Online Continues To Be A Frustrating Experience

  • Thread starter Thread starter jcmc
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For the last months I have been home only on weekends with most of the time dedicated to wife and friends when I am home. That means I only have about an hour or two at night to hit the online mode. Needless to say, its a pain in the ass to find a proper racing room. I am a great fan of low powered race cars, GT-300, Clio Trophy cars etc.. Finding such lobbies is a task of neigh impossibility. Either I search for 30-40 minutes or wait the same time in a self created lobby for people to join.

And guess what, when people join, they generally dont have a clue what a GT-300 car is. I tend to be a nice host, pointing people the right direction, telling them what cars are ok, or what substitute they might run instead if they dont have one.

But honestly that takes up soo much time and still you get that idiot who tries to enter the race with one of the rally cars or a stanard street car. Its tiresome and I realy dont have the time for this. Last two weekends I was home I probably didnt even get a single race online.

This game needs a proper system to set up lobbies - applying tags that one can search for. Dont have a GT-300 car, you cant enter the lobby - want to have a GT-300 race, just search for the tag. I dont know where the problem lies, but with all that nifty database technology at hands today, it cant be soo hard to add some searchtags to the lobby system.
 
Search tags would be a fantastic idea. I guess a really primitive version of this is the race for fun etc category system but in reality it does absolutely nothing.
 
GT5 online after PSN outage lag a lot, you can still race but it's ugly to see all your rivals cars jumping from left to right like a crazy ball, the new PSN has almost ruined online lobbies for me. Do you ever experienced anything like that?
 
Tags id like to see:

Type of race to expect:
Drift or normal

Distance of race to expect:
long, short, medium

Type of cars (basic):
Street cars, Race Cars, Rally Cars, Free for all

Type of cars (advanced):
A tag per race series (DTM, GT-300, GT-500, GTR, LMP, GT1, historical race cars, European Supercars, Musclecars, FormulaGT, you name it)

producer/nationality/production date:
Those are all already present within the GT5 database, though one cannot use them to set up a lobby.

Type of tracks used:
Thats actually already in the game but not utilised for the online mode

Modded/Unmodded:
One should be able to limit races to unmodded (with tires as exception) cars, to alleviate the power differences of modded tuned down cars from the stock game version.

I dont believe that it could be that hard to add in such a tag system. At least as an advanced search option to find a propoer lobby for oneself. A second step would be for the host to specifically limit the car selection in a lobby to the cars associated with those tags.

Another feature would be to give the host the possibility to sort through the complete car list of GT5 and allow specific cars to be used (like the arcade car selection already available).

Search tags would be a fantastic idea. I guess a really primitive version of this is the race for fun etc category system but in reality it does absolutely nothing.
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Yeah, I looked forward to it, but firstly it seems to do nothing and secondly in the German version of GT5 the race types were named in such an awkward way that they dont actually tell you anything about what they are supposed to be. The only search function that I found helpful was the skid control on/off one.
 
Trying to race at Nur Norb. I usually just race with a group I like but Saturday I wanted to try out my newly tuned Scuderia in 600pp street rooms.
The group vote went to the Nord. There was like 13-16 drivers. Generally I would start in mid pack or up front. EVERY race was started with a chain reaction of no braking into the first turn by the last cars. Typical I know.Then whenever I was able to make my way through the first set of turns, ANY braking zone was met with a punt off course. Then the punters would invariably crash by themselves and quit the race. I could never catch back up, so I'd just cruise along alone in last place just to finish the race.

I should know better than race with that many drivers or on that track by now and just use the track for time trials. I guess a lot of people don't know the brake zones that well which is understandable but I guess to a bad driver, success is to be had by smashing anyone out of the way as soon as possible. I felt like getting out the tank car!
 
I tried doing some online racing this weekend and I couldnt find a good race anywhere. Nobody was racing. Everyone was just messing around.
 
ncrthree
Trying to race at Nur Norb. I usually just race with a group I like but Saturday I wanted to try out my newly tuned Scuderia in 600pp street rooms.
The group vote went to the Nord. There was like 13-16 drivers. Generally I would start in mid pack or up front. EVERY race was started with a chain reaction of no braking into the first turn by the last cars. Typical I know.Then whenever I was able to make my way through the first set of turns, ANY braking zone was met with a punt off course. Then the punters would invariably crash by themselves and quit the race. I could never catch back up, so I'd just cruise along alone in last place just to finish the race.

I should know better than race with that many drivers or on that track by now and just use the track for time trials. I guess a lot of people don't know the brake zones that well which is understandable but I guess to a bad driver, success is to be had by smashing anyone out of the way as soon as possible. I felt like getting out the tank car!
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Tell me about it. I'm not the greatest racer ever, in fact I usually finish (providing I don't get railed into the slipperiest grass ever) somewhere in the middle. There has been many times when, just as you described, I'm high in the pack and making my way into the first corner, I brake and get slammed into from behind by someone going WAY to fast for a corner and thrown into the wall or the green abyss that is Gran Turismo grass. This of course means I end up last, or just short of last, last being occupied by the person who just sent me flying off the track...then that person inevitably quits and I end up last.

