KNT2011

whenever I'm playing something else, GT or PC2 or whatever it might be and I mess up, immediately looking for the flashback button before I remember

The really don't have enough liveries to be making them one shot items. I hope this isn't the case or what about players who have only just bought the game?

It can be tedious, absolutely. Out lap a little less so as you can back off when you come out the pits, let the car ahead get some space, and follow around slower, it's not perfect but can be managed. But when you get one on track with you... Dear lord. I've noticed that it's about proximity to the player. But the AI is not understanding what is going on. The trick, at least most of the time works for me, is when you are both close full speed, pull off line quick and slam the brakes. You will stop and AI will have gone far enough ahead to be out of your 'zone' so it will slow down, and then realise noone is around, and speed up and go on its merry way.

Having a young daughter means I don't get the run of uninterrupted free time needed to focus completely on the race, so I consider flashbacks to a wonderful invention. When I was younger and would take the games far more seriously I would be shocked by such a ridiculous assist! but now they are very much appreciated, just want to hit the track and have a competitive race, if something totally out of the picture means I shove it into the wall on lap 1, after doing practice and qualy etc. then I'm using it, otherwise I've wasted all the time. I try to judge on the merits of that moment, obviously having some soft toy chucked at me or being jumped on directly will bring a flashback (but not a safety car thankfully) And if I do something stupid just as I'm not concentrating as I'd like, then usually I'll flash it back. As others have mentioned, AI stupidity I feel is justified but again need to weight it up in the moment. All in all, it's a proceless feature, you use really at your own discretion and demands for what is considered 'realistic'. I'd never use cos I went wide, lost it on Eu Rouge (though god knows I'd like to) made the wrong move and clipped an AI car, I have to live with those as I class them as part of the race. My daughter I wouldn't, her impacts are not racing incidents, more acts of God

You can change difficulty per race and even per session

Relatable

For the player it is too tempting to shut the door on the AI and not give them space when in reality this would cause a penalty or worse. Most of the time when I think of 'poor AI' complaints, it's aggressive player actions, and obviously AI is gonna back out at this point.

As with a lot of games that try to create a fictional world round the player, Football Manager comes to mind as probably the deepest attempt at doing this, it sitll will always come down to the players imagination. The game is limited in that it can't give you context as to why moves happen, this is something that you have to try and rationalise yourself. I saw a complaint about Leclerc moving to Haas in mid season, but the more I thought about it, you could stretch your imagination for this to be realistic, massive falling out with a chaotic Ferrari who have had a bad start, all other seats are taken, Haas is able to negotiate well and lands Charles. It's unlikely, but not impossible. (also suspect some of the claims about moves are made up to bash the game but that's another conversation!)

I don't remember if it was 2010, 2011? You could walk around the paddock? I never played much around that time so I don't recall how interactive it was but yeah we could use just something new off track to give us a bit of immersion.

2017 had the best career for me. With the hospitality areas between races / sessions showing the backdrop of the races, and the different areas you would visit. They dropped it in 2018 when they brought in Claire / media interviews, but I do wish instead they could have just added that onto what they already had. Alas.

This area of the game could certainly do with a revamp, hopefully on next gen. To add on, after all these years of F1 games with random crowd waving nations flags, I do long for them to do something interesting with certain elements. Where are the stands full of orange that we see now? And more interestingly, imagine driving down the main straight at Monza, Ferrari leading, the red smoke rising from the stands and the giant Ferrari flag being passed along. Monza, really, is truly special for the fans and atmosphere it has, yet no F1 game has ever tried to do more with it. It's just another race in the game, when it is anything but. On Grid 2019, they do some nice effects at race start with coloured smoke and balloons and things going off, so it can be done, just going to take some imagination on a devs part.

Wild to think a base of 70 would produce Monaco 87, this is what I'm getting at, doing it by times is more applicable to different driver skill levels. I may as well just dump it in the first corner at Monaco on 87, nevermind 97, and if we use my typical base difficulty of 90... Monaco is typically 75 for me, and I know it off by heart, but damned if I have the bravery to really attack it.

It is frustrating as once you have the difficult set correctly for it, Austria is a blast of a race. You can try different strategies, you can score some great overtakes, it's always unpredictable weather wise, and if you're not careful and too into the racing you can go off the other side of the planet at Turn 1. Not to mention it is a beautiful part of the world well realised by the artists. And I just feel for the players to whom it's just easy race on the calendar they can probably lap 2nd place as they don't spend time adjusting difficulties and will never know what it is capable of.

