Falling from grace

[Zenjungian]

Wow, it takes some doing to climb back up the SR ratings once you’ve fallen from grace. Down in the lower grades there can be pushing and shoving and even when I was trying to avoid all contact I was getting penalised for being smashed into. It was often two steps forward three steps back. I’m glad to say I’m back into SR/S and I will guard it carefully.

 

[Krypton78]

Wow, it takes some doing to climb back up the SR ratings once you’ve fallen from grace. Down in the lower grades there can be pushing and shoving and even when I was trying to avoid all contact I was getting penalised for being smashed into. It was often two steps forward three steps back. I’m glad to say I’m back into SR/S and I will guard it carefully.

Absolutely agee. Since patch 1.23 its easier to fall down and harder to climb back. Before that update I was almost automaticly at SR 99, now I'll have to watch out.

You don't get penalties for lightly contacs, but if you get one with the orange arrow showing "SR down" you have a problem. Losing 10-20 SR is usually the case then.

And additionally you get for contacts some minus SR in secret without getting it displayed or getting a penalty during the race at all. But if you check your SR afterwards, you see you didn't gain the normal SR amount for the race (for race B 6 SR points, race C 9 points) or even did lose some.

But at least you don't get much SR down by driving beyond track limits, even the penalties are displayed then.

 

[Zenjungian]

Absolutely agee. Since patch 1.23 its easier to fall down and harder to climb back. Before that update I was almost automaticly at SR 99, now I'll have to watch out.

You don't get penalties for lightly contacs, but if you get one with the orange arrow showing "SR down" you have a problem. Losing 10-20 SR is usually the case then.

And additionally you get for contacts some minus SR in secret without getting it displayed or getting a penalty during the race at all. But if you check your SR afterwards, you see you didn't gain the normal SR amount for the race (for race B 6 SR points, race C 9 points) or even did lose some.

But at least you don't get much SR down by driving beyond track limits, even the penalties are displayed then.

Yes, I wouldn’t mind so much if all SR deductions were displayed but I have had clean race stars and SR deductions that I wasn’t expecting. I’ve also had penalties for being rammed. The odd one isn’t an issue when I’m SR 99 but when trying to claw my way back up it was a nightmare lol.

If you were to look at my Kudos Prime there are a couple of weeks where it looks like I was a complete hooligan but I swear I was trying to be the cleanest driver on the planet!

 

[Krypton78]

I would say its a good change, but for example you still get penalties for beeing divebombed, because the system thinks you didn't left him room or so.

Or you get penalties for losing control, spinning and hitting the wall. As long as this things are not solved, its broken at all anyway.

How hard can it be to program correctly, really. Its 10 month now.

 

[Skeletor27]

Am I the only one who doesn't have a problem with the penalty system? Overall I think it works pretty good considering it's a computer algorithm. It would probably be worse if there was a human in charge of issuing penalties.

I've purposely sandbagged my SR/S down to a B and worked it back up to an S again. I didn't find it that difficult. Getting out of B took a little while though. Had one contact penalty through my journey back up where I barely touched the person, but "it" was right. I've had other and witnessed many other incidents where penalties were given and not given, and I honestly agreed with "it" on all of them.

 

[Zenjungian]

Am I the only one who doesn't have a problem with the penalty system? Overall I think it works pretty good considering it's a computer algorithm. It would probably be worse if there was a human in charge of issuing penalties.

I've purposely sandbagged my SR/S down to a B and worked it back up to an S again. I didn't find it that difficult. Getting out of B took a little while though.

Well I really struggled to get back up. I think partly I struggled with last weeks B race track. It was close racing and too easy for others to cause conflict. On the whole I think the penalty system works pretty well but I would say there are instances where I’ve been needlessly punished and instances where I’ve been blatantly pushed off without the offender getting punished. I would say it’s getting better not worse and is easily the best of any game I’ve played.

 

[Skeletor27]

I had a blast with last weeks B race (Gr.4 @ Dragon Tail ). It's what got me back into Sport Mode after several month hiatus. But Gr.4 is my favorite category and I'm pretty good at Dragon Tail.

I saved the replays of the few incidents that happened in front of me where penalties caused massive crying in the chat box after the race. After viewing the replay, I concluded the penalties were justified. I'm willing to bet money that a lot of cases are like that.

