Best way to play the game as a n00b?

Hi guys. I'm new to the PC racing sim world and just started playing GTR Evo. It's great so far. Tried a couple of events with a Mini Cooper and came in 1st in an 8 lap race on Curitiba with the AI at 89%.

I'll be playing the game offline for the most part until I get better, but as a complete noob, what is the best way to start playing the game as far as what to do first?

The problem is there are too many options...lap quantity, different rules, flags/no flags, loads of cars, classes etc. And since the game doesn't have a structured career mode it's very daunting as to which direction to go in.


OK some questions:


1)I want to recreate my own Gran Tursimo/GT Legends/rFactor-like career mode, by starting with some slow cars first and work my way up to fastest cars incrementally. What's the best way to do this? I've already tried the Minis because they seem pretty slow. Are they good to start out with? If so, what should be next after them?

1)What should I set the AI to? I had trouble beating them at 89% at Curitiba and just barely got lucky and squeaked by with a 1st place win. Should I lower it to something like say, 85%?

2)How many laps should I race? What's the norm in a game like this?

3)Is it OK if I turn off flag rules? They're kinda getting on my nerves, with all the stop and go penalties I appear to be getting for no apparent reason.

4)I have disabled practice, warm up and qualifying. I just want to jump in and race. How important is it to have qualifying turned on? What is the purpose and is there any added benefit to doing it?

5)Other than turning off all driving aids(which I have done), any tips as far as car setups go?Any tweaks I can make to the Minis to make them go faster?

5)I guess I could doing championships....so how many tracks should I enable in a championship? 1? 5? 10? 20? What's the norm?

Using a Frex FFB wheel, CST pedals and SST Lightning Shifter btw.

Thanks in advance :)
 
Hey, welcome to RD, Simracing and GTR Evolution. Hope you have a great time with all three. :laugh2:

To answer your questions:

1) Yes, the Minis are excellent cars to start out with. The next cars up would undoubtedly be the Caterhams, as they are incrementally faster, then possibly the WTCCs, then the Radicals maybe, then the FBMWs, then GT Club-Sport-Pro (in that order), WTCC Extremes and then finishing up with the F3000s.

2) It all depends on whether you want to fight for your wins. Determine the right kind of AI Difficulty by yourself, as only you can determine the right level for your skills.

3) Again, it all depends on the type of race you want to run. There is no real "norm" when it comes to offline racing, so choose what is right for you.

4) As long as you are an honest driver, and don't normally cut the track to gain an advantage, then it's perfectly okay to turn off the flags in my opinion.

5) Basically if you want to assess your driving against the AI, then you can turn on Qualifying. No real advantage is gained except if you are racing against real people (which I do regularly), so you don't have to have it turned on.

6) It all depends on the track. For tracks with long straights and not that many low-speed corners, make the gear ratios longer, and conversely, for short tracks with short straights, make them shorter. Other than that, I can't help all that much, so you have the options of either downloading a setup from the online files in-game, or talking to someone on here who knows about setups. There is a downloadable setup guide located in the sticky thread at the top of the Evo forum.

7) Again, there is no "norm" and it all depends on your personal preferences. Feel free to run as little or as many tracks in a championship as you like. :)

Anyway... hope what I said helped, and have a good time with Evo. You won't regret it.

Rhys :D

EDIT: OMGZ I just realised this was my 1,000th post. PARTEH! :victory:
 
I have to add: Start driving online as soon as possible. When your lap times are becoming constant ie. +- 0.5sec or better, then it's time to head on to drive with real people. The offline AI is good for early practice but it does teach you some false techniques. Real people drive more unpredictable than the AI and they don't back off like the AI does in certain situations.

I drove too long offline and picked up somethings that don't work with real people. And unlearning can be difficult. For ex. in GTRe if you swing your back even a little in front off AI in the curves it brakes... Real people don't, they come flying past you in the following straight.
 
first of all welcome to Rd mate, driving online is the best way to improve. I started like 3 months ago here and was a total noob 7 seconds off the pace no set up base bla bla etc. i start learning from others by watch them racing and listen to their advice. And the most important thing is have FUN, here is does not mather if tou are fighting for the top spots or at the back its the friends atmosphere here in the races that counts..

all the best and enjoy
 
Thanks your replies.

I will keep all of these in mind. Having a pretty good time learning the Minis so far. Will give online a try when I get a chance. But I *do* have to go on a slight rant regarding the game so bare with me:


After playing GTR Evo, I have come to the conclusion that I really prefer racing sims with a career mode.

