- 1,416
- Coventry
- graveltrap
How about an SR safety net?
- Thread starter Bengalryan9
- 50 comments
- 2,387 views
- 1,874
- United States
How about you let your track knowledge and skill dictate which races you enter rather than which races that are up for the day. If there are no circuits that day you can race properly such as knowing the proper braking points or correct lines then spend your game time learning a circuit that you like to race on for when it is available.
If you play a FPS then you are not going into a situation with only a knife against a tank and expect good results.
If you play a RPG then you are not going to try to defeat the big boss without the proper armor and weapon upgrades to give you a chance of winning.
So in the above situations what do you do, you spend the time to acquire the needed tools and equipment before going into battle.
This game is no different, you have to have the right tools to expect a non disastrous result and in an online race that affects not only you but every other player on the same track as you.
Pick the races and tracks that currently suite your skills and if they are not available then skip racing online in those events.
- 1,416
- Coventry
- graveltrap
And that is why I don’t bother racing in sport mode... I did race when it was a weekly cycle, but these days there is no point, for reference I have a grand total of three sport mode races, with two wins. I made sure to gold the license test befor even looking at sport mode as well.
However most of the community approach to sport mode is somewhat different, they jump and race with minimal practice hopping from one daily race to the next.
The weekly cycle started off much as the daily races, but the quality of racing improved over the course of the week.
Maybe they should lock each daily race behind a minimum time spent qualifying, say an hour per day? That would force people to play the way you want them to...
It would be an interesting experiment to see how many people participated in a race set up in such a way.
- 369
- Ohio
This is exactly why you shouldn’t join races where you don’t know the track like the back of your hand.
If you wait until you can close your eyes and visualize an entire lap, turn for turn, you will have a extreme advantage over the players you described.
It shouldn’t take more than an hour lapping a track to memorize it. After that you’re building muscle memory.
- 1,874
- United States
Actually if they ever get the SR rankings tweaked to where the higher ranks are much harder to obtain and the criteria to remain within the upper ranks is more dependent on constantly maintaining mistake free performances with fewer mistakes allowed than what is acceptable today will solve a lot of problems.
Then the racers that choose to participate in on line races on tracks and with cars they are not knowledgeable making multiple mistakes as a result will be relegated to lower SR rankings and racing with other racers with a like mindset instead of causing carnage and ruining the races because of their lack of knowledge within races where the racers have spent the time to learn the track.
Then everyone can be happy and be racing where they should be.
- 1,416
- Coventry
- graveltrap
Again, that is why I personally don’t race, but the vast majority of the community does, in fact all the game required of you to enter a sport mode race is to watch a couple of videos.
You can even drop into a race without qualifying.
Chopping and changing tracks on a 24 hour cycle breeds bad racing because people don’t take the time to prepare, they don’t have to do why bother wasting time learning a track when I only have an hour to go racing on it?
You are trying to change the way the community approaches sport mode that won’t happen unless the game forces it to.
Having a longer cycle a week gives everybody more track time, which then leads to better racing for everyone by the end of the cycle (sure it will star
Sorry for dragging this off topic, btw, but better racing leads to less moaning about SR being lowered
Totally agree with that, but it will also have the effect of reducing the player pool size in match making for SRS rated players (it currently seems to prioritise safety rating above anything else) so you will still end up being matched with less skilled players in an attempt to fill the races.
I still think the best way to improve the quality of racing is to force the players to use the track for more than a day... That will cause a whole new line of threads about being bored though!
- 1,874
- United States
I would rather race with ten people that knew the track and their cars to provide all with a fast close mainly incident free race than race against 20 people just to be able to fill a race to 20 people if that meant that the additional racers would greatly add to the "incidents" encountered during the race.
I would like to see the longer races be extended to maybe 20 -25 laps and be the same for maybe a three day period. Then you do have practice time but not for a full week as to get stale plus multiple pit strategies could possibly make things interesting as well.
Problem there is that people complain about to long of a time between race starts.
- 369
- Ohio
I agree about the the dailies. They should be weekly.Again, that is why I personally don’t race, but the vast majority of the community does, in fact all the game required of you to enter a sport mode race is to watch a couple of videos.
You can even drop into a race without qualifying.
Chopping and changing tracks on a 24 hour cycle breeds bad racing because people don’t take the time to prepare, they don’t have to do why bother wasting time learning a track when I only have an hour to go racing on it?
You are trying to change the way the community approaches sport mode that won’t happen unless the game forces it to.
Having a longer cycle a week gives everybody more track time, which then leads to better racing for everyone by the end of the cycle (sure it will star
Sorry for dragging this off topic, btw, but better racing leads to less moaning about SR being lowered
Totally agree with that, but it will also have the effect of reducing the player pool size in match making for SRS rated players (it currently seems to prioritise safety rating above anything else) so you will still end up being matched with less skilled players in an attempt to fill the races.
