Time Trial Discussion

  • Thread starter seadog777
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Y'know, I kinda feel like these TTs should have a 24 hour lockdown period or something. The medal thresholds lock at whatever they are with 24 hours left in the TT and then the aliens have the last day to fight for the top board position. I mean I totally understand the strategy of sandbagging till the last minute to try and grab the top position on the board but it puts a lot of us who aren't in that league at all in a tough spot after spending a lot of time trying to get the gold (or silver/bronze even) only to get knocked out without any time left to do the dozens of laps we need to try and improve our times.
 
If you want to secure something you get yourself a margin, it's not really any more complicated than that. By now you should've also learnt what a good enough margin is.
No, it is entirely dependent on the TT in question.

While I may be a decent driver, I still took many laptimes for granted and was forced to return to the track (even if I was still in gold, but the buffer being too close for comfort).

But regardless, you just need to keep an eye out for a WR improvement and not rest until it's over.
 
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The thresholds should be a hard set time and not percentage based on top time, for better or worse. It's the same for any other challenge in the game, I don't see why these should be any different.
Right, and PD's supposed to set a fixed time for all the tiers before the TT even starts?

I think it's pretty clever this way actually, keeps you alert and means the tier times generate themselves.

One thing they could change, however, is have dynamic percentages based on the TT difficulty (just like how they did with Daytona). Some golds have been a breeze compared to average.
 
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If you want to secure something you get yourself a margin, it's not really any more complicated than that. By now you should've also learnt what a good enough margin is.
Sure I get that. But there's a scheduling issue and also a calculation involved for a lot of us. FOr instance, the Dino TT...I made a choice - ok I feel like gold is in reach here I'll give it a shot. I put in the hours when I had them available and I got in there. It took probably well over 5 hours of laps to get what seemed like a reasonable time for gold. The threshold didn't move for a week or more. Then, in the final hours the top time dropped significantly and thousands of players lost a million credits. For me, there's no five more hours of laps available to set a higher time at that point. My schedule is such that thurs/fri/Sat are the days of the week I can really commit to it and I did for that one. I mean really the medals don't actually mean anything ultimately right? they are just a threshold for awarding the different credit payouts. It's still the actual lap times that set the positions on the board. Yes, I should have kept trying to set a higher and higher time I suppose, but there comes a point where I say OK I've put all the hours I can into this now...hopefully that's enough.

The guys setting top ten times on the boards are in a far far different league than the rest of us. It's awesome that one guy can get his name to the top spot...fantastic for him. But it's a purely personal victory that has no actual benefit in game terms to him. Meanwhile, while he claims his personal victory, thousands of us who put in long hours lose out on an actual game benefit (the credits payout) for those hours of effort. And the vredits do matter actually...it's one of the reasons I ever try for gold. I can put in the time thinking there's at least an extra million credits in it for me to put towards the car collection.
 
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Right, and PD's supposed to set a fixed time for all the tiers before the TT even starts?

I think it's pretty clever this way actually, keeps you alert and means the tier times generate themselves.

One thing they could change, however, is have dynamic percentages based on the TT difficulty (just like how they did with Daytona). Some golds have been a breeze compared to average.
They do it for every other challenge in the game don't they? It's not like they don't have fast drivers working for them to tell them what a top top time should look like.
 
Y'know, I kinda feel like these TTs should have a 24 hour lockdown period or something. The medal thresholds lock at whatever they are with 24 hours left in the TT and then the aliens have the last day to fight for the top board position. I mean I totally understand the strategy of sandbagging till the last minute to try and grab the top position on the board but it puts a lot of us who aren't in that league at all in a tough spot after spending a lot of time trying to get the gold (or silver/bronze even) only to get knocked out without any time left to do the dozens of laps we need to try and improve our times.

The thresholds should be a hard set time and not percentage based on top time, for better or worse. It's the same for any other challenge in the game, I don't see why these should be any different.
At first look I like both ideas but on second look 👀 no because it kills a lot of thrill and it is boring in the end 🤷‍♂️
 
They do it for every other challenge in the game don't they? It's not like they don't have fast drivers working for them to tell them what a top top time should look like.
When's the last time we had a "challenge" added in the game? Yeah, a while.

But regardless, that's the whole point of having a dynamic target time in the Sport mode TT's: it's sport mode, not single player. The gold times are always harder than in the Circuit Experiences or License tests.
 
Storm in a teacup. Your best effort is your best effort and is independent of what the best driver achieves, unless you are that best driver.

If everyone gave their best effort every TT, we would not see those frequency spikes just ahead of each medal threshold.

So all you can do is your very best and be at peace with what that ends up meaning in terms of medal reward.
 
When's the last time we had a "challenge" added in the game? Yeah, a while.

But regardless, that's the whole point of having a dynamic target time in the Sport mode TT's: it's sport mode, not single player. The gold times are always harder than in the Circuit Experiences or License tests.
We get new challenges every time a new track is added, but that's been a while. We also got new ones with the new license testes in spec 2.0 update, and that wasn't that long ago.

Regarding the difficulty, they can make it harder or easier the same way they do now. Some have a 3% target, others have had 1% target. And that's not taking into account the top target time they set internally. Do you really believe they have no clue what times are possible if they wanted to? They're outsourcing that to us, which is fine if that lets them work on other things, but it would be an option and I don't think it would detract from the experience if they dit it properly.

Feel free to disagree though, it's just my opinion.
 
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Today Jeddah took the lead, but Japanese driver responded immediately and overtook him, so now are new, lower medal times...
I hope they steer clear of Fuji!

nervous biting nails GIF
 
Storm in a teacup. Your best effort is your best effort and is independent of what the best driver achieves, unless you are that best driver.

If everyone gave their best effort every TT, we would not see those frequency spikes just ahead of each medal threshold.

So all you can do is your very best and be at peace with what that ends up meaning in terms of medal reward.
But it's not independent of what the best driver achieves. The reward is based totally on what the best driver achieves. You are absolutely correct - if everyone gave their best effort every TT this wouldn't be an issue, bacause the top time wouldn't drop by significant chunks at the last minute. The problem is that the people who are capable of setting the bar don't give their best effort till the very end when the rest of us don't have much of any chance to do a whole lot to try and reach the bar they've now set.

I mean it's just a game and I'm not all that worked up about it. BUt it definitely does come into play for me with regard to deciding how much effort I can commit to these TTs. Gold was simply not in the cards for me at Fuji and Suzuka...
 
But it's not independent of what the best driver achieves.
It absolutely is. I said "Your best effort is your best effort and is independent of what the best driver achieves, unless you are that best driver" and I'm sticking by it because it is factual.

What a man in Saudi Arabia or in Japan does cannot possibly have an impact on the time it takes me, with my best effort, to get a virtual car around a virtual track.

What the medal hurdles are, are of course dependent on the top time. It is so by definition.
 
It absolutely is. I said "Your best effort is your best effort and is independent of what the best driver achieves, unless you are that best driver" and I'm sticking by it because it is factual.

What a man in Saudi Arabia or in Japan does cannot possibly have an impact on the time it takes me, with my best effort, to get a virtual car around a virtual track.

What the medal hurdles are, are of course dependent on the top time. It is so by definition.
Right of course, but the medal hurdles are the specific issue at play here. The times are the times and ultimately those set your position on the leaderboards and that doesn't change based on how the medals are awarded.
 
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