PENALTY SYSTEM IS STILL A PIECE OF ****!!!

[Norrin Radd]

Had a good one yesterday, got punted so badly a Graham Hill Bend I kept going till I hit the wall. So yes I lost loads of time and then got 1.5 sec pen for it. It's bad enough the guy who did this gets off scot free without me getting a pen too.

 

[Geauxgreddy]

Agree.

Damage in daily races is not going to stop players from divebombing into other cars, and I don't know why people want damage in for. I know players that don't like ghosting including myself, but that seems the only logic approach to fix that behaviour.

The reason i dont like ghosting is it has a very arcade game feeling to it as opposed to realism and diminishes the skill required to have a good clean race. Avoiding others is, in my opinion, part of the fun. We had damage on for our 2 hour LeMans multi class charity event. Maybe the cleanest race I've been in, ever. Very rewarding as well.

 

[CBH]

The reason i dont like ghosting is it has a very arcade game feeling to it as opposed to realism and diminishes the skill required to have a good clean race. Avoiding others is, in my opinion, part of the fun. We had damage on for our 2 hour LeMans multi class charity event. Maybe the cleanest race I've been in, ever. Very rewarding as well.

Players want a realism like race in Sport Mode daily races, but you are never going to get that because of diveboming. I can't see any other way than ghosting to fix it.

 

[OJBrit]

Not quite.

As the normal driver avoids accidents, they'll end up in fewer of them.

As the divebomber keeps crashing, they'll end up in more accidents.

This trend makes the safety rating of the divebomber lower on average, and higher on average for the safe driver, which will over time widen the gap between them.

I agree with you and Famine.

If this ever happened it will be annoying the first few occasions it happens. (My whole street will probably hear what I have to say about it in that moment.) But it should reduce over time. It's an attitude thing. Those who enjoy clean races with actual racing in will persevere on the promise it will get better over the coming weeks.
Those who are win at any cost especially if it means ramming those ahead out of the way will only get more and more frustrated.
If they put the game away because of that then that is a good thing in my book. If they clean up their act, that is a good thing in my book. It is a loose loose in the short term, but a win win in the long term.

 

[Geauxgreddy]

Players want a realism like race in Sport Mode daily races, but you are never going to get that because of diveboming. I can't see any other way than ghosting to fix it.

Only one way to find out! Have they tried damage in daily races? I know they haven't since I've been on GTS. I think its a combo that would help solve it, nothing will fix it.

Even with ghosting, you'll have 16 cars diving into corner 1, because why not. That's not even racing, its just hotlapping with other cars on the track.

 

[CBH]

Only one way to find out! Have they tried damage in daily races? I know they haven't since I've been on GTS. I think its a combo that would help solve it, nothing will fix it.

Even with ghosting, you'll have 16 cars diving into corner 1, because why not. That's not even racing, its just hotlapping with other cars on the track.

Damage will never solve the problem but some sort of ghosting will wipe out divebombing, and players being stupid out on the track for good.

 

[Famine]

some sort of ghosting will wipe out divebombing

You can't eliminate something if you make it something you can do with zero consequences, and that's exactly what ghosting will achieve. Players will just carry on doing it because they won't face any punishment for doing it...

What it will eliminate is any actual racing or defensive driving, because nobbers can just dive straight through you. There'll be no side-by-side action (everyone can take the same line), no over-under corner defence (everyone can take the same line), no need to plan an overtake several corners ahead (everyone can take the same line), no making the pass difficult by sitting in the centre of the track (everyone can take the same line)... no racing at all. Well done, you just destroyed a racing game by not having any racing in it.

Giving idiots free rein to do whatever they want isn't a solution to idiots doing whatever they want. It's enabling it. To stop them you need to punish them.


Penalties work okay as a punishment, but a sufficiently quick moron can overcome it and continue to ruin lots of people's races all in the same race. Damage is the only thing that will work, because it punishes the drivers who make contact not just once but for the entire race. They can't then go on and ruin other people's races because they have a damaged car and can't catch up to do it.

In the short term, almost everyone will face race-ruining incidents probably about half the time, and yeah, that'll suck... to start with. Over a little more time, the repeat offenders will face race-ruining incidents a lot more often, and everyone else a lot less often because there's far fewer idiots and far more drivers who know to avoid contact. In the long term it becomes a rarity to suffer it at all, except by accident or if a known throbber who just won't learn is in the race.

 

[Sven Jurgens]

This.

