I’m really sick and tired of the entire dirty lap concept. We are competitors. All that matters is if someone gained an unfair advantage. That all drivers had an equal opportunity to get the fastest lap time.
Before the track limits were visible what I disliked was I don’t have time to spend hours and hours playing the game. Learning where I could cut corners or go wide without a dirty lap was hard. The limits give me feedback right away to learn faster. That’s important in gaming. My son plays Dark Souls and although it’s very difficult to play, he likes the clear consistent feedback about what he did wrong instead of playing hours to figure it out.
If I rewind during a lap, sure it’s a dirty lap. I gained an advantage. It makes sense. However, if I didn’t rewind during the last turn or two on a chicane or two tight turns (like the last two at LeMans), then my next lap should be clean.
However, if I tap a wall, just like real racing, it doesn’t matter. What I care about is how fast I managed to run a lap without gaining an advantage. I DO NOT CARE if someone ran a faster lap by hitting a wall, then beat me. I do care if they gained an unfair advantage.
There are two types of fastest laps. Fastest qualifying with no aerodynamic benefit from other cars on the track, or fastest laps in a race. If during a race another driver beat me with strategy by using some drafting then it’s all fair. [Mod Edit - warning: abbreviated profanity is subject to enforcement - MM]
However, as I said in qualifying or racing if someone gets a faster lap despite tapping a wall with a faster time, they beat me fair and square. Their lap time is better. I don’t care if it was ‘clean’, I only care about faster without an unfair advantage.
If some events like ‘Track Days’ where you have to get a fast lap by passing other cars, then all I care about is if the other driver stayed on track inside the limits. I don’t care about drafting or if they tap another car. The dirty lap doesn’t matter. All that matters is how many cars they passed without going outside the track limits.
Races are about finish position. Leaderboards are about lap times subject to the same conditions and track limits. Any speed advantage gained from drafting or boundary cut is going to benefit the lap time all the way through the finish line so the whole lap should be marked as different from one that kept within the boundaries with no added advantage.
Wallriding can result in faster lap times, and for the sake of sportsmanship I personally wouldn’t want a system that condoned that behavior by not flagging it.
Agree regarding the wall riding, however, that should be easy to detect based on the geometry of the car. If the roof of the car.
In regard to the benefit for drafting as I said, in the real world racing has different lap times recorded for qualifying with a hot lap or the fastest lap in a race. They don’t even take account improvements with car technology. There is a fastest lap for every F1 track that doesn’t care about drafting or clean air.
I didn’t dispute the boundaries. I agree they should factor in to make it consistent for all.
I don’t think rewinding will dirty the next lap unless you do something else to dirty the lap. Going off track or hitting a wall anywhere in the last sector of a track will cause the next lap to also be dirty. If you have a clean lap and then cut the last corner but rewind before you cut the corner and take that corner cleanly your next lap will start clean.
While having a lap dirtied by a minor mistake can be frustrating sometimes, it is completely necessary.
In the past there were way less conditions players needed to meet before having a clean lap. And those same players abused them, hard. People would have ME Four-Twelves in front providing a slipstream for their C-class cars. Players were discovering just how to hit certain walls exactly to get them that .10 advantage. It was a free for all.
Gradually, Turn 10 implemented measures to avoid this behaviour. It turns out it is actually really hard to detect if someone has gained an advantage by hitting a wall for example. Sometimes, it is obvious and you could argue this should re-validate the time. Most often though, it is a lot less clear. has the player actually skirted along the wall by accident or was he strategically bleeding of speed to hit the inside of the next corner?
The same really goes for the on-track barricades. Players would find all kind of ways to try and cut corners. Turn 10 would then respond by trying out different measures; invisible areas were you would slow down to a halt. Barriers. Invisible patches were you would suddenly lose all grip. Nobody likes those measures, as they will absolutely cost you your race in multiplayer… they are necessary however.
Having said that, there is room for improvement. I’ve often found myself frustrated by having to rewind and having the next lap invalidated. This is not a problem when i could’ve gained an advantage by using the function to perfect my exit speed, but when it happens more than 3 corners before the start/finish line… no bueno.
Maybe they could implement an option where the standards are less-strict and have a seperate set of leaderboards for those players. But then again, there’s a challenge in having to complete a lap perfectly.
I just tried it. Track I used was Watkins Glen Short, the last split time you get is right as you exit the 180 degree right hand corner (Turn 5). I had a clean lap all the way until the very last corner before the finish line., I cut the last corner (turn 7) and dirtied my lap, I rewinded until I was on the straight between turn 6 and turn 7 and then took turn 7 cleanly and my next lap started clean.
On my 2nd lap I had a clean lap the entire lap until about 10 feet before the finish line I hit the left wall and dirtied my lap, my next lap started dirty. I rewinded until just before I hit the wall and finished the lap without out hitting the wall (the rewind did not take to before turn 7), my next lap started as a clean lap. Rewinding will never cause your next lap to start dirty, for the lap to start dirty you need to either drive out of bounds, hit a wall, or draft a car at some point during the last sector of the lap, if you can rewind enough to make the last sector of the lap clean your next lap will start clean.
There is nothing stopping you from using the rewind feature to get the perfect exit on the last corner of a lap, or even rewinding the first corner until before the start line and retrying the first corner of each lap until it is perfect.
Don’t understand the problem here, if youre racing a lap being marked as “dirty” means nothing. There is no qualifying so that doesn’t apply, the only place it would matter would be rivals. If thats the case what exactly is the problem, stay on the track and it won’t be dirty. Everyone has to follow the same rules making it a level playing field. If you hit something or go off the track in the last sector rewind and do it again. Every track has different limits so do it no matter what because its better to be safe than sorry.
There are different driving styles for different types of racing. Qualifying is done alone on the track IRL and a lot of racers run wide open with special tunes for maximum power to get the best time. In a race teams develop different strategies blending longevity and reliability with the fact that the best line will often have a competitor in it meaning beating qualifying times are very difficult.
I think this approach should be mirrored in Forza. Lap times in a crowded race should not go on leaderboards but all races should have practice sessions and qualifying before the race start in single player to allow for hot lapping.
In a race lap times should take a back seat to finding a clean and fast solution to finishing as close to the front of the pack as possible. Instead of dirty laps there should be stewards inquiries for aggressive cuts or yellow flags for wrecks or black flags for blatant violations. I would be ok with a three or five strike rule where leaving the track and reentering with an advantage on your sector time applied a strike to your player card. Too many strikes and immediate DQ. Next race you start at the back of the pack too with fewer strikes available than before. Get DQed again and you are booted from the lobby in multiplayer or are forfeited from the championship in single player and must restart.
Combine that with automatic ghosting in multiplayer once you are farther behind the leader than the race finish timer and you have a simple recipe to greatly incentivize clean racing and avoid players waiting a lap to wreck the leader. Easy to implement too.