PENALTY SYSTEM IS STILL A PIECE OF ****!!!

[kilesa4568]

The inside driver may have what is considered the preferred line but that does not make it the only legitimate racing line by a long shot.

I'm going to leave you a car's width of room, don't worry there. If you look out of your side window though, you'll notice the grass I'm using as that car widths margin. Are you really sure you want to try it?

You quit doing daily races due to the penalties but will attempt outside passes...

Keeping out of trouble isn't easy in GTS but trying low percentage moves against an under pressure driver is kinda asking for it. I wouldn't try that move against someone I trust, never mind someone I've never met before. You're threading a needle by the exit.

Play the percentages and wait for better opportunities. You get a lot of them in the dailies.

 

[fastone371]

Ha, I use a DS4, you can be plenty steady and consistent with it. It does seem some users use the d-pad for steering though! A little trick for more steady steering is use the rotational part of the sticks, instead of just moving it horizontal, push the stick against the edge and rotate it up and around.

I never changed the sensitivity though. I've seen posts telling to dial up the sensitivity for DS4 use but wouldn't that cause that twitchiness? It's part lag as well amplifying any minor steering correction the other driver makes. Just choose a line coming out of the corner and don't touch it until the next corner, it's not that hard. (after thousands of races )

Like I said earlier, there are some very, very good DS4 drivers but at the same time I see many (get hit by them too) that cant even drive a straight line down the straights. You know the guys I speak of, they bounce off of the side of your car when you pass them on the straight, not because they are trying to crash you off track I dont think but because they cant make a small direction corrections. You can watch the red steering dot during replays, going down the straight they are moving joystick max right, max left, max right, etc. just trying to stay in center of road and yet they think they can keep their line thru a corner when next to another car??????

 

[soundtiger95]

Like I said earlier, there are some very, very good DS4 drivers but at the same time I see many (get hit by them too) that cant even drive a straight line down the straights. You know the guys I speak of, they bounce off of the side of your car when you pass them on the straight, not because they are trying to crash you off track I dont think but because they cant make a small direction corrections. You can watch the red steering dot during replays, going down the straight they are moving joystick max right, max left, max right, etc. just trying to stay in center of road and yet they think they can keep their line thru a corner when next to another car??????

Man as someone who was privileged enough to get a wheel a few years ago and can’t imagine racing games without it since, it doesn’t occur to me that more people are using a controller than a wheel. Everything makes so much more sense now.

 

[Sven Jurgens]

I've been racing as A/S again, without qualifying so plenty opportunities to meet clumsy and sometimes dirty drivers.

The penalty system still sucks with giving out penalties for getting rear ended in traffic. At least it's infrequent and only 1 or 2 sec. It seems more bumps go unnoticed now, some rubbing is allowed as long as everyone stays on the road. That opens the door again to bump passing yet I guess the occasional bump pass going unnoticed is better than raining penalties in the heat of a close race.

Some things are still bad though. I got two 10 sec penalties tonight for other cars screwing up.

I'm already slowing down sensing trouble, on the brakes when I see him over correcting yet the car spinning out hits the car in front and I get nailed by the car behind me. I come out of it in last and get the penalty for it....

Here the car I've been following for 5 laps gets too close to a car that just re-entered the track. He instantly slows from the bump, I couldn't see it coming as his car obscured the red car, had no time to react anyway, everyone held on, yet I get the 10 sec penalty....

At least Brand's hatch had lots of SR to give so I never got a red rating, yet driving with 10 sec for other's mistakes is annoying.

 

[djidane57]

those penalties are complete non sense , sometimes a rocket to the ass barely gets you a 4 or 5 sec penalty , but a side kiss is a instant 10 sec , WTH

 

[Sven Jurgens]

New day new penalties. Non qualifying runs at Nordschleife.

Avoid the wobbly car, avoid the ghost, get nailed by a grass overtaker, 10 sec.

I slow down, I'm braking, looking for a way out, there is none, 10 sec.

A brake check, braking hard way early, has no trouble making the inside of the corner, 10 sec

A clean pass, or not? 3 sec.