Short-term, almost everyone gets damage a lot, and everyone's unhappy about it.
Medium-term, fewer people get damage, mainly a small group of ramming asshats who get more damage in more races and a larger group of people they ram getting damage every now and then because they individually meet the rammers less often.
Long-term, the guys who would otherwise keep ramming have learn not to ram, making deliberate contact far, far more rare except for a handful of hardcore ramming fannies.

Nah, people will simply get smarter at driving dirty, just as they do every time PD tries new penalties. The punts will change to pushing you out from the side onto the grass so you can't brake and wreck yourself. Or push you into the pit wall or other obstacles. Gentle bumps from behind that sent you wide won't cause the bumper significant damage. Grinding you into the wall will also cost you a lot more damage than the one leaning on you to make the turn.

So yeah, it will discourage the kamikaze punt. Yet that was discouraged before with penalties and people simply changed their dirty driving tactics to the ones I mentioned above. With race cars even easier, a little brake check, insignificant damage to the brake checker, front spoiler loss to the victim.

Ghosting is not ideal, but better than damage which more often than not turns out worse for the victim. The real solution is much easier. Measure contacts over time driven and sort people on that for races. Those who keep initiating contact will be sorted with like minded individuals. Those who avoid all contact will be sorted with others that can share corners without bumping.

Of course you can still replace ghosting with damage to make it more realistic. But it won't clean up races by itself. Besides that, the races are too short to discourage rammers on damage alone. And some just play to create chaos.

You can't eliminate something if you make it something you can do with zero consequences, and that's exactly what ghosting will achieve. Players will just carry on doing it because they won't face any punishment for doing it...

What it will eliminate is any actual racing or defensive driving, because nobbers can just dive straight through you. There'll be no side-by-side action (everyone can take the same line), no over-under corner defence (everyone can take the same line), no need to plan an overtake several corners ahead (everyone can take the same line), no making the pass difficult by sitting in the centre of the track (everyone can take the same line)... no racing at all. Well done, you just destroyed a racing game by not having any racing in it.

Giving idiots free rein to do whatever they want isn't a solution to idiots doing whatever they want. It's enabling it. To stop them you need to punish them.


Penalties work okay as a punishment, but a sufficiently quick moron can overcome it and continue to ruin lots of people's races all in the same race. Damage is the only thing that will work, because it punishes the drivers who make contact not just once but for the entire race. They can't then go on and ruin other people's races because they have a damaged car and can't catch up to do it.

In the short term, almost everyone will face race-ruining incidents probably about half the time, and yeah, that'll suck... to start with. Over a little more time, the repeat offenders will face race-ruining incidents a lot more often, and everyone else a lot less often because there's far fewer idiots and far more drivers who know to avoid contact. In the long term it becomes a rarity to suffer it at all, except by accident or if a known throbber who just won't learn is in the race.

Except if you give a penalty for needing to be ghosted.

The ghosting works in SR.E, yet there are no consequences to having to be ghosted. The missing step is dissing out a penalty and SR Down for having to be ghosted. If the game deems you to dangerous to continue on as a solid object, you deserve a penalty.

Only one way to find out! Have they tried damage in daily races? I know they haven't since I've been on GTS. I think its a combo that would help solve it, nothing will fix it.

Even with ghosting, you'll have 16 cars diving into corner 1, because why not. That's not even racing, its just hotlapping with other cars on the track.

There has been damage in FIA races. You get caught in the T1 chaos and your chances of a good race are practically over as you have to pit to repair damage, putting you so far behind you're just racing the one that rammed you for the rest of the race...

So it turns into a lottery instead of a skill race.

(Sorry for the multiple posts, tried multi quote and just ended up with a huge mess)

 

[Famine]

There has been damage in FIA races. You get caught in the T1 chaos and your chances of a good race are practically over as you have to pit to repair damage, putting you so far behind you're just racing the one that rammed you for the rest of the race...

So it turns into a lottery instead of a skill race.

Yes. This is the short term result of such a system. No-one is used to it, so the crashes still happen, and it sucks.

Nah, people will simply get smarter at driving dirty, just as they do every time PD tries new penalties. The punts will change to pushing you out from the side onto the grass so you can't brake and wreck yourself. Or push you into the pit wall or other obstacles. Gentle bumps from behind that sent you wide won't cause the bumper significant damage. Grinding you into the wall will also cost you a lot more damage than the one leaning on you to make the turn.

This is where the penalty system comes in (or at least a decent version of it). Causing a collision resulting in damage = penalty.

