As you wish.
It's all about when something is considered "balanced". Is one person being able to set comparable lap times in all cars enough for them to qualify as "balanced"? Or should several drivers of roughly similar skill levels be able to set times approaching the midrange regardless of chosen car and have close races? Because I'd argue - particularly in a series with the spirit I'm going for with this - the latter should be the ideal.
Does anyone remember the specs we started with? Because when I was testing them, I could set comparable lap times across the board - if this series had been just myself and the 15 clones I keep locked away in my basement, it would've been brilliantly close racing all the way through. Granted, some were ever-so-slightly stronger at one track only to suffer a little more at another, but I chose to see that as an opportunity to make this an evolving, more unpredictable series. More on this later. But it goes a bit further than that. See, I'd called upon
@Drex124's help (well, not him specifically. I made a public announcement and he was the only person on the site to not have me on their Ignore list) in advance, and when he tested them, they were indeed, to put it as bluntly as I can, unbalanced as 🤬.
And that, right there, is the crux of the issue I've tried to deal with for the past month-and-a-bit: in addition to different skill levels overall, some people are better at handling certain cars than others. As we've discovered, I'm not a magician in a RWD car; someone else may be similarly less capable in FWD cars. Where, then, does this leave the question of when things are truly "balanced"?
The moment the BMW feels competitive - as in a similarly skilled driver to me, capable of pushing the BMW in the same way I can push the Focus, could reasonably be expected to put in the same sort of lap times as myself - I'll leave it be. Until then, it's subject to exactly as much scrutiny as all the others.
Speaking of which, that point I said I'd go back to? This is where that gets juicy.
If one were to look at the championship standings, you'll notice a very clear pattern among those who have been attending most of the four rounds we've had thus far. Most cars (and people, actually) have had one or two good racedays, with the rest being middling-at-best.
Even with you personally taken out of this equation, the BMWs have only had 1 weekend where they haven't performed extremely well - and I suspect even that one weekend mainly has to do with the slight touring cars that went on.
And now, just to cover all the immediately-obvious angles:
- Nobody's bothered to show up in a BRZ or MX5 for the longest of time so I don't really have much "real-world" data to build an informed opinion on,
- The Honda has, somewhat as intended, balanced its one week of glory at Red Bull Ring with middling results elsewhere. Much like the Focus has. And, to a slightly more uncertain extent courtesy of a recent entry to the series, the Golf
- With all due respect to anyone doing this, but hosting a series with this varied a car selection and custom BoP is a completely different ballgame to hosting another wants-to-be-taken-seriously Gr.3 series running (and thus being able to blame all issues on) the in-game BoP. And you get absolutely 🤬 on for doing so. And, finally,
- No, none of this entire post was meant as a personal attack on anyone. So stop thinking of it as such. Please.
I guess the ultra-short version is as follows: Many a lesson has been learnt from this, my (engaging self-deprecation) highly-anticipated grand return to hosting online things in a bigger capacity than the Dragon Trail 300KM (and yes, that's a plug. November is coming) - a whole raft of mistakes I can guarantee I won't be making again. There's a painfully obvious link here to a snarky remark about how I'll make new mistakes instead, but hey-ho, last time I checked, that's how life works. I can't do anything about that. What I
can do is sound like a broken record and say "I know for certain that things will be better next time. But that's for next time. Now let's have some fun these last three weeks".
And yes, more than one bean was spilled just then. I hope people haven't got any plans for early July.
