Pro vs AM

Hi, this is my first post on this forum and I hope I have not infringed any rule.

In the Blancpain GT as we know there is the distinction between PRO and AM drivers. Ok, in ACC there will be a new system of driver rating, but beyond that I think that this distinction could be implemented in a very simple way: why not splitting the classification of the time trials in two pieces, one for the PRO drivers (who can liberally customize their car setup) and one for the AM, like me, who have no time/knowledge to edit the setup? I know this sound a bit arcadey, but on GT Sport it works really well. I fear that the ACC driver ranking could be influenced by one's setup, so that if you are able to setup your car really well you can achieve faster laptimes and better lines, improving your ranking. That's why I fear that the ranking will not be enough. Of course who is able to setup their car deserves to win and to have the maximum prize, this is a real simulator. But I think it would be cool to see a separate classification for drivers with fixed setup.

Sorry for the length

 

I agree. I'm enthusiastic but not very fast and I'd much prefer to be able to race with others of similar talent as I build up my experience. I'm sure that I'd just spend most of my time trying to get out of the way of the aliens whose lap times I can only dream about. I'm not even sure it really has that much to do with setup. Even with the default setups, most of the better drivers look to be significantly faster than the more casual users. I know most of you will say practice more but some of us just don't have the time but still want to enjoy racing when we can but don't want to race in arcade racers.

 

Do you have to win? or interesting battles.
It does not matter if it's place 1-2, 5-6 or 10-11 or so ...
It has to be clean races. Without crash or bombs.

 

This...though I will always strive to win, I'd rather have full servers than too many sub-divisions of driver rankings and categories. As long as I can get a good fight, it doesnt always matter if it's for 1st or 6th.

What I'm hoping with the weather engine is that some servers will run it with dynamic weather on. The odd chance may be handed to me that I will time things better than my faster opponents and get a few places on them that way. Sometimes it will hopefully also end up with you and front and them chasing you down. I've memories of defending quite well against some of the faster opposition out there

 

That argument again...

"I fear that the ACC driver ranking could be influenced by one's setup, so that if you are able to setup your car really well you can achieve faster laptimes and better lines, improving your ranking."

The ranking is there to show who is faster than who. If someone is faster than you, it doesn't matter if it's because they're as talented as Fernando Alonso, or because they're simply better at setting up the car.
If you feel like you're at such a disadvantage because you're no good at making setups, take the time and learn it, or at least don't try to hinder the ones who did so.

 

Bingo. I noticed that sentence and thought the same thing.

 

I've never said that the ones who are good at setting up the car must be penalized. I said that as not everybody has the time or even the will to learn how to setup a car, I think that a separate Leaderboard for the time attacks could be a good idea to give a chance to people like me to have some satisfaction. I like to win even if I'm not an alien, but what I like most is to be able to compete with people who have the same tools that I have. So it may not be online races, even if it could be an option to tick if someone rents a server (don't know if it's already like that sorry), but a separate leaderboard for the hot lap challenges, in my opinion, would not create any damage: The overall winner will always be the one with the fastest time, obtained with a customed setup. But for me, who have no idea on how to do it, it is pointless to partecipate because I can't really know my level of skill in that specific combo: was it me or the setup? That's what I mean with AM and PRO: it would be impossible to copy the real thing because they're two different things, but it could be "translated" in this terms. The ones who don't know how to setup, called Amateurs, and the ones who fight for the overall with no limitations, the PROs

The driver ranking was the ratings, sorry

 

I think that this will just create two separate rankings. IMO It looks like a good idea, but it won't work because of:
a) there's people a lot faster than the others no matter the setup. I have been, and I guess a lot of you too, driving on servers with limited or closed setup. Ten drivers with similar times, everything looks fine. "we are elite drivers guys!". A new guy comes in and sets the best time by 2 seconds. General disappointment. another guys comes a while later and beats that guy's best lap by 3 seconds. ' The setup is important, of course. But if you're fast, you will be fast with whatever setup
b) people would take advantage of that. People who are fast but not the fastest and want to be on top of some ranking would aim for that AM leaderboard thus depriving it from its original meaning.

I hope it doesn't sound mean, it's not my intention.