I still think the best way to improve the quality of racing is to force the players to use the track for more than a day... That will cause a whole new line of threads about being bored though!
I’m not trying change the way the community approaches Sport Mode. I’m telling the people who are constantly complaining about it how to improve their experience.
You can complain all you want, but if you aren’t willing to try something to help yourself.....
@graveltrap On Saturday, pick a One Make race if there's more than one. Go into the qualifying, not the race entry. Go round until you're dizzy, maybe 30 minutes, have a break, do some squats and pressups and have a coffee. Then go round again for another 30m. The break is important, it allows your brain to process and consolidate memory faster.
You'll then know the track quite well and hopefully start quite high in the field, possibly pole as you've indicated you've a win ratio of 66% which would suggest a decent ability. Check your times in the rankings against friends and the Top 10. If you have no friends on GTS, you can add me, Renrag39. I'll be the guy below you on the time rankings!
Then race. Or qualify more. Or both. Keep at it. Just remember, you have to work for it, wins are not gifted.
You'll then know the track quite well and hopefully start quite high in the field, possibly pole as you've indicated you've a win ratio of 66% which would suggest a decent ability. Check your times in the rankings against friends and the Top 10. If you have no friends on GTS, you can add me, Renrag39. I'll be the guy below you on the time rankings!
Then race. Or qualify more. Or both. Keep at it. Just remember, you have to work for it, wins are not gifted.
- 6,764
- Ontario
- SvennoJ
- SvenZ
Yet the only place to learn how to drive with a full grid of random players is by entering the race. Someone who ran qualifying laps for hours still sucks on the track. I get run into plenty times a day by people that can't adjust their driving line or braking points, conditioned to follow the racing line and nothing else. No skill whatsoever to go through a corner side by side.
You can try to race the AI yet that will only teach you to drive dirty, that is if you don't fall asleep while driving up front.
The last couple races of the day are usually the cleanest. I've been bumped down to SR.A twice today on Bathurst. The last couple hours went a lot smoother and it didn't take long to get to max SR again with people finally being smarter in choosing where to overtake and where to fall back. Early afternoon I still got punted off the road in max SR. End of the day, a group of cars ahead, lets brake a little earlier. It could also be that the kids had gone to bed...
What exactly do you win in that exclusive SR.S club? First the matchmaking needs to be changed as that simply takes a point range. So you only want to be matched with other 99/99s. Currently matchmaking can't provide a decent group at 80 to 99 SR, resorting to grouping DR.D to DR.S together. It's actually better to be nearer the bottom of SR.S than the top as matchmaking will create more even races. If it can only group 99/99s together, have fun racing DR.S players that are used to always getting pole and driving ahead out front.
SR.S is no longer a point of pride for me, it's a curse. Matchmaking works much better at low SR.S or SR.A. The max SR.S races I was in today were a mess of mismatched players causing a lot of accidents. Luckily those pinball races dropped me to SR.A where the matches were better and consequently the races a lot cleaner. Of course that propelled me back up again, then down again.... SR joke. Better to match on DR first and widen the range of SR considerably. Even in SR.B I've seen cleaner races than at max SR.S.
So punt me off the road, it's fine. I know I'll get better matches when I get away from that cursed 99/99 rating
Hey, my SR rating is nothing to crow about @Sven Jurgens
I won't be part of that exclusive club but if it's easier to lose maybe people will work harder to maintain it regardless of whether in b, a or s.
I won't be part of that exclusive club but if it's easier to lose maybe people will work harder to maintain it regardless of whether in b, a or s.
- 1,654
- UK
- JacksHereR
What I would like to see with the SR, is once you get to SR:S 90 points, you only get SR+ points per clean lap instead of per clean sector. Once you reach 95 SR points you only get SR+ per clean race.
- 16
- NKURyan
For what it's worth, I think implying that people who have SR problems don't know the tracks and can't race well is pretty ridiculous. I've run daily races pretty much every day since launch, do the full 15 minutes of free practice before FIA qualifying begins, and can usually put up a top 5 qualifying time against the people I'm matched up against at DR B. I'm hardly out there just winging it, but I can't account for every other driver on the track either (I mean for pete's sake, in the original post I mentioned getting into an unavoidable pileup right at the start of the race because the guy who qualified 2nd never bothered to accelerate). The problem only gets worse if you do manage to have a bad race and slip down to lower SR levels, because now you're dealing with even more contact as you try to fix it.
