PD's Biggest Mistake with GT Sport

[Gil]

As we all know, Sport Mode is a bit of a roulette with bad drivers and rammers, whether accidental or intentional. Now not everyone can drive 100% clean all the time, especially in a competitive environment. Accidents do happen. Also not everyone who plays the game immediately becomes an expert, so a few corner overshoots here and there is to be expected of beginners. But the point of mistakes is you learn from them and be better next time. But even in high SR rank races (I've only gone up to A, don't know about S), there are still people who consistently ram others out of the way and just generally be a ****, even the faster drivers who can clearly win races without resorting to playing bumper cars.

Why? Well, we all want to win. That's the point of a race isn't it?

But Sports Mode winnings are abysmal (compared to GT League Blue Moon Bay for example). You get no bragging rights except self satisfaction. And aside from the elite few who have a shot at eternal glory and win the FIA Championship, the rest of us is literally just making up numbers in PD's servers. So why do some people just want to win at all costs? Me personally a well fought 2nd or 3rd with clean side by side racing for a whole race is much more satisfying than ramming everyone in front and winning by a mile.

I've just had a thought about this and basically, the problem lies with GT Sport's trophies. Especially the "Win 91 races to equal Schumacher". There's an in game achievement for this too, but that only goes up to 20 wins IIRC, so it's not as big of a problem. Now when you tie a trophy like that to platinum, you are going to inspire a whole lotta people to have a win at all costs mentality. Even trophy walkthrough websites and videos encourage dirty driving. Of course, there will always be people like this in any game, but a trophy like that encourages it AND they will keep doing that until they get that 91 wins (which is a ridiculous number).

On the flipside, what do we have to encourage clean driving? Two barely useful videos, a Sportsmanship Rating that is easily manipulated, a paltry clean race bonus, and nothing else really. Heck, we don't even get ANY compulsory Driving School events or Missions that require you to race clean. In fact, hitting the AI cars doesn't even disqualify you anymore in the driving tests (in GT5/6 that's instant fail).

So what we have, is an online heavy game with a steep learning curve, a competitive environment, fueled by a seemingly impossible trophy and nothing to dissuade dirty driving tactics. You wonder why there is so much crashers? As usual it's PD/Kaz logic fail.

IMO, simply making the trophy earnable in custom lobbies as well as Sport races would go a LONG way to alleviating dirty driving. Trophy hunters can get it much easier without causing grief in private lobbies. Newbies might crash a few times at first but they will improve (or leave the game out of frustration). That leaves perpetually dirty drivers/griefers/trolls, who will all just play demo derby amongst themselves in SR E rooms...and eventually they will all get tired and leave the game too. In a few months, we will have a much higher quality, much cleaner pool of racers left 👍

If it’s the same Shumaker from years ago, that guy is ridiculously fast.
If Mr. P is still around he’s crazy fast too.
I race for personal enjoyment.
The adrenaline is so much better if you have a 1 second gap vs a 12 second lead.

 

[cleanLX]

I get so frustrated by losing SR through no fault of my own though.

I think the entire community is behind you on that one.

 

[azrilnazli]

iRacing is so expensive so that only serious people that might subscribe. Serious doesn't mean rich. So being expensive, they weeds away the 'gamer' type racer. being expensive, that guarantee that other racers also put same commitments. They also don't want their only Saturday Nite racing ruined by 'gamers'.

About winning .... if you look at my statistics, I entered 1365 official races ( normally GT3 with 30++ racers with 1 hour race ) and only won 16 of them.

If I'm after trophy, iRacing is like 1000 times harder than GTS. But the immersion and VR quality is top notch. So USD110 renewal every year is nothing compared to the fun I get there.

The developer of GTS really want their game at least at iRacing level of racing, still far away but going there.

 

[KingFrog]

If you think GT sport is bad then go play × game . It's 200000x worst in other games . I was playing forza 7 online and a idiot was driving backwards online , took me and #1 out. And no it wasn't a player lobby .

 

[TenderLoins]

Yeah, I know (and have done that before) but you sacrifice DR. I went up to SR A (then S briefly) but DR went down to C. I started to "try" again and DR went up massively, but SR dropped back to B. And I can say genuinely that I am trying to be fair and clean in every race.

You can see my trade off on the graph...

View attachment 710405

In the end it does come down to you knowing how to drive cleanly at pace.

Learn one car in each group and practice on every track because maintaining SR/S at any DR level isn’t that difficult.

Since reaching DR A I’ve given up any real hope of a win or a pole, but the racing is fast and exciting and mostly clean. Even starting 6th - 12th SR always stays S.