Another brake check, before the hill is not a braking zone, 5 sec

Enough to put me in SR.A despite clean races in between. Which means matchmaking is putting me behind less experienced players now, some of which brake for every little corner or can't keep it on the track and keep swerving from side to side. One very slow uncertain driver seemed to want to let me pass but couldn't hold his line driving with 1 wheel on the grass. He was DR.D so 10 sec for me. The last race I catch the early braker in time, yet the car behind bumps me for 1 sec, then the uncertain car ping pongs from side to side and after avoiding him 5 times he touches my bumper, 10 sec for me.

SR 69 currently, good time for a break.

Love the track! Penalty system still garbage.

 

[djidane57]

i think we can put dragon trail gardens in the same bag as tokyo , as the SR graveyards

 

[MrBrunoA]

Racing now in a room of A/A+/S, last corner before finishing line, guy behind me tried an aggressive overtake and his car ghosted and merged with mine for a few seconds, saving my (and probably his) race. Did anyone see this happen before? Not the most realistic thing, but anyway, thanks Polyphony!

 

[Conquerer]

Just got rammed from behind late in Maggiore banked corner, enough that I was pushed wide to the edge of the track and lost two places, including to the guy who rammed me, and I waited for the PENALTY marker to pop up above him and it did not... He clearly bumped me significantly late in a heavy braking zone that I was pushed aside and lost position to him AND another car, yet there is no penalty? And then two laps later into the long right hander, turn 5, I brake late, accelerate early and just tap the rear very softly of the guy ahead as he comes back from his wide entry and there's absolutely no consequence as we both continue without problems, until PENALTY 10 SECS shows up on my screen. In what world of motorsport is the first incident not worth a single second penalty and the second 10 seconds?

Just not worth it. Immediately quit the race and turned it off. Not worth my time, not going to finish that race if the game is gonna cheat me, don't care what it does to my rating. If the penalty system cannot determine if there was proper fault and consequence in both these cases, it needs to be completely reworked. It is not acceptable and is ruining this game.

What bothers me most are the super harsh penalties for light contact that results in absolutely no damage or any consequence to anyone's race. Racing drivers do not receive penalties for tapping other cars where nothing happens to either. Just doesn't happen. Not to mention incidents where a car behind is aggressive and hits the lead car and both are given penalties (1s for lead car and 3/5/whatever for car behind). I don't care if it's only 1 second penalty for the lead car, it is 100% BS when you're in that position and do nothing wrong when someone hits you. PD's penalty system is absolutely incompetent and stupidly harsh to the point that it's just making up rules, yet it wants to be taken seriously. Not even close to being an effective system in any way and a complete embarrassment.

 

[CBH]

Just got rammed from behind late in Maggiore banked corner, enough that I was pushed wide to the edge of the track and lost two places, including to the guy who rammed me, and I waited for the PENALTY marker to pop up above him and it did not... He clearly bumped me significantly late in a heavy braking zone that I was pushed aside and lost position to him AND another car, yet there is no penalty? And then two laps later into the long right hander, turn 5, I brake late, accelerate early and just tap the rear very softly of the guy ahead as he comes back from his wide entry and there's absolutely no consequence as we both continue without problems, until PENALTY 10 SECS shows up on my screen.

Just not worth it. Immediately quit the race and turned it off. Not worth my time, not going to finish that race if the game is gonna cheat me, don't care what it does to my rating. If the penalty system cannot determine if there was proper fault and consequence in both these cases, it needs to be completely reworked. It is not acceptable and is ruining this game.

What bothers me most are the super harsh penalties for light contact that results in absolutely no damage or any consequence to anyone's race. Racing drivers do not receive penalties for tapping other cars where nothing happens to either. Just doesn't happen. PD's penalty system is absolutely incompetent and stupidly harsh to the point that it's just making up rules, yet it wants to be taken seriously. Not even close to being an effective system in any way and a complete embarrassment.

I would be good idea to send this Thread over to PD, so they can read your good post and many others that are not happy with the penalty system.

I said in one of my post a few days ago, I really think PD does not give a dam about what goes on in Sport Mode, because it has been going on for far to long with this crap penalty system.

 

[CRN_G-TR]

Why are there enough people who do manage to keep up their SR DR up what are they doing that keeps their drivel level Up and what am I doing wrong is the question people have to ask their self's instead of waiting Till PD reads this tread.

 

[Sven Jurgens]

Why are there enough people who do manage to keep up their SR DR up what are they doing that keeps their drivel level Up and what am I doing wrong is the question people have to ask their self's instead of waiting Till PD reads this tread.

