Mr. Yamauchi - A question about the performance points system.

[Johnnypenso]

Mr. Yamauchi,

As I'm sure you're well aware, Performance Points based racing is very popular in online lobbies, especially with street cars because they fit into such a wide range of performance and the PP system is the best way we have in the game of equalizing a wide variety of cars. As you may also be aware, there is quite a disparity in on-track performance among cars at the same PP. Cars fully tuned and running at the same PP level can be as much 3 or 4 seconds a lap apart on equal tires, even on medium sized tracks. What ends up happening of course, is that the same handful of top performers permeate the online lobbies and the vast majority of cars never leave the garage even though they may be fun to drive, because they are not competitive.

My question is, will we some improvements to the PP system for GT7, in terms of making a wider range of cars competitive at a given PP level?

I have a couple of ideas which may help with this. The first is, how about having two separate PP systems, the current one and a more specific one, designed to make cars more equal in performance within a narrower category of car type. For example, you could have a category called "Super Cars" and include the Ferrari 458, Enzo, various Lamborghinis, Zondas, etc. Through testing and some tweaking of the PP formula specifically for those cars, it might be possible to make them much closer in performance on the track.

Another idea I've had for some time is to establish performance markers utilizing the community as a test bed and this would work in conjunction with the above idea. Let's say we wanted to narrow the performance range of cars in the 450PP area. You could implement a series of time trials with fixed performance criteria and run 10-15 cars in Time Trials with the whole community participating. You could use the top times, average times etc. to then tweak the PP figures of each of the 10-15 cars to make them closer in performance on the track, adding or deducting PP as needed. These cars might then be labeled in the game, "450PP Tuned" cars, which could then be available to race online with a fixed tuning package, the same package that they ran with in the TT's. Perhaps all cars would have a 6 speed transmission installed, drivetrain upgrades as needed, a bit more or less power etc.

I think the community would absolutely eat this up to be honest. We'd love to be able to help shape the game going forward and we'd also like to enjoy the fruits of our labour, that is, having a ready made selection of cars available to purchase and race online, knowing that whichever car you choose, so long as your skills are up to the task, you can compete on an equal basis with 10, 15 or 20 or more cars at a given PP level.

 

[TRLWNC7396]

The "recommended cars" area is a nice start....

We had someone test a Viper and a 'Vette for a week to come up with a VERY good tune really, really good, close race (there may have been another car... Don't remember) for road races.... Didn't work on ovals (High Speed Ring was a course used in the event) because the Viper still had a LOT more power, but they were balanced for the true road courses.

So, yeah setting up a specific tune for an event could be neat.

 

[Johnnypenso]

The "recommended cars" area is a nice start....

We had someone test a Viper and a 'Vette for a week to come up with a VERY good tune really, really good, close race (there may have been another car... Don't remember) for road races.... Didn't work on ovals (High Speed Ring was a course used in the event) because the Viper still had a LOT more power, but they were balanced for the true road courses.

So, yeah setting up a specific tune for an event could be neat.

I'm thinking that in GT7 they could have many more cars available as recommended. Part of that would be a class of cars at 400PP,450PP, 500PP, 550PP etc. You should be able to pick any pretuned 450PP car on the list and have a competitive race with all the other 450PP cars. Cars should retain much their inherent character, but driven at their limit be capable of achieving very close to the same performance at many tracks in the game.

 

[TRLWNC7396]

The problem with that is what I mentioned for that one series. Some cars will cook others on the road, some will cook others on the oval. There would need to be a set-up for both road and oval, and THAT could be interesting to work out.

 

[Johnnypenso]

The problem with that is what I mentioned for that one series. Some cars will cook others on the road, some will cook others on the oval. There would need to be a set-up for both road and oval, and THAT could be interesting to work out.

Oval racing in GT is mainly Nascar and the cars are already pretty close together. Oval racing in street cars is just a tiny portion of the game and obviously wouldn't be a high priority I would guess.

