Does a good SR rating help noobs?

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United Kingdom
Behind you
I'm new and haven't done any driving games for years, GT4 was the last one I played. I got GT sport and only tried the online stuff because there really is no offline game. Anyway I'm enjoying it, but I'm not that good and improving slowly, I try to play fair and this obviously slows me down even more. Now we get to the problem I have, I'm just a D rated driver and happy enough to improve slowly, but if my SR is A or S I'm lucky if 30% of the grid are D's with the rest being well above me often with 2 or 3 A's. If I have a few bad games and get down to a B on the other hand I now get far easier games often full of players of my ability.
Take my last 2 races, I'm doing daily B and sitting with an A rating, 1 other D driver and 3 A's in there. I still have to cope with bad driving and get 2 secs because someone cuts into me. Last place, terrible race and no fun, but because of the penalty my next race is all D's except for 2 C's and it was a close fun admittedly a very scrappy race, but since my rating has been shot by "better" drivers I have the advantage of being in races where you don't really care about your rating and can just have fun.
Today I got my first pole, fastest lap and would have had a win if I hadn't been taken out on the last lap and it's been when I've been rated B and therefore get to drive against people of my sort of skill.
Yes I know most here are much better than me so want to drive at the highest level, but I'm not ready for that and want to drive against people I have some sort of a chance against and I don't get to if I drive cleanly.
 
If you haven't done so already, I recommend that you sign up for the FIA races. In the FIA races you will get consistently matched up with other drivers that are at your level. Those races are also longer so if you drive cleanly, then you can gain a lot of SR points. This was extremely helpful when I was just starting out earlier this year.
 
For new players maintaining a high SR may become frustrating.

Maintaining a high SR will theoretically match you against cleaner drivers. But at the highest SR you may be matched against much higher DR due to the smaller numbers of lower DR with that SR. ie if you have SR S there's a greater chance to matched with DR A+/A/B than DR C/D as there may only be a few DR C/D with SR S.

Higher SR will equal higher competition. For the top drivers maintaining a high SR is important to get into higher slots in FIA races. In these races you get matched then you qualify and the races are for FIA points more that just DR. So SR is important.

To increase DR in the Dailies you want a balance of fast and clean. Aim too high on either and it will be mathematically too challenging.

So the answer depends on how hard you want the competition to be.
 
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If you haven't done so already, I recommend that you sign up for the FIA races. In the FIA races you will get consistently matched up with other drivers that are at your level. Those races are also longer so if you drive cleanly, then you can gain a lot of SR points. This was extremely helpful when I was just starting out earlier this year.

Agree to disagree my good friend. FIA is fun and will improve your race craft (I believe as it has improved mine) BUT I disagree with your statement that you will be matched with drivers at your level. Yes the other drivers WILL be the same SR but they might all be the same DR OR you could see a possible split between a few DR. Also I still don't believe every B/S (as an example) are the same. Too many DR resets allow better racers to drop down into lower ratings to accumulate wins.

I ask you to look at the qualification times next time you get in a race . . . I personally have seen qualification times which are 3-4 seconds (some as high as 5-7 seconds) higher than my own. How is considered "matched"? This will show you what I have experienced and explains my first paragraph in this post.

Good post - Enjoy your racing!
 
If you haven't done so already, I recommend that you sign up for the FIA races. In the FIA races you will get consistently matched up with other drivers that are at your level. Those races are also longer so if you drive cleanly, then you can gain a lot of SR points. This was extremely helpful when I was just starting out earlier this year.

Agree to disagree my good friend. FIA is fun and will improve your race craft (I believe as it has improved mine) BUT I disagree with your statement that you will be matched with drivers at your level. Yes the other drivers WILL be the same SR but they might all be the same DR OR you could see a possible split between a few DR. Also I still don't believe every B/S (as an example) are the same. Too many DR resets allow better racers to drop down into lower ratings to accumulate wins.

I ask you to look at the qualification times next time you get in a race . . . I personally have seen qualification times which are 3-4 seconds (some as high as 5-7 seconds) higher than my own. How is considered "matched"? This will show you what I have experienced and explains my first paragraph in this post.

Good post - Enjoy your racing!

Yeah thanks, did enter both the national and manufacturers and it is a little bit better, but Timm is right DR doesn't totally equate to same level of drivers. You can't get a perfect system, but I'd be happy meeting C's as having to work makes me better, but watching A's is more fun on Youtube.
 
Dailies start matching by SR first, IIRC. Meaning that the matchmaking system will grab all the racers SR 90-99 and then sort them by DR and qualy time. Then SR 89-80, etc. Having just brought my main account back up from a DR reset, I can definitely attest to the fact that the lower your SR is the wider range of DR will be filling out your lobby. When my SR was hanging around the 60s or so, I'd often have lobbies that ranged from DR.A to DR.D. When I focused on raising my SR back up to 99, the wide DR variance went away.

Now, you are correct that with the DR reset system, a person of a similar DR rating is not necessarily the same skill level as you - especially this late in the game's lifecycle and with frustrated racers leaving the title until GT7 comes out. But you are far more likely to be among similarly skilled drivers when you're being matched with people of the same DR range as you. That's most likely to happen in the FIA races and when your SR is 90+. (Look up your KudosPrime stats, if you haven't already.)
 
