Is Sophy 2.0 no longer competitive?
- Thread starter rlx
- 319 comments
- 32,266 views
- 2,933
- Austria
- GTP_SnowCrash
A couple of things I noted trying the Sophy races on Professional level with road cars.
- The opponent cars are all chosen in the range of 100% - 110% of your own PP. (I assume it's common knowledge that Sophy is always on stock tyres and setups)
I wish I could understand why they chose to do it that way. Sophy 1.0 was so good that they had to give it a worse car or it would blow you away every time. Now they give Sophy 2.0 a better car and then make it go slower when you have no chance. Seems like an odd design choice.
There are also obvious flaws in Sophy-behaviour. Especially when passing you, they often swerve back to the racing line when there's still overlap, resulting in hitting the front of your car completely unprovoked. It feels almost like Sophy 2.0 hasn't been trained as long as Sophy 1.0 was, maybe so that it makes more mistakes and is not "too perfect"?
I didn't try how it behaves on the lower settings yet - will be interesting to see how different the car choice is...
- The opponent cars are all chosen in the range of 100% - 110% of your own PP. (I assume it's common knowledge that Sophy is always on stock tyres and setups)
- On lap 1, Sophy basically is going full speed.
- At the start of lap 2, suddenly it seems the Sophy cars get a power cut. It is particularly obvious, if your car is rather underpowered - on lap 1 you get blown away on the straights, on lap 2 you can suddenly stay close. Sometimes, when you are close on a straight you can actually see the moment this happens - it's like they suddenly do not apply full throttle anymore, although I think it's more likely a limitation of engine power, something like 10% less power.
- Lap 3 is a continuation of lap 2, but if you overtake Sophy, it returns to lap 1-like power.
I wish I could understand why they chose to do it that way. Sophy 1.0 was so good that they had to give it a worse car or it would blow you away every time. Now they give Sophy 2.0 a better car and then make it go slower when you have no chance. Seems like an odd design choice.
There are also obvious flaws in Sophy-behaviour. Especially when passing you, they often swerve back to the racing line when there's still overlap, resulting in hitting the front of your car completely unprovoked. It feels almost like Sophy 2.0 hasn't been trained as long as Sophy 1.0 was, maybe so that it makes more mistakes and is not "too perfect"?
I didn't try how it behaves on the lower settings yet - will be interesting to see how different the car choice is...
I have seen similar behavior with the "normal ai" cars when doing custom races. (In my custom races at the nordschleife at night the "slower" cars (cars are same spec from my garage) even indicate with lights that they will move out my way/stick to the left or right side of the track...)
- 126
- Croatia
- Deni323ci
Sadly is just another catch the rabbit race but with aware AI and sometimes really nice battles.
But why cripple it I don't get it. Let it drive at full and we'll tune our cars accordingly. It would be a nice challenge for example sophy race 600 they all drive 600-ish pp car and you try to win it with as low as possible.
But why cripple it I don't get it. Let it drive at full and we'll tune our cars accordingly. It would be a nice challenge for example sophy race 600 they all drive 600-ish pp car and you try to win it with as low as possible.
- 999
- Spain
I've had this thought before, and regarding football games in the past. I know nothing about programming nor AI, but my lingering impression is that it's not that it's difficult to make CPU opponents hard to beat, but about making them good but still beatable.
Is it possible to replicate human error overlaid onto optimally fast driving abilities?
I've always thought it would be like being stuck behind Verstappen and resigning yourself to waiting for him to make a mistake before you even stand a chance of passing him.
- 1,273
- Deadlights with Pennywise and the Balloons
- naughty_teddy1
As much bad press/rep fifa/ea football has, the granular cpu sliders are spot on.
In fact there's a group that constantly tweak the sliders to make the game as realistic as possible... Community sliders... they've been around for years and have a big following on forums.
Woukd be great if pd allowed granular control of cpu ability in certain facets.
In fifa yiu cam tweak from 1 to 100 around 20 odd parameters, such as first touch, shooting, passing, aggression, tackling, various error rates etc
The generic levels are all usually flawed in some way ie higher levels are certainly tougher, but cam make gane tedious/not enjoyable as can feel like playing flawless robits that don't make mistakes. More like playing a maths equation than football...
Whereas you can make the gsne challenging using sliders, but tweak them so cpu is still realistic, prone to errors/mistakes... like irl.
A don't indicate/drive like tourists option on Nordschleife would be good, for a start...
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- 208
- The_Revengel
Here's my take:
Make Sophy unbeatable and nobody will try it. But by making Sophy 2.0 beatable (and the rubber band effect exists all over the single player universe in Gran Turismo) you have a much higher chance of people driving against Sophy. I think it's the right way to go. Not perfect, but far better than what existed prior to Spec II.