Do race C. That regularly is worth over 20 SR, boosted as well at lower SR levels. Brands hatch was worth 23 points yesterday at SR.S. A white rating there means -18 SR on the daily A today.

Plus for the faster drivers, you get top 3 or pole when your SR drops a bit due to match making preferring chase the rabbit rooms. If you're not naturally fast or don't qualify like me, you got to actually put some effort in on the sprint races.

 

[soundtiger95]

Why are there enough people who do manage to keep up their SR DR up what are they doing that keeps their drivel level Up and what am I doing wrong is the question people have to ask their self's instead of waiting Till PD reads this tread.

I don’t think people are complaining about their rating. It’s more about people having their races ruined. I’m a clean driver who is average when it comes to speed (B DR, S SR) but I constantly am taken out and it ruins the entire experience.

 

[Conquerer]

Why are there enough people who do manage to keep up their SR DR up what are they doing that keeps their drivel level Up and what am I doing wrong is the question people have to ask their self's instead of waiting Till PD reads this tread.

My DR and SR ratings are consistently high and not the problem. I regularly have races ruined from the minorest of contacts that hurt nobody or witness other moments where I get hit hard/divebombed by someone else who doesn't get a penalty and it doesn't make any sense. It's too flawed of a penalty system to regulate Sport mode properly.

 

[Sven Jurgens]

I've been focusing on false positives, so here are a few false negatives.

Actually the first one is just blaming the victim.

He sees I'm about to overtake him, hits me once to slow me down, again to get me off the road.
I get 3 sec penalty, he doesn't get anything.

In SR.B it seems every other car I pass tries to bump me off like that. Most of the time no penalties are issued, probably why so many people do it. Luckily I normally don't get a penalty either, however in the above example he went off the road after his second bump.

Now this:

He bumps me three times making sure I'm off the road. His third bump slows him enough to recover while giving me enough speed to end up in the wall at the end. His pass is successful, no penalties were issued.
When I called him out on it, he said I was a poor loser and lost control of my car..



Back to the fun stuff. Right at the start I'm behind a nervous driver slowing down too much while I have an impatient driver pushing me forward

The car behind bumps me into the car in front, I get 10 sec penalty, nothing for him, no one went off road.

That was not all. The car in front can't hold his line in the next corner and I can't slow down enough since we're both recovering from the previous collision.

He comes out fine, I lose a place and get another 10 sec penalty and another tap from behind from the first driver.
I'm the big bad dirty driver here with 20 sec penalty and a red B at the end, rest all blue... (I was the only DR.A)



So that's how I got to SR.B where matchmaking put me with increasingly unstable drivers. For example:

10 sec penalty for brushing his bumper while braking. It's not even perceptible, no collision indicators.


I'm not giving up on the challenge, I'm back to SR.A, 70, at the moment. It takes a lot of blue races to recover from 1 red one.

Edit: Just after I get back to SR.S I get rammed again while over taking. It was a DR.C driver, I was ahead yet he knocked me into the wall and on the rebound it looked like I hit him. 10 sec, and back to SR.A. The penalty system needs to look at the entire incident, not just the individual contacts. It probably wasn't malicious and he simply lost control as he was half on the grass, likely oversteered. Yet give the DR.A a race crippling penalty.

 

[Chevy Heavy]

Why are there enough people who do manage to keep up their SR DR up what are they doing that keeps their drivel level Up and what am I doing wrong is the question people have to ask their self's instead of waiting Till PD reads this tread.

As a B/S driver you are not subjected to the same penalties as higher ranked drivers. That is the problem. As an A/S I have to pick and choose what races I enter as I don't want to have to go through another DR reset. As much as I'd like to enter more races, I know beforehand that on certain tracks it is not going to end well because of petty penalties. Nothing pisses me off more than collecting penalties from people running into me. I'm a clean driver but with the penalty system the way it is now there are tracks I just avoid.

If you need more explanation, just read through some of Sven Jurgens posts. He has over 3k races so I think he is quite familiar with the penalty system. When a driver tells you he looks forward to being demoted in rank to have less stressful and more enjoyable races that should tell you something.