I also think it's pretty silly that for a lot of people the solution to potentially getting your SR damage is just "avoid entering the race", but hey, I'm sure that's not a sign that the system could use some tweaking or anything. "Well I've got an hour or so to play some PS4, think I'll run a couple of races. Let's see what's up on Sport mode today... Northern Isle, Tokyo, and Willow Springs Horse Thief in Tomahawks. Guess I'll go stare at a wall for an hour instead." IMO any game should be encouraging you to try new experiences, not making you duck them out of fear, because that's just poor design. Someone compared it to going up against a difficult boss in an RPG before you're ready... not even close, because even if that boss completely mops the floor with me, I've a) not been penalized with anything outside of having to reload my game, and b) learned something.
I appreciate the testing, but...
1) In my experience, Suzuka and Nurb GP both tend to result in pretty spread out fields of racers, making them two tracks that are pretty easy to raise SR on.
2) Even if the game started your guest account at DR E, you're clearly not a DR E driver and more than likely were way better than anyone you were grouped with, allowing you to easily post good results and raise your DR quickly.
So I take these results with a little grain of salt... no offense.
I also think it's pretty silly that for a lot of people the solution to potentially getting your SR damage is just "avoid entering the race", but hey, I'm sure that's not a sign that the system could use some tweaking or anything. "Well I've got an hour or so to play some PS4, think I'll run a couple of races. Let's see what's up on Sport mode today... Northern Isle, Tokyo, and Willow Springs Horse Thief in Tomahawks. Guess I'll go stare at a wall for an hour instead." IMO any game should be encouraging you to try new experiences, not making you duck them out of fear, because that's just poor design. Someone compared it to going up against a difficult boss in an RPG before you're ready... not even close, because even if that boss completely mops the floor with me, I've a) not been penalized with anything outside of having to reload my game, and b) learned something.
I appreciate the testing, but...
1) In my experience, Suzuka and Nurb GP both tend to result in pretty spread out fields of racers, making them two tracks that are pretty easy to raise SR on.
2) Even if the game started your guest account at DR E, you're clearly not a DR E driver and more than likely were way better than anyone you were grouped with, allowing you to easily post good results and raise your DR quickly.
So I take these results with a little grain of salt... no offense.
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- 369
- Ohio
None taken. I am currently a high B/S rating (on my original account) and have been close to A for while but can’t seem to get over the hump.
They were three lap races at Suzuka and I only qualified for the last race. So that meant running in traffic with unskilled drivers which is what most people are complaining about. The reason I and plenty of other drivers are able to do this is because of track knowledge. If you don’t have to think too much about what turns are coming and where to brake, your awareness of your surroundings is naturally better.
Yes it took me longer when the game first came out (3-4 days). This is the first racing game I have played since GT2. I did not know the tracks well but jumped into Sport mode anyway. It resulted in much more contact which was just as much my fault as anyone else.
Learning the tracks is key to clean driving. Case in point my FIA race at Brands Hatch yesterday. I went into the race with in a GR4 Mercedes that I rarely drive on a track I’m not comfortable on and generally dislike. As expected, my lack of preparation resulted in avoidable contact twice which put me off track and I finished dead last because of it.
Sport race aren’t the only place to learn. Lobbies are a great place to practice running in traffic without consequences.
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- 1,874
- United States
That may be very true if you are playing an offline game by yourself but playing online where your performance or lack of knowledge can very well affect your teammates or others game results in the scenario a players lack of can very well affect another persons game not only your own.
As a racer I could care less about how your lack of knowledge of a track affects YOUR finishing position or affects YOUR SR or DR rankings but I do care about how you not having a clue and apparently any respect for those you are going to be racing against affect MY results or rankings.
So not being prepared and knowing the track, its normal braking points and racing lines BEFORE racing that track online is actually showing no respect to every other racer your lack of knowledge affects within the race.
Again how do you fail to understand that some track designs and the way they flow, how narrow the track, close proximity of walls among other issues increase the odds of a race that is full of contact incidents and overall carnage that is hard to avoid as the skill levels and experience of the participants is rarely the same across the board making the issues magnified even more.
Racers that race for the enjoyment and experience of good close contact free racing usually choose to avoid such circuits as the chances of having that type online race on those circuits is at a much lower rate than many other circuits. So the damage of the SR and DR rankings is just the products of general poor races at those venues.
That hour of game time rather than stare at the wall could better be employed spending time learning a track you like than racing on a circuit that are known for the carnage within the race and ranking killers if both clean racing events and your rank is important to you.
Each person has what they want out of a game, if you enjoy the circuits known to be wreckfest and those races you enjoy by all means go race in them. But when get punted off track 3 times and pushed out wide 2 more times in one 3 lap race and you started 4th and finished 17th and you also lose SR an DR as a result please refrain from whining about the 'dirty' races you were just in.
People tried to warn you there was a greater risk than normal that this could very well happen on certain circuits due to their design over other circuits.
Have fun races the races you like.
