I think you need to read again. I wasn’t on the inside, I was behind him approaching the corner. He was taking the middle line around the turn since that’s where he entered the turn, so that was what he decided would be his racing line. I was actually taking a similar line to him. He didn’t start outside and then come in. He was literally in the middle part of the track in the first part of the turn and continued on nearly to the middle part of the turn. As soon as he saw me coming up the inside part of the turn, he moved his car further inside to block. That’s not a clean defensive move, that’s blocking, and it isn’t a sportsmanlike move at all, whether a sportsmanlike move is defined as it is in real racing or by PD themselves (blocking is in one of their videos, and it even says to refrain from blocking someone trying to pass). What it looked like happened is that he carried too much speed into the turn and went wide halfway through, and then tried to correct it once he saw me coming up the inside and blocked my pass attempt. By the time he reached where I was, the front of my car was even with the back right door of him and I had to go into the grass to avoid a collision and he continued to the inside until I touched the wall.
It was a clear case of blocking. He made a mistake by carrying too much speed and then completely changed his line. Just because you’re ahead doesn’t mean you can change your racing line halfway through a turn because someone is trying to pass. That’s both dangerous and unsportsmanlike. Also, the first incident with him isn’t even being discussed here and shouldn’t be ignored either. He drove up on my bumper, loosened me up, and ended up pushing me away and made an easy pass.
The penalty system is both flawed and inconsistent and when it negatively affects you, it completely ruins your race. This isn’t iRacing where most people are solid drivers who know proper racing techniques. This is GT where there’s many more casual drivers who know nothing about racing lines, passing, etc, even at higher levels. I understand the system will never be perfect, but it needs to be worked on so it stops penalizing people who are doing nothing wrong.
I did read your original post again and in what I read in your original post I would still make the same assumption, now what you wrote in your reply and 2nd post to what I wrote describes a scenario much more detailed that changes the facts from"he turns and put two wheels on the grass to stop me" which was what you had written originally and I said I would need to see a replay based off what information was given in that first account to change my opinion of the incident based off the information as written.
Now in your second accounting you give a lot more information regarding car positioning and alignments going through the corner and from that description it sounds as if he overcooked the corner and he turned down onto your position of an inside racing line where by your accounts you were holding and you did not slide up into him but rather he turned down into you hitting your car forcing you off the inside of the track before he was able to put "two tires in the grass" as you originally wrote.
If that was the case then you were in the right, but you have to admit that the differences in how the incidents were written actually could very easily be describing two separate incidents instead of the same incident.
I also bet that the other driver would have a different accounting of how the events unfolded or what happened and would probably say he was going for the late apex to maintain a higher corner speed and not blocking and that is the reason that only a replay showing the actual event can be used by a 3rd party in most cases to determine who was in the right and who was in the wrong. Even with a replay some incidents can still leave a question of who was right or who may have been in the wrong and those get chalked up as "racing incidents" with no one being listed as "at fault" for the incident. Can easily get pretty confusing would you not agree?
This is one of the reasons that any penalty system for a racing game is going to get it wrong some of the time, there are many different ways to attack a section of race track and those differences sometime end up in contact. What about the situation that everyone is running at racing speed and the front car of about a train of 4 loses rear grip, gets loose and check up on the gas trying to keep from spinning out and basically for those at the rear of the pack it is like those in front just parked it and he hits the rear of the car in front of him causing a chain reaction.
Who is at fault there? The guy in the front that failed to maintain grip and drastically cut speed in an instant or the cars in the train that hit the cars in front of them because of the instantaneous reduction of speed or would that be classed as just a racing incident? Remember we are racing on a track and the 2 second rule does not come into play like on the public streets. How can the racers behind anticipate the sudden change in momentum when they are running inches off the car in fronts rear bumper looking to make a pass at the first opportunity? Should those racers be assessed a 10 second penalty for contact while the lead car that actually caused the incident be penalty free?
No system that relies on 1"s and 0's to determine fault or punishment in something that has the potential to have such controversial situations that many times a change in the blame of an incident can be caused or a result of the "intent" of the driver or even the loss of the rate of acceleration by tires losing traction from just being slightly over the physics of being able to maintain grip.
This system seems at least to start to be doing a fairly good job of grouping drivers of similar speeds together and taking basic actions such as collisions or off track excursions and assigning a penalty for the action.
Also using the amount of incidents for the time or miles raced to further group racers together or in some cases separate the racers by how on track incident free they race is another good step in trying to get clean competitive on line races to be more than just a rare event. . The system does lack the ability to examine a replay and make a penalty determination from the video evidence.
As a result sometimes penalties will be wrongly assigned and when it happens it does suck. I do not think you will find anyone that races this game online that has not had an instance of feeling they had unfairly been penalized at least once. I think for what the system is it is overall doing well and even trying to assign blame at times to the guilty party but right now that model that assigns blame still needs some work.
I think that turning on "high damage" would also stop some of the ramming or using other cars for a braking berm as damage will slow down your car and in instances require a trip to pits to continue. That still is not going to stop those that do not care about their ratings but as the rating classes get further separated and the guys wanting to race and run in clean races "value" their rating then there will be more emphasis on the "give" rather than "take" part.
Patience and trying to race within what the system is trying to promote is the best we can do as racers. I think this going to single day races will cause more on track incidents as racers have less time to learn the tracks and cars they are trying to race so there will be more mistakes and frustration in the on line racing as a result.
I know my on line racing will be made very selectively as a result. I personally do not want to be one of those that ruins someone's race because I do not know the track, the reasonable braking points or the cars behavior or handling characteristics. I think this may cause many to lose interest and put the game down.
. Obviously send a message afterwards though
