DiRT 4 Difficulty too easy

[Swift747 26]

I'm playing with no TC, no stability, no anti lock brakes, auto transmission, on the hardest difficulty and I'm winning stages by up to 26s+! 

I know codies need to cater for everyone, but as the hardest difficulty, this isn't challenging at all. 

I hope they add some more difficulties, or else I'll have to go online all the time to get a challenge. 

[Dalkiranoglu 0]

Its not easy at all. maybe at the begining you feel easy because firts couple of events's track complexity is easy. And remember you cant select hardest difuculty at the begining. 

[JKDizzy 0]

I'm finding that the "tough" difficulty which is suppose to be the highest really isn't that difficult. Particularly in Rallycross and landrush but all across the game the ai seems really easy

[Swift747 26]

Dalkiranoglu said:

Its not easy at all. maybe at the begining you feel easy because firts couple of events's track complexity is easy. And remember you cant select hardest difuculty at the begining. 

I'm half way through career on 'tough', the hardest one, and it's very easy. 

[JZStudios 631]

Dalkiranoglu said:

Its not easy at all. maybe at the begining you feel easy because firts couple of events's track complexity is easy. And remember you cant select hardest difuculty at the begining. 

I'm playing with one hand on a wheel. It's too easy. The AI are pitifully slow.

[ark13700 24]

CM pls patch Tough rallycross AI to use 100% throttle

[Rallycameraman 241]

Swift747 said:

Dalkiranoglu said:

Its not easy at all. maybe at the begining you feel easy because firts couple of events's track complexity is easy. And remember you cant select hardest difuculty at the begining. 

I'm half way through career on 'tough', the hardest one, and it's very easy. 

The hardest difficult is actually fearless, which you unlock after being promoted through the ranks. I can't remember which level it is it unlocks though. 

[McNastysRevenge 0]

 Fearless unlocks once you finish 100% of any one of the four disciplines. It unlocked for me when I hundred percent finished land rush. 

[dsiOne 0]

McNastysRevenge said:

 Fearless unlocks once you finish 100% of any one of the four disciplines. It unlocked for me when I hundred percent finished land rush. 

Damn I wish I knew that!

[T3RRAF0RM 0]

Swift747 said:

I'm playing with no TC, no stability, no anti lock brakes, auto transmission, on the hardest difficulty and I'm winning stages by up to 26s+! 

I know codies need to cater for everyone, but as the hardest difficulty, this isn't challenging at all. 

I hope they add some more difficulties, or else I'll have to go online all the time to get a challenge. 

I totally agree. I've also got all assist off and the difficulty on the highest setting. I have won everything comfortably. I did a stage yesterday where I made 3 big mistakes and still came 1st by 2 seconds

[Swift747 26]

McNastysRevenge said:

 Fearless unlocks once you finish 100% of any one of the four disciplines. It unlocked for me when I hundred percent finished land rush. 

Thanks for that info. 

Very silly move by codies imo. Are we expected to cruise through career on tough, then get fearless? Kinda dumb. Im not even sure fearless will be much harder. 

[thecraicbear 0]

T3RRAF0RM said:

Swift747 said:

I'm playing with no TC, no stability, no anti lock brakes, auto transmission, on the hardest difficulty and I'm winning stages by up to 26s+! 

I know codies need to cater for everyone, but as the hardest difficulty, this isn't challenging at all. 

I hope they add some more difficulties, or else I'll have to go online all the time to get a challenge. 

I totally agree. I've also got all assist off and the difficulty on the highest setting. I have won everything comfortably. I did a stage yesterday where I made 3 big mistakes and still came 1st by 2 seconds

It's probably because too many people cried their eyes out during DiRT Rally saying it was too difficult for them, when they just weren't putting in the hours to get better. 

[Scyy 0]

thecraicbear said:

T3RRAF0RM said:

Swift747 said:

I'm playing with no TC, no stability, no anti lock brakes, auto transmission, on the hardest difficulty and I'm winning stages by up to 26s+! 

I know codies need to cater for everyone, but as the hardest difficulty, this isn't challenging at all. 

I hope they add some more difficulties, or else I'll have to go online all the time to get a challenge. 

I totally agree. I've also got all assist off and the difficulty on the highest setting. I have won everything comfortably. I did a stage yesterday where I made 3 big mistakes and still came 1st by 2 seconds

It's probably because too many people cried their eyes out during DiRT Rally saying it was too difficult for them, when they just weren't putting in the hours to get better. 

