Yeah I'm this person. It takes the right combination of car and track to get me excited to play sport mode. More road cars isn't what is going to draw me in. I understand mistakes happen and that winning isn't something I am guaranteed. The main reason I require the right combination of car and track is because I loathe the other humans who play sport mode. The odds of having a clean race are less than 5% regardless of my safety rating. The odds of having someone get butthurt and wreck me because I passed them is higher than 50%.
Fix those two things and I'm playing sport mode every week not just when I really like the combo.
To me that's the biggest problem. Not the combinations PD gives us but just how horrifically bad the experience is more often than it isn't. Like someone jumps into sport for the first time and plays a whole week. Odds are pretty good they're going to have a bad time and it takes a very specific desire to push through that experience just to get to where it won't happen every time just about half the time.
I'd bet a lot of people who do not play sport mode regularly have tried it at least 5 times and have had junk experiences more often than not. Why bother when skill and pace are never rewarded and the best way to advance is to wreck the car in front of you?
The thing is, the more you play sport mode, the more the ppl around you get to know you and if you’re dirty you will undoubtedly attract the same, the SR matters hugely as right at the top of S it’s clean with ppl wanting to hang on to that rating.
I can jump into race after race and know my opponents by and large, those messages at the start generally relax the lobby I feel because folk will be clean with folk they know and have raced before,
Your points are spot on for casual drivers, ppl who haven’t matured into daily racing because for sure you have to drive a certain way around certain ppl to make them know your intentions, slowing down after a bump is a huge thing,
For me the player base isn’t the problem, I don’t even think the penalties are either, it’s the variety. I do love a gr3 or 4 for the tracks where I feel it works and I’ll enjoy, but I do feel the game is so vast in its car count that could put certain cars with certain tracks, and shuffle them, but that formula will take some creation and upkeep.
Beyond the staple of gr3/4 cars, B & C are spot on rotating between sprint and endurance each week, this just needs a bunch more tracks, Road America, Silverstone, plenty to choose from the various F1, Touring championships worldwide,
The gr3/4 all need to be updated and current and throw some one make, RWD only into that mix and sort the bop so is not a meta fest every week
The there should be the same in road cars, sprint and endurance but I’d like to see combos voted on so any with a real high rating could be used again, 3 times per year max,
Sport just doesn’t cover everyone’s car culture like the game does.
But in any case, I’m happy to miss a few weeks out here and there rather than race combos I’m not keen on whilst those do come up and they will from time to time
