I´m not a professional in a business but like all people i have my own way of interpretation.
I was a professional in this particular area for a very long time.
How can you compare cooking with a complex thing like a game mechanism that try to simulate a "jury" that in the other hand have to judge the behavior of real persons in a track.
I was, at one point, regarded as an expert in multiplayer gaming and managing the behaviour of players in a multiplayer space. So, let's just say, that if I am on the side of the people who hate this system, the arguments against the system likely have a lot of merit (in my opinion).
A good example of how hard it´s just watch a football real match where they implement a referee that have acess to cameras to help the main referee in the field so he can make the right decisions, guess what.., even with humans interpretating still bad decisions are made.
The replay cameras try to determine whether an infraction occurred (or did not occur) when the alleged infraction in real time appeared misleading. Totally not the same issue here.
The two LARGEST issues with GT Sport's penalty system is that, for one thing, there is no true system. It is not based on rules, but on biases. That brings up the second biggest issue which is that the rules change based on your DR rank.
Imagine if, in any real life race, the people at the back of the grid had no rules to govern their action, but the people at the front had very strict and separate rules for their actions. It would be, as we are seeing in GT Sport, a complete chaotic, unpredictable mess.
I think it´s better to create a system that filtrate the persons that behave bad and that acumulate or get penaltys in every race, make a simplier penalty system and a average clean races system where that average reset after a specific number of races so the average of a player can always be updated, then make a grind system where a bad average player will gain less points in de SR rank, SR rank in the other hand will also impact DR points even if in a good lobby.
Welcome to the point of this entire, extremely long, thread.
The system, originally, was simply harsh. So we asked that maybe it be toned down a little.
What PD chose to do,
and this is where the system took a MASSIVE shift in the wrong direction, was to make the penalty system more forgiving for bad players and harsh for good players. On the surface, this may seem fair, but it encourages chaos.
A DR B player (or less) can race with reckless abandon and advance through the DR ranks. Then, when they are racing against higher DR players, their reckless bahaviour penalizes the higher DR player MORE. Thereby bringing the better player down.
The SR system's only real use is to impose penalties on your DR system. So, if you have a few bad crashes, you get screwed out of your DR level. When you have worked hard to get to a high DR A or DR A+, which is quite hard to do if you play recklessly, it's very, very frustrating to have that all washed away by someone else, who has not yet had to learn to be careful.
Through various iterations, PD has maintained the direction that your DR rank dictates the severity of the penalties, so, NOW, the system has gotten to the point where good players (who are completely innocent of bad bahaviour) are getting penalties for the bad behaviour of others.
As we have seen, if a bad player happens to touch a good player as they pass, and then that bad player proceeds to crash into other cars (through no fault of the good player), that good player gets all the penalties.
People must be forced to learn how to beahave or else they will never get the S rank neither they will get a decent DR to ruin decent players, most of the time my races are ruined cause people are fast but have no idea how to aproach a corner when other players are arround and make contact every time they can to slow other people down.
Again, this is why there is so much complaining.
The system, for far too long, rewards BAD BEHAVIOUR.
Lower DR players can drive recklessly and succeed, while higher DR player are given penalties for events that are not their fault.
Fia = simulation
Dailys= Arcade, one of the dailys races could have real damage on. Or make 4 or 5 daily races availabe with at least 2 races with real damage on.
Or simple make 2 sport mode modes, Arcade mode and simulation mode where Fia are in simulation mode. Each mode with it´s own rank.
There are solutions but all of them have to be forced penaltys for themselfs no matter how good developers implement it will always have a handicap and spoil the races cause like it is now it allows diferent type of players to race each other just cause they can make similar times doesn´t mean they know how to race.
A separated aproach to FIA and Dailys probably it´s the best system overall.
All these suggestions are excessively complex solutions to an already excessively complex implementation.
I have stated it many times in this thread.
We need a simple table to score contact between car parts (front, back, left front, left back, right front, right back). Compare car orientation(and direction of travel) to the racing line to assess blame (because if two cars are both properly aligned to the racing line, then it's just a racing incident). Lastly, put cars into states to adjust the contact scoring.
All of this is already being done to some extent. The damage system knows six points of contact (as evidenced when you turn on damage). The game knows if you are oriented properly, and cars are being put into other states (evidenced by the ghosting system).
- A ghost car is another state. When a car is a ghost, you can see through it, and you can not collide with it. That is a different state with different game rules.
- If you set the ghosting to strong in a race, you can see how sensitive the detection is for your car's direction of travel and orientation
- If you go the wrong direction on track, you become a ghost. In order to do this, the game must know your car's orientation relative to the racing line. Once you exceed a set angle, you are "going the wrong way". It can't know that set angle unless it knows ALL angles.
- On strong ghosting, if your car starts to slide too much, your car becomes a ghost.
This is my issue with the system. What we are asking for is for a common, fair system, that penalizes every DR level equally, thereby enforcing that you must drive with care.
Also, implement a system that makes common sense using parts that are already in the game.
Make no mistake. PD has deliberately chosen to make a crappy system and we are here to speak out and ask that they make a better one.
If any one wants to know why this is a big deal to me, it's because this is a great pass-time for me. I love taking breaks in my day to have a quick race. It's a stress reliever. GT has been that release for me for two decades now. Other racers just don't provide that (and I don't want to get into the hows and whys of that)
This last implementation is a stress inducer. I am actively avoiding play, which sucks on many fronts.
