I agree 100%. The dirtiest races I've had recently, by far, were at SR S. That means something is really wrong with their Sportsmanship system. I did a race from the back (Gr. 2 at Suzuka 2 weeks back) and it was an SR S lobby! There were 2 players who were tapping, punting, blocking and sideswiping cars off the track the whole race and they both finished with blue S!!! And all the victims finished either red or even ranked down to SR A or B. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw it!!! I got demoted to SR B just because one of them was on fresh tyres and kept tapping me for half a lap. Each tap was an SR down for me.
And don't even let me start about the penalties I got last week at the Ring. That's another level of ridiculousness.
Three years of tinkering and adjustments and this is what we get??? It's 🤬 embarrassing!!! They should just admit complete failure and turn it off ffs. Even a random number generator will get better results than this "system". This is an insult to us, loyal customers. I'm not touching GT7. EVER. I will not support ignorance, arrogance and incompetence with my money.
For me it has directly affected my decision to get a ps5 or not. If GTS was still good I would have pre-ordered one months ago, faster loading, faster patching, sign me up. Now it's the first time since '98 that I haven't jumped into a new generation at launch.
I won't say I'll never get GT7 cause I'm weak and will cave when I see the Nordschleife with real time weather or full racing in PSVR 2.0. Online is another matter. If my kids weren't piggy backing on my ps+ I would be cancelling it now. GTS is (was) the only game I play online.
I still did a ton of races on N24 last week, the track is too addictive to me. Out of about 80 races, I've only met a handful of good clean drivers who I could have a fair clean race with, going through multiple corners side by side giving each other plenty room. The rest of the time, stay well behind and wait for them to go wide enough to squeeze though without them having the option to pivot back into you, because they will. I've never seen as much dirty blocking and pushing people off as last week.
Here's an example from yesterday, state of play, bullet hell. Not sure what SR range that was in, doesn't really matter anyway
Of course all that shoving and punting also helps clear the road. I had 20 victories last week and many more fastest laps, my fastest lap was an 8:19. All but a few felt like hollow victories though, from last to a 16 sec lead just by avoiding penalties, that's not racing.
I ended in SR.A (79) after a dozen or so DR resets during the week
Last night it finally started to calm down a little bit. I couldn't be bothered to go on to restore my SR, the higher SR lobbies are just a messed up mix of slow tip toe drivers trying to hang on to their SR (still blocking until death anyway) and the usual win or die crowd. On avg close to half the room quit during the race, so starting last, you're guaranteed to move up
The thing I noticed most is how many people have left
Less than 10 of the old regulars spotted during the week. The penalty system has destroyed the game.