Be Excellent To Each Other

Yeah but you won't feel that either with a helmet on. Having fans is probably a good thing for general comfort though I'd have thought.

Ah so a decent fucked up then.

I enjoyed earning money to muck around with cars far more than actually racing. I'm therefore rather sad that it's gone the route it has.

Yeah, loads of people saying the same. I was never really into that side of things as much so it suits me perfectly. The livery editor is pretty cool, though.

No Mazda Demio, no sale

Ugh, the Demio.

It feels wrong having a GT game without the Toyota Trueno AE86, Nissan Silvia/SilEighty/180sx, Subaru Legacy Wagon GT-B, Nissan R-32/33 Skyline, classic Mazda RX7s, those classic Gran Turismo cars

He has said that there will be hundreds more cars eventually, though.

I'll wait until the Honda Concerto 1.5i is released.

Rover 25.

Rover 75 V8.

Man, I suck at this game.

If you're talking about the daily races or the FIA stuff then I think it depends massively on where you are within your driver rating. I'd managed to just get up to a C rating but when I did that race at Interlagos last night it quickly became obvious that I was right at the bottom of that rating. I did a qualifying lap that wasn't that far shy of my fastest practice lap but it put me dead last. Managed to make up a few places in the race but yeah when you jump up a rank it certainly gets rid of any illusions you had about being any good. Then I had a worse race after that, went back down to a D rating and so the next race I was qualifying right at the front again.

However I have managed to get the top sportsmanship rating and it makes such a difference. I only ever seem to get matched with other S ranked drivers and it's all really well mannered. The online stuff is just so well implemented in this game, though. The fact that you can just jump on whenever and have a decent race against a bunch of strangers who are going to be about the same level as you and not total fucking morons is brilliant.

I did the 2nd round of the championships yesterday, qualified 10th and finished 15 in both of them. Meh, it's still fun pootling around at the back, you still have epic battles and that, it's just a but discouraging when you're massively off on the pace of the leaders, and you can't see anyway to bridge the gap.

Oh yeah, slightly disappointed that the championships assume you have no life. Missed Saturdays because I was out, going to miss todays because it's darts night. I now it's the best three from seven, so you can miss some, but I need all the help I can get.

I don't think it's too bad really given that it does just count your best three. If they gave too many options for race times then it could get spread too thin and you'd end up with players with too many different skill levels in each race. They're probably still finding their feet with it so I expect it'll change a bit.

There will always be people faster than you. Those that have more time to practice, those who are just naturally fast. I have been playing iRacing properly for two years now and I am still sometimes 4s off the aliens depending on the track. I'm much closer on the oval side of things but that comes more naturally to me.

Just get to the level your dedication and skill can manage and have fun there. Don't see it as a game that you've got to conquer, because realistically you'll never get to the top.

Seems unfair to let them play in the human groups.

Heh, it's what us mere mortals refer to those who are ridiculously fast.

I think the people way faster than me might be using wheels. Dirty cheating twats.

Anyway, I have a new goal. Get to S rank Sportsmanship by grinding SR points, then Pund Smash!

(oh yeah, one of the flaws in the system, you can totally grind sportsmanship rating. You have to be racing to get into racing incidents, after all. Just let everyone pass you at the start of an online race and rack up those clean sectors.)

People do that in iRacing too, but I don't really see the point. Your skill rating will just go down surely?

Yeah I don't see the point in trying to game the system. I think if you just play however you want to play and give it some time then you'll mostly ended up with like-minded folk.

There are some people up there using pads too. So it's not that.

Seriously though it must surely be much harder with a pad even though they've put lots of effort into making it playable that way. I'll have to give it a go.

The point? The tears of people who think that an S rating is a shield from Demolition Pundy?

Well this was a shitshow last night. Did plenty of practice for the Brands Hatch race. Got a decent qualifying lap in and then bing! "you have been disconnected from the network"

Oh yeah, that's a killer. Think of it as some mechanical fault instead.

Yeah, I wasn't too fussed I just went on and did one of the other races instead. I'll try again tonight but it's a bit of a shitty track for this round.

Well it turns out I'm shit hot at this sportsmanship thing. Just shit at going fast.

Anyone wan to buy a lightly soiled copy of GT Sport?

Well thats my first season done, points scores:

Nations cup : 36
Manufacturers: 17 (though I only completed 2 races)

See, told you I was shit.

Good race last night for the FIA manufacturers series thing. It was on Willow Springs which is a pretty fun track in so far as it has virtually no concrete run off, just acres of dirt. So going wide is usually very costly. Managed to qualify second and then spent almost the whole race in a three way battle before eventually finishing in second. I'm starting to wonder if I'm too courteous at times, though. At one point I thought I'd run someone wide so I eased off and gave them the place back but on looking at the replay I'd left them plenty of room and they'd just made a mistake and driven off the track all by themselves. Then coming out of the final corner on the final lap the guy behind got a run on me. I'm pretty sure that 90% of players might have blocked here. I could have won, easily, but I just moved once then held my line knowing I was going to lose the drag race to the line.

