Skill Ceilings?

  • Thread starter Thread starter OakleyPete
  • 18 comments
  • 2,738 views
O

OakleyPete

Messages
10
United Kingdom
United Kingdom
So, I play GT7 for fun and I've got a question for you all....

I've been a B/S driver pretty much since day one and don't seem in danger of reaching A grade any time soon. Partly this is because I sometimes rage quit when I get unjustified penalties... but I'm wondering if there are simply skill limits in the game. For example....

I haven't learned to play GT7 with manual gears yet and I mostly drive with Traction Control on 1. I'm wondering if B/S is the absolute highest you can get with these settings and you have to put the hours in with manual gears and TC-off to get further? Are there any other glass ceilings?
 
OakleyPete
So, I play GT7 for fun and I've got a question for you all....

I've been a B/S driver pretty much since day one and don't seem in danger of reaching A grade any time soon. Partly this is because I sometimes rage quit when I get unjustified penalties... but I'm wondering if there are simply skill limits in the game. For example....

I haven't learned to play GT7 with manual gears yet and I mostly drive with Traction Control on 1. I'm wondering if B/S is the absolute highest you can get with these settings and you have to put the hours in with manual gears and TC-off to get further? Are there any other glass ceilings?
Click to expand...
Well, that's not really a glass ceiling. Those settings can make you a little slower, but they are not necessarily going to be the cause of you not finishing well.
 
There is no ceiling due to AT or TCS. There are plenty of A-A+ drivers using AT, and some using TCS, but the real challenge is maintaining composure despite setbacks.

I've never quit a race in Sport, ever. It's just damaging to your DR. Multiple times after big upsets cause by whatever I've stayed in the race to find that other people made bigger mistakes, or I was just able to capitalize on the slower drivers that I now am surrounded by.

Practice... a LOT. Qualify your heart out. Learn the track well. Watch faster drivers and how they do things. LEARN MANUAL because there's just an extra level of control you'll have over chassis attitude, traction, rotation, fuel saving etc.. LEARN THROTTLE CONTROL because TCS will ultimately limit the amount of power you can put down, and your ability to use throttle to adjust chassis balance. With learning these things, your ability just gets better and better, you'll be more sensitive and careful, and more able to do what you want to do with the car when you want to.

There are no "glass ceilings" because that term implies that no matter how much work you put into something, you will never be able to achieve the same as others, and it's simply not true here. You put in the work, learn what you're doing wrong, and get better. Through this you will rise in the ranks.
 
Thanks....

With the ceilings thing I really meant, is that extra power from non-TCS and the extra control from manual necessary to progress to A-spec? Sounds like the answer is "No, but it'll be a damn sight harder" :).

I don't rage quit often, but when I do it sure tanks the ratings. I actually miss the old GT Sport progress bar in your profile which told you where you sat in the rankings, whether you were at the bottom of B or near the top.
 
OakleyPete
Thanks....

With the ceilings thing I really meant, is that extra power from non-TCS and the extra control from manual necessary to progress to A-spec? Sounds like the answer is "No, but it'll be a damn sight harder" :).

I don't rage quit often, but when I do it sure tanks the ratings. I actually miss the old GT Sport progress bar in your profile which told you where you sat in the rankings, whether you were at the bottom of B or near the top.
Click to expand...
Are you on a wheel? Manual is actually fairly easy to learn and get used to with paddle shifters, which you should use instead of a shifter+clutch if your priority is improving your times. To me it also makes a race more engaging and fun.

I think shifter+clutch is even more fun but it is definitely hard mode when it comes to improving lap times!
 
OakleyPete
I'm wondering if B/S is the absolute highest you can get with these settings and you have to put the hours in with manual gears and TC-off to get further?
Click to expand...
I got to A+ in GTS often using TC. I always used it with Gr.3 cars, for example. I didn't need TC for the Maggiore Human Comedy race using the Gr.3 Aston Martin recently, but I didn't find it any faster than TC1. While TC does take power away in corners, my experience is it mainly only does that when you'd need to slightly lift off the throttle anyway with TC0, so it's not so much slowing you down as providing a different way to take the corner at the correct speed. That's true provided you try to minimise your steering input. If you keep the stick fully sideways when it doesn't need so much steering input, you will lose speed with TC.

Auto gears will hold you back with some car and track combinations, and will particularly hurt you if it's a fuel saving race. There were some races where I used auto gears in GTS, a Gr.1 race is one where I remember I tested both auto and manual and I was the odd tenth quicker with auto, so I used auto for the race. Basically, if auto isn't costing anything it will actually make you a little quicker due to freeing up brain power for other aspects of driving. But if the auto shift points result in a significant difference in power or fuel use compared to optimal shifting, it's probably worth spending the brain power on manual shifting.
 
SugarBooger
Are you on a wheel? Manual is actually fairly easy to learn and get used to with paddle shifters, which you should use instead of a shifter+clutch if your priority is improving your times. To me it also makes a race more engaging and fun.

I think shifter+clutch is even more fun but it is definitely hard mode when it comes to improving lap times!
Click to expand...
No, I play on a controller :(.
 
Rule number 1 for getting better is try to avoid mistakes and penalties as much as possible.

Once you start lapping without doing those, you can start pushing youself.

In online racing games, it's the one that makes the less mistakes and races the most equilibrated that usuallty wins.
 
