Mike Dee

@urgaffel already gets stressed enough when people try to run down his animals in the road, I can only imagine what would happen if we started adding bodies to the mix

What does this rank do though? What people are you being matched with? There is no match making or anything, there aren't different categories or tiers of racers. You don't sign up for weekend races with limited # of drivers. Ranks work for iR and games like that because there is a reason to have a rank. They host events, they host lobbies, there is a reason to have similarly skilled people in the same race. We don't have any of that in DR2. If there was tiers or something where you needed to be at least a "3500MMR driver to enter" or something I would understand. But what do the players gain from just making tiers in the dailies or weeklies? What happens when you "win" in Tier 4 for a daily? Do you move up to Tier 3? Why? What did that do to make the game any more fun or competitive for you? The problem is that moving up in rank does nothing for the player. There is nothing to gain. There is no reason to move up unless you want more competition which would be achieved without ranks entirely. I also don't want to sound like I am against the idea of ranks - I just see ZERO value for using ranks in the current DR2 system. It isn't designed to use the ranks for anything useful. We would need a lot more on top of the game modes and community events for there to be a reason to have ranks.

You keep asking for a ranking system, but what would that even give us? What does it add? You don't race anyone directly, you race their times. What do we gain by splitting times up into a bunch of sub groups? "Oh yay you are the fastest of the slowest 40%!!" - I'd rather just see where my time lands compared to all times both faster and slower than me. Show me what grouping I land in (like they do with the splits for community events) but I care more about how far from the real top/bottom I am than how far I am from being top 55%...

Don't you dare bash on my fiestas!! The MK7 has probably the best liveries in RX!

Hell yeah, those were awesome. I just loved them because everyone was also forced to run the same tuning - you couldn't complain someone beat you because they knew how to tune and you didn't or anything like that. It is why I also find the RX2 class so much fun in MP, everyone is basically on a perfectly even playing field mechanically. It all came down to driver skills.

Current experiments have pegged the AI at roughly the following levels: Open: 50-60% Clubman: 60-70% Pro: 70-80% Elite: 80-95% Master: 95-110% I would also say you could probably make the ranges a bit fuzzier on the edges (ie Pro is more like 67-83%) but not by that much; could honestly just be chalked up to randomness/conditions. But it has been noted that in My Team Masters tends to run a bit faster than the 100% AI in customs. Maybe that is just consistency? Not really sure but it is definitely a bit above 100% AI

It's the only way I know how to rally hell at this point half of my twitch stream is a craft beer review!

NSFW - I get a little excited after the joker...

When the DLC drops and you can make good MP lobbies...

Oh hey, look what someone found while streaming the new DirtFish content... if you're in the Discord thank @Trollikene

Does anyone know if the Test Drive miles add onto your distance driven for upgrades? Could be a nice way to pad a few extra miles to get the next upgrade when you're right on the edge.

Can anything please you? People complain about not having DirtFish this time around, asking specifically for it because it is such a well known rally school and location that everyone liked in previous titles Codies delivers what is requested The internet complains that they got "rehashed" content I think Steam is leaking again...

And to do super awesome drifts through while letting our inner Kenneth Block out! Seriously, I know people think the whole gymkhana thing is super "bro" and isn't in the spirit of true rally, but goddamn if it isn't an absolute blast to do. It also lets you hone your skills 100x faster than doing normal stage rally because you can force yourself to attack an obstacle constantly until you learn serious car control. Not to mention playing follow the leader back in D3 with all your friends drunkenly at the end of the night is some of my best memories in Dirt

wait was that epic drift by Erikkson in Germany RX?!?! Oh boy this just got way more exciting if so... ALSO DIRT FISH IS TOMORROW. GET HYPED!!

@PJTierney you can't do this to me man, I'm at work and my boss is looking at me like I'm an idiot as I sit here grinning like a 12 year old on a Saturday morning mumbling "Deja Vu!!!" and talking about Runnin' in the 90s...