The real solution is much easier. Measure contacts over time driven and sort people on that for races. Those who keep initiating contact will be sorted with like minded individuals.

That's pretty much what the SR system was originally intended to do, but people kicked up a fuss about getting SR down for things that weren't their fault (even though it was a non-fault system originally).

I'm not saying "put damage in and get rid of everything else". It's something that needs to be implemented on top of everything else.


Ghosting just results in hot laps.

 

[DanSHW]

I don't think anyone's suggesting permanent ghosting, that just becomes group TTs, but conditional ghosting would work, anyone who goes off course should be ghosted as they return, and if the impact between two cars is going to be above a certain level, ghost the cars, still allows for clean racing, but anyone trying to use another car to deflect them round a corner will find themselves going through them and probably off the other side of the track, or losing so much speed they'll get overtaken by more cars on the next stretch.

 

[Rambo_Jambo]

I don't think anyone's suggesting permanent ghosting, that just becomes group TTs, but conditional ghosting would work, anyone who goes off course should be ghosted as they return, and if the impact between two cars is going to be above a certain level, ghost the cars, still allows for clean racing, but anyone trying to use another car to deflect them round a corner will find themselves going through them and probably off the other side of the track, or losing so much speed they'll get overtaken by more cars on the next stretch.

Something needs to be done. It’s beyond a joke how people play even at S SR rating. I was just 3rd in the daily road car race. The dude in second messed up the hair pin near the end, letting me catch up with him/her. I had more speed and was edging past….so they started bumper car time. Continuously battering me into a wall until we were eventually both overtaken. I ended the race in 5th….absolutely fuming. They don’t even apologise after the race. Just straight out without an apology and minimal affect to their SR. The manufacturer’s race was the same yesterday - two guys in Ferraris basically ruined the entire race for a load of us. And they are, somehow, S rated.

As per usual, the thing that ruins a social experience is….people. People never fail to ruin everything.

 

[O604]

Something needs to be done. It’s beyond a joke how people play even at S SR rating. I was just 3rd in the daily road car race. The dude in second messed up the hair pin near the end, letting me catch up with him/her. I had more speed and was edging past….so they started bumper car time. Continuously battering me into a wall until we were eventually both overtaken. I ended the race in 5th….absolutely fuming. They don’t even apologise after the race. Just straight out without an apology and minimal affect to their SR. The manufacturer’s race was the same yesterday - two guys in Ferraris basically ruined the entire race for a load of us. And they are, somehow, S rated.

As per usual, the thing that ruins a social experience is….people. People never fail to ruin everything.

Absolutely correct that people are the problem. Many things have been tried and people find a way to cheat it, for some I think it's a game in itself to find cheats.

I'm starting to see "idiots" as training tools. Punishing people periodically only relieves the problem temporarily. Learning to avoid them is a longer term solution. Learning to avoid out of control cars is useful training you can't get with AI.

 

[GR33N]

Just finished a Daily Race (A+/A lobby) where I was literally the only one trying to do a proper race, all others around me playing Wreckfest, I lost 7 positions due to being shoved, punted every corner, I never tried to retaliate but was the only one with a red S at the end. I have no words for the state of this game right now (outside FIA 3-4 highest splits where it's bearable).

PD, please.

 

[RSnider]

Damage will never solve the problem but some sort of ghosting will wipe out divebombing, and players being stupid out on the track for good.

Damage will somewhat solve the problem if the rammer's car is also damaged. Sure, they're still going to take someone out, but at least they won't be able to maintain the lead and keep doing it to everyone else. Eventually, they'll learn to be better drivers or they'll get tired of always driving a broken car and quit the game for good. Damage also discourages revenge rammers.

 

[Norrin Radd]

Damage will somewhat solve the problem if the rammer's car is also damaged. Sure, they're still going to take someone out, but at least they won't be able to maintain the lead and keep doing it to everyone else. Eventually, they'll learn to be better drivers or they'll get tired of always driving a broken car and quit the game for good. Damage also discourages revenge rammers.

Unfortunately GTS doesn't have a decent damage system and it can be manipulated quite easily. It would need something like TOCA had all those years ago where damage is on several different parts and is also accumulative. One crash and race ruined like we have here is really bad for everyone.

 

[Sven Jurgens]

Just tried he game again, R92CP on Sarthe. I never hit anyone, but some guy bumped me a couple times. No penalties for either yet my SR went down 11 points. I see where this is going. 88 SR left.