 

[Seikenfreak]

Yea I got up to S/S around launch-ish of the game and then it just became about avoiding Daily races I guess. But FIA test season races were more frequent so that was less of a problem. There was something for me to do most days. The people I was paired with in FIA races were all pretty good (to put it mildly) and penalty issues weren't much of a problem. They did eventually add the Yellow Flag system which created some issues for me (and you can find posts I made on here pissed off about it).

Since I've been messing around with the game again, I want to brush up on my skills so.. Dailies then. And now I've just been getting screwed on the regular. And I am partially complaining about the ratings too because when it drops me down then, typically the drivers get more careless, creating a compounding effect. Just because I breathe on someones rear bumper as an SR S doesn't mean I should automatically be an SR A now. Or someone bumps me off course, dropping my position from a Top 5 to the back of the grid and now my DR takes a massive hit. I'd prefer to keep my higher rating so I could be paired up with the people I used to race with in FIA, even if it means I'll be at the back of the grid now.

And I guess part of coming back was trying out La Sarthe and that seems to have some extremely sensitive corner cutting penalties.

 

[Sven Jurgens]

Ok, 2 more before I go to bed. Previous race dropped me to 76 SR.A, this race down to SR.B again 61 from 2 10 sec penalties.

First, car loses control, I slow down avoid, he seems to have recovered, then he brake checks me. We're not even near the corner yet. 10 sec penalty

Later a driver that bump passed me earlier which cost me 2 positions and putt me behind the brake checker above is wreaking havoc in the twisty bit. He messes up, is fish tailing ghosted so it seems PD wants me to drive pass him?

Wrong! Solidifies on my bumper at low speed. I give him a nice boost back into the race, and get the second 10 sec penalty. -15 SR for that race.


I survived the last race of the day! Back to SR.A exactly, 65, despite a dirty driver, I've already reported earlier, trying the penalty serve ghost bait trick on me. He slows down in the middle of the road on the final section as I'm coming up to pass and presses the gas right in front of my bumper to solidify. Finally, the penalty system rules in my favor for a change and I don't get a penalty. He flies off into the grass. Karma, as I was following him for half the race watching him ram another driver to such an extent the game just let them drive through each other for the last third of the race.

It's not all doom and gloom though. I got 6 wins today of which 2 thanks to #1 having penalties. Plenty clean races and clean drivers as well with fun close battles, however the nonsense penalties outweigh any clean driving on sprint races when it comes to SR. I never got rid of DR.A either and actually gained 1.5K DR.

 

[I-Runner]

Eight/nine times on ten when I receive a penalty I ask to myself..... WHY ???

PD must Reduce the number of cars in the race, due to PS4 hardware capacity, but make a proper and logically penalty system ...
This system is killing the competition in the game and the GT brand reputation....

IR

 

[VBR]

@Sven Jurgens - Loving all the gifs mate! The evidence against the broken penalty system is overwhelming.

 

[bmxmitch]

Vettel wouldve gotten a 10sec penalty and Bottas a 1sec for sure! Verstappen another 8sec for cutting the corner

Also, @Sven Jurgens : I really like your gifs too! They perfectly show what we all have to deal with in Dailies....but PD just wont care.

 

[CRN_G-TR]

Vettel wouldve gotten a 10sec penalty and Bottas a 1sec for sure! Verstappen another 8sec for cutting the corner

Also, @Sven Jurgens : I really like your gifs too! They perfectly show what we all have to deal with in Dailies....but PD just wont care.

My DR and SR ratings are consistently high and not the problem. I regularly have races ruined from the minorest of contacts that hurt nobody or witness other moments where I get hit hard/divebombed by someone else who doesn't get a penalty and it doesn't make any sense. It's too flawed of a penalty system to regulate Sport mode properly.

We all know the penalty system is messed up since day 1 it seems PD doesn't care.
so what can we do to get less penalty's that's my point. You can keep saying the penalty system is crap but that won't help it cause you probably still playing the game.

 

[Timlour]

I can't recall if this has been brought up before in this thread but...

It's one thing when drivers get penalties for rubbing and bumping. It's another thing when you are being straight-up lied to about the other driver getting a penalty when they didn't.

A long while back, I was in an online race at Tokyo and I came to blows with someone. It was a about 3-4 months back (don't know when the game started showing you the other drivers penalty time), so I don't remember exactly what happened, but I do remember getting a penalty and being shown that the other driver got a penalty. They finished the race without a red dot on their name in the race results, which means they never got a penalty. Annoying, but figured it would be fixed eventually.