The follies of online racing. It's the only type of online gameplay where another player's lack of skill can directly effect your gaming experience.

I would suggest some sort of skill level ranking system. This system would ideally separate good players from bad players, but of course this isn't realistic because it would result in people attempting to win races at any cost to increase their rank.
 
zr1chris
I tried doing some online racing this weekend and I couldnt find a good race anywhere. Nobody was racing. Everyone was just messing around.
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Don't you love it? I've spent more than an hour in some instances searching for rooms of people actually racing in a clean manner. Most rooms are "drag" or "drift" or "cruise" and also usually include some reference to marijuana in the room title. "420 drag show smoke blunts"...I don't care if people get high or not, but WTF does that have to do with racing?

Hopefully when Forza 4 comes out some of these people will migrate over there and leave us to race
 
Joined a room this morning and this dude kept hitting me. So I took it upon myself to bust his "butt" at about 240mph. That felt pretty good. Dude was like "*****************", then "*****************" and another "*****************". Then he left
 
DEATHSARTHE
Let me guesss...

Viper ACR
Enzo
Speed 12
Zonda
Minolta
Veyron
X1
... and oddly enough Fiat 500 lulz
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I never see those online. Just the Enzo and the Minolta once.
Try some 400-600pp rooms with tire restrictions (comfort till 450 and sport above 450). Lots of variation in cars and a lot of clean drivers. 👍
 
Krizzay
I never see those online. Just the Enzo and the Minolta once.
Try some 400-600pp rooms with tire restrictions (comfort till 450 and sport above 450). Lots of variation in cars and a lot of clean drivers. 👍
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I personally love low PP rooms, the problem is that they are so flippin' hard to come by. And then when I do find a low PP room, they have tire restrictions. Now I know the argument for not using race soft tires ad nauseam, but I don't care. I want to race these lowly street cars (think Citroën C5 V6, not Lotus Elise) to their fullest potential.
 
Have you ever experienced "error disconnecting from server" bug in online lobbies? Today it happen me twice, quite annoying honestly. Not to mention those fools with "fair play" rooms and the race was a demolition derby...
 
Agreed on prejudice. I'm English and when I got in to say, an American lobby they're 99% of the time very nice, while if I go into a French/Spanish/Italian lobby and there's just French/Spanish/Italian people they usually say stuff about me, ram me and eventually kick me... 🤬 And also i've seen a few 'No Paki's' rooms and what should the nationality be, English :/
 
In the span of 1 hour last night, I competed in 1.5 races.

1.5 because some jack hole didnt know how to take a turn and would ram me at ever corner of La Sarthe. So I quit.
 
Giving encouraging comments after a race, such as "nice racing, [name of driver]", or "that was a clean and fun race, [name of driver]", is usually a good way to improve the general behaviour of any specific online lounge. Because everyone reads the chat and deep within they want to be appreciated and getting such comments themselves. If I enter a lounge and find it being quite chaotic, a few races with such comments afterwards generally cleans it all up pretty good.
 
Callumfromleeds
Agreed on prejudice. I'm English and when I got in to say, an American lobby they're 99% of the time very nice, while if I go into a French/Spanish/Italian lobby and there's just French/Spanish/Italian people they usually say stuff about me, ram me and eventually kick me... 🤬 And also i've seen a few 'No Paki's' rooms and what should the nationality be, English :/
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The best way to cure such behaviour is to simply take the discussion whenever you find yourself in a situation like that. For instance, if you are English and being in an all English lobby where the host kicks out all the "Paki's", just say stop and ask the host what the hell he is doing. Then leave and start your own lobby, cause not even GT5 is fun to play with racists...
 
One thing that pisses me off is fake winners. Yesterday I clearly won by over 10sec and the stats pop up and say I came second. Wtf! The host who was dead last somehow won
 
Moot
Have you read GT5's own description of the McLaren F1 stealth car? it says it is a GT500 car.
Maybe I should have said the stealth GTR version, but I thought you would assume that I meant that version anyway seeing I was entering a GT500 room when i needed a racing car to GT500 spec.
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Have YOU read the description of the Mclaren F1 Stealth Car? I can provide a couple screen shots if not but there is not 1 word of it being GT500. Nice try though.

GT500 rooms want cars from the SuperGT/JGTC GT500 class of which there are an abundance of them in this game and they are all right around 500 HP, not 642 like the F1.
 