 

Simracing involves several competences. Outright pace, consistency, strategy, setups, safety to name a few. You may be really fast over a single lap but lose time or even crash too often, you may be really consistent but not have too fast pace, there are several ways to win or lose time on simracing, especially since you don't have a team to plan your strategy and set your car up.
Being able to set up the car is just as important as the other competences, it takes time and effort to learn to set the car up just as it takes to learn the fastest line over a circuit.

So I ask you: Why do you think there should be a system to take setups out of the equation? Do you think it doesn't matter as much as other skills? If you do that, you are effectively penalizing those who took the time to learn that skill. I'm complete crap at setting up my cars, I can barely set them to feel how I want them, but not too much beyond that, so if a driver that's 0.5 seconds slower than me on equal conditions manages to beat me because he was more competent setting up the car, that's his merit and I should just deal with it.

Also, I believe there will be a system that allows players to share and download each other's setups, so if you're as bad as you say and don't wanna put in the effort to learn how to make your own, you can just download one from someone else if that concerns you so much.

 

Car setups aren’t just to make one faster. It’s suppose to help them tune to their racing style. Some might like rears to slide while others not. This is geared at style more than it is speed imo...not to say it doesn’t help people get faster but not to put them into a different category

For this reason this topic makes no sense to me.

 

I am currently a totally useless driver my lap times are embarrassing; I love messing about with the settings but more often than not , they make things worse, because i am also useless at setups. Having everybody being forced to use the same setup would benefit some and disadvantage others. There cannot be a single setup that would be good for everybody. People who take the time learning about setups, deserve the advantage it may offer. So I will continue to learn about setups , a little at a time until I get better at it just as much as I practice driving to get better at it. I don't think its that difficult, you just need to be methodical and it adds so much to the realism of the game

 

There's also another point: Learning how to set up the car is relatively easy, there are tons of guides showing what each part of the car does. The difficult part is having the consistency and the feel to take the car to the limit and know what difference each setup change will make. For that reason, fast people will usually be good at setting up their cars and not-so-fast people will usually be not-so-good, being able to drive fast and being able to improve your setup are two skills that are very closely related.
For that reason, if you introduce a rating system that takes setups out of the equation, you won't be changing the pecking order too much, you'll just decrease the gap a little bit between the fast drivers that can gain a second with their setups and the slow guys that aren't able to improve the car setup.

 

Wouldn’t it make sense for a driver to be ranked either PRO or AM based on their driver ranking? So to be ranked PRO you must be above certain level in all categories or along those lines. Everyone would start at AM initially and as the ranking improves move to PRO category

 

As I understand it, drivers aren't pro or am, the teams are. Drivers are bronze, silver, gold and platinum. Teams are pro, pro-am or am depending on the combinations of drivers in the team. For example, a pro-am team can have drivers platinum/bronze/bronze. Your driver ranking would sort out whether you were bronze, silver, gold or platinum. So if anything, you could have a pro rank for gold and platinum drivers, and another for bronze and silver. But I don't know what that what achieve, really.

 

Well it would achieve matching drivers with other drivers of similar skill level in an open online race. Would be fairly similar to the MR system where a server would be for gold/platinum only or if using an auto match system for joining online races it would join you to drivers of that grade. Splitting in to 4 categories simplified it a fair bit. Also could split the racing in to multi class if running multi driver endurance races based on the rankings.

If you think of it from a league perspective you always have a handful of really dedicated guys that are fighting for the win, then mid pack who are there to enjoy the racing but won’t generally win a race and then new guys who will be way off the pace initially. If you would have separate championships for those tiers of drivers it would give more incentive for the guys who aren’t on the ultimate pace to keep racing and also not get in to incidents with the faster guys as they would be fighting for their own championship in their own skill class

 

That's all true and good points, but I was thinking in the context of the OP's idea to have separate time trials.

 

Yeah, my bad, went a little off topic...

 

From Official Site Blancpain:
https://www.blancpain-gt-series.com/about/regulations

 

For online races only one rating "SAFETY RATING (SA)" is valid.
All other ratings are unimportant for online races.
If you are 4 seconds slower than the penultimate one, you go home.
Whether with super setup, gold, silver or bronze-driver.