Sport modes biggest failing for the slow to average driver.

[Riptide]

So yes, the truth hurts and GTS sport mode is not in very good shape from a player standpoint and if you think otherwise and everything is fine as is enjoy watching it die a painful death!

I've seen this threat in FORZA, Project Cars, GT and even in AC, yet they are all still going strong.

 

[Woodybobs]

Certainly not - I'm more referring to an increase in a demanding society in general with an unbelievable entitlement.

Where are you getting that from?

 

[Outspacer]

It's not that rare :S I did 2 Dailies last night and both grids looked like this:

What time of day was that?

... anecdotal evidence from Sven ...

Actually that is somewhat useful information, since he plays so goddamn much! It's not evidence as such, but it shouldn't be dismissed.

 

[VFOURMAX1]

Perhaps it is more of a problem on the NA server. No one is denying that the matchmaking isn't perfect due to the player pooling, but the reason you keep being accused of straw manning is because you keep bringing in this bizarre angle of As rubbing their hands with glee whenever they see an underpopulated lobby of "fish in a barrel", to use your words

And my bizarre angle as you put it concerning the "A's" is because the A's in their majority are the ones this affects the very least, does get race wins from easier lobbies with lower numbers of actual competition and because they are the least effected and many not affected at all other than the amount of DR they may gain from a lobby of slower players.

But they say it is all fine and dandy as is!

Not the same on the other side of the street!

 

[_ApexPredator]

What time of day was that?

*EDIT* - Just checked the video and it was in fact 23:30 not 22:30.
It was the 23:30, so quite late, definitely not prime time; that was the first of the two.

Actually that is somewhat useful information, since he plays so goddamn much! It's not evidence as such, but it shouldn't be dismissed.

Yep. I think my words were:

I would argue your anecdotal "evidence" a long with Sven's vast experience that you cite now carry less weight in support of the original claims.

 

[VFOURMAX1]

What's the point of a win if your lap time is trash? It's a paper trophy.

In the grand scheme of things in GTS ANY WIN is actually just a person sitting in front of their tv maybe in their underwear with some even sitting in their pretend car drivers seat using their pretend steering wheel controller to tell the x's and o's which way to send their pretend car on their pretend track across their tv screen.

So your description is a worthless paper trophy, I do not care what your sport mode level is for 99.9% of the player base to even get a paper trophy they can take a screenshot of one and send it to their printer because at the end of the day you are in a fantasy world playing a video game.

Get over yourself already and grow up!

 

[_ApexPredator]

In the grand scheme of things in GTS ANY WIN is actually just a person sitting in front of their tv maybe in their underwear with some even sitting in their pretend car drivers seat using their pretend steering wheel controller to tell the x's and o's which way to send their pretend car on their pretend track across their tv screen.

 

[VFOURMAX1]

And that covers more than .1% of the total players in the GTS Sport Mode player base as I stated how?
Reading and comprehension of what you read apparently is not one of your strong suites is it?

 

[Outspacer]

But they say it is all fine and dandy as is!

Not the same on the other side of the street!

I'm at the top of A, and I certainly don't think it's fine! And for me the flip side of getting a pole or win didn't come very often either :/

It was the 22:30, so quite late, definitely not prime time; that was the first of the two.

Well, I'd say that was at the tail end of the prime time peak in UK, although it's already 1hr later in mainland EU. Just a little later and the matching would've been the other style - already there's a spread there from berz (75k?) down to a lone DR B, and it seems it doesn't take many fewer players to make the matchmaking choose the mixed matching mode. I'm thinking the peak is around 8pm, with a bell curve around that of 3 or 4 hours each side. Maybe the OP just plays a little later than you. I know that back when there was twice the number of players, I could play past midnight and still get decent matching.

edit: 22:30 / 23:30 - either way, it's useful to know, to gauge the shape and size of that bell curve

 

[VFOURMAX1]

I'm at the top of A, and I certainly don't think it's fine! And for me the flip side of getting a pole or win didn't come very often either :/

And that is why I said the majority of the A's and not all of the A's!

But in this thread you are one of the few minority of the upper ranks that seems to understand what the problems are and why it is not fine as is!

I respect someone that can look from others perspectives.

I am not passionate about this issue just for myself but the even lower D ranked guys get it the worse out of anyone.

I just cannot understand why even though so many claim it is the fault of the lower player numbers for much of the bad ranking matches that making changes to keep more people playing is not their priority as honestly it is not going to get better the way things work currently.

Seems more people would rather than face the reality of the actual problem would rather just say lower ranked guys want easier wins.

I find that concept or excuse funny as being a B ranked racer I can intentionally tank my rankings all the back down to D and get all the easy wins I want if that was all I wanted.