- 16
- NKURyan
I understand it completely. Seems to me like the system should be able to account for this as well (ie, some tracks have more contact and maybe shouldn't be as penalized as heavily) to make it more enticing to use all of the tracks that Polyphony decided to include, but I'm sure they love that people avoid certain tracks entirely. I think a system designed to account for some tracks being more difficult to race cleanly on, or a system more willing to forgive mistakes on said tracks, isn't all that difficult a goal for them to strive for.
Keep on making those assumptions, dude. As said multiple times, I know the tracks. It's not like there's all that many of them to learn in the first place, or that the majority of them are all that complex.
You act like I'm out there racing blind and throwing my car around the track out to cause as much chaos as possible, and that's about as far from the truth as possible.
I thought I had a somewhat decent idea and would come here and get some feedback on it. Clearly that was a mistake, and excuse me. If people are just going to keep talking down to others with the attitude you've displayed, I won't bother any more.
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- 1,874
- United States
Regardless of how difficult the circuit may be why should penalties be lessened to invite even higher incidents of carnage and contact? Some tracks are harder to race cleanly on and the problem is compounded by drivers with different mindsets and skill racing on such circuit at the same time.
Again if you do not mind the higher risk and chancing taking the ranking hit then feel freely to race on those circuits and enjoy them.
But people complain about the hits they take and how much their rankings dropped and then when others here advise to avoid certain races if not willing to take the higher risk those circuits pose to losing ranking in general then a person wants to defend racing those circuits.
All that has been done in reality is for other racers to point out the well known
dangers those circuits pose to your rankings, nothing more. You are free to race what tracks you prefer.
@TenderLoins is a DR B, SR S ranked driver and I am also a DR B, SR S ranked driver and I do not feel either of us assumed anything or questioned your racing abilities at all. All either of us have done is give an opinion based on previous information posted and to what we have personally experienced.
I know that I have over 200 Sport races and by using the exact criteria that I have posted I have been an SR S since the games release and I race every race I enter at the best pace I personally can run with a goal of having no mistakes or contact at all and at worst a minimum of mistakes with trying to avoid all contact if possible.
I can also say that not once has my SR ranking EVER gone below S since achieving it and my DR ranking seems to have me placed about where I should be.
So as also being a B level driver I feel avoiding the carnage tracks and driving cleanly will reasonably keep a driver in the SR S ranking.
I do know that one or two bad races alone will not cause a majority clean driver to lose their S ranking.
If you are not driving enough clean sectors within the majority of the races you are running to reach the 99/99 level in level S then perhaps you need to look harder not only at the races you choose to run in but perhaps whether your driving is actually within your skill level and as clean as you want to think it is.
This is not assuming anything or saying what your driving skills may or may not be only that the higher SR rankings are already full of people that by the driving they exhibit on a regular basis should not be at that ranking and if you find it difficult to remain within that ranking without constantly dropping to lower levels then apparently you are struggling to meet the criteria the ranking requires and is the reason the game keeps placing you in a lower bracket on a repeated basis.
This is another one of your quotes and if you generally are starting top 5 then if you can race that pace consistently with few mistakes you should usually be ahead of the majority of the carnage on the track in the race. If you cannot maintain close to that pace across a race distance then you have mastered the skill of throwing down 1 hot lap to get a decent time but not the skill of maintaining that pace across multiple laps and perhaps a you are finding yourself making too many mistakes across a full race distance to remain out from the main carnage towards the back of the pack.
Again not an attack on you personally but maybe things to look at to see if maybe these could be part of the cause as to where or why you have a what seems to be an above average hard time remaining within a ranking class.
But regardless the higher rankings need to be harder to reach and maintain and they already have an excess "safety net built in currently".
They are not levels to gain but a measure of your current skills as to where you should be placed in the Sport races so you will be among like skilled drivers. At the present time that placement within the upper ranks is already far too lenient.
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- 1,324
- Toronto
So after a cluster**** interlagos race, my sr dropped to A.
Then after a full race of leading Bathurst 8 laps, I got a white letter?
I got a penalty for track cutting down the chicane on the mountain, and bumped the wall a few times but nothing other than that. Literally no contact with other cars.
Can anyone explain that?
Then after a full race of leading Bathurst 8 laps, I got a white letter?
I got a penalty for track cutting down the chicane on the mountain, and bumped the wall a few times but nothing other than that. Literally no contact with other cars.
Can anyone explain that?
- 3,954
- Laguna
- Alpha_Cipher1
your SR neither went up nor down
- 1,324
- Toronto
Yes, my question is why me getting a penalty, that had nothing to do with anyone else, and bumping into a few walls means my SR doesn’t move in a positive direction.
- 1,874
- United States
Off track excursions and corner cutting or any act which can also result in a penalty being assessed is not considered to be a "safe" mode of racing. Lack of car to car contact is only one aspect of what is considered safe controlled race craft which affects SR ratings.
The white rating just means that although you did not gain any SR points you also did not lose any. Sort of a draw between the good and bad across the whole race distance.
