In our yesterday's MP race with WTCC 2016 cars at Mantorp, a pretty weird thing happened to me - my second lap was basically ignored by the game. As I crossed the finish line, the lap timer didn't reset, it kept on going as if I still haven't finished the lap. This had the effect of the game immediately placing me last in the race despite technically still being in 13th place, and basically a lap down, giving me blue flags for the rest of the race as soon as any car behind me came close, and pretty much ruining the rest of the race for me as I was left confused and frustrated. Had to do another lap for the timer to finally reset and have the lap counted. I have no idea why this happened. The only explanation I have is that it was somehow connected to the fact that I have spun out during that lap and got a cut warning, but another guy spun out pretty much at the same time in the same place and he had no issues with this. Here's a video of the whole thing (from the start of my second lap to the end of my third lap): 00:43 - I spin out and end up on the grass 01:23 - As I cross the finish line to begin a new lap, I'm placed last and the lap timer keeps on going 02:44 - I finish another lap, get a 2:43 laptime and finally the timer resets.
If you had had the track map on you would find that the sector timing gate is at the apex of the corner you cut (unintentionally of course, but the game doesn't know intent). The cut was significant enough that you missed the gate completely. Which in turn caused the missed lap since all gates were not triggered until you went around again. I have had this happen to me on occasion as well. I will look at this corner and see if perhaps the line could be extended some, but a compromise may have to be made to help prevent people exploiting these boundaries to gain time in races. -Jesse
That's kinda...unfortunate, isn't it? So I had my race ruined because I unintentionally slid off the track for a few seconds in the wrong place? It also looks like I might've not been the only one that it happened to in that race after all... I don't understand how would anyone gain time by driving through the grass...I mean, surely it's slower than driving on track? And even if it was somehow faster, wouldn't it be better if, in the instance you miss the sector gate, the game maybe looked at your overall time for the lap at the finish line to see if you actually gained anything and counted the lap normally if you didn't? I can't help but feel there should be better solutions to solve this (perhaps purely hypothetical) issue of people cutting through grass than simply ruin the race for anyone who happens to make a mistake and miss the gate. And even if there wasn't, the game could at least tell you what happened. I was really confused about why my lap didn't count and why I was suddenly last in the race over a minute behind...
As Jesse said he is looking into the problem , unfortunate it screwed your race , try to avoid area till fixed ?
I very much appreciate you guys looking into it, don't get me wrong. It's just that the explanation of how and why that happened kinda sounded like it is more or less unavoidable and kinda working as intended, even if perhaps overly sensitive in this instance. Didn't want to sound ungrateful and if I did, I'm sorry. I was just offering some further suggestions based on what was said. As for avoiding the area...well, we're doing a big race there tomorrow and that corner is a pretty busy place with people braking hard after that long back straight, so... But now that we know it could be an issue and why, I guess we can at least warn others about the possibility of something like this happening to them there.
@ChatCureuil I was a bit confused about this as well, but then I realized that cutting only makes your laptime not valid, but in a race, you still get to keep the advantage you gained by the cut (unless you got a slowdown penalty as well). Or at least I think that's how it could happen...
Yes I was talking about stop & go and slow down penalties, I don't see why using this gate system when penalties should do the job. It's critical if it can screw your race.
But Zetoyok said it was also used to prevent track shortcuts, but penalties are already there to do this job, isn't it? Just trying to understand... I find critical that there is a possibility to drive outside a gate and screw the race.
you can run a race without penalties where this could be exploited I guess.. but by then without penalties the race isnt really the same anyway so maybe not an issue like that. Never said this line was intended to be this way for cut prevention. just a thought how it might work and that it would be looked at. I apologize for any confusion that comment made. You are correct in that normal cut penalties should be enough and the timing line may not be intended for that purpose. -Z
BTW, you probably checked this for yourselves already, but since I'm curious, I've been testing that corner tonight to see how much do you need to cut there to not trigger the split, and it's much less than one would probably expect. The area where you can drive around the split detection is surprisingly large and extends quite close to the track (relatively speaking). Also there really is no other way to make your lap time counter reset apart from driving through that missed split. I was able to do several laps without the timer reseting simply by cutting through the grass in that corner. The good news is that triggering the split is really all you need to do, so if you happen to end up on the grass there, it's safer to just loop back and go through the corner again. You'll lose some time, but way less than doing the whole lap again (obviously).
So maybe the simplest fix is to stop ignoring lap with missed gate? I mean, instead of checking multiple gates on multiple tracks, with some problematic gate placements, just don't consider them in lap validation, easy fix. ^^ If it doesn't add any trouble...
What more do you want me to say ? Issue has been reported and if I am not wrong tomorrow is Sunday so ..... for now stay on track ? Don't race that track ? Or just wait till they can fix it ?