Jewel Runner
Definitely there's a skill limit. Even with constant practice and experience a person will reach a certain limit not as high as another person.
Click to expand...

Yeah but I'd say pretty anyone can get to top 10% online if they have the time/dedication.
 
I think this describes it well:
Hazel
I think it's one of those 90/10 things.
10% effort to get to 90%,
but 90% for that last 10%
and 99.9999999% effort for that last 1%.
Click to expand...
Of course there's a limit for each person. No matter how hard you try, you may not make it to the very top. But only a handful of people actually have the chance to do so.

Just stay focused, practice and try to look at tips/races/laps of drivers that are better than you, to see where you can improve. Some relatively small things may give you loads of lap time if you get it right (brake points, racing line etc.), whereas other details won't bring you as much.
 
if you only enter sport races on track
/car combinations that you know you do well on your results will generally be more positive improving your DR and avoiding the losses suffered from poor combinations
 
The skill ceiling in racing games in general is extremely wide.

However, very, and I mean it, a very miniscule amount of players will ever reach A or even A+ rating.
Out of 80.000 players (according to Kudos prime) only 4.4% are DR-A and 1.1% are A+/S.

And these percentages are extremely inflationated by the fact that the vast majority of those 80k players are people that actually put in some time on the game (20 sport races or more). Ergo, these 80k have a much higher percentage of "aliens" and very good drivers than the total sample size of everyone who plays the game.
Because if we actually factor all of 15 million+ Sport players, most of them wouldn't be above B level.

Also, don't get discoraged by people who post around here that they are A or A+ here, because GTPlanet is as well, a place where the majority are old timers or "hardcores" of the game, so you will see many A rank players around here.




As for the tips to get better, aside from what almost everyone has stated about the use of assists and to just repeat and repeat, the only thing that is going to restrict you from achieving a higher ceiling in a racing game is your concentration and reflxes (more so if you have a wheel where you also have to be fast on your feet), and those clearly not everyone has the same capabilities, you either have those two talents, or you don't.
A wheel can on average also give you better times than a controller, and give you a lot more consistency as well. A top-tier player using using both, can achieve a similar lap-time, though, it's just that consistency that is severely lacking on the controller due to the much harder turn and throttle/brake inputs.
What I say in simplers terms is that a wheel can achieve you a "target" time in 5 laps, and you would probably need 10 with a controller.
 
Last edited:
OakleyPete
So, I play GT7 for fun and I've got a question for you all....

I've been a B/S driver pretty much since day one and don't seem in danger of reaching A grade any time soon. Partly this is because I sometimes rage quit when I get unjustified penalties... but I'm wondering if there are simply skill limits in the game. For example....

I haven't learned to play GT7 with manual gears yet and I mostly drive with Traction Control on 1. I'm wondering if B/S is the absolute highest you can get with these settings and you have to put the hours in with manual gears and TC-off to get further? Are there any other glass ceilings?
Click to expand...

There probably is, but you’d be amazed at how close you can get with enough time and dedication invested. When I started GT Sport, I was an automatic driving, pretty average driver, I think I made it just into A rank on my own in auto. Then I decided to dig in and learn, and get better. By the end of GT Sport I had 3 accounts up to A+, was mostly running it top split in FIA races and had even made it into a few of the last Top 16 NA races. So average Joe can definitely get pretty far, but to continue getting better at that level requires a whole new level of time invested, and dedicated practice. An amount I couldn’t do with a wife, kid and a full time job lol. Those top guys are absolutely crazy good/fast! 🤯
 
Last edited:
Even at the top levels of professional motorsports team mates who train their whole lives can be 3-4 tenths apart regularly. The glass ceiling is simply a matter of skill.
 
OakleyPete
So, I play GT7 for fun and I've got a question for you all....

I've been a B/S driver pretty much since day one and don't seem in danger of reaching A grade any time soon. Partly this is because I sometimes rage quit when I get unjustified penalties... but I'm wondering if there are simply skill limits in the game. For example....

I haven't learned to play GT7 with manual gears yet and I mostly drive with Traction Control on 1. I'm wondering if B/S is the absolute highest you can get with these settings and you have to put the hours in with manual gears and TC-off to get further? Are there any other glass ceilings?
Click to expand...
Golden rule that I've had to learn the hard way several times... Don't get angry... don't take revenge for the unfair behavior of others, be as fair as you can, but never too careless. And most important of all, NEVER leave a race. You get far too many points deducted when you leave a race, which ruins several good races. Even if you only finish 12th or 14th or even 15th, you still get more than you would have left the game.
Since we unfortunately don't have an overview like Kudos, it's very difficult to know exactly where you stand.

It may even be that you have stood directly in front of A several times and then fell again because you stopped a race. Unfortunately, a race is also considered canceled if the game crashes or the race gets stuck. Since this happens more often in GT7 than in GTS, progress is also slowed down.
 
Original Poster here ;).

I actually hit A grade this week and have stayed up there. I think what nudged me over the line was narrowing my focus and persistence. Rather than continually swapping between the three daily races I focussed on one with my limited time, learnt it better, qualified faster and got consistent podium finishes. Where before I would race "whatever starts next". Lots of great tips though all of which I'm applying..... just need to find the time to shift (pun intended) to manual gears.
 

Latest Posts

Back