GTR Evo is a bit too open and nonlinear for me. Winning 1st place after an event or championship leaves me with very little satisfaction. You get "points" but can't do anything with them. It's just, over. Done. Back to the main screen. No money, no unlocking parts, a new car, nothing.

I would rather feel like I am working towards earning something....money, a new car, parts, anything. As a result, I've ordered GT Legends and will give that a try. I hear it has a nice structured and robust career mode. I'd give rFactor a try as well, but I hear the AI is notoriously bad.

Will still be playing EVO and once GT Legends arrives I'll decide which one I like best :skywalker:
 
  • SimbinRacer

If you just barly win at 89% then that is the proper difficulty for you. It should never be a breeze to win and you'll learn to be faster if you must chase down the front runners. Too many options is kind of a curse when you start up but once you get more into the game you'll be happy you can customize events and driving outlay and feel. It's only "kind of" a curse because you can for simplicity click novice and just run with presets there and then advance to semi-pro presets if you want less options. Go explore options later if they feel like a burden for the moment.

1a) Run Minis for a season and If you finish top 3 total, advance to WTCC.
2b) You should set the AI so that with your skill it requires a damn solid run to win.
2) Run 8 laps. Not to short, not too long. Or just change laps up until it says "real" or something if you want that. Usually around 14 laps for WTCC.
3) Up to you. I run all the rules on and manual pitstops. The only way to learn but on the other hand I've screwed up many pitstops on the way.
4) Up to you. If you just wanna race and/or have little time, just do random grid. For me simgames are for simracing. It is hard to get the best racing experience unless there are tight races I think. Races will only be tight if the difficulty is challenging. You will only be able to compete in challenging races if you come prepared. You prepare in practice and fight for a decent starting position in qualifying. It is after all pretty much impossible to take the win if you start last with the other cars on the grid matching your laptimes=challenging difficulty.
5a) Have a look at the setup doc at this forum. Setups are part of simracing.
5b) Your pick. Or run standard championship and you'll get all the tracks according to real life season.

Anyway, rFactor is great but you'll find yourself in an even deeper jungle of options, tweaks, modding and fixes to make things work. It's like one big huge never ending beta project almost :)
 
  • leahcim

Winning 1st place after an event or championship leaves me with very little satisfaction. You get "points" but can't do anything with them. It's just, over. Done. Back to the main screen. No money, no unlocking parts, a new car, nothing.

Yeah, they didn't bother writing a game :(

Ok, you can sort of forgive that they haven't got some of the things arcade games have, but they could do a lot more.

It's deeper than that too. As some of your replies have suggested, sim racing appears to be premised on folk who have no coordination skills prior to starting it. Similarly, read the beginner's tips in game and you see they expect you to be a moron who doesn't even realise you have to brake at corners.

They are hardly useful tips for how to play the game well.

Simbin's mythical "beginner" needs several years, it would seem, to go from driving the mini to driving the f3000 :)

At which point they probably feel they've achieved something irrespective of
how fast they are at that point merely by being able to drive around the track without crashing at every corner.

What hogwash. That is easy....and yes it's easy in GTR2 and GTL and whatever other game someone wants to kid you is really difficult to control the cars.

It's this fallacy that adds the farcical things like "novice" mode, rather than something useful.

Those of us who started off with the dexterity to press a pedal and turn a wheel however will probably quickly be underwhelmed. What do we do then?

Obviously the real thing beginners want to know isn't how to drive around the track. That is trivially easy. It's how to drive fast around the track.

Sadly, there isn't a single feature or line of code that has been spent on gtr evo or race 07 that might give someone who can drive in the game any feedback, help or features that might help them drive faster than they are.

Since the game bears no resemblance at all to driving IRL, you can't pragmatically bring real life driving experience to bear either (you might be able to use some theory perhaps)

All in all, this has meant the game hasn't really lasted very long for me.

There's no career mode. There's no learning curve to actually drive the cars around the track as laughably suggested to go from mini upwards (in fact that's actually absurd, the F3000 and many other cars in the game handle far better than the mini and, if anything, are easier to drive, even if they are faster) but there's no feedback in the game to tell you how well you're driving that might let you find a learning curve or something to do.

As it stands, I'm as quick in the game after a couple of weeks as I can see I'm ever going to be. Indeed, probably as quick after 5 laps on some tracks as I am after 500. Why wouldn't I be? I'm not crashing, I'm not spinning off...what am I supposed to change? The game simply has nothing to it.

How quick you are, of course, is relative. But this thing about "set the AI faster" - clearly you can set the AI to 2 points - one where you win, one where you don't. It really doesn't matter if you lose by 1 car length or 1 lap if you have no idea of why. Fairly obviously the AI wins because it's faster, but the game won't tell you why you aren't.

