I, too, have done the grind for a better QT so I can hot lap a race for podiums, improve my DR/SR...yada, yada. I got faster, but that speed went quickly when I stepped away from the game for a couple months. Since then, I have maintained consistency, but not speed - consistently slow, I guess.
However, I do take some pride in knowing that I ran a lot of quali laps today in almost every Gr4 in my garage, and most of my lap times were very close. As long as I am not molested off the track, I can gain spaces through clean passes and being consistent. I can keep places by not making 0.5 sec mistakes, and I am slowly getting better at avoiding terminal assaults. So, yeah, I am personally satisfied at not being a jerk - again, managed expectations.