Dailies start matching by SR first, IIRC. Meaning that the matchmaking system will grab all the racers SR 90-99 and then sort them by DR and qualy time. Then SR 89-80, etc. Having just brought my main account back up from a DR reset, I can definitely attest to the fact that the lower your SR is the wider range of DR will be filling out your lobby. When my SR was hanging around the 60s or so, I'd often have lobbies that ranged from DR.A to DR.D. When I focused on raising my SR back up to 99, the wide DR variance went away.

Now, you are correct that with the DR reset system, a person of a similar DR rating is not necessarily the same skill level as you - especially this late in the game's lifecycle and with frustrated racers leaving the title until GT7 comes out. But you are far more likely to be among similarly skilled drivers when you're being matched with people of the same DR range as you. That's most likely to happen in the FIA races and when your SR is 90+. (Look up your KudosPrime stats, if you haven't already.)

Using KudosPrime and I have exactly the opposite results from you. When I'm above 90 I see A's nearly always and when I'm below 60 I seldom see higher than a C. I think the high SR is just more common for higher rated drivers that they match me with people who "drive safe" rather than people I can actually race. Honestly the only difference I see between high and low SR rated drivers, is the lower ones tend to drive badly because they are bad and the high ones do it to win.
 
Agree to disagree my good friend. FIA is fun and will improve your race craft (I believe as it has improved mine) BUT I disagree with your statement that you will be matched with drivers at your level. Yes the other drivers WILL be the same SR but they might all be the same DR OR you could see a possible split between a few DR. Also I still don't believe every B/S (as an example) are the same. Too many DR resets allow better racers to drop down into lower ratings to accumulate wins.
For me personally, FIA races tend to be extremely closely matched. Everyone in my race last week was within ~5,000 DR, for instance. It just depends on the player pool that signs up for each race. And while there may be people who deliberately tank their SR to race in lower FIA lobbies and get wins but there's no real incentive to do so since the points will be worse than just finishing mid-pack in a properly matched race.
 
For me personally, FIA races tend to be extremely closely matched. Everyone in my race last week was within ~5,000 DR, for instance. It just depends on the player pool that signs up for each race. And while there may be people who deliberately tank their SR to race in lower FIA lobbies and get wins but there's no real incentive to do so since the points will be worse than just finishing mid-pack in a properly matched race.

I call these racers trophy hunters. They are trying to get the GTS trophy list completed . . . ?? wins gets a trophy.
 
Keep in mind that losing to A/B DR players when you are D DR basically does more or less nothing to your DR (you literally lose like 1-2 DR per A driver you finish behind at that point), so ultimately even if most of the lobby is A/B and you're only racing a few C/D drivers at the back, you are still likely to gain DR that way while avoiding the SR gulag. Additionally, if you manage to survive one of them dumpstering it in the race, you can gain a ridiculous amount (even upwards of 300 per player beaten) by beating any of them, while the losses will practically not affect you. For comparison, as a 65K DR A+ player I actually *lost* DR for finishing *2nd* in a dead time (3AM PT) lobby of about 50% B drivers and 50% C/D drivers the other day. I didn't check the DR of the person that won, but I'm pretty sure it was a C/D driver and they gained an absurd amount of DR from it (as they probably should).

Of course, that doesn't solve the problem of not being able to be matched with that many people at your level for thrilling races, but I think (personally) that you'll find that if you stick with it you'll be better off avoiding tanking your SR to win gulag races.
 
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Honestly the only difference I see between high and low SR rated drivers, is the lower ones tend to drive badly because they are bad and the high ones do it to win.
At lower DR, you get a lot of bad driving due to incompetence, even with SR >90. I found that above about 25k DR, in EMEA, major incompetence became quite rare, and there was a lot of good racing in FIA races in the 25-35k range. As you move upwards above 35k, the rating is selecting for the people who are most keen to win at all costs, and as you say, a lot of higher rated drivers drive dirty to finish higher up. Their dirty driving is much more skilled and subtle, they'll hit you just hard enough to disrupt you enough for them to pass.

If you're in a daily race as a C or D DR driver, then anyone with B DR or higher who finds themselves behind you for whatever reason will be incredibly keen to pass you to avoid huge DR loss, and most seem to see it as like a blue flag situation and think you should pretty much get out of their way because you must be slower. This is annoying, but the problem goes away as you get up the ratings, and as pointed out above, you don't actually lose much DR anyway if you are beaten by a much higher rated driver, so it's best to just let them go and not fight the position too hard.

FIA races should give you a much tighter spread of DR than daily races. However, there is still an effect where at the same DR, people with lower SR are worse drivers, and total race times are much worse, so it is much easier to do well in lower SR races at the same DR, IF you can avoid being taken out. Of course, if you manage to avoid being hit by people in these races, and finish high up because so many other people are driving off the track or hitting other cars, then your SR and DR will rise, and future races will become tougher. The way the system works is that you'll always eventually end up at a level where you're usually finishing mid-field.
 
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