For a long time, I thought it was fixed, until I watched dibblr's stream of the manufacturers race at Tokyo. We were racing each other and I braked a little too early into Turn 1, causing dibblr to bump me in the rear. On his screen, he got a 3-second penalty and was shown that I got a 1-second penalty. However, I got no such penalty on my screen; I already had a 1-second penalty for a previous incident with another driver, but I got no extra time added on after dibblr's bump.

Need I remind you, this happened in an official FIA championship race.

I assume this is a rare occurence, but it's still downright inexcusable that the virtual FIA stewards can lie to you and say that the other person got a penalty for an incident when they didn't. If PD are going to fix anything about the penalty system, I believe that they should look into this issue first and foremost.

 

[Seikenfreak]

We all know the penalty system is messed up since day 1 it seems PD doesn't care.

I don't think it's because they don't care.. I think it's because it is an incredibly difficult thing to design and code for.

If they make it more relaxed, which is better for more skilled and mature drivers, then everyone in the mid to lower skill levels and maturity will scream and yell that everyone is hitting them and nothing is happening. *This is what it was like closer to launch*

If they make it more strict in an attempt to keep bad drivers and cheaters in check, then it punishes anyone who is trying to race legitimately where minor, realistic events occur like lightly bumping someone in a draft or slightly cutting a corner to avoid a collision. *This is where the system is now*

That isn't even factoring in the insanity of getting this all to work over internet connections of all speeds and all around the world. That sounds like an impossible task to me. iRacing might be the only platform with a decent penalty system (I haven't played it in a long time) but guess what? That game (its not really a game) costs a ton of money, been around for a long time, and looks like old crap now etc.

I would rather have the entire system removed and I try and continue to race with people that are reasonably skilled and mature. Where accidentally bumping someone results in letting them get past you afterwards, an apology after the race, and then we all move on to having more fun close races, because everyone makes mistakes sometimes.

 

[Sven Jurgens]

I can't recall if this has been brought up before in this thread but...

It's one thing when drivers get penalties for rubbing and bumping. It's another thing when you are being straight-up lied to about the other driver getting a penalty when they didn't.

A long while back, I was in an online race at Tokyo and I came to blows with someone. It was a about 3-4 months back (don't know when the game started showing you the other drivers penalty time), so I don't remember exactly what happened, but I do remember getting a penalty and being shown that the other driver got a penalty. They finished the race without a red dot on their name in the race results, which means they never got a penalty. Annoying, but figured it would be fixed eventually.

For a long time, I thought it was fixed, until I watched dibblr's stream of the manufacturers race at Tokyo. We were racing each other and I braked a little too early into Turn 1, causing dibblr to bump me in the rear. On his screen, he got a 3-second penalty and was shown that I got a 1-second penalty. However, I got no such penalty on my screen; I already had a 1-second penalty for a previous incident with another driver, but I got no extra time added on after dibblr's bump.

Need I remind you, this happened in an official FIA championship race.

I assume this is a rare occurence, but it's still downright inexcusable that the virtual FIA stewards can lie to you and say that the other person got a penalty for an incident when they didn't. If PD are going to fix anything about the penalty system, I believe that they should look into this issue first and foremost.

it's not that rare unfortunately. Every time there is even a little lag involved it's probably lying to you. According to what my game told me another driver bumping me 4 times should have had 27 sec in penalties. He did have a penalty yet only slowed down after it was supposedly over 24 sec, he didn't slow down very long either to get rid of that 27 seconds.

it's hard to tell from the red dots as so many people end up with penalties all the time yet I also see it happen frequently that a car finishes with the flashing penalty sign over their car and not have a red dot. I've also seen people slowing down for the finish to get rid of a penalty they didn't have according to my console.

As long as the clients don't discuss penalties with each other it won't be fixed. It's simply a local calculation and whatever the other drivers have is nothing more than your console's best guess.

We all know the penalty system is messed up since day 1 it seems PD doesn't care.
so what can I do to get less penalty's that's my point. You can keep saying the penalty system is crap but that won't help it cause you probably still playing the game.