 

[kjeldsen]

Spring Cleaning

 

[KingFrog]

I think this whole idea is absurd. I see all kinds of player types. I see the most dirty stupid assholes fighting for 12th place (which trophy do we put the blame on?)

And the most respectful players on the 10th lap ridiculous much faster than me accepting that a defensive line on the last chance corner for them just cost them 1st place and another step towards the 91 wins, I guess there is a hidden trophy for them?

A lot of dirty driving can also be boiled down to lag . You can't side swipe like in motorstorn but I often am since the guys position was readjusted due to lag . The worst is when a tiny tap is calculated with more force sending your car flying at 200 mph against a wall. Clearly not human malice but rather lag.

 

[kilesa4568]

I think this whole idea is absurd. I see all kinds of player types. I see the most dirty stupid assholes fighting for 12th place (which trophy do we put the blame on?)

I accept there'll always be dirty drivers but it seems that trophy almost condones it for some of them.

Wind your neck in and read it all?

 

[UGA95]

I too was confused when I found out that these trophies only apply to Sport mode. It doesn't make much sense to me why they're not applicable to online lobbies.

However I'm not sure I would attribute that to the bad/wreckless driving. I think most of it simply boils down to a lot of people have no idea how to race around other people. They can't race side by side in the corner. They don't know when to just concede a position to someone else. And they don't know when to be patient and when to be aggressive. There's certain corners you can afford to be aggressive on and others not so much. Then when contact is made, someone gets their feelings hurt, and it escalates from there. At least that's my experience. There are of course some people who are just flat out idiots and shouldn't even be allowed to race in Sport mode. I've been lucky enough to not have encountered too many of those. I do typically start up front though and don't usually see what's going on in the middle of the pack so my experience is probably skewed a little.

 

[Voodoovaj]

The trophies and the ratings, at the end of the day, have changed the GT6 dailies into the GTS dailies. Gt6 dailies were an nice diversion for a quick hit. The GTS dailies are the reason we play. BIG DIFFERENCE.

I doubt the trophies cause dirty driving though. The trophies cause players to fudge their true rating, but being dirty doesn't help.

 

[Johnnypenso]

I too was confused when I found out that these trophies only apply to Sport mode. It doesn't make much sense to me why they're not applicable to online lobbies.

However I'm not sure I would attribute that to the bad/wreckless driving. I think most of it simply boils down to a lot of people have no idea how to race around other people. They can't race side by side in the corner. They don't know when to just concede a position to someone else. And they don't know when to be patient and when to be aggressive. There's certain corners you can afford to be aggressive on and others not so much. Then when contact is made, someone gets their feelings hurt, and it escalates from there. At least that's my experience. There are of course some people who are just flat out idiots and shouldn't even be allowed to race in Sport mode. I've been lucky enough to not have encountered too many of those. I do typically start up front though and don't usually see what's going on in the middle of the pack so my experience is probably skewed a little.

I don't believe this to be true. The way you characterize it is lack of knowledge but you can't tell me that anyone who has even the most basic knowledge of road racing doesn't know you aren't supposed to run into the other cars and push them off the track to get ahead. Rather the opposite is true. Outside of lag issues, I think pretty much all of the carnage is deliberate. Many people treat it as a game and in most games the idea is to win at all costs. In FPS and almost all competitive gaming there is no etiquette, no unwritten rules, no "fairplay", you just win and kill the other guy any way you can. I think most people know that a certain etiquette and sense of fairplay is expected in a legitimate racing simulation but there are some people who just don't care . It's just a game to them. They aren't trying to simulate a real life experience like us hardcore players are. They'll abuse the limits of the game's mechanics and penalty system in every possible way to get ahead.

 

[UGA95]

I don't believe this to be true. The way you characterize it is lack of knowledge but you can't tell me that anyone who has even the most basic knowledge of road racing doesn't know you aren't supposed to run into the other cars and push them off the track to get ahead. Rather the opposite is true. Outside of lag issues, I think pretty much all of the carnage is deliberate. Many people treat it as a game and in most games the idea is to win at all costs. In FPS and almost all competitive gaming there is no etiquette, no unwritten rules, no "fairplay", you just win and kill the other guy any way you can. I think most people know that a certain etiquette and sense of fairplay is expected in a legitimate racing simulation but there are some people who just don't care . It's just a game to them. They aren't trying to simulate a real life experience like us hardcore players are. They'll abuse the limits of the game's mechanics and penalty system in every possible way to get ahead.

