Huge wall of text incoming. You have been warned!
Man, this game can give such highs and such frustrating lows.
I'm a custom race enthusiast, but I dropped
my beloved Porsche series (around de 1995 ClubSport model, did 20 liveries, made scripts for randomizing ballast/performance limiters and Excel sheets to keep track of events, championships, stats and everything) back in April simply because the rubberbanding with either AI method gets into my nerves and makes everything kinda pointless.
But I didn't keep track of the game, and thought that maybe things have improved since then. With Spec III about to drop, a new DLC, and the fact that I got myself a PSVR2 for testing, it made sense to resume the Porsche Cup season with the highlight of the series: a 2-hour race at Le Mans (24h complete cycle).
I absolutely love the real world event and the track. I am no alien, but I think I am pretty handy around La Sarthe: if not extremely quick, at least I know my way around it, so I don't make mistakes, know how to position the car, where to push and where to pass. I was very keen on doing the endurance and did it yesterday.
As I mentioned, I use a script to randomize the grid, since there is no qualifying, and the algorithm decided to put me on pole surrounded by a bunch of rivals with very similar ballast/performance modifiers, which would make things interesting, or so I thought.
Race starts and I could do the math: I would need to set engine mapping to 2 and 3, alternating it through the lap, in order to make 4 laps per stint. As the track is long, I knew it would be pointless to try and Scott Dixon the thing to squeeze out one more lap per stint. After the first two stints, stopping at laps 4 and 8 with everyone else, it was clear the race would go for 24 laps, but we’d need one more to round out the 2-hour mark.
That got me thinking: the AI will more likely than not stick to the plan and go stopping at each 4 laps, so they'll do 4-8-12-16-20-24, which means a pit stop at the end of 24, opening of the last lap. With that reasoning, and having a pack of 4 to 5 cars glued to me all the time (except for the Indy and Porsche curves, where Sophy drops a bit), I decided to anticipate my 4th pit window to lap 15th so I would make my last stop at the 23th lap: the goal was to make things more exciting and to build a bigger gap.
And so I did. Went to the pits while leading on the 15th lap. Got back to the track at 16th position, managed to get ahead of one car and, as predicted, everyone in front stopped on lap 16, so I was on the lead again. Playing in VR, I didn’t have the map to gauge the gap, but I was pretty sure it was enough to keep them out of my mirrors. Yay! It works. Except… hum, it didn’t. I didn’t see anyone for the first few corners, but halfway down Mulsanne... yeah, there they are, stuck behind me again. That instantly reminded me why this series wasn’t finished.
But maybe I was wrong! Maybe the VR didn't resolve the field on my mirrors, maybe I didn't actually made that much of a gap. So let's see what happens coming the next pit window. Again, I went to the pits a lap earlier (19th) and dropped to 12th this time, meaning the field was stretching. Next lap, 20th, everybody was pitting and I got the lead again. Same impression: I am ahead by some margin, but got my companions around me way before the end of the Mulsanne straigth.
At this point, I was a bit annoyed, but kept going and repeated the process for the last pit window: stopped at lap 23 and the AI the next lap. Dropped to 8th in my last stop because It was basically a stop-and-go: I needed fuel for just 2 laps. Got to the main straight as everybody in front of me were busy refueling and was 1st again. But, this time around, I hit pause, removed the VR and watched the map (because of course this is a racing game which doesn't show you your gap to your rivals because if it did you would notice right away something very weird happening).
And yeah, I could clearly see that I was far enough ahead to have a noticeable gap to the field as they were leaving the pits. I don't know how to guestimate, but let's say it was like 7-10 seconds: it was sizeable on map. Middle of Mulsanne? Everyone was back with me again
.
I mean, man, this... sucks!
So, to recap:
- I did a good race, no mistakes, drove really well
- Facing a competition that, at first, I took honestly as rivals matching my performance because we were in quite similar cars, I had to think ahead
- So I came up with a different strategy from the AI to pull away from them
- I took the risk and broke away from their pattern
- The strategy worked because I could actually notice the gap
- Felt good to resume the lead at that last lap, like a win over the machine! Take that, Sophy!
- But the game devalues my effort, nullifies my performance and strategy, and just bunch everyone together again because reasons.
It was really frustrating and made me rage-quit the race remembering perfectly why I dropped custom races back in April:
it’s pointless. I don’t see the fun in having to invest inordinate amounts of time crafting crazy scenarios just to circumvent a
game-design anti-pattern: the damned rubberbanding.
Look, Polyphony (lol, as if they’d read this), I know why you insist on it in single-player content: most GT players are casuals, they need cars around them all the time to stay engaged and not feel bored. I get that. I really understand this and I am really not against it. But you need to allow people doing custom-races to disable this if they want: create a slider, put together a clear description of what said "AI engagement" slider defines in game and let us just have fun with real racing, make the rubberbanding on by default, it's fine as long as I can turn it off if I want. I really like Sophy as it is, but fealing cheated out of my results simply nukes any fun I could be having with it.
This very thread is a testament to how detrimental this feature is: instead of discussing actual, real, racing, most posts go about what happens when you try this and that in order to make the racing feel less atificial.
The rubberbanding is a device to keep players coming back but it is keeping me away from the game. I will finish the Power Pack events and probably drop GT once more, maybe coming back eventually to see a new car or track they add to it and I don't think I will bother with the PSVR2 either: is amazing, but too much money into an accessory that I might turn on a few times a year. Which is sad. Really is, because the potential is here and it's just enormous. I wish I could finish my Porsche series and start my WSC 1992 (I’ve already made liveries for 6 Group-C cars and 14 GTs, but I have zero drive to actually play with them). The F3500-A and B cars are absolutely glorious, and I’d love to run championships with them - but like this? Meh.
looks interesting. I did a race at Spa yesterday with 2.1 and tow rivals crashed out at Eau Rouge in different incidents. Maybe a coincidence?
It really does dramatically improve the experience, provided you can live with there being a secret p1 40sec ahead of you, etc. Safety Cars make headcanon-appropriate rabbits for me, or as another user mentioned, you can flesh out an entire faster ‘class’ of a few cars that race each other ahead of your group. Curse the 20 grid slot limit!
