Gran Turismo Officially Acts Against Wallriding Exploit

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A bit more than 2 weeks ago, top esports Gran Turismo players raised concerns over an exploit that could be used to gain an advantage in the second round of GTWS Manufacturers Cup season 2, hosted on August 20 at the iconic fictional High Speed Ring track.

The exploit allowed people to go flatout in T2, wallriding without getting penalized for it by getting bumped by another car before the corner, to trick the penalty system by thinking it was accidental. Despite the public warnings of renown personalities of the Gran Turismo community, the event still went as initially planned, which triggered various approaches in different regions.

For context, the Manufacturers Cup is divided into 3 regions : Asia/Oceania, EMEA (Europe/Middle East/Africa) and Americas, who race one after the other in that order. Standings are separated into 3 leagues according to driver ratings at the start of the season, with only the top GT1 league being able to qualify for special online and live events. Following the race and various reports, Polyphony Digital reactively changed the combo for a following race, and implemented a significantly increased damage sensitivity for contacts with walls in the 1.20 update.

It appears they have now reviewed GT1 splits and decided to penalize players who used this exploit by settings their individual points to 0 for this round. Additionally, that round is now being excluded from the constructors standings, but only in the Asia/Oceania and Americas regions. The results will still count for the EMEA region: following a call on socials by multiple top players, every high split racer in the region agreed to not abuse the exploit, showing a display of sportsmanship that many observers didn't believe would be respected.

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As Asia/Oceania players were the first to enter the race, everyone there expected some people to use the exploit and nothing to be done about it, so pretty much every racer there chose to level with others. As for America's, players made an effort in the first slots, inspired by what happened in EMEA, but as no formal agreement was made, some people in the later slots started to use the wallriding strategy, resulting in crashes and general chaos.

In the official statement released in game and on the Gran Turismo website, Polyphony Digital also stated their esports regulations have been amended, with the following additions:

Forbidden Actions
  • It is forbidden for a competitor to simultaneously participate in the same championship and season with multiple accounts.
  • It is forbidden to participate using another person's account for PlayStation®Network.
  • It is forbidden for a competitor to intentionally support another player during a race where they are not part of the same team.
  • It is forbidden for a competitor to exploit unintended gameplay mechanics and issues found in the software in order to gain any type of advantage.
  • Unsportsmanlike conduct.
If players are found engaging in forbidden activities, they will be dealt with accordingly, including but not limited to being banned from the championships.
About author
GT-Alex
Global motorsports enjoyer, long time simracer, Gran Turismo veteran, I've been driving alongside top drivers since the dawn of online pro leagues on Gran Turismo, and qualified for the only cancelled FIA GTC World Tour. I've left aside competitive driving in 2020 to dedicate myself to IGTL, a simracing organisation hosting high quality events for pro racers and customers, to create with friends the kind of events we wished we could have had. We strive to provide the best events for drivers and the best content for viewers, and want to help the simracing scene grow and shine further in the global esports scene.

Comments

Now, seriously, I don't blame the drivers, especially in a competitive environment like this. It's their JOB to exploit whatever opportunity to win.

And it's the organizers and devs job to set the rules and apply the penalties.

I said as a joke, but its real, in CS if you use the wall you get a penalty. The devs did their job...

Comparing with RL is tricky, the car would wreck... Either GT becames a bit more serious and get a proper damage model, or some ruling and/or extra coding will be needed.
 
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No matter how one tries to phrase it or couch it, that is the only reasonable conclusion.
The entire Asia-Oceania region disagreed with you. We all used the wall exploit because that was the fastest way to take turn 2. Only for a lot of players in our region to have their points stripped, even though there was no rule against doing what we did at the time.

In this light, I think it's entirely reasonable to say that the developers cheated the players, not the other way around.
 
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Going by past history yes it is.
I don't think anyone is criticizing your stance merely observing that the reality is somewhat different.
In an ideal word it would be great and we wouldn't need to have this discussion.
I will cede the point to you as, yes: many humans will take advantage of others for their own aims.

I know how the real world acts, I just think that if we are going to complain about the behavior of society we need to take a hard look at ourselves...

My wife says she likes me because I am too honest...:O_o:
 
The entire Asia-Oceania region disagreed with you. We all used the wall exploit because that was the fastest way to take turn 2. Only for a lot of players in our region to have their points stripped even though there was no rule against doing what we did at the time.

In this light, I think it's entirely reasonable to say that the developers cheated the players, not the other way around.
What does that say about you as a person?

Would you hold it against me if I told you that your decision to partake in that type of behavior is morally wanting?
 
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Would you hold it against me if I told you that your decision to partake in that type of behavior is morally wanting?
Yes. there's no way to sugarcoat it. We all raced to win, you race to lose.
 
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As an organizer myself, I would have put an explicit mention in the rules against intentional wallriding in the first place - which Polyphony kinda did now. Actually, I did include that in the IGTL driving standards regulations, I believe in bulletproofing things as much as possible.

Now, even with it not being explicited by PoDi in their regulations before, they could have released an official statement like this one before the race, saying wallriding would be met with sanctions and that top splits would be rewieved. It would have required no update, and there's no way nobody at PoDi was aware of the situation.

The irony in this situation is that EMEA is by far the most competitive region in Gran Turismo. The sheer number of players makes it that even though you have aliens in all regions, for other regions, they may end up taking 25 - 50% of top split's grid, while in EMEA your top split will be close to 100% aliens - we've even had situations in the past where top split was too small to fit every driver who could have a legit shot at the podium.