I never said people don't know they're not supposed to run into other cars. Obviously everyone knows this. But there's so much more to understand about racing other people than simply "don't hit them." There's also a big difference between knowing not to hit people and actually being able to do it on a tight race track around 15 other people. How many people do you think are capable of racing on edge side by side with someone around Brands Hatch? Feet sometimes inches away from each other with no contact? Not too many. But that doesn't mean that people don't try to and that honest mistakes aren't made. I totally disagree when you say that it's almost all deliberate. Mistakes happen, people race over their head, they try to pass when they shouldn't, they dip a tire in the grass and cause a spin, they don't leave someone enough room on exit, they stick their nose in entering a corner when they really shouldn't, they brake just a hair later than the guy they're trailing and bump into him. **** happens. I stand by what I said 100%. I see people all the time apologizing to someone else in the chat afterwards over something that happened during the race.

 

[BD Ford]

The problems are two fold :
1. Skill levels
2. Attitiudes to others

The game is open to everyone, from newbs to very the experienced. The SR/DR system helps a little to grade players but is far from perfect. I for one would be happier for the licence tests to be relative to online racing, with more ardent skills needing to be mastered first before players are able to compete at higher levels. That way you would have a better chance of being matched with people which have had to at least learn/master not just driving skills, but racing skills. This would help some in not getting punted by newbs mistakes etc.

the second part - peoples attitudes - is another matter, and much harder to police and monitor. Some people are just dickheads. There are skilled experienced dickheads, and newby inexperienced ones. Some people just do not give a stuff about anything and anyone, and they ruin many experiences in life, not just online gaming. It's very hard to predict where and when they might appear, too. So any online public activity can fall prey to these people.

The online stuff is ok, I've had good races mostly, a few bumps but nothing too bad, but I tend to be a bit "meh, whatever," to what's being offered so don't do too many.

I am convinced, the best way to have a positive online experiences, is ... make friends.
Start contacting and cultivation people you like race against, get a gang together and get some private online lobbies going. I raced like this for years against a dozen or so people in modified NASCAR Heat (PC) and had the best time - because we knew each other, recognised some were faster than others, and any new members who didn't behave were kicked out.

Public online is always going to be a lottery. And there's probably no way for any software company to police and control people's crap attitudes, without it being so restrictive as to affect and frustrate everyone.
PD were keen to heavily feature this "social" aspect of the game being online, but may not have thought it through. Perhaps the developers didn't appreciate the different social attitudes in other countries, given that Japan is a quite polite and well mannered society, but that's not the case everywhere. My regional rooms are full of Japanese drivers and overall I've found them to be pretty good so far.

So in the end, we have to take what Sony/PD has offered us, and try and make it the experience we want. Admittedly, that's not so easy.

Happy Laps
BF

 

[Johnnypenso]

I never said people don't know they're not supposed to run into other cars. Obviously everyone knows this. But there's so much more to understand about racing other people than simply "don't hit them." There's also a big difference between knowing not to hit people and actually being able to do it on a tight race track around 15 other people. How many people do you think are capable of racing on edge side by side with someone around Brands Hatch? Feet sometimes inches away from each other with no contact? Not too many. But that doesn't mean that people don't try to and that honest mistakes aren't made. I totally disagree when you say that it's almost all deliberate. Mistakes happen, people race over their head, they try to pass when they shouldn't, they dip a tire in the grass and cause a spin, they don't leave someone enough room on exit, they stick their nose in entering a corner when they really shouldn't, they brake just a hair later than the guy they're trailing and bump into him. **** happens. I stand by what I said 100%. I see people all the time apologizing to someone else in the chat afterwards over something that happened during the race.

I didn't have to crash my bike 50 times to learn how to ride it. I didn't run into 100 other karts when I took up kart racing to figure out to slow down until I felt comfortable enough to pass safely. And I didn't have to run dozens of people off the road when I took up online racing to know when and where it was a good idea to pass people. People learn quickly and, if you care about the other person's gaming experience, you quickly figure out that your rambunctiousness and lack of skill is ruining someone else's game. If you do care, you slow down, you become less aggressive, you learn how to not interfere with other players and you take the time and make the effort to not put yourself into situations where you are likely going to be in over your head.

 

[UGA95]

I didn't have to crash my bike 50 times to learn how to ride it. I didn't run into 100 other karts when I took up kart racing to figure out to slow down until I felt comfortable enough to pass safely. And I didn't have to run dozens of people off the road when I took up online racing to know when and where it was a good idea to pass people. People learn quickly and, if you care about the other person's gaming experience, you quickly figure out that your rambunctiousness and lack of skill is ruining someone else's game. If you do care, you slow down, you become less aggressive, you learn how to not interfere with other players and you take the time and make the effort to not put yourself into situations where you are likely going to be in over your head.

