Realish Rally Chronicle Debrief

[camp_bell]

Thanks to everyone who competed in Realish Rally Chronicle, hopefully you all enjoyed it and the change of pace from doing a more varied season. This thread is for any feedback, comments, congratulations, etc (@PJTierney I've seen your post in the Welcome thread, thank you).

Since there still seems to be interest, there will be at least one more Rally Championship season later in the year. Without giving it away completely, it will feature a popular class we've not yet touched in a season, so if there are any suggestions feel free to leave them here.

[BlueSpearman]

What a fun season, great car and location combinations, so thanks for all the efforts putting everything together.

The main feedback I would have would be to focus as much on getting as many people to do the rallies and doing so competitively, even if it means golf style handicaps of some sort. I would have suggested the H1 class as it seemed like everyone liked it, but looks like we're going another way, and if it's the R5 class I'd suggest many wet stages and fewer services to encourage people onto the Medium tyres, as R5's can be too grippy/boring to drive, and good times come from just knowing where you can yeet it as opposed to careful car control.

Had a read through @PJTierney post and disagree with almost all of it haha. Knowing the weather and stage degradation for all events even before the season has started seems like anathema to the spirit of rally. I didn't find the events inconsistent at all, I'll always advocate for more randomness and variation in event length/condition. If there are things that more serious clubs are doing I would say we should just to the opposite.

I agree though that we should try and discourage practicing before the events, it's a bit disheartening to see people practicing like a week in advance for a 30 minute casual club event. I think things like having a single short power stage with its own service would only encourage that, as would knowing the stage order, weather, degradation etc., and having a lot of service time.

[Sam Hill]

I've gotta agree with @BlueSpearman about the practising. The whole point of a rally is to drive off the pace notes and react. If you wanna drill the stage to muscle memory you should be doing circuit racing. I think I said the same last season but it's pretty annoying knowing that no matter how good a run you have, there will be guys that have sweated it out and you know you'll never have a shot. Obviously it's something that's impossible to police though. Perhaps a multi-class setup and people declare which side of the fence they fall on before the season?

That's the only complaint I have though. The mix of cars and rallies was spot on. Running them back to back was great and two weeks seemed like a good length. The rallies were a good length but it would maybe be cool to have one round extra long with fewer services as a bit of an endurance special in the future.

[PJTierney]

Just copying this in here from the other thread so that everything's in one place

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Now that the season's over, some thoughts.


What I liked:

• The 2 week cadence and Friday night finish times were nice to have.
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• Having the Club all set up from the first day of the season meant you could preview Stages ahead of time.
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• The event lengths were good too, 6 Stages can be gone through in just over an hour. Good for streaming.
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• The class selections were mostly good.
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• Having the season in the first place; it's the only way for console players to take part in Realish Racing.

What I didn't like:

• Having to switch between cars; it forces more practice upon people if they want to do well whereas in Season 3 you could grow with the car over time. I really liked that Citroen by the time I was done.
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• The inconsistency in event setups. Some rallies would have 2 Longs and a Short on a stint, some the opposite, some no Longs at all.
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• Road conditions (Stage Degradation) not being known in advance.
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• Service Times were a little too short.
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• Not having a Wiki (I get it, you guys have moved on)

Some suggestions for the future:

• If a class has a "fastest car"*, I'd like to see anybody that got a podium in the previous season be forbidden from using it. That should not only open up some diversity, but the possibility of other drivers having a better chance at success.
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• Avoid Poland, it's got the worst track limits in the game.
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• Single car class (and car choice per driver) for the entire season.
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• A RWD championship would be nice, Group B or Rally GT.
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• An R5 championship would also be fun as it's the most popular class in the game, but only if the "OP car ban" I suggested above is in place.
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• A more consistent structure to each event. One potential idea is the "loop" format I've seen in other communities.
  Essentially, you pick 1 Long and 2 Shorts and have that as a stint, and then after service you repeat those 3 Stages (tweak time/weather/degradation accordingly), followed by another service, and then repeat once more. (tldr: Long/Short/Short + Long/Short/Short + Long/Short/Short)
  The end result is that the drivers get more confident and faster as the rally goes on, and don't have to practice as much beforehand.
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• A more consistent structure as regards weather and Stage Degradation would be handy too, along with all the details being published at the start of the season. Essentially you screenshot the event creation screens as you go through the calendar, like this: https://dirtrally2.dirtgame.com/News/20 ... ampionship
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• A community poll on the locations to use in the next one. Multiple choice, most popular ones get picked.
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• A Power Stage at the end of the rally. One way to go about it is to have a very long service (full repair essentially) and the shortest Stage straight after it. Points for top 5 times, and the time obviously contributes to the overall rally total too.