Keep working at it. Next time you get a penalty you don't agree with, save the replay to get another perspective of the whole thing. One time I rear ended someone hard enough to send him sailing into the cat litter and he ended up with the penalty. In that case it was because he got on the brakes way too early. From his perspective I punted him off and the penalty was bogus.

 

[DakotaXIII]

It's easier to fall than it is to climb. This might be by design, but it's very heavy handed. Personally I don't think you should able to lose more than 200-300% the maximum available SR gains for a single race, given the system isn't perfect and can't calculate blame properly.

I got my SR up to 92 at one stage, then had a nightmare race with two orange SR penalties after dubious incidents triggered by someone else -- SR dropped to 68 in one go. That's a drop of 24. If I had run a perfect race (+0.25 SR per sector or whatever it is), I would have only been able to gain roughly 3-4 SR depending on the number of sectors. Let's say that's 4 SR max for arguments sake (not counting any clean race multipliers).

24 is 600% of 4.

There doesn't seem to be any cap on the amount of SR you can lose in a race (before you wind up being DQd for penalty time). But there's obviously a cap on the amount of SR you can gain (races are only so long). So, inherently, it's a LOT easier to fall than it is to gain. Too much so, in my opinion.

I think PD should implement some kind of SR falls cap, in admission that sometimes you get an SR penalty for something that is not your fault.

If this was set at 200-300% the maximum gains, serial offenders would still drop down the SR tables (the number of not-at-fault incidents is roughly the same for everyone, plus they would continue to get more penalties than the average driver due to the incidents they cause).

Clean drivers will still gain the exact same amount of SR as they would have for clean racing, but not be penalised too heavily for getting caught up in stuff that wasn't their fault. The law of averages still applies and, over a number of races, people will still wind up spaced out on the SR table according to how dirty they are. Naturally this would create a top-loading effect (more people in S, A, B etc.) but PD could just change the bands in the backgrounds to control the weighting (shrink the S, A and B bands then widen the C and D bands proportionately.)

I think a small change like this would go a long way to making the game seem more fair.

Brainstorming aside. OP: wait for the new races on a Monday. Practice the tracks in arcade mode with BOP on. Don't set a lap time. Pick the longest race. Cruise around at the back, overtaking the odd straggler and avoiding trouble. I did this at the Mountain last week and farmed 30 SR in one evening. DR stayed level as I made a few overtakes.

 

[Sven Jurgens]

Unfair penalties still happen, yet more often penalties aren't handed out at all, just SR taken away without telling anyone until after the race. Working my way up through the field on Sarthe I sometimes get crashed off in the next corner, especially when I drive a GR.C car that has earlier braking points. 1 in 5 times I end up with the penalty for getting rammed off the road. It's better than 5 out of 5 times when it gave penalties to both cars.

The system is very simple. When there is contact and the other car leaves the road first, you get the penalty. So if someone taps you while flying off you get the penalty.

For example, bump pass, I get 3 sec penalty as he goes off road after bumping me.

Then you have what really are racing incidents yet since the other car is too eager you get a penalty. Here I'm slowing down for a car losing control in front of me, get rubbed by a car from behind trying to take advantage who then accelerates too fast and touches the wall and I get 3 sec penalty.

Then there are the times you avoid the diver and his mess and you get a track penalty for your efforts to avoid getting hit.

Better a track penalty then get punted and get the penalty for it I guess. I look more in my rear mirror in corners than where I'm going to avoid people...

In SR.S it happens rarely enough to fall from grace, at most I drop 1 or 2 SR when something like that happens in a race. When it happens multiple times, that's when you go down fast. One is enough to negate the 15 point 'margin' you have in GR.C. So with getting hit twice like that you're down 10 to 20 SR after the race. After 1 hit with penalty I go into full avoidance mode, as when you get to lower SR rankings people take more risks and have less control. The one that stays on the road is assumed at fault...

I've had to work my way back up from SR.B with the new penalty system and it took 5 races just to get to SR.A while driving very carefully (never qualifying though, always working up through the field). From there it took 2 more races to get to max SR again. At lower SR there is more rubbing going on in the races which makes it hard to earn SR. At max SR there is still plenty rubbing, yet a blue S is a blue S no matter if it's +1 or +15 SR. To get back up with +1 or +2 SR per race takes a long time!