What D/S rating are you?

 

[Johnnypenso]

What D/S rating are you?

Don't have one. I haven't indulged in GTSport yet. Still on the fence. Why does it matter what my D/S is?

 

[UGA95]

Don't have one. I haven't indulged in GTSport yet. Still on the fence. Why does it matter what my D/S is?

So let me get this straight you haven't even played the game and you're in here arguing with people on what's going on in Sport mode? D/S is your driver and safety rating. The better you are and the cleaner you are the better drivers you will placed with when you race. So naturally if you haven't raced a lot then you would be placed with others who haven't raced a lot and are probably just casual players and don't care about the game as much as others with higher ratings do. That's why most of the complaints come from people below the A/S or S/S level.

 

[TT92]

Their biggest mistake is that dirty driving is rewarded:

SR is too easy to gain, a couple bumps per race won't change your rating, plus a light tap that can still destroy someone's race goes undetected.
Track limits are very loose, encouraging diving to the inside, cutting the corner to overtake.
Penalties you do get mean nothing, the vast majority of red dots in the result screen are not a deterrent.
If you do get your SR lowered, you get easier matchmaking. Max SR is not the place to win races.
Rage quitting or ruining the race and getting last is rewarded with lower DR thus easier to win future races.
The paltry money/xp rewards are the same at E/E as S/S, getting a dirty first at D/B is 5 times the prize money as a clean hard fought 10th place at A/S. DR only matter for FIA races to get more useless points (unless you're top 24 material)
Do good, race at your pace at max SR and you will end up as grid filler at the back of the pack for left over S/S and A/S drivers.

It's a miracle the system works as well as it does the way it is set up.

Currently I'm in A/S and the racing is pretty good, also pretty uneventful now. I get placed at the back of the pack, pick up a few positions from accidents, maybe get to make one pass yet it's mostly driving in a train for 3 laps. The top of the pack is occupied by one or more top 10 players which are still 2 to 3 sec faster than me, can't catch em. I get pretty much the same people every race, pretty much same out come every race. Perhaps time to lower SR again to see some other people and get a chance to start higher up in the grid instead of 10th to 16th.

My sentiments exactly! And this is why I will drop down a few levels and give that a go.

 

[John Crellin]

I haven't indulged in GTSport yet.

now this intrigued me

You are in a bunch of threads with highly opinionated views about the nuances of GTS. Clearly your interest has been piqued by GTS. May I ask why you havent tried the game?

 

[JacksHerer]

Microsoft Pay cheque

 

[bigTTracing]

This is all GTSports fault. Its garbage rating system is the ultimate flaw of what they intended which was an online competition based game around driving. The garbage system caters to garbage drivers. I can get rammed from any angle and they will never receive a penalty which makes ranking up especially from E-C nearly impossible simply because you'd basically be putting your own SR and position at risk since, not to mention, you get punished as the victim. Sport Mode is an ULTIMATE failuire.

 

[TotosaLoko]

I had the best experiences in a console playing project cars 2, not perfect, but much better than the GT Sport system, examples: the time penalty has to be fulfilled, otherwise the player will have to go through the boxes, unfairly reached positions as by path cut have to be returned, and most obviously, nothing ghost mode and cars without damage, this in the most competitive lobbies..., trolls exist, but in more difficult game modes they do not appear as much, there is something similar in GT but I would like to see it implanted in Sport mode.

 

[Imari]

I suspect it happens so rarely on YT because the comment drama drives views which drives revenue.

Commenting actually hooks into Youtube's algorithm for which videos it deems "popular" and are likely to show to other people. Disabling comments pretty much ensures you'll never end up on someone's front page simply because you don't have the "engagement" that Youtube deems the mark of a good video.

iRacing is so expensive so that only serious people that might subscribe.

You managed to afford a console and a racing game? You could afford iRacing if you wished, at least at a limited level.

 

[Spurgy 777]

You managed to afford a console and a racing game? You could afford iRacing if you wished, at least at a limited level.

The point is that no one is going to spend £100's on 1 game just to 🤬 about on it and crash into people and therefore the people that do buy it take it a lot more seriously than your average GTS player.

 

[Imari]

The point is that no one is going to spend £100's on 1 game just to 🤬 about on it and crash into people and therefore the people that do buy it take it a lot more seriously than your average GTS player.