Most lower ranked players do not seek easier wins, they just want to race in races where all the competition is on their level and pace but apparently that is such an evil idea to many!

Thanks though for looking at the actual problems concerning the matching though. I do know from other threads on the subject this is something you do actually care about.

 

[_ApexPredator]

Reading and comprehension of what you read apparently is not one of your strong suites is it?

I'd say it depends a lot on the writer, but typically actually yes, they are (or it is... :S see what I mean).

 

[Sander 001]

What are you talking about? I didn't say quick, I said quicker. One suggests a short period of time, the other suggests a shorter period of time than an original, irrespective of how long the original is.

I'll say it again. So what if people don't get the trophy. It only sucks for them. Why should PD care if they're going to leave anyway?

You’re asking why customer retention is something a business may be interested in??

An even more screwed up narrative and to such mentality I don't respond to. Phone me when you're 45.

Don’t hold your breath; there’s not much value in somebody who can’t admit they’re wrong when facts have demonstrated that their opinion is incorrect.

 

[azrilnazli]

Tank the SR and easy wins.

 

[Riptide]

Don’t hold your breath; there’s not much value in somebody who can’t admit they’re wrong when facts have demonstrated that their opinion is incorrect.

LMAO

 

[sturk0167]

UK gets pretty quiet later into the evening, by midnight-ish it had usually switched to the poor matching.




Could work from the other end, the DR calc. Even if half the lobby is A/A+ and the rest is D, finishing at the head of the Ds would be a DR gain. OP's win rate indicates that OP's DR is below what it should be, but I don't think the matching is the reason - OP admits to pushing too hard when starting behind a much faster driver, causing mistakes and losing positions. Seems that has more to do with temperament!

It would be funny to see how things worked out if the starting grid was inverted for handicapping (faster people in the back).

 

[Woodybobs]

You’re asking why customer retention is something a business may be interested in??

No, I'm not. I'm asking why a business would make changes for customers that have no intention of sticking around.
Perhaps you missed this earlier.

Sport Mode doesnt reward playing the game in different ways so if you're here to collect trophies, you'll get them and leave, or you won't and leave. PD should not pander to such a person's wants. If you're playing Sport because you enjoy the racing and competition, the trophies don't really matter. They'll come or they won't but you'll play till you you've had enough.

For the majority these trophies are hard to get. We all have to beat 12-20 similarly skilled drivers to creep towards the total. Appeasing a few trophy hunters by handing out wins, pp, FL, for beating far fewer drivers serves no purpose except provide another way to farm these trophies.

 

[VFOURMAX1]

I'd say it depends a lot on the writer, but typically actually yes, they are (or it is... :S see what I mean).

And now you see why I feel the need to be so precise when I answer something in a thread like this.

I knew that I had to cover the very few that go to the finals in different events is the reason I made sure to include that .1% that makes the finals in PD's events the reason for the 99.9%.

I actually even laughed at how quickly those pictures appeared.

I also see that it seems to be some of the Pictures may be from an older GT Academy event while one is from the more recent FIA event.

 

[Tassie_tiger]

*EDIT* - Just checked the video and it was in fact 23:30 not 22:30.
It was the 23:30, so quite late, definitely not prime time; that was the first of the two.

That's me in the lobby.
Myself and a UK friend raced until 3am (his time), at which time the lobby was becoming less populated with spreads in the DR ranks, so it was time to quit.

We raced for many, many hours.
We also raced many, many races at Dragon and Bathurst for a couple of days before the change over.
During that time I went from B/B to B/A to B/S to A/S.
My friend didn't have quite as much luck with the traffic and dropped SR causing him to drop to DR C.
He has been bouncing up and down a bit but has fought his way back to DR B and eventually SR S.
In all that time neither he nor I (talking in PSN chat) came across any crazy DR spread in the lobbies we drove in, with perhaps 2 exceptions from memory.

It does get bad in the small hours when the majority of GT Sport players are doing what the majority of the general public are doing, which is sleeping.

 

[Outspacer]

And that is why I said the majority of the A's and not all of the A's!

But in this thread you are one of the few minority of the upper ranks that seems to understand what the problems are and why it is not fine as is!

I respect someone that can look from others perspectives.

I am not passionate about this issue just for myself but the even lower D ranked guys get it the worse out of anyone.

I just cannot understand why even though so many claim it is the fault of the lower player numbers for much of the bad ranking matches that making changes to keep more people playing is not their priority as honestly it is not going to get better the way things work currently.

Seems more people would rather than face the reality of the actual problem would rather just say lower ranked guys want easier wins.

I find that concept or excuse funny as being a B ranked racer I can intentionally tank my rankings all the back down to D and get all the easy wins I want if that was all I wanted.