That said, you'll probably find most sims are similarly bland. It's a pity imo that the authors still use the "washes whiter" mentality of advertising.

Where, like each soap powder was supposed to wash whiter for year after year, each sim is supposed to be more realistic. Clearly they convinced the community that GTR2 was realistic so well that no amount of imploring now from Blimey or Simbin that it's not realistic will actually work. Perhaps they should take heed from that, and instead write a decent computer game...it won't be any less realistic than any so-called sim....and it might actually be worthwhile driving lap after lap in it. At least for those of us who can already tie our own shoelaces :)
 
If you're an alien it's easy. For the rest of us finding and keeping the fast pace is the key. I'm always 2 secs behind the fastest drivers ONLINE and that is where this game is really meant to be played. On some tracks i know exactly where i loose time and on the others i still don't have a clue. The AI will never teach you how to be a good driver, other people will.

If you can not drive the Minis fast, then you are not a perfect driver even if you have a breeze with the F3000. That is a fact. It's not speed of your car, it's the man inside what counts..

The career mode is missing, it would be a nice addition but i have not missed it. For the first month that would've been nice but i was happy that i could take any car from the list and drive on any track without having to drive the same car/track combos for ages to unlock new content. So there's an upside to it.
 
  • Matt Crouch

another rant

I honestly don't understand why you're here, as in every post you make it clear that you hate pretty much everything about simracing :confused: :)

and for something on topic... I would agree about going online after a bit of offline... I drive completely differntly with the AI just because I know they're not real people and there's no consequences to given them a bit of a push or making stupid dives down the inside

also the difficulty of the AI varies qiute a lot between tracks. 89% could be easy on one track and hard on another, although I imagine that's not so much of a problem with default tracks
 
There's no learning curve to actually drive the cars around the track as laughably suggested to go from mini upwards (in fact that's actually absurd, the F3000 and many other cars in the game handle far better than the mini and, if anything, are easier to drive, even if they are faster)

Excuse me? I personally think going from Mini upwards is quite reasonable. It's not a question of whether the F3000 is easier to drive or handles better than the Mini, it's about speed and the way isamu wants to play the game. All I was doing was answering his question fair and square by saying that the logical progression was from Mini to F3000 if he wanted to do a Gran Turismo-style career mode. Have you played Gran Turismo? it starts out with the slowest cars first, then progresses upwards, with cars that are incrementally faster, until you get to the cars that are the fastest in the game. Think about it. If you were in my position Leahcim, would you tell isamu to start out with the F3000 first, because it "handle far better than the Mini"? No. Why? Because the F3000s are undoubtedly the cars to finish off the pseudo-career mode that isamu specified, namely because of the obvious fact that F3000s are much faster, require quicker reaction times, are more sensitive to driver input and are incredibly hard to keep under control when going hard in them - almost the complete opposite of the Minis. And even then, there's the "laughable" omission of the fact that the F3000s are very powerful and rear-wheel drive. What are the Minis? Front-wheel drive, and considerably less powerful. If anything, I find the Minis easier to drive than the F3000s.

I was simply answering isamu's question the way anyone would have expected it to be answered, but your cynicism has yet again destroyed the purpose of this thread and people's replies done in good, helping spirit. To be quite honest, I didn't see you answer his question once during your reply; rather you pointed the finger at my opinion (among others) dismantled it, and turned your reply into another of your rants. If you hate this game so much, express your opinion elsewhere, and don't make it look as if you are intentionally discouraging people like isamu, who are only just beginning to play this game. They don't need their simple questions and other people's answers demolished by a pessimist.
 
Here's what I would suggest. Sign up for a club race, connect with the fast drivers... get tips, download setups and just be involved..... but more importantly....

Sign up for 1 particular event each week (preferably the same model of car every week). Know that car and it's tendencys. Don't try to set up the car. That takes months/years to learn. Just get one from a fast guy and drive it. Tell him what it feels like and can tell you what to tweak.

2nd.... plan for that race by practicing and learning the track and the line. THis is where you'll learn the most about driving. Get the track, download a fastlap (get someone that is competitive to post one for you if there aren't any online) and then watch that fast lap and follow it. Figure out break points, gear changes etc. This will make you competitve faster than anything..... You can actually see the line, breakpoints and accel points of the other driver. This should give you an idea of how to handle this track as well as general rules of thumb of how to drive that car and go fast. This is also fun because this can be a goal (If you feel this game was lacking arcade career mode.... this is what you get in exchange) it's a great learning tool that WILL make you faster.