*Based on my work on the game's esports scene, these would be:

• Group B 4WD: Lancia Delta S4
• Group A: Lancia Delta HF
• 2000cc: Citroen C4
• R2: Ford Fiesta R2
• NR4: Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X
• R5: Ford Fiesta R5 MKII

[PJTierney]

Regarding practice, I can only speak for myself and on what I typically did before each event.

I tend to play the game every day for my lunch break, spending 40 minutes on the Dailies. If I have any time left I'd pick one of the Stages from the upcoming rally and run it a few times in Time Trial. Once I start the rally I do it all in one go however as part of my stream.

The exception was the Lancia Stratos section as I knew I was very quick on both Scotland and USA and sweated it out. Got some World Records (which I've never had before) but really that class was an anomaly.

Realistically, if you have two weeks to do a rally that's two weeks that people can practice in, and you can't police it either. One way to get around it is to have a one day rally, where the club is only open for a single 24 hour period.

That being said, practice isn't a bad thing. Sure the fast people will dial in their settings and so-on but for the slower drivers it is a useful way to get used to a car/location before you do it for real.

Besides, although real rally drivers only have the recce and shakedown before the main event, they're constantly reviewing the onboards and memorising the course as much as they can beforehand

[supernicebob]

I think the format for this season was great. Yes, having to get used to a new car was in some sense annoying, but it kept things fresh and provided opportunities to mix up the results a bit. Ultimately I'm happy to drive whatever (apart from RWD) in any conditions, so knowing things advance wouldn't change my approach too much.

That said, I'm guessing I was probably one of the main offenders on practicing before each event. Although I played Dirt 1 a lot I only play this game when I'm doing these seasons - so a lot of the locations were brand to me this time round. I found I'd normally gain a lot of time on just my second run through, and this could often put me close to the leading pace so it was tempting to practice more, working on the setup too, to try and find that last little bit. Still, I never felt I was putting in an excessive amount of time, and that amount of time varied quite a bit from one event to the next and I was certainly very reliant on the pace notes.

It would be good to see a more competitive/level playing field though so I'm totally happy to stop the practicing on the basis it will help to accomplish that. If excluding set-ups is an option then that could help too. I like the idea of a Powerstage at the end, but I think in reality it would just see the same people picking up more points - but I'm sure there'd be the odd mistake from someone pushing too much though so chances for others would still come up.

Thanks again to @camp_bell for organising! Someone give me a nudge on Twitter when it's time to sign up for the next season as I probably won't check by here too often.

[BlueSpearman]

The recent RD rally championship had a neat idea on the power stages although it wouldn't work with the lengths of rallies here. They came at the end of 50-70km legs, so the soft tyres were still the fastest way to do the leg, but anyone who tooks mediums was in better shape for the power stage.

A few of those rallies were the only time in my 200 or so hours in this game that I've found choosing a tyre to be a bit of a dilemma.

[PJTierney]

Random suggestion for next season, can we have a "summer" Monte Carlo rally?

There's 4 short Stages (2 uphill, and then in reverse) which are almost entirely dry tarmac, with only a little bit of snow/ice at the end.
2 loops of 4 (so 8 Stages) would make for a fun little rally I think.

[camp_bell]

Thanks everyone for your feedback. I fell in love with the idea for this season after it was proposed during last season as it gave a chance to not only do something a bit different, but to run some classes that wouldn't normally be considered for a full season. Playing Art of Rally a lot over the winter was probably another factor (seriously, play Art of Rally, it's great and it's coming out on consoles soon). I'm glad that people seemed to enjoy it.

Regarding practice, I think having the rallies run for two weeks is a good balance but obviously that allows anyone with the time and inclination to do a lot of practice. Ultimately, I don't want to have rules that can't be enforced but I would say that doing tonnes and tonnes of practice for a casual series like this is a bit silly.

Road conditions (Stage Degradation) not being known in advance.

Apologies, I thought this was shown in-game like weather conditions are (I must admit I've never found the stage degredation to be a massive factor, I'm probably just too slow!). I did set up the rallies so the surface would deteriorate on the second run over a section of road, and a wet stage would usually be followed by a wet surface stage to, but if this wasn't clear I apologise. Screenshotting the the event creation screen is a good idea going forwards.

[PJTierney]

It’s not a big issue as this is a casual club, but having them open does rule out the possibility of one driver being a “scouter” for another, and other shenanigans.

You know how much I like to find the loopholes afterall