 

[TRLWNC7396]

High Speed Ring is almost an oval.....

 

[lbpomg95]

I'm with Johnny. That said, even the non-oval tracks have differing results. Monza/Fuji/Sarthe and Tsukuba/Brands Hatch/Autumn Ring for example. The addition of flat floors to some cars and not others also makes things more difficult. Take the Diablo GT2 and R33 GTR for example. Tuned, both are around 650pp at full chat. The Skyline will mince the Diablo at Tsukuba, but the Diablo would (have the chance to) beat the R33 at Monza, with it's 200BHP advantage, and downforce in high speed corners. Accounting for this would be difficult. Perhaps a power to weight ratio based pp system for the high speed circuits along with the current system (tweaked) for tighter tracks?

On a separate note though, I find the case of the El Camino hilarious. 580pp+ alongside The M3, selected tuners etc. It would struggle against them on an oval, let alone a tight circuit! Perhaps if we could flat floor more cars the uneven nature of circuit racing would be negated somewhat.

 

[VBR]

Great idea Johnny, but this is too much common sense for PD to handle. I hear that at the moment they're busy working on accurately recreating the surface of planet Mars for GT7 so we can drive radio controlled rovers & collect soil samples etc.

 

[Lewis_Hamilton_]

I too would like to see some adjustments to make the PP system fairer. I like to choose cars that most people wouldn't consider driving in a race; Kei, pre-1979, minivans and pickups, but this comes at the sacrifice of fighting in the mid field rather than being competitive. It's the very light and heavy cars that are at a disadvantage, so that's a lot of them.

 

[Johnnypenso]

I'm with Johnny. That said, even the non-oval tracks have differing results. Monza/Fuji/Sarthe and Tsukuba/Brands Hatch/Autumn Ring for example. The addition of flat floors to some cars and not others also makes things more difficult. Take the Diablo GT2 and R33 GTR for example. Tuned, both are around 650pp at full chat. The Skyline will mince the Diablo at Tsukuba, but the Diablo would (have the chance to) beat the R33 at Monza, with it's 200BHP advantage, and downforce in high speed corners. Accounting for this would be difficult. Perhaps a power to weight ratio based pp system for the high speed circuits along with the current system (tweaked) for tighter tracks?

On a separate note though, I find the case of the El Camino hilarious. 580pp+ alongside The M3, selected tuners etc. It would struggle against them on an oval, let alone a tight circuit! Perhaps if we could flat floor more cars the uneven nature of circuit racing would be negated somewhat.

The El Camino is an example of why I would separate cars into categories for more specific PP allocation. There simply is no way to make all cars with very little grip match cars with tons of grip on all circuits. But if you take car designed for similar performance and equate them it's a much smaller gap to narrow, like the R33 vs. Diablo, but even then, I'd probably have the Diablo in a category against Ferraris, Lambos, Rufs etc.

I too would like to see some adjustments to make the PP system fairer. I like to choose cars that most people wouldn't consider driving in a race; Kei, pre-1979, minivans and pickups, but this comes at the sacrifice of fighting in the mid field rather than being competitive. It's the very light and heavy cars that are at a disadvantage, so that's a lot of them.

Same response as above basically. I would have the Kei cars in a category all to themselves like "Econoboxes", which could cover a huge range of cars, basically most cars under 400 PP, perhaps equated to 350PP. Trying to equate a Cappuccino to an Elise is impossible given the huge difference in grip, but trying to equate the Cappy to other Kei cars, minivans, old sedans etc is relatively easy. It's the grip differential that's hardest to overcome through PP, but narrowing a category to cars with relatively the same grip makes it much simpler.

 

[Tornado]

I'd think, if we were finally given the chance to adjust grip levels through things like tire width/profile or more profound aerodynamic adjustments (or simply the PP system finally taking all mods into account), we could finally put the base grip multiplier in the past. I know in Forza 4, you can make cars that are reasonably competitive against modern Ferrari or GTR and the like that in GT6 could never hope to.


