Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-26829117-20170904090146/@comment-28169398-20171016181521

Mugwumps wrote: " Though how would TSM opponents be ranked?" That's the brilliant bit; they already are! FM are definitely not doing any fancy or even basic Bayesean predictions of your performance. It seems to be mostly just a ranking of your time (or distance or speed, as appropriate) and where it fits in the ditribution of times on their server. So FM could just use the existing TSM ranking system and add a bonus based on a tiering scheme, i.e., the actual race time doesn't matter, though it will effect future events. The downside being that, at least for some events, you will need a heavily upgraded car and drive using cuts to get the fastest bots (e.g. EK 10-lapper).

In terms of difficultly, perhaps I wasn't clear, but I was meaning a user-settable difficultly level, just like turning on or off traction control. I was thinking about User-settable Difficulty setting as well. We used to have that in the video games of the 80's and 90's. Today's algorithms should be even better at fine tuning it.

We do have User-settable Difficulty in a way, though. Bot slowing and bot management are inherently that. In a fully serviced Audi R18 e-tron quattro (2015) -1 Engine, I can run the 10-Lap Endurance Champions race in 29-30 minutes, but in the interest of always winning, I never run it faster than about 35 minutes. So in essence, I have set the difficulty for that series and that race in particular to Easy. With SE's I might set to Easy to Moderate. For LTSs Moderate to Difficult, given that there is time to go back and reset the difficulty in Speed Snaps, Head-To-Heads, and Eliminations if it is getting too hard to get 100% completion. Bonus Series, except for Endurance Champions I will run Difficult to Very Difficult, to test myself, and I am stalled in Career, hopeful that the Ferrari 599 GTO Championship will return as a Flashback LTS.

I would say that I wish they would add either some qualification rounds to the events for starting position or a randomized grid position, so that it isn't the constant start at the back unless it is some weird special event.

I would also rather run clean races as opposed to using cuts and pitting. No driver is perfect, not even LH or Seb. I would like to see Auralpod and Dr. P. put a foot wrong every so often in a race where they lose traction in a turn and you have a chance to catch them up instead of having to resort to unsportsmanlike conduct...