I do get what you're saying but it assumes CM must have difficulty perfectly balanced and all discrepancy comes from players, different styles, assists, etc. The truth is likely in the middle somewhere, but I don't agree that everything comes from player difference. I appreciate it's not an easy thing to do but it can certainly be improved by CM, Austria is the smoking gun I'm afraid! and it has been like that for a few years now, certainly all of this gen... It can never be perfect, but CM certainly have the data that would allow them to bring it at least closer so that difficulty adjustment doesn't have to be such an overwhelming part of the game. I would remind that AI times in Catalunya are 3 seconds faster than 2019. The biggest jump between games, so they are clearly tweaking.

Find it pretty impossible to believe CM don't look at Austria and know they need to work on the AI there. I have a 20 point difficulty swing between Australia and Austria.- 85-105 and I have driven Albert Park for 20 years, it's not a question of my performance.

Unless I've somehow missed a random bug.. Drivers who come back out in Q1 and Q2 are on the 'bubble' trying to make it into the next Q session So drivers who are 'safe' will not come back out, why would they? There's nothing to gain.

Amazing move by DJ in C there, still not over that, phenomenal

You're going to need to post this in technical support mate, it's not going to get any attention in this forum, which is just for random stuff. https://forums.codemasters.com/forum/106-technical-assistance/

While the aesthetics are the leading factor, you could of course point at any major stadium and say the same, for whatever sport. Bristol above, tags itself as 'The Last Great Coliseum', so at least in that sense, they were going for that look!

This is something I've been considering also. And one of the reasons a part of me preferred the general difficult levels Hard - Master - Expert etc. which didn't let you tweak to the single digit. YHes at some tracks you'd dominate, and some tracks you would suffer, but you wouldn't have it playing on your mind all the time. I generally do it this way, say I am driving the Ferrari, I would consider that (in the game, lets not get into all that haha) to be a top 5 car. Does my TT time put my in the top 5 on a difficulty level? If it does, that's what I pick. And go from there. But your question is a good one, where do you settle? I'm a firm believer that the difficulty needs some serious work by CM and needs streamlined so we're not stressing over whether it's 92 or 93 difficulty. Austria, for example, is an obvious one, and they need to get rid of the obvious ones where the player is miles ahead on the same difficulty they're competitive in at say Bahrain. Once you get the obvious ones out of the way, only small tweaks remain, and then you can return to a more basic Hard - Master - Expert difficulty selector and save people creating full websites and spreadsheets to find that perfect number, in all honesty it's incredibly tedious, and we all just want to get out on track and have a competitive race.

The Wall is absolutely a merciless god JR Hildebrand crashed from the lead on the last lap of the 500, 2011

Oh for sure, though the sadistic part of me that watched Montoya drive into a track dryer at the Daytona 500 (I like JP! Just what a moment..) would find some enjoyment in seeing Hamilton, Vettel et al handle a raging oval (yes I also saw Lewis drive Tony Stewarts NASCAR back in the day but I mean in a busy competitive race!)

What a drive to win today. Middle finger to the team asking him to back off, drove hard, kept the tires, great banter on the radio. Undoubtedly a future champ.

For me, and I posted my qualifying time guide in a different thread, it's a case of running AI qualy sessions on various difficulties at every track. This gives you a guide to work from, before any race jump in TT, do 5 laps of the track, have a look at your average and then compare to the AI qualy times and make a judgment of where you would be. Times are much easier to work with as you can see in a handful of laps the general range of where you're going to be and can tweak session to session still if you need. And you've had a few laps practice for a track maybe you haven't raced in a while (I consider it the simulator!) Using someone else's difficulty guide will always cause problems as they may at a basic level just play the game better / worse, as someone notes above, assists will cause variation, as will track performance. Getting the range of lap times the AI performs at will give you a much more solid guide and a site like https://difficulty.racing/index.html which one of the mods shared a while back can make it easier for you if you don't have the time / patience to sit running AI sessions.

While I think a track like Martinsville really lacks a lot of appeal and is certainly one for the short course hardcore, a race at Bristol is an absolute blast given the huge banking, total lack of track space, and "it's just a flesh wound!" mentality as crews send their battered cars out with tape to replace their entire front assembly. It's a race I think should be experienced at least once by any fan of motorsports. And you can't argue with the sheer scale of the setting