I fear, though, that with how deeply ingrained the hacky hidden settings are for PD's artificial car balancing, that it is a pipe dream.

 

[TRLWNC7396]

Well, when GT5P came out, tires AND aero were taken into account..... If they put that back,..... (shrug) (but )

 

[snowgt]

I think the PP-system is not bad as such, it just has one flaw - from the looks of it, it uses some base value for the car's chassis (however this was determined) that is pretty far off the car's actual performance. In my own testing I had as much as 8 seconds difference on Ascari for cars in stock condition at same PPs. So, either this base value is flawed, or there's a lack of taking the chassis performance into account. It does seem like the PP-figure is somewhat based on straight-line performance. E.g. muscle cars therefore have high PP's, but are too slow around corners to warrant their high PP-figures.

I do like your idea of using the community for benchmarking the cars. To be consistent, this would have to be done for several tracks by the same set of (good) drivers for all cars though (a project that I busy myself with continually - I've also derived a PP-algorithm based on testing times). I do understand that PD can't do that simply for time reasons. The same driver(s) would have to drive all cars, which would take a couple of months, so it's clear why they chose the simple formula-based approach.

 

[Lewis_Hamilton_]

It does seem like the PP-figure is somewhat based on straight-line performance. E.g. muscle cars therefore have high PP's, but are too slow around corners to warrant their high PP-figures.

I can't say I agree with this, as very lightweight cars are punished the most by the PP system, i.e. they have extremely slow straight line performance, as well as most muscles cars having low top speeds due to poor aero dynamics.

 

[TRLWNC7396]

Then you have tires, aero, and other inclusions. If we get 5 levels of play, I hope that aero and tires get added into the equation on the higher levels.

 

[Darragh]

There's near a ten second difference in time with my 500pp cars around Brands Hatch. It's quite annoying playing online, where I've only 4-5 500pp cars that are competitive. A quick fix to bring down the pp of OP cars would be welcome for me. Cars like the Focus RS and RX500 could easily just be brought down 10pp without it having drastic effects on online racing.

 

[snowgt]

Then you have tires, aero, and other inclusions. If we get 5 levels of play, I hope that aero and tires get added into the equation on the higher levels.

There's a reason why tyres and aero are not part of the PP-formula. Downforce comes with a drag penalty, so it's a trade-off. Putting a wing on that generates more downforce will slow you on high speed tracks. As the effect can be either positive or negative, it should definitely not be in the equation unless the effect is not variable (like a flat floor).

Tyres should also not be taken into account, because races are usually run with the same tyre type allowed for all. If you put tyres into the equation, it will just get harder to produce an accurate PP-figure as lower powered cars will have even more grip on twisty circuits and might be a match to much more powerful cars, but they will be far from being equal on high-speed tracks. Tyres just make the PP-figures a lot less accurate.

 

[TRLWNC7396]

Minis used to race Mustangs.... And win.... What's the problem?

 

[Streeto]

I say scrap the whole PP system, who needs it really?

We should be able to do class racing by engine size etc.

 

[Darragh]

I say scrap the whole PP system, who needs it really?

We should be able to do class racing by engine size etc.

Too complicated for the average GT racer. We'd just have people getting the lightest car with the most power available me thinks.

 

[Streeto]

Too complicated for the average GT racer. We'd just have people getting the lightest car with the most power available me thinks.

Yeah I thought of that, but that's what horsepower/weight limits are for.

 

[Darragh]

Yeah I thought of that, but that's what horsepower/weight limits are for.

Good point, idk, maybe it'll stir things up with different engine/weight changing the cars and making things unpredictable

 

[Johnnypenso]

Good point, idk, maybe it'll stir things up with different engine/weight changing the cars and making things unpredictable

Engine/weight restrictions have been in lobby's for 3 and a half years. They aren't popular. Like it or not, people like to mix and match and race a wide variety of cars most of the time. It is the essence of the franchise's success for 15 years and not likely to change soon. Refining the PP system with a systematic approach would seem prudent.