What you can do to get less penalties:
- Lower your DR to DR.B. DR rank has a big influence on penalties and A and A+ get screwed the most by far.
- Be extra careful around lower DR players, usually the higher rank takes the blame.
- Qualify well to start at the top.
- Avoid tracks with a T1 bottleneck.
- Avoid tracks that favor dive bombs.
- Play late in the evening / night when the kids are in bed and people have already raced the tracks a few times.

Or just have fun and don't worry too much about ratings. Those are only important if you have a chance at winning a FIA championship. And remember, you can always restore SR on a daily C with plenty laps. The more laps, the higher the SR pool.

I don't think it's because they don't care.. I think it's because it is an incredibly difficult thing to design and code for.

If they make it more relaxed, which is better for more skilled and mature drivers, then everyone in the mid to lower skill levels and maturity will scream and yell that everyone is hitting them and nothing is happening. *This is what it was like closer to launch*

If they make it more strict in an attempt to keep bad drivers and cheaters in check, then it punishes anyone who is trying to race legitimately where minor, realistic events occur like lightly bumping someone in a draft or slightly cutting a corner to avoid a collision. *This is where the system is now*

That isn't even factoring in the insanity of getting this all to work over internet connections of all speeds and all around the world. That sounds like an impossible task to me. iRacing might be the only platform with a decent penalty system (I haven't played it in a long time) but guess what? That game (its not really a game) costs a ton of money, been around for a long time, and looks like old crap now etc.

I would rather have the entire system removed and I try and continue to race with people that are reasonably skilled and mature. Where accidentally bumping someone results in letting them get past you afterwards, an apology after the race, and then we all move on to having more fun close races, because everyone makes mistakes sometimes.

For the bolded, it's completely upside down now. It's very strict for the more skilled drivers, while still quite relaxed for the lower DR ranks. Which is what causes so many problems as matchmaking puts A+/S to D/S together at high SR. Add in strict penalties and the field mixes up due to higher ranks having to slow down, then have to race lower ranks that are used to getting away with bumping and cutting each other off as that's usually fine at the lower ranks.

It's as if the current system is designed to create more incidents....

 

[fastone371]

I would be good idea to send this Thread over to PD, so they can read your good post and many others that are not happy with the penalty system.

I said in one of my post a few days ago, I really think Polyphony does not give a dam about what goes on in Sport Mode, because it has been going on for far to long with this crap penalty system.

They will start to care when there are no more drivers in the Daily lobbies. The thing that Polyphony better realize very, very soon is that they better get this figured out quickly, once players leave it will be hard to get them to come back because they have moved on elsewhere, kind of like an old girlfriend.

A good start would be to give up that biased penalty crap where the higher ranked driver gets the bulk of the penalty and the lower ranked drivers get very little or no penalty at all. How does Polyphony think that is going to help improve a lower ranked drivers habits? All Polyphony is teaching them is that it is OK to drive like a bull in a china shop because they will give other drivers the penalties, that's just going to make dirty driving a habit for those people. Their SR will not improve because even if they don't acquire penalty time they still get an SR down, its nothing short of insane that Polyphony thinks that is a good idea.

 

[Seikenfreak]

For the bolded, it's completely upside down now. It's very strict for the more skilled drivers, while still quite relaxed for the lower DR ranks. Which is what causes so many problems as matchmaking puts A+/S to D/S together at high SR. Add in strict penalties and the field mixes up due to higher ranks having to slow down, then have to race lower ranks that are used to getting away with bumping and cutting each other off as that's usually fine at the lower ranks.

It's as if the current system is designed to create more incidents....

Are you referring to the points penalties related to DR and SR? I was thinking of the time penalties while racing. But yes, the reduction in SR does seem very harsh now for me.

I wish it was more like.. If you maintain an S rating across X number of races over Y amount of time = you gain some sort of more permanent S rating. There would obviously have to be some sort of back up here for the trolls who would just get an S rating over time, with the intention of reaching the FIA finals or whatever, and then torpedo the leader because "ha ha, remember that time you bumped me in a corner 8 months ago? I have no life and nothing better to do with my time"

 

[CRN_G-TR]

it's not that rare unfortunately. Every time there is even a little lag involved it's probably lying to you. According to what my game told me another driver bumping me 4 times should have had 27 sec in penalties. He did have a penalty yet only slowed down after it was supposedly over 24 sec, he didn't slow down very long either to get rid of that 27 seconds.

it's hard to tell from the red dots as so many people end up with penalties all the time yet I also see it happen frequently that a car finishes with the flashing penalty sign over their car and not have a red dot. I've also seen people slowing down for the finish to get rid of a penalty they didn't have according to my console.

