AI difficulty Quali vs Race
Making another thread on this topic from my own personal experience as this NEEDS to be addressed after 3 games of same issue getting WORSE. Last year the AI speed from track to track on same diffic...
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Ok so I turned the temps off and did some extensive testing yesterday and finding were pretty much exactly as I suspected.
Quick race at Melbourne, in McLaren as Piastri, so I'd know I'd have a fast teammate (pace stat 90+) to compare to. Weather clear, short quali, 25% race, no assists, recommended setup with onl minor front wing and brake bias changes.
On 103, qualifying without going mental or using blatant exploits like extreme track limits or anything else, I was a bit slower on 1st runs than Lando and on 2nd run I did what I called a damn good lap, but something I could probably do again without needed 10+ flashbacks lol. Ended up side by side on the grid with Lando just outside top 10. So to me that seemed pretty much exactly where the car should be based on performance index.
Restarted on 104, all the same and ended up 2 tenths off Lando, which given his speed, me still being new to game and Melbourne not being my BEST track I thought was fair.
I started the race on 103, OH MY GOD! I got past him and a couple others in the lap 1 mayhem but as soon as things settled Lando was lapping soooo much faster than me it was a joke. When he caught and then passed me easily with drs I was then able to hang on with drs and save battery, but as soon as I passed him he would be back through short time later when battery got low, so fair to say he had a SIGNIFICANT speed advantage and was just towing me along.
I went back and did everything again, qualified almost exactly the same, just 1 spot/1 to 2 tenths off Lando but started the race on 97.
Wouldn't you know it, he's a bit faster than me but now it's a case of he can pass me with drs when battery a bit low or I make a mistake and I can then pass him with DRS, so we're basically matching each other swapping places. I would say he probably still had a slight advantage due to consistency vs me being a bit slower and faster lap to lap but otherwise pretty close. 96 would have been less "sweaty" shall we say.
So that's about a 6 to 7 drop in difficulty setting in order to maintain similar relative performance from quali to race. I then used this same approach for first 3 races of my team, qualifying on 103/104 then racing on 96/97 and found each time I'd over qualify by a little bit ie sneaking into Q3 in a car that probably shouldn't be in Q3. Then having similar pace to cars who were a bit slower than me in quali who really should've been a bit head of me. But tbf being a not perfectly consistent controller user I'm better at getting 1 really good lap on fresh tyres than doing it over and over in a race 🙂
So for me anyway it would seem that track to track on this game that a difficulty drop of 6 to 8 between quali and race is required for a consistent AI experience between sessions.
Having also now watched the youtube career videos of the likes of tiametmarduk, aarav, jarno opmeer and more who all are making comments about the AI being "fast in the races" this seems pretty accurate.
This is probably codemasters. Overcompensating as usual. They don’t like a happy medium. Last year AI were faster in Qualifying compared to race. So obviously this year is visa versa.
Last year Ai were OP at race starts. I’d generally lose couple of places going into first corner. This year I gain minimum 3 places into first corner.
Last year Ai wouldn’t give you an inch when attempting a pass into corners. This year they can be easily pushed off their line even if it’s their corner
- @ScarDuck14 100% on all points, but I still think it's better lol. I'd rather AI I know I can race with fairly if I choose not to take advantage of vs having AI that'll just send me to Narnia the minute I try a legit pass. Same as I also prefer to have race starts where I can choose not to go for the crazy divebomb or weaving around like a lunatic on the motorway towards turn 1, and instead treat it like reality where the real guys would be thinking about staying alive 😁. I have my fingers crossed so far that although I have found this big disparity between quali and race settings, it seems to be a very consistent disparity meaning each race weekend I can choose a number and be fairly sure it will be pretty close to what I want each time. Unlike F1 22 where if u didn't already know the different tracks AI behaviour you could end up choosing the same number as the track before and suddenly be miles ahead of at the back getting destroyed.
Honestly, unlike last year, they could literally put a patch in to just shift the AI speed relative the number on the screen by about 6 levels either up for quali or down for the race and it'll pretty much solve the problem. No track by track adjustments really needed.
@ScarDuck14 wrote:This is probably codemasters. Overcompensating as usual. They don’t like a happy medium.
@ScarDuck14 💯 Preach!