Most lower ranked players do not seek easier wins, they just want to race in races where all the competition is on their level and pace but apparently that is such an evil idea to many!

Thanks though for looking at the actual problems concerning the matching though. I do know from other threads on the subject this is something you do actually care about.

Actually, from reading other threads, quite a few A/A+ don't like it either because they can't score DR from DR D players! To the extent that some only partake of FIA races, which of course makes the problem in dailies even worse for the remaining DR A/A+.

Thanks, I do care, and I do try to see things from all player's perspectives. For a decent technical view of it, that's actually a necessity!

Trouble is, I think the time for keeping a large number of people playing has passed, and I'm not sure that anything could change that. It's remarkable how steady the participation numbers have been for the past couple of months though. I also think people just get bored quite quickly of 3 daily races with not much variety to them (e.g. Race C always very high fuel usage and tyre wear, others none) when there are lots of options PD could've used. Even worse with weekly races. Then there's meta cars remaining untweaked for BoP. Lots of factors other than the SR/DR systems and matchmaking that we argue about! So for me, I just see any talk of revamping systems etc as mitigation for the low participation (US now, EU sometime), not as a solution for it. Of course that's strange to say when GTS actually has high participation in online races compared to other titles, so maybe there is hope yet.

 

[Sven Jurgens]

It's not that rare :S I did 2 Dailies last night and both grids looked like this:
[Ignore my slow quali plz, late at night and I didn't know you could tune ]

That's Europe though, I play on the NA server, much smaller player base and perhaps less active as well. I rarely see that many A+ and A together. My race count stands at 3888, slightly above anecdotal I would say with avg 13 races a day!

Yet it does seem grid filling should be less of a problem in Europe, at least in prime time. I'm currently down to 26K DR.B again due to not qualifying, not tuning, staying inside the lines and switching cars every 3 races. I'm still being matched with the fastest and have a high chance of not reaching the finish in time. At least I don't have to wait at the result screen (It is rather annoying I only get one chance per race at setting a best lap for my GR.1 comparison)

 

[baldgye]

My race count stands at 3888, slightly above anecdotal I would say with avg 13 races a day!

That's not what anecdotal means...

 

[Tassie_tiger]

I disagree, being one of the two or three higher class drivers in a grid full of lower class drivers *is* easy. Or perhaps I should say 'easier'. I know this because I have had a couple of big SR bumps in my time (one network outage dropped me all the way back to D/E or something like that) and I ended up racing against weaker competition. That rectified itself as my ratings normalised, and I was soon tootling around at the back making up the numbers again.

My experience was created by an abnormal situation. I could re-create it by deliberately tanking my ratings but I don't wish to do that. The A/A+ drivers that get gifted grids with one or two similar rated drivers and 10 lesser rated drivers are being given the same advantage automatically, without any need to tank their ratings. It's most definitely unfair.

There is plenty of evidence on this thread alone to show that the grids are often being populated with something like 4 As at the front and 8 Ds behind with no hope of keeping up. It's not only the top 10 drivers that get to see this. Splitting those grids into 8-12 As in a race of their own, and another race with 8-12 Ds, would mean everybody has to face a similar challenge and would be much fairer.

My apologies.
I didn't realise you were only talking of the occassion when a lobby comprises, say, 2 A+ drivers and 10 D drivers in your original post I quoted.

My reply did however mention DR B, A, and A+ all being "grouped together" in a lobby.
By which I meant only B, A, and A+ drivers in the lobby. 👍

 

[Sander 001]

No, I'm not. I'm asking why a business would make changes for customers that have no intention of sticking around.
Perhaps you missed this earlier.
For the majority these trophies are hard to get. We all have to beat 12-20 similarly skilled drivers to creep towards the total. Appeasing a few trophy hunters by handing out wins, pp, FL, for beating far fewer drivers serves no purpose except provide another way to farm these trophies.

"A few trophy hunters"? It's literally 99.9% of all players. That is an incredibly poor retention rate and businesses are always changing and evolving to retain their clients.

 

[Outspacer]

It would be funny to see how things worked out if the starting grid was inverted for handicapping (faster people in the back).

As part of a season where you raced the same players each race, it might work to do that for one race, but in the random world of dailes it would be, erm, problematic!

 

[_ApexPredator]

And that covers more than .1% of the total players in the GTS Sport Mode player base as I stated how?

It doesn't. Which is why it wasn't quoted. It was in response specifically to this:

In the grand scheme of things in GTS ANY WIN is actually just a person sitting in front of their tv maybe in their underwear with some even sitting in their pretend car drivers seat using their pretend steering wheel controller to tell the x's and o's which way to send their pretend car on their pretend track across their tv screen.

I also see that it seems to be some of the Pictures may be from an older GT Academy event while one is from the more recent FIA event.

Correct.