The race didn't look dirty, pretty clean driving from what I could see. However lag in GR.1 is still a huge factor. Racing from Canada, South America players wobble all over the place, and I'm likely wobbling all over on their screen. The internet can't handle fast cars.

Second race, I got rammed into the pit wall. The perp didn't get a penalty of course, 2 cars passed me into the pits. I got another red S after the race, but 4th place finish no qualy. 86 SR left.

Third race, clean race bonus, +10 SR to 96.

Fourth race, got bumped off at Mulsanne, no penalty for the hitter. Then had a great race working together with another R92CP, couple bump drafts along the way, no penalties, no SR Downs, down to 84 SR.

The SR scoring system still has nothing to do with racing. Penalties seem to be completely off, only the inconsistent 0.5 sec track penalties trigger on Sarthe. Better to hit someone than go slightly wide and get a penalty!

And yep, in SR.S there is still shoving and side swiping going on. But nice to drive the R92CP again.

 

[BaareCZ]

Penalties seem to be completely off

They ARE completely off. Have been since 1.66, I think. No SR downs either. On your screen at least. They obviously still happen. Although this week at Le Mans they seem kind of more brutal. I had a race where I don't even remember making any contact with anyone and I still finished red.

only the inconsistent 0.5 sec track penalties trigger on Sarthe.

Don't let me even start about those. 😆 Had to vent in the Daily races thread about that today. 😄 Absolutely baffling.

And yep, in SR.S there is still shoving and side swiping going on.

SR means absolutely nothing now.

 

[Sven Jurgens]

They ARE completely off. Have been since 1.66, I think. No SR downs either. On your screen at least. They obviously still happen. Although this week at Le Mans they seem kind of more brutal. I had a race where I don't even remember making any contact with anyone and I still finished red.

Don't let me even start about those. 😆 Had to vent in the Daily races thread about that today. 😄 Absolutely baffling.


SR means absolutely nothing now.

Yeah I see. I just tried a race after school hours..... This morning it was decent. Right now it's ram at will. Side swipes, bumped off from behind. It's a challenge. I went from 84 to 73 SR in that race, getting rammed off 3 or 4 times. One guy that crashed himself trying to side swipe (missed), the others crashed in other places.

I don't think I've ever seen it this deliberately bad. I start from the back and nearly all of those I passed (finished 5th) tried to block on the straight or side swipe or bumped me off in the next corner. I wonder where I'll en up next race.

Ended at SR 64. I haven't bumped anyone off, no point in taking out the bad apples when all the apples are the same... It seems the more you get rammed off, the lower your SR goes.

Well done PD, I was getting excited for GT7. You killed all my excitement in half an afternoon of racing.

 

[GR33N]

My 2 cents on this whole penalty thing: PD's priority is to ensure nobody in FIA top splits gets a stupid contact penalty, because it makes bad advertising as soon as a top driver posts something about it on Twitter. They also want to let people have (too) close battles.

And because PD can't figure out the contact penalties, they basically turned them off for everyone. But it's so easily gamed that it ruins the races of 99% of the players in the lower lobbies (I won't even talk about the dailies).

 

[Norrin Radd]

Well done PD, I was getting excited for GT7. You killed all my excitement in half an afternoon of racing.

Yeah I wasn't going to bother, then it's coming to PS4 so YEAH and now I'm close to deleting this game and just moving on. If GT7 has a good enough offline game then it will maybe be worth getting, but not hopeful about the online game. It's a real shame as this is close to a perfect game and one problem that they can't fix makes it virtually unplayable.

 

[Daz555]

Having played a few sims over the years with penalty systems I have to say that overall I prefer the harsh brutality of iRacing where every collision is given equal blame to both parties. Yes it sucks when someone rams you but at least you know a dodgy dynamic penalty system has not let them get away with the collision either.

 

[Rambo_Jambo]

Having played a few sims over the years with penalty systems I have to say that overall I prefer the harsh brutality of iRacing where every collision is given equal blame to both parties. Yes it sucks when someone rams you but at least you know a dodgy dynamic penalty system has not let them get away with the collision either.

The fundamental restriction is it has to be automated. There is no human judgement. So it can never be perfect. The question is - does iRacing’s harsh penalty system result in more fair racing overall, even though it may be unfair on players at times? I’ve never played it so I don’t know.

for me, the worry with that is it de facto punishes clean players more unfairly than dirty ones. And that seems intuitively wrong.

