I haven't raced a lot recently because I don't have central air in my apartment and it's hot as **** in my living room. But I've been doing Daily Race C quite a bit this week. I've
never driven Gardens II before Monday, and I actually love that layout, even though I'm quite bad at the regular Gardens.
Anyway I guess the penalty system is quite sensitive to bumps from behind now, even if the car ahead doesn't leave the racing surface. No big deal; obviously it's good to
not hit someone when you have more momentum coming through a corner, but I had a couple minor contacts in a single race that resulted in my SR dropping from S to B. I accept the blame but,
yikes.
So today I've been trying to crawl out of no man's land of Forza-esque races, and I had a pretty good race where I was able to climb up to P1 and get the win. There was only one driver that was able to match my pace, and they actually had a purple lap slightly faster than my best. The last few laps were quite intense because they consistently kept me in range and were faster in certain sections than me. I won in the end, and I thought it was a good fight, so I gave them a little "You are fast!" and the conversation played out... well, much differently than I thought it would:
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What I thought was a fairly good race at the end, in reality was
cheating on my part, apparently. I immediately was called a ”cheater," which surprised me because there was
never any contact between us, and all I could reply with was "What??" because I had no idea how they thought I was cheating. They asked how I was faster in the final corner, which I noticed throughout the race that they were losing time on me there.
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The way I take the final corner doesn't feel like some secret to me; at the very end of the outside kerb I lift off the throttle about halfway and turn in at the same time, and once I'm on a good trajectory I throttle up smoothly, usually hitting the apex right when I'm at full throttle, and I can take the rest of the turn flat out into the straight. That doesn't seem novel to me, and again, I've never driven Gardens II before Monday, so I'm still acclimating to the track. Obviously I couldn't give them a full explanation in the post-race chat so I said "Decelerate before apex?" I was never directly behind them so I don't actually know what line they were taking or why they were slower. For reference, here's a clip of how I took the final corner on my personal fastest lap of that particular race:
I don't think that was even my fastest go through that turn, because I had to modulate the accelerator more than I like to there.
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I was then called a "grip cheater." I don't even know what the **** that means, so I was only becoming more confused. I don't know if there actually is some sort of grip exploit, and if there is I certainly don't know about it. They might have just pulled it out of their ass for all I know. Then I realized exactly what was going on.
"Look at the top times they take it like i do"
Here's the thing. I actively ignore the meta in this game. I don't pick cars because they're at the top of the leaderboard, I rarely look at the top times except to see how far off I am, and I sure as hell don't watch leaderboard laps. I know a lot of people do so to try to improve and there's nothing wrong with that. However, I'm
deeply paranoid that if I try to mimic what the top drivers do, it's going to give me a false sense of security that I must be improving as a driver; if I rely on the meta cars and try to mimic top laps, it will leave a massive blindspot in how I perceive my own skill level, because I won't be able to tell if I'm actually improving my racecraft, or if I'm successful simply because I'm in the best car, and trying to mimic the top laps when my driving style could be completely different from those drivers.
And that's exactly what's happened here. I kind of felt bad that they didn't understand that. "How am i slower" They were incredulous; I don't know if they were using a meta car for this race, but they were clearly studying the fastest laps of the top drivers, and made the assumption that they were taking the
only correct line through the final corner because the top drivers did it that way, and if someone took a different line faster, then they
must have been cheating, of course. Again, I have no idea what line the top drivers take through that corner or any part of the circuit. I'm sure whatever the top drivers do is indeed faster than what I do.
But just because you try to study and mimic what they do doesn't mean you understand why it's faster. And if you don't understand why, then you probably aren't going to be able to execute it properly anyway.
I wish I could have actually explained that to them, because they were quite fast. But they also accused me of being a cheater, so all I managed to type was "**** top times," which was not an insult directed at them in any capacity, but they replied "Yeah **** u too cheater," and apparently reported me for "grip cheat."
Oh how I've missed this game.