The point is that it doesn't actually cost hundreds of pounds to get into it and spend the first year working through the low level series. The price of iRacing is routinely misrepresented. Yes, it costs and arm and a leg for all the content, but only a moron actually buys all the content up front because the dedication required to race cleanly and with competence in any given series means that you will at most be participating in a handful of vehicles. Which doesn't require much additional content, or any if you're just starting out.

iRacing is designed based on depth rather than breadth like Forza Motorsport or traditional Gran Turismo games. Just jumping into a random car and taking it into a race will tank all your ratings and lead to a generally bad time. You pick a couple of series to compete in, and you practice. You figure out your set up. You work on your fuel load. You learn where the limits of the track are, and where you can safely overtake and block.

Just like real life, racing drivers don't hop between dozens of disciplines in a single year. And so the real cost of iRacing is the subscription, which is cheap if it's your first time and can be cheap if you're smart about when you renew. Plus whatever content for the series or two that you wish to play in, which is probably less than a full price game on console.

For years and years there has been this ongoing misconception that iRacing is really expensive. I've seen it described as thousands of dollars. In one sense it's true, but for actual players it's not. iRacing does not play like Gran Turismo. You are not trying to collect them all. You are trying to get very, very good at a few cars that you really engage with. That's just not that expensive, and it's certainly on the same order of magnitude as console gaming.

The fact that the gameplay encourages people to focus on a single series and develop excellence is what promotes better gameplay, not some arbitrary pricing.

 

[JayRS200]

As we all know, Sport Mode is a bit of a roulette with bad drivers and rammers, whether accidental or intentional. Now not everyone can drive 100% clean all the time, especially in a competitive environment. Accidents do happen. Also not everyone who plays the game immediately becomes an expert, so a few corner overshoots here and there is to be expected of beginners. But the point of mistakes is you learn from them and be better next time. But even in high SR rank races (I've only gone up to A, don't know about S), there are still people who consistently ram others out of the way and just generally be a ****, even the faster drivers who can clearly win races without resorting to playing bumper cars.

Why? Well, we all want to win. That's the point of a race isn't it?

But Sports Mode winnings are abysmal (compared to GT League Blue Moon Bay for example). You get no bragging rights except self satisfaction. And aside from the elite few who have a shot at eternal glory and win the FIA Championship, the rest of us is literally just making up numbers in PD's servers. So why do some people just want to win at all costs? Me personally a well fought 2nd or 3rd with clean side by side racing for a whole race is much more satisfying than ramming everyone in front and winning by a mile.

I've just had a thought about this and basically, the problem lies with GT Sport's trophies. Especially the "Win 91 races to equal Schumacher". There's an in game achievement for this too, but that only goes up to 20 wins IIRC, so it's not as big of a problem. Now when you tie a trophy like that to platinum, you are going to inspire a whole lotta people to have a win at all costs mentality. Even trophy walkthrough websites and videos encourage dirty driving. Of course, there will always be people like this in any game, but a trophy like that encourages it AND they will keep doing that until they get that 91 wins (which is a ridiculous number).

On the flipside, what do we have to encourage clean driving? Two barely useful videos, a Sportsmanship Rating that is easily manipulated, a paltry clean race bonus, and nothing else really. Heck, we don't even get ANY compulsory Driving School events or Missions that require you to race clean. In fact, hitting the AI cars doesn't even disqualify you anymore in the driving tests (in GT5/6 that's instant fail).

So what we have, is an online heavy game with a steep learning curve, a competitive environment, fueled by a seemingly impossible trophy and nothing to dissuade dirty driving tactics. You wonder why there is so much crashers? As usual it's PD/Kaz logic fail.

IMO, simply making the trophy earnable in custom lobbies as well as Sport races would go a LONG way to alleviating dirty driving. Trophy hunters can get it much easier without causing grief in private lobbies. Newbies might crash a few times at first but they will improve (or leave the game out of frustration). That leaves perpetually dirty drivers/griefers/trolls, who will all just play demo derby amongst themselves in SR E rooms...and eventually they will all get tired and leave the game too. In a few months, we will have a much higher quality, much cleaner pool of racers left 👍

The aim isn't to get do S S. The aim is to settle into what your skill level is.

Also if you're not doing to well in Sport mode you should practise more, not jump straight into daily races. Sport mode will always be there. Go off and pound around each track til you know it like the back of your eyelids.

Do all the mission races.

After a lot of practice, and I mean a lot, when you do Sport mode and you're still not winning... practise some more. Always practise.

If you're still not winning then that's what level you're at. Think of all the great drivers out there that have never won a race.

Unfortunately GTS doesn't have enough consistent disciplines in Daily races for say someone that isn't good at Gr3, Gr4, road cars or karts. You're skills might shine on say F1 cars, F2 or other open wheel categories and tracks. There's just not enough going on in GTS.