It definitely depends on class and location. Tough ai on group A will compete with the very top of the leaderboard in some places.

[Elfyn 0]

Scyy said:

thecraicbear said:

T3RRAF0RM said:

Swift747 said:

I'm playing with no TC, no stability, no anti lock brakes, auto transmission, on the hardest difficulty and I'm winning stages by up to 26s+! 

I know codies need to cater for everyone, but as the hardest difficulty, this isn't challenging at all. 

I hope they add some more difficulties, or else I'll have to go online all the time to get a challenge. 

I totally agree. I've also got all assist off and the difficulty on the highest setting. I have won everything comfortably. I did a stage yesterday where I made 3 big mistakes and still came 1st by 2 seconds

It's probably because too many people cried their eyes out during DiRT Rally saying it was too difficult for them, when they just weren't putting in the hours to get better. 

It definitely depends on class and location. Tough ai on group A will compete with the very top of the leaderboard in some places.

I am playing with the same setup and I think it depends on the car. Some cars have been very easy to drive and it was not difficult to finish first with a big lead. But on some stages it was very hard. In Group A I had to finish in the overall online top ten to get the gold medall. It was cool to put 4 times within the online top 20 but that also made me think of it as tough as stated in the setup.

Maybe it really differs on different platforms or simply randomly!?

[Dscru 20]

Does weather affect the AI?
Dry stages/good visibility vs  wet/bad visibility (namely heavy rain at night & fog).

I've just moved up to fearless, and it's a lot more difficult for me to compete with the top times, which is great.
But damn, the stage time differences are massive between dry & rain. (Especially heavy rain.)
I won a day/dry stage by 3sec, even though I made 2 massive mistakes.
The next stage was night/heavy rain. Very tough to see (cockpit view), but I went as hard as I could, no real mistakes and was 26sec back :(
Both were about 5.7mile, similar Australia stages.

[Voidhawk 73]

Dscru said:

Does weather affect the AI?
Dry stages/good visibility vs  wet/bad visibility (namely heavy rain at night & fog).

I've just moved up to fearless, and it's a lot more difficult for me to compete with the top times, which is great.
But damn, the stage time differences are massive between dry & rain. (Especially heavy rain.)
I won a day/dry stage by 3sec, even though I made 2 massive mistakes.
The next stage was night/heavy rain. Very tough to see (cockpit view), but I went as hard as I could, no real mistakes and was 26sec back :(
Both were about 5.7mile, similar Australia stages.

 I agree. I love heavy rain but I think for both player v player and AI v player, there is an unreasonable handicap in Cockpit view. On Pro Tour those using external views have a considerable advantage.

[adsadsads 0]

Difficulty varies a lot. All of the kit car career events I found extremely easy. R2 events were pretty easy too. Group A was much more challenging. Up to 2000cc was somewhere in between. RX2 was noticeably harder than the Group B 4WD RX and world RX series.

The RX bit of the triple crown is a massive jump in difficulty. Most of the drivers are around where they were in final bit of RX series but some of them are quite a lot faster. Around 3s a lap faster.

[adsadsads 0]

McNastysRevenge said:

 Fearless unlocks once you finish 100% of any one of the four disciplines. It unlocked for me when I hundred percent finished land rush. 

You don't need 100%. Just have to do well enough in the final championship. Probably just need to not dnf in every event as that's all that's required to unlock licenses.

[schnauzahpowah 0]

When it's raining it's like they go full tropic thunder Robert Downey jr 

[WhiteWagon 0]

Never go full camber.                                  

[BrySkye 14]

The DiRT Rally AI was flawed. I did some tests with that before VAC came in, using tools that let me see exactly where the AI's times would sit on the leaderboards, and found that the easiest AI was perfectly capable of setting times that put it well within the top 100 of the world wide leaderboards, occasionally even breaking the top 20.
That's absurd when you think about it.
The easiest AI could set times which less than a 20 people playing the game could beat?
That's not really a sign that people were crying and just not putting the hours in. That kind of talk from the veterans just saddens me and reminds me why I stopped coming here regularly after Early Access ended. 
The actual data leans towards issues with the AI's difficulty curve. Or lack there of.
Given that the game had so many AI difficulty settings, the differences between easiest and hardest were just too small.