I am usually very courteous unless it's the last couple of laps and then all bets are off.

Yeah, I'd have felt like a right cunt just blatantly weaving about all over to block although I could have made it just a bit harder for him and probably won as a result. To be honest though I don't really care about the result if it's been a good race.

You don't need to weave about, and that is a cuntish thing to do. There are a few things you can do though. Take the inside line through the corner to make them try going around the outside (do this early so they don't just try to sling it up the inside). You can also back them up by going a bit slower to the apex. If there's a specific part of the track where they're faster but you know you're fine for the rest of the lap, defend hard there and then just pull away again.

Yeah I understand how to defend in general. The last corner at Willow Springs is a very, very long and wide double apex corner followed by a long run to the line. I wasn't defending in the corner as he was too far back for it to really be necessary. I was just too cautious and really not wanting to bin it on the final lap but basically just misjudged how far back he was so by the exit of the corner he had enough speed to get by before the line.

Rookie error!

I've got past the stage of being frightened of binning it on the last lap now. Took me ages though.

The controller nearly went through the TV last night. Going round the oval, battling with another dude in a clean, pretty fun battle for 13th and 14th, let him through as he had a better run out of the turn, and I wanted to draft him for an attempt next turn and spun by a dude coming from behind. Dead last and a lap down.

Try not getting spun from behind

A few not "me being shit" annoyances:

The qualifying rules for 'live" qualifying suck: You get very limited time, which is understandable, but your out lap eats into this. So you have to push hard on your out lap to maximise your chance of putting in your best hot lap. Your out lap doesn't count, either.

When it ends, it ends. You can be literally inches from the line on a pole time, and boom, because you ran out of time, doesn't count.

If you finish the lap with time penalties, they are added to your lap time. And your next lap doesn't count. Which means that, if it's close to the start of qualifying, you have to push hard, and don't even get the benefit of the time. If you know a lap is about 2 minutes and there's 4 minutes left, you might as well park up. (Which is what I saw a bunch of people doing last night.)

So I'm seeing lots and lots of incidents in qualifying, because 1) you have to push hard all the time to get laps in. 2) it tends to be full of traffic, because waiting for a half lap to get clear tarmac may be punished. 3) time penalties are lethal, so people are slowing down to get rid of them.

Other annoyances: Does it really need to do a 20 car flyby at the start of the race? (In FIA races) It takes forever, and everyone knows what grid position they are in. I don't need to know I've qualified 18/20... Again.

Unskippable winner cutscenes. It's not me (it won't ever be me) so I don't give a fuck. Let me skip it if I want.

Managed to qualify first for a race last night, then immediately got twatted at Druids and then punted straight off at Graham Hill bend by the cheating cunt who won. But I still had a fun race working my way back up from 19th to 9th. And afterwards the couple of people behind me at the start who saw what happened stayed in the chat to commiserate with me and call the winner a cheat which was nice.

Is there a reporting mechanism?

Nah, and the current safety rating system is quite basic. It's not difficult to get the top S class safety rating. You could if you wanted to keep it by only cheating when you really need to in order to win. But most people don't and if some prick needs to win that badly then fuck them. I had some good racing with decent folks making my way back through so wasn't too upset.

Good race last night. Qualified on pole and got away clean but made a minor mistake and got passed by someone, but then I kept it clean and after two laps with me on his bumper he could take the pressure no more, went too deep into a corner and hit a wall. Then he spent the rest of the race fighting with the cars behind. It was tense, though. For eight laps they were never more than one mistake behind me and tyre wear was on. I was constantly having to brake earlier but also trying not to give too much away. But I held on and by the last lap I had managed to gap them to about four seconds so I could drive safely to the line for sweet, glorious victory and clean race bonus points.

Nice! Wins are so good. Enjoy the moment!

The problem is if I do well in another race I'll get moved up a rank. So I'll be a poor dickhead scrapping in the melee at the back again.

Yes but then in a month's time you'll be top of that one. You learn more about yourself as a racer by racing against better drivers. I don't see the point in thrashing idiots over and and over again.

Is that why you go for the role of idiot to be thrashed? Or just the natural state of things.

Hah. You don't get to race against better drivers, you just get to scrap against idiots like you while the better drivers disappear into the distance.

There's at least a couple of dickheads in every race. I've found that, in GR3 at least, most of the top knobheads seem to be either in Porsches or those other fucking shitty actual Beetles.

I'm assuming you get better as time goes on. In your case I'm happy to make an exception.