CSLACR
Penalties shouldn't be an option.
Edit - to make that clear, they should be mandatory.
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Oh no. I don't know why GT5 calls it a penalty system anyway. It's a cheat system. Cars drive through each other to pass, and drivers get penalties for being pushed off the track.

If anything should be mandatory, it's penalties off, IMO. Kicking solves problems, turning penalties on just makes things worse.

Mac K
I actually think thats a good idea.. You could qualify with a good time in a "fair" car and at the last second, exit the track and switch to a much better car... I'm going to assume thats why its setup like that.
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This doesn't make sense. Why would someone qualify with a slow car? We have PP, so most times, you there isn't an unfair car to jump into anyway.

It would be nice if the tuning menu was inside the free run though. You shouldn't lose your time because you want to tune some settings.
 
xNEVER-ONEx
I think the host is given too much power. We need official PD rooms with pre made rules and regulations, along with pre made track playlist. I hate it when the host doesn't like that you beat him and then he votes you out.
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I think if we had some races like we had in GT5P this would help the "kicked" situation. In some ways Prologue better by being very basic.
 
shmogt
One thing that pisses me off is fake winners. Yesterday I clearly won by over 10sec and the stats pop up and say I came second. Wtf! The host who was dead last somehow won
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That sounds like you got lapped.
 
I cringe everytime I read a post like this. I imagine these kinds of posts are read by developers or the distributors and games get dumbed down to coddle the crybabies. Then we are stuck with rediculous things in racers like the timed race start in NFS Shift. Its my opinion that games like GRid, NFS Shift, and Ferrari Challenge are perfect examples of this kind of thought process. All those games were gimped especially when it concerned the freedoms of creating the kind of racing room the host wanted.

I hate to be this guy but if you dont like what you see then create your own room. SET THE FREAKING STANDARD FOR GOD SAKES. Quite frankly its none of your business why he kicked you. He did, get over it. Create your own room. People will join and play by your rules or leave. In a short time you will have a friends list of regular racers and find yourself in the position im in. Racing heaven!

I hope you dont think im being harsh and im not trying to offend anyone but GEeeez.
 
Tommy_861
Have YOU read the description of the Mclaren F1 Stealth Car? I can provide a couple screen shots if not but there is not 1 word of it being GT500. Nice try though.

GT500 rooms want cars from the SuperGT/JGTC GT500 class of which there are an abundance of them in this game and they are all right around 500 HP, not 642 like the F1.
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Sorry got that wrong, I was thinking of the wiki entry about the car. The fact is though it is a GT500 car, it raced as a GT500 car,restricted in power to less than the road car.
"In 1996, Team Goh of Japan purchased two F1 GTRs of 1996-spec for participation in the All Japan Grand Touring Car Championship's (JGTC) GT500 class under the name Team Lark."
The car got down to 1012kgs, but they might have had a weight penalty for the GT500 entry. I think it's about 1140kgs in GT5?
 
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Moot
Sorry got that wrong, I was thinking of the wiki entry about the car. The fact is though it is a GT500 car, it raced as a GT500 car,restricted in power to less than the road car.
"In 1996, Team Goh of Japan purchased two F1 GTRs of 1996-spec for participation in the All Japan Grand Touring Car Championship's (JGTC) GT500 class under the name Team Lark."
The car got down to 1012kgs, but they might have had a weight penalty for the GT500 entry. I think it's about 1140kgs in GT5?
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No, the fact is some team heavily modified two F1 GTRs into GT500 cars at some point in their history. That car is not reflected in this game, so therefore if you try and run in a GT500 room with it you're gonna get asked to change it. In the game all 3 iterations of the Mclaren F1 (The road car, the Stealth, and the Race car) none are or qualify for GT500. That is the point.
 
Tommy_861
No, the fact is some team heavily modified two F1 GTRs into GT500 cars at some point in their history. That car is not reflected in this game, so therefore if you try and run in a GT500 room with it you're gonna get asked to change it. In the game all 3 iterations of the Mclaren F1 (The road car, the Stealth, and the Race car) none are or qualify for GT500. That is the point.
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How do you know that?
GT500 is not restricted to 500bhp. There are weight penalties for more powerful cars. minimal race weight for GTR 1012kgs, race weight in GT5 is 1100kgs in it's lightest form for the Stealth F1, that's an 88kgs weight penalty. And 200kgs could be added to that in GT5 to make it 1300kgs, heavy enough for GT500 for your rules?
Or the GT5 restriction can be used to bring the power down closer to 500bhp. You can set these conditions on the game menu, you can set it to exactly 500bhp if you like. This is called setup.
The F1 is GT500 eligible, it just needs the setup for the race regs, what's wrong with that?
The car is supplied to you by McLaren to your garage so you can adjust it to suit whatever class you intend on joining, it's up to you to fit your own restriction to the car to meet regulations.
 
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