The point is to encourage players to try a stock car (or close to it anyhow) for a more thrilling door-to-door racing experience. If we take the bolded above (and that's up to every individual player, by the way) then it's like taking a Tomahawk to the Sunday Cup. You can do it but it's not the intended point.
Let me toss myself under the bus.
If I go out and drive a Cobra in the Sunday Cup because I want to hear the engine or just get a weekly challenge done as quickly as possible - I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this - then I'm choosing to kick the idea of a competitive race to the curb. However, if I choose a similarly equipped car (say, a stock Fiat 500) there's a better chance I'll need some driving skills to pull off the win.
By having Sophy at the level she is, the user has the option to have a great battle with the best A.I. in a console game (opinion - shared by many but still) and improve driving skills in a 2-3 lap battle using standard-equipped cars (for the most part - now she can select based on your car.) The secret sauce is PD has kept this option achievable for more drivers by toning down Sophy to Sophy 2.0 and leaving the rubber band effect.
Granted that's just my opinion . . . it may be wrong.
- 1,273
- Deadlights with Pennywise and the Balloons
- naughty_teddy1
There yiu go. Looks like I over exaggerated the sliders available, but that gives yiu the idea.
Like i say, the people who create these settings are held in high regard, abd constantly test/tweak as EA frequently tinker with gameplay physics/mechanics.
Idea is to make it as close to real football as possible, and fun/engaging.
Fifa has plenty of critics, but I think many would enjoy it much more if they copied these settings.
I see no reason why pd and other companies coukdnt offer simikar features in their games.
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- 1,273
- Deadlights with Pennywise and the Balloons
- naughty_teddy1
Good list tbf. Maybe sim racing experts have more input.
Ultimately, it's stuff of dreams anyway, as pd have no track record of this kind of thing. More useful than sophy ajd would add much more overall imo.
Given level of enthusiasts, serious players I have littke doubt we'd see optimum sliders published on sites like this, as certain players would no doubt enjoy tweaking, testing settings for tens/endless of hours!
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- 959
- Klondike_rush
I don't think they should have that many sliders in a Console game. The majority of people playing on Console could find the game to complicated.
That being said a few sliders, mainly for AI difficulty, and race length, and then let the credit payout scale along with those sliders would be awesome, and relatively more simple to implement and test in development.
Its more or less a 3 variables which already exist in the game.
Those variables need some UI code where the user can scale the value for AI difficulty, and race length.
In the background have those variables increase / decrease the Race payout variable value according to their new values.
The basics of it is so simple that any junior developer can make this kind of functionality in like 20 minutes.
Of course there is also need for some testing, how the AI will behave at different values, but for a company the size of PD it should not really be a concern.
That being said a few sliders, mainly for AI difficulty, and race length, and then let the credit payout scale along with those sliders would be awesome, and relatively more simple to implement and test in development.
Its more or less a 3 variables which already exist in the game.
Those variables need some UI code where the user can scale the value for AI difficulty, and race length.
In the background have those variables increase / decrease the Race payout variable value according to their new values.
The basics of it is so simple that any junior developer can make this kind of functionality in like 20 minutes.
Of course there is also need for some testing, how the AI will behave at different values, but for a company the size of PD it should not really be a concern.
dabz343
(Banned)
- 950
- United States
- dabz343
You make a good point. GT should preserve the 'simplicity' aspect, while also balancing some players' need for intricacies.
How about 2 layers of customization? 1st layer is simple, probably 3-5 parameters to set Sophy. But there are additional 2-3 parameters nested within each of the 1st layer's 3-5? That way, more variations could be had and thus more players may find their own setting that work perfectly for what they are trying to achieve.
- 1,273
- Deadlights with Pennywise and the Balloons
- naughty_teddy1
I think it's a case of having preset default difficulties now, but as with fifa, presenting the ability to customize for the more discerning player.
As I do agree, it would likely turn off a fair % of more casual players. I wouldn't champion/advocate for sliders only or making in any way mandatory.
Even just aggressiveness/skill sliders that acc has woukd be an improvement.
I know of casual gt7 fans who don't really notice 'chase tge rabbit' as an issue, if thry notice it all as not proper rscing and enjoy gt7 fir what it is every now and then, before pivoting back to their yearly purchases of cod/fifa. They wouldn't be interested in optimising ai at all I suspect.
One of them genuinely has no clue as to tge assists he even has enabled, just leaves it at default.
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- 999
- Spain
Looking back at the introductory GT7 screens, there's three 'default' difficulties available from game intro. The lowest of which has assisted braking as one of the standard options. It's absolutely unfathomable to me that they think that the bottom 33% of players might need that level of invasive input assistance in a racing game.