As long as the clients don't discuss penalties with each other it won't be fixed. It's simply a local calculation and whatever the other drivers have is nothing more than your console's best guess.




What you can do to get less penalties:
- Lower your DR to DR.B. DR rank has a big influence on penalties and A and A+ get screwed the most by far.
- Be extra careful around lower DR players, usually the higher rank takes the blame.
- Qualify well to start at the top.
- Avoid tracks with a T1 bottleneck.
- Avoid tracks that favor dive bombs.
- Play late in the evening / night when the kids are in bed and people have already raced the tracks a few times.

Or just have fun and don't worry too much about ratings. Those are only important if you have a chance at winning a FIA championship. And remember, you can always restore SR on a daily C with plenty laps. The more laps, the higher the SR pool.




For the bolded, it's completely upside down now. It's very strict for the more skilled drivers, while still quite relaxed for the lower DR ranks. Which is what causes so many problems as matchmaking puts A+/S to D/S together at high SR. Add in strict penalties and the field mixes up due to higher ranks having to slow down, then have to race lower ranks that are used to getting away with bumping and cutting each other off as that's usually fine at the lower ranks.

It's as if the current system is designed to create more incidents....

- Play late in the evening / night when the kids are in bed and people have already raced the tracks a few times.

That's a really good one

 

[CBH]

They will start to care when there are no more drivers in the Daily lobbies. The thing that Polyphony better realize very, very soon is that they better get this figured out quickly, once players leave it will be hard to get them to come back because they have moved on elsewhere, kind of like an old girlfriend.

A good start would be to give up that biased penalty crap where the higher ranked driver gets the bulk of the penalty and the lower ranked drivers get very little or no penalty at all. How does Polyphony think that is going to help improve a lower ranked drivers habits? All Polyphony is teaching them is that it is OK to drive like a bull in a china shop because they will give other drivers the penalties, that's just going to make dirty driving a habit for those people. Their SR will not improve because even if they don't acquire penalty time they still get an SR down, its nothing short of insane that Polyphony thinks that is a good idea.

Do you get a penalty for going off the track to avoid a crash, because you had nowhere to go on the track ?.

 

[Sven Jurgens]

Are you referring to the points penalties related to DR and SR? I was thinking of the time penalties while racing. But yes, the reduction in SR does seem very harsh now for me.

I wish it was more like.. If you maintain an S rating across X number of races over Y amount of time = you gain some sort of more permanent S rating. There would obviously have to be some sort of back up here for the trolls who would just get an S rating over time, with the intention of reaching the FIA finals or whatever, and then torpedo the leader because "ha ha, remember that time you bumped me in a corner 8 months ago? I have no life and nothing better to do with my time"

There seems to be a gradient with everything

- Lower DR player often gets the benefit of the doubt in collisions.
- Lower DR player gets less severe time penalties or none,
- Lower DR player gets lower SR deductions for contact.
- Lower DR player gets lower shortcut penalties.
- Lower SR player gets less SR deductions for contact
- Lower SR player gets an SR boost for the race up to a factor of 2.4 between SR.E and SR.S.
- Lower SR player gets ghosted sooner when a collision is imminent, avoiding penalties and SR deductions.

Those are my observations over many races switching between A/S to A/B and B/S to B/B.


That last sentence reminds me of someone that suddenly said I was on his **** list and was going to race me hard every time he sees me, yet he couldn't remember why I was on his list. Every time I see him now he leaves with a red rating vs my shiny blue rating. Pay more attention to the road instead of your **** list

People get better. I used to block dirty or rather clueless drivers on psn. Nowadays I end up unblocking someone now and then to send a friend request after a good race. I still report dirty drivers though, much easier, let PD sort it out, or not.

Do you get a penalty for going off the track to avoid a crash, because you had nowhere to go on the track ?.

Yes, and on some tracks (eg Sarthe and Mona) that time penalty is often bigger than the penalty for hitting the other car Plus you often lose time anyway having to go off track to avoid a car... And if you hit a wall to avoid someone it's 5 sec automatic Hit the wall at pit entry to avoid a penalty server you get SR Down as well