 

[Norrin Radd]

I heard that FIA won't allow joint blame systems so that's out. The thing is no automated system will get the right decision, but blaming everyone should be fairer over time especially if the SR system was changed to resemble something sensible.
So keeping the points per race roughly the same, but capping allocation so you can lose a max of say 10 points per race but only make 1 back. So 1 dirty race would take 10 clean ones to repair not 5 races to get from 1-99. BUT this can only work if the system can't be gamed, how often do you see an obviously dirty driver with BLUE and you've driven fairly clean but are in the RED? So if they can't blame both parties the only real solution is damage, but this won't stop people deliberately spoiling others games as they can keep their S rating.
Punishing everyone would seem unfair to begin with, but if it was done with a better rating system the dirty drivers would be out of our way quite quickly and they would need to learn to drive clean to get back. As it is now you can loose the little DR to just sit at the back and farm SR for a game or 2, but with a better system you have to drive clean to have good SR and DR.

 

[Sven Jurgens]

I don't buy the FIA excuse, they have no say over daily races and FIA races have had different rules already. PD has simply given up on sport mode. A year ago I still had hope the were working on a much better system for GT7, yet no mention of any of that, and GT Sport would be the perfect test bed. Yet for over a year there has been nothing but small tweaks while ignoring the fundamental problems.

Why not a separate SR/DR/penalty system for dailies and FIA races. Many people use different accounts for those anyway. Plus it never made sense you could restore your ratings in the dailies to get back to top splits in FIA.

 

[JSHuiting]

Players want a realism like race in Sport Mode daily races, but you are never going to get that because of diveboming. I can't see any other way than ghosting to fix it.

Would've been such a easy thing to implement for PD too, just ghost cars when the difference in speed is higher than 10kmh? Maybe more..
Rubbing and bumping into others would still be possible as it should, race accidents are part of the sport.

 

[CBH]

Would've been such a easy thing to implement for PD too, just ghost cars when the difference in speed is higher than 10kmh? Maybe more..
Rubbing and bumping into others would still be possible as it should, race accidents are part of the sport.

I think we talk about that a few years ago about speeds, and has to come into the game to stop divebombing, but some players don't want Ghosting because it will not be racing which is bollocks.
Without some sort of ghosting we will be still talking about the penalty system in years and years to come, and Ghosting is the only fix to the problem.
When there is contact between 2 cars at speed in a game there should be ghosting, because it is not real life racing unless we have real life racing stewards, and that is definitely not going to happen.

 

[Norrin Radd]

Ghosting is so easy to use to cheat and make things worse. It's a terrible idea and should be removed completely. Proper punishment along with a SR system that keeps dirty drivers away from clean ones. It ain't hard just make going down much easier than going up and it's sorted.

 

[Timm Sheehan]

Ghosting is so easy to use to cheat and make things worse. It's a terrible idea and should be removed completely. Proper punishment along with a SR system that keeps dirty drivers away from clean ones. It ain't hard just make going down much easier than going up and it's sorted.

I am not sure I agree, current ghosting is not really easy to cheat with and not sure how it can make a race worse.

If "gamers" know how to adjust their tactics every time the system changes then they know (or will know) how to adjust to any form of ghosting. If you go with the DR "E" ghosting then what you end up is Hotlap "A", Hotlap "B", and Hotlap "C". Your in the way then I will drive on through you to get the best lap. Where is the realism?

I personally do not believe ghosting should be an available option in any race.

 

[CBH]

I am not sure I agree, current ghosting is not really easy to cheat with and not sure how it can make a race worse.

If "gamers" know how to adjust their tactics every time the system changes then they know (or will know) how to adjust to any form of ghosting. If you go with the DR "E" ghosting then what you end up is Hotlap "A", Hotlap "B", and Hotlap "C". Your in the way then I will drive on through you to get the best lap. Where is the realism?

I personally do not believe ghosting should be an available option in any race.

You say where is the realism but how can you have it in Daily Races, unless you have racing Stewards watching every single race and every car, and you know that is never going to happen.
I don't like the idea of ghosting in the game but and it's the only solution to the problem, because it is not real life racing.

 

[Sven Jurgens]

Ghosting is better than get punted off and side swiped all the time. That's not real racing either, yet PD condones the behavior.

I realize now why all the SR ups / downs and penalties have been removed. No more faulty penalty videos... Behind the scenes the same wrong assignments still happen, yet you can't expose them anymore as no one is going to watch a full race to analyze the SR outcome.

SR.E is not hot lapping btw. And the easiest way to prevent cheating with ghosting is to give a penalty to the car that needed to be ghosted. Collision prevented, dangerous driver still gets the consequences.