@Jake Cushing you missed the best one! 977675 Dirt Rally 2.0 Car Pack 5 (Toyota Eurobeat DLC) 458 MB

Hey glad to see people like my masochistic events lol But yeah, I totally agree, until you start having looong gaps between service the tyre options are a moot point. I'm actually pretty sure people still found it faster to take Soft tyres in Argentina last event for the 6 stages of sprints & longs than to take mediums. It is really fun though to see people driving "smart" in order to conserve as much of the car as possible. Unfortunately until they get a chance to revisit the tyre damage model I don't know if we will ever hit a point where tyre choice matters. I've been doing a few tests in Germany and Spain ahead of the championship to see if I can find a point where mediums/hards become the better choice but I don't think I can make it happen without doing something insane like 10 stages without a service.

http://blog.codemasters.com/community/03/celebrating-the-women-behind-our-games-for-iwd2019-meet-mandy/ Actually went digging and came up with the old interview from Mandy. Not super detailed, but touches on a few of the challenges.

I can't speak for CM and all of their individual licensing agreements... but let's say most of the time? Normally there is going to be some form of compensation, no one wants to give their stuff away for free. But if there is a big enough promotional gain by allowing the use of their logo/car/etc you might see "partnerships" arise. It would have been a lot more common to see that kind of stuff in the older titles between smaller sponsors and studios where it's beneficial to all involved to up the eyes on the content while increasing the content count too. But now if you're going to see some kind of partnership like that, it'll probably also involve an investment agreement. They'll offer their content/cars/etc for "free" or on extremely good terms, but they will also have a sizable financial stake in the studio/investment firm/whatever producing the game and will reap the rewards from it that way. Now maybe I'm completely wrong in all of this, I don't work in the game industry so it might operate very differently than other industries. But from what I did learn by looking into that stuff years ago, and what I do know from my own professional experiences with vendors and outside companies, everything involved money or some kind of compensation now. Maybe it's a one-time up front cost, maybe it's a per-sale cost, and maybe these agreements are only valid for a few years too so the game becomes literally unsellable after it expires since it would contain "unlicensed content" at that point.

Yeah it really sucks, and without some behemoth behind you like Microsoft in Forza's case, it gets really tricky to also convince those holders to allow users to completely "tarnish" their car's image with custom liveries when you yourself can't source all the liveries you want as an organization. It's the entire reason why the Quattro has only a single livery in the games. To even get the car in the game, CM had to agree that the Audi wouldn't be touched and would always be draped in the iconic White/Yellow. Now if manufacturers and sponsors could only get it in their heads that being in a video game is actually a good thing and free promotional material, we might finally get back to the old days of having all kinds of official content in any title.

He's explained it once before, or maybe it was Urgaffel, but essentially - yes. That is what makes official liveries of historics so insanely annoying to source. You not only need to get the main sponsor and manufacturer to ok it, you then have to find out who the rightsholders are for each individual sponsor and a lot of the times it has been sold all over since the 70s when the livery was first revealed. Maybe you get lucky and it ended up in the portfolio of a big entity that CM already is working with, so it becomes more like a line-item for them. But other times it has been traded a handful of times and the new holder doesn't even realize they own partial rights to that specific livery. edit - found the link to Mandy's interview, and she is a Licensing Admin for Codies http://blog.codemasters.com/community/03/celebrating-the-women-behind-our-games-for-iwd2019-meet-mandy/ she talks about how insanely hard, and how many months in advance it takes, to get the liveries or car rights.

Handing the VR lift off to a new team, even if it external, definitely does not mean that CM magically frees up all the resources that would have been working on it. You still are going to be required to keep some % of those resources on VR communication and integration with the vendor, and that % can vary drastically depending on how easily the work is flowing that sprint. It definitely would help, but I'm sure CM has a few people working closely with any outside team on the VR implementation.

does this count? how I started a Friday off work.

Lol @Riggs you're putting out quality content that people even think is real. Well done, and ofc you added Portugal at the end =P Would be a wild rally though, wouldn't complain if they did sneak it in.

Honestly that sounds like your wheel settings could use some tweaks. I can huck the 037 around Wales all night pretty casually with only one hand on the wheel; you shouldn't be wrestling or breaking a heavy sweat just from rotating the wheel. Unless you like to replicate the good ol 6R4 experience by placing your PC directly behind your gaming chair to jack the cabin temps way up. Then sweating is actually a requirement.