Yeah, the top few % players in the world are going to find it too easy now, but that's what the Community Challenges, Time Attack, Online and organised leagues, etc are for.
DiRT Rally had its AI calibrated by the devs actually doing tool assisted runs of the stages (things like infinite flashbacks), ironing out mistakes etc in creating their internal delta times. A process that can't be readily applied to the Your Stage concept, so it has to be implemented in a different way.
There is more AI behind the AI, as it were.
It may well see some tweaking as the data starts feeding back to the team.

Personally, I don't think catering too heavily towards the Porkhammers of the world is a particularly great way to do things either.
There was talk in the DiRT shows of just how impressed they were by the top times being set, and feeling the need to make adjustments as a result. But its entirely possible to put too much emphasis on the top 1% of players.
Maybe DiRT 4 has gone too far in the other direction, but DiRT Rally was by no means implemented perfectly either.

[Elfyn 0]

BrySkye said:

The DiRT Rally AI was flawed. I did some tests with that before VAC came in, using tools that let me see exactly where the AI's times would sit on the leaderboards, and found that the easiest AI was perfectly capable of setting times that put it well within the top 100 of the world wide leaderboards, occasionally even breaking the top 20.
That's absurd when you think about it.
The easiest AI could set times which less than a 20 people playing the game could beat?
That's not really a sign that people were crying and just not putting the hours in. That kind of talk from the veterans just saddens me and reminds me why I stopped coming here regularly after Early Access ended. 
The actual data leans towards issues with the AI's difficulty curve. Or lack there of.
Given that the game had so many AI difficulty settings, the differences between easiest and hardest were just too small.

Yeah, the top few % players in the world are going to find it too easy now, but that's what the Community Challenges, Time Attack, Online and organised leagues, etc are for.
DiRT Rally had its AI calibrated by the devs actually doing tool assisted runs of the stages (things like infinite flashbacks), ironing out mistakes etc in creating their internal delta times. A process that can't be readily applied to the Your Stage concept, so it has to be implemented in a different way.
There is more AI behind the AI, as it were.
It may well see some tweaking as the data starts feeding back to the team.

Personally, I don't think catering too heavily towards the Porkhammers of the world is a particularly great way to do things either.
There was talk in the DiRT shows of just how impressed they were by the top times being set, and feeling the need to make adjustments as a result. But its entirely possible to put too much emphasis on the top 1% of players.
Maybe DiRT 4 has gone too far in the other direction, but DiRT Rally was by no means implemented perfectly either.

I totally agree.

I think DiRT 4 almost fulfils everyone’s needs concerning the degree of difficulty. There are enough ways to tweak the AI I think.

[Mystx24 0]

I am currently driving the Bwm at historic super series on tough, sim handling, no assists or hud, and lets say iv now racked up 5 or more WR times and the AI beats me by 20 seconds sometimes. Def. Think BWM has something to do with it. I plan to run the Ascona to test my theory. 

Have found other inconsistent events as well with group A mostly. I should not be winning by minutes overall then being slaughtered after doing almost flawless runs.

[BadD0g 0]

Mystx24 said:

I am currently driving the Bwm at historic super series on tough, sim handling, no assists or hud, and lets say iv now racked up 5 or more WR times and the AI beats me by 20 seconds sometimes. Def. Think BWM has something to do with it. I plan to run the Ascona to test my theory. 

Have found other inconsistent events as well with group A mostly. I should not be winning by minutes overall then being slaughtered after doing almost flawless runs.

I just did that championship with the same car on Brutal and got completely destroyed, right after winning almost every stage in an R5 championship and breezing through a historic championship in the Mini on the same difficulty. Hopefully the difficulty will be re-balanced soon, I think consistency makes a bigger difference than outright difficulty. Someone who does fine with one car class, but is way far behind in another because the difficulty isn't balanced right, might be more likely to dismiss the harder class whenever the opportunity comes up to drive it again.

[kobeshow 0]

@BrySkye I think it was firmly established that the DR AI difficulties were created with a different concept in mind. It was about finishing on the podium, and the first placed driver always set "Masters" times, the dropoff after that depended on the difficulty setting. I can't believe that people STILL don't seem to grasp that concept. This edge case where AI got into the top 20 was also heavily dependant on location/class, Monaco Group A comes to mind as being pretty tough.
DR in my opinion had a great concept of not handing everyone a trophy right at the beginning, I actually enjoyed getting better with time, and then finally placing first was very gratifying. D4 is back to industry standart AI difficulties (easier=easier to win), though fast location/class combinations remain (Michigan AI seems to be quick)