That's me in the lobby.
Myself and a UK friend raced until 3am (his time), at which time the lobby was becoming less populated with spreads in the DR ranks, so it was time to quit.

I thought it may have been *waves*

Actually, from reading other threads, quite a few A/A+ don't like it either because they can't score DR from DR D players! To the extent that some only partake of FIA races, which of course makes the problem in dailies even worse for the remaining DR A/A+.

That's been explained very thoroughly by many people in this thread already too.

My race count stands at 3888, slightly above anecdotal I would say with avg 13 races a day!

Whilst above average, still very much anecdotal

 

[VFOURMAX1]

Actually, from reading other threads, quite a few A/A+ don't like it either because they can't score DR from DR D players! To the extent that some only partake of FIA races, which of course makes the problem in dailies even worse for the remaining DR A/A+

Which I hear the same remarks from some but maybe some of those current D players will become A players down the road if they stick with the game.

But you also see many new lower level players quit after a small number of races and could some of that be seeing the best they can finish is 10th if they beat every other D level player in the room?

Suggest though that they award class wins within mixed lobbies so even though they may not be racing for first overall they can still get 1st, fast lap and pole position awards within their respective class and its like you are talking about shooting the pope or something on here.

Doing what it takes to to retain players should be top priority if players want the game studio to keep supporting the online portion of the game.
Awarding players trophies and win stats that hurt absolutely no one but yet lets the low ranked player to be fulfilling the achievements within their personal game may be enough of an incentive to look past the broken penalty system (which we will not being into this discussion at all!) to continue to play sport mode which is a win for all.

Some people just automatically assume there will be future FIA events but if the numbers in Sport Mode do not justify the effort to the studio there obligation actually ends after this years finals.

Don't count chickens before they hatch, higher player numbers benefit everyone even if the reasons may be vastly different as to why they want to play.

 

[kjeldsen]

Full stop.

When people write that, I disregard everything they write after that. What you're doing is making a straw man claim on my behalf for something I never said. Me responding to your question would reaffirm your false presupposition. So by default I can't respond to you because your point is built off of a claim I never made. Respond to what I wrote and I'll gladly respond back.

You got no answer, i understand. A bit like the rest here that wants a game that throws everyone against each other, and just as you totally dismissed every other game or sports that uses matchmaking.. And you even went so far as to compare lazy drivers with their real persona, i guess that tells more about you than your observations..

*golf clap*

I can only wish that the next GT game understands that money is made from the masses and not the entitled few that thinks doing 250 laps to get the best lap is how a game like this should be done. My respect for those racers are gone, self serving elitist that can not understand how others might want to approach a game like this.. for fun! And i honestly have no idea why, it's really confusing, its like they are afraid of something, maybe tanking SR wont give them easy victories? No one to beat easily? "Look mom i just beat 12 incredible slow drivers.. i am SO good"

 

[VFOURMAX1]

I play on the NA server, much smaller player base and perhaps less active as well. I rarely see that many A+ and A together. My race count stands at 3888, slightly above anecdotal I would say with avg 13 races a day!

That's not what anecdotal means..

Whilst above average, still very much anecdotal

You can play with the words or definitions all that you like.

But when it comes down to the N.A. region and daily sport mode races YOU PROVIDE ANY OTHER available source of compiled data or knowledge with a higher sample or data count from a singular source of research on the subject of the DR and SR ranking makeup of daily racing grids observed then you can then perhaps you can attempt to discount Svens to not be of THE BEST CURRENTLY AVAILABLE accurate sources of information available.

You can even visit several other threads where many of his results and observations have been posted concerning rankings and gridding subject matter.

So until you can do that quit trying to discount a source that does not seem to skewer his data to make one or another different point just puts it down from his observations.

 

[baldgye]

You can play with the words or definitions all that you like.

I'd prefer not to, which I why I pointed out the wrong use of that word. One persons experience does not equal research and data.

But when it comes down to the N.A. region and daily sport mode races YOU PROVIDE ANY OTHER available source of compiled data or knowledge with a higher sample or data count from a singular source of research on the subject of the DR and SR ranking makeup of daily racing grids observed then you can then perhaps you can attempt to discount Svens to not be of THE BEST CURRENTLY AVAILABLE accurate sources of information available.

Seems Kudos is actually quite the resource for you. While it may require you to do some work, the data all seems to be there and I'm sure if you speak to Kudos he could help you refine the data to give you what you need. You then simply need to analyse it and then come to some sort of meaningful conclusion.

You can even visit several other threads where many of his results and observations have been posted concerning rankings and gridding subject matter.

Yes the world is full of anecdotal evidence.

 

[mthomas_95]

entitled few that thinks doing 250 laps to get the best lap is how a game like this should be done

Literally no one thinks this.