To me, Polyphony should have clarified the situation by at least saying something. Nothing prevented them in doing so, and the community clearly was asking for something to be done about it. They didn't react in time - most likely because they haven't dedicated staff to manage the competitive events - so to me, that puts a greater responsibility on them, so outright bans wouldn't have been fair in this situation. What they did is probably the best responsive answer they could provide: it makes a statement for the future, bring some fairness back in, and rewards the common effort of EMEA players.
 
In my humble opinion, people who do not respect normal driving standards should not be "penalized" with zero points. They should be banned for deliberately cheating.

Whether this is wallriding in Gran Turismo or racing through the grass in iRacing, this is not how real life motorsports works and this is also not how esports should work where with simulate real life racing.

Got no respect at all for people doing this. Especially not pro's who should represent our sport in the best possible way.
Maybe polyphony should have been clear from the getgo what is illegal and what not or, you know, try to fix it? Same with iRacing, when in DotA 2 a team found an exploit called a "Fountain hook" and used it to win a match valve didn't null them, they patched the exploit before the next match.

"Hate the game, not the player".
 
Yet you came out like a sad sack of cheating losers.
Nobody cheated. We drove according to the rules in place at the time, only for PD to cave to pressure from high and mighty folk like you, and change the rules after the fact.

Apologise immediately.
 
D
In my opinion, I think the developers should have patched the wallriding exploit if they didn't want it to be used to gain an advantage. Amending the rules simply makes them look lazy, or unwilling to own up to their error.

I see it similarly to F1 teams finding a loophole in the rules, like Aston Martin and their recently-developed rear wing.
 
Nobody cheated. We drove according to the rules in place at the time, only for PD to cave to pressure from high and mighty folk like you, and change the rules after the fact.

Apologise immediately.
There's no place in motorsport to gain advantage with wall riding, so you just cheated.

No apologies deserved.
 
Staff
Premium
A bit of speed reduction (resistance) when hitting wall objects would have cured this. It's still an arcade engine, seeing the previous grass exploits.
This, 100%. It's the trivially obvious solution, but perhaps they are unable to do it for some reason (the article talks about them introducing increased damage rather than any kind of speed penalty).
Watch any premier league football match where every game sees cheating, exploitation, there's even such a thing as a"professional" foul.
Unfortunately that's human nature when there's something on the line.
Yeah, it's true and it sucks. Worse even than a professional foul in my view (since that actually does attract an intervention from the ref) is the stupid crap like shirt-pulling which is explicitly illegal but often goes unobserved by refs, and so even though the cameras will give us glorious slow-motion footage of it, no sanctions result. (Personally I'd hand out post-match bans, which would dry it up pretty bloody quickly.) This stuff, along with the diving and the professional fouls, is the footage that children watch, and I guess it shapes their ideas of what is and isn't OK.
I find myself unable to enjoy watching any sport where I know for certain that cheating is occurring (no matter if it's cycling, motor racing, football, esports, whatever). I'm not naive enough to think that it isn't occurring on other occasions too, but once I know it's happening, the fun is just gone.
If wallriding was clearly defined in the rules as a no go, then shame on drivers. If not, then shame on organizers.
Well, that argument would have at least a shred of merit, if it wasn't for the fact that the article indicates that the only way to successfully gain from a wall-ride was to do so right after making contact with another car. So I'm inferring that basic wall-riding was already punished by the game engine, right? If this is correct, then I consider it beyond obvious that a deliberate contact combined with a successful wall-ride for advantage was an exploit, and thus anyone doing it was cheating.
 
Staff
Premium
Nobody cheated.
In any esports racing series or grassroots simracing league you would have been penalized for cheating as you are all violating the number one racing rule: The white (or yellow) lines mark the edge of the road. Do not cross them with more than two wheels.

That cheaters are riding walls isn't even relevant: you have all left the track to gain an advantage and you should all be disqualified if this has been happening consistently.
 
In any esports racing series or grassroots simracing league you would have been penalized
GT7's online eSports isn't league based; it uses the iRacing model of automated race lobbies. There isn't enough human resources to oversee every race, so the game's penalty system acts as the steward. At the time, the game saw nothing wrong with bouncing off the wall to gain time as long as you didn't hit the wall too hard or for too long.

the number one racing rule: The white (or yellow) lines mark the edge of the road. Do not cross them with more than two wheels.
This style of driving was not penalised or even considered controversial, even though it crosses the white lines many times;


Gran Turismo considers kerbs as being part of the road, and the playerbase generally agrees that this is fine. The green patch near the wall at HSR turn 2 is considered a kerb, so it's part of the road by GT's definition.

The point is that there are already many examples of "cheating" by your strict definition, that have been condoned or even applauded by the Gran Turismo community. There was no reason for anyone in Asia-Oceania to believe that this would be any different.
 
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I will pick up what someone said and dwelve on it a bit more.

Cheating is way too "tolerated" in sports, professional ones at that. If i were in charge, cheating would be dealt much much harshly, akin to the penalties that exist now for dopping, where you can be banned for life even.

Professional fouls should have no place in sports, period. Or else i might as well start watching things where cheating is impossible by design, like chess.


Now as for the GT7 cheat, like someone said above, you not only needed to wall ride, but you even needed someone to punt you at the right moment to make this happen.... so i am sorry, but saying "there is no rule against this", is intelectual dishonesty at it's finest. The people doing it know they were cheating, because you couldnt even do the fastest lap on your own, so coming now and saying "everybody else was doing it, so i had to" is a bit rich considering that there was a sizeable number of players voicing against it, and even concerted action to not do it.

Picking my chess analogy from before, its like you just grab the king from the other player, throw it off the table, and say "i win! i have to take the king out, don't i?", at that point, you are not even playing the game anymore...
 
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