I've been mostly running the career since finally getting a clean lap on the mountain, so I haven't improved my time of 18:50.245. It's still tough to peg the AI as one event they'll be ridiculously slow and the next event they'll be more than I can handle. They do still seem a bit tougher on higher ranked events, but when they are slow on rank A they aren't anywhere near as fast as they are when they are fast on rank C... if that makes any sense. At their best on rank A just not-crashing isn't enough to win for me but on C it always seems to be. Unfortunately they're slow often enough that over time you can't help but make lots of money. I should see what difference it makes running at a higher difficulty, but you can only have one career save.
I've been sticking to superbikes and refusing to ever restart an event so I win some and I lose miserably at some. Each year I get a practice "training" lap at the full Snaefell Mountain course for no money. After my 5th year I'm starting to wonder how long I can hold off before driving a superbike. I'm starting to have to pass up occasional events because the only option is a superbike race.
Then it gives me the sign for a new email, but with no sound to indicate new emails after the event. I just happened to see it, and checked my messages. One of them that was for events I had already chosen was now marked unread. I looked and a third option for Tourist Trophy with both superbikes and supersports had been added! Scrolled away and back and it now said I had replied, but I picked the TT anyway. When returning to the main menu the next event I was scheduled for had changed to a 5 lap "
Tourist Trophy" race! Not quite the way I had envisioned qualifying for the event, but I'll assume that I crossed whatever threshold qualifies you after winning my last event? Sitting at 6900 fans(my highest).
Needless to say, I know what I'll be doing tomorrow. Been avoiding doing a long one on my own in the hopes of getting it to happen first in the career. Will do it on Dean Harrison's Ninja. I still find the Kawasaki the toughest bike to ride, but Harrison's seems to handle more nicely than any others I've tried and I've been riding it for a while. 5 laps straight should teach me a thing or two.
Right at the moment I'd say my favorite track outside of the Mountain is probably Super Hillside. Long enough to feel worthwhile, with a good mix of fast stretches and difficult technical stuff, a little bit of everything. I hate that bump before the chicane after you leave town though, it seems like you could take the corner 30mph faster without it.
My worst track is probably Castle Ring. I kind of like driving it, but I can't finish a race there without crashing repeatedly and failing. I have a fairly respectable time on the leaderboards compared to my others, in the top 500 which is what I usually have(best is 279 at Triangle, worst 796 at West Sussex, mostly 3-400s), but the bots always kill me. Always.
I've read that there is supposed to be feedback on the triggers if you have an XBone controller, I wonder if that is the cause of some of my problems when I can't tell if the rear wheel is sliding. I still wish they'd add a noise or something for it. I did request on the steam forums that they add an option to not autosave every lap and every section on the TT course in career. It's very annoying even when it doesn't cause a crash that's no fault of my own. Hopefully they'll see it and consider it. I also wish they could add a way to sort your owned bikes in career, and something that makes the end of a season feel like an actual event itself instead of just rolling on to the next race like normal.
Bring on the sidecars!
