NERFING assists

With F1 being a simcade and with the way the competitive scene is laid out, it's to no one's surprise that discussions like this miss the mark so often.

@RVladimiro and @catchygaaaa, thank you for being sound and reasonable 👍

Let's break it down:

• Excellent driver: Rarely, if ever, overshoots their inputs. Brakes to the full capabilities of the car on any given scenario and is quick on the modulation when they sense the wheels locking up. Throttle application is on point, getting on the gas on the proper exit point as to reach wide open throttle - WOT quickly. If they ever miss it, they're quick to react and feather it just enough for the rear end to bite again or the grip to increase and enable WOT. Jarno on a good day? Let's put it like this.
• Good player: Plays with no assists and hit good lap times. Is competitive in leagues and has good standings on TT boards. Obviously not every lap is perfect and they're bound to pick up an off-track here and there, but when they nail it, they nail it. Only uses those "good", proper esports setups of LLRR or RRLL or LRRR or RLRR or whatever the meta is these days.
• Average player: Reasonable times with no assists, but they're not winning any open championships. Have fun on leagues. Feels energized whenever they break into top 20% of the TT leaderboards. When they feel pressed, they fall back on to ABS and TC on medium because why not? That podium is just right there... Also copies whatever LLRR setups they can get a hold of.
• Casual player: Loves My Team, loves Career. Plays most of the time with assists on, but can venture into no-assist territory when they feel like being precise, but are not as skillful or not inclined to give it the time to become precise with their old man/casual fingers. Don't dab with online much, too much carnage and too much unpleasantness on the lobbies that the matchmaking lock them into.

Sticking with Jarno, back when F1 22 came out he was a guest on the Traxion's podcast. He mentioned how the recently released F1 game made strides into being more realistic, punishing players for going arcadely ham on kerbs and the like, but lamented how it still wasn't enough to do away with the infamous esports line. We've all heard about it. Jarno lamented that, and though I do not follow him as closely as some of you do I'm positive he did not change his mind.

Now there's being a fast driver, and there's being good at exploiting what this simcade faulty simulation of reality enables you to get away with. Attacking a kerb like it's no one's business, getting on with bottoming out without much care in the world. And above all, getting away with unreasonable RRLL et al setups as the game does not punish you for running with unrealistic suspension geometry and stiffness.

Just this week we had @DavidGG53 giving his general guidance on everything setup related. Lengthy post where he gives a ballpark to set up every single parameter in that setup screen, always accompanied by a justification of what they choose to do so. And yet no mention of a "RRLL" or min this, max that. 

The reason being, and I'm pretty confident @RVladimiro, @catchygaaaa and others with a penchant for motorsports plus the experience of ever having used a h-shifter on their life, is that those unrealistic extreme values add instability to the ride. It just so happens that you can get away with it on this simcade rendition of motor racing, specially if you're an excellent driver or a good player (list above). Now the latter will sometimes eat dirt for their ballsy moves or their lapse in focus, that's the toll the game collects for running with an extreme setup, but so what?

That said, have the good and average players ever given a reasonable setup a fair go? Back in the day of the original Codemasters Forum and, what, F1 2020 or F1 2021, I made a lengthy post myself with telemetry data showing how if you were to set a good amount of toe in on the rear axle there was no difference in straight line acceleration and top speed (tested on Monza), and the added stability in and out of corners made it so much easier to brake and apply throttle. It was just free stability, all pluses with no drawbacks.

And yet, RRLL everywhere.

Jarno again and many other esports players often put out the infamous "does assist make you faster?" sort of video. Please bear in mind that these are made for entertainment, engagement and views on their channels, and the methodology varies from "oh that's actually reasonable" to non-existent, so they're not all worth the same. I'm particularly fond of Jarno's, and I always remember this one. His results:

In the video he explains why ABS made him 0.1 slower but why he felt he could have been 0.1 faster.

Now how much faster assists make you?

To tie it all up:

• Excellent driver: Won't gain any time using assists.
• Good player: May gain some time using assists compared to the laps they greatly overshoot their inputs, but more often than not will only make them slower. Wish they could give a fair setup a go and check if their overall laptimes over the distance wouldn't get better 😉
• Average player: Compared to themselves running without assists? Of course they will gain time! If even their good laps are 2-4% apart from each other, it is only logical that they will get more consistent hence closer to their performance ceiling with assists correcting their eventual grotesquely off the mark inputs. And again, my suspicion is that their overall laptimes would get better if they have a reasonable setup a go 😉
• Casual player: Same, but to a larger degree.

I find it deeply contradictory that the "good" and even the "average" players of the bullet list above so often demand that assists get nerfed to oblivion but do not give a hoot about RRLL setups being usable. They get vexed with average players nibbling close with assists on, when they should truly care about unreasonably unstable cars driving on unrealistic lines getting away from them.

Just my two (lengthy) cents. People wouldn't feel the need to nerf assists that often if the game wasn't so simcadey.