This game is not really meant to be played offline. It's an online game so for a competitive guy that wants to feel progress and feel a challenge.... i say use club events and leagues to be your "career". Racing the AI is no challenge. They yeild to you too much and it doesn't teach you to race appropriately against other humans.

Do this and you'll be glad you did!!!
Then you're somewhat prepared
 
Yeah, they didn't bother writing a game :(

Ok, you can sort of forgive that they haven't got some of the things arcade games have, but they could do a lot more.

It's deeper than that too. As some of your replies have suggested, sim racing appears to be premised on folk who have no coordination skills prior to starting it. Similarly, read the beginner's tips in game and you see they expect you to be a moron who doesn't even realise you have to brake at corners.

They are hardly useful tips for how to play the game well.

Simbin's mythical "beginner" needs several years, it would seem, to go from driving the mini to driving the f3000 :)

At which point they probably feel they've achieved something irrespective of
how fast they are at that point merely by being able to drive around the track without crashing at every corner.

What hogwash. That is easy....and yes it's easy in GTR2 and GTL and whatever other game someone wants to kid you is really difficult to control the cars.

It's this fallacy that adds the farcical things like "novice" mode, rather than something useful.

Those of us who started off with the dexterity to press a pedal and turn a wheel however will probably quickly be underwhelmed. What do we do then?

Obviously the real thing beginners want to know isn't how to drive around the track. That is trivially easy. It's how to drive fast around the track.

Sadly, there isn't a single feature or line of code that has been spent on gtr evo or race 07 that might give someone who can drive in the game any feedback, help or features that might help them drive faster than they are.

Since the game bears no resemblance at all to driving IRL, you can't pragmatically bring real life driving experience to bear either (you might be able to use some theory perhaps)

All in all, this has meant the game hasn't really lasted very long for me.

There's no career mode. There's no learning curve to actually drive the cars around the track as laughably suggested to go from mini upwards (in fact that's actually absurd, the F3000 and many other cars in the game handle far better than the mini and, if anything, are easier to drive, even if they are faster) but there's no feedback in the game to tell you how well you're driving that might let you find a learning curve or something to do.

As it stands, I'm as quick in the game after a couple of weeks as I can see I'm ever going to be. Indeed, probably as quick after 5 laps on some tracks as I am after 500. Why wouldn't I be? I'm not crashing, I'm not spinning off...what am I supposed to change? The game simply has nothing to it.

How quick you are, of course, is relative. But this thing about "set the AI faster" - clearly you can set the AI to 2 points - one where you win, one where you don't. It really doesn't matter if you lose by 1 car length or 1 lap if you have no idea of why. Fairly obviously the AI wins because it's faster, but the game won't tell you why you aren't.

That said, you'll probably find most sims are similarly bland. It's a pity imo that the authors still use the "washes whiter" mentality of advertising.

Where, like each soap powder was supposed to wash whiter for year after year, each sim is supposed to be more realistic. Clearly they convinced the community that GTR2 was realistic so well that no amount of imploring now from Blimey or Simbin that it's not realistic will actually work. Perhaps they should take heed from that, and instead write a decent computer game...it won't be any less realistic than any so-called sim....and it might actually be worthwhile driving lap after lap in it. At least for those of us who can already tie our own shoelaces :)


isamu, disregard this guy's post. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, of course, but this fella simply has no idea what he's talking about. He complains about the game being too simple, when in fact there are so many nuances to simracing that it's mind boggling at times. Mr. leahcim may be able to tie his shoes, but can he apex his corners correctly and turn in properly enough to not only beat the CPU, but also go toe-to-toe with the world's best? Does he know his racing lines like the back of his hand, and just how to vary his approach to that racing line when dealing with opponents? Hmmm? And does he know a thousand other racing techniques it takes to truly call racing lap after lap a waste of time? I don't think so. So while he sits on his computer and writes lengthy posts, desperately trying to back some ridiculous point, you have some laps to run, Isamu. And so do we all. Because there is ALWAYS more speed out there; you just have to find it.

However, if you sit offline and race the computer, you'll never learn the nuances it takes to find that speed. So do as people have suggested and get your feet wet with the computer, and then hit online and really go at it.

If you're an alien it's easy. For the rest of us finding and keeping the fast pace is the key. I'm always 2 secs behind the fastest drivers ONLINE and that is where this game is really meant to be played. On some tracks i know exactly where i loose time and on the others i still don't have a clue. The AI will never teach you how to be a good driver, other people will.

If you can not drive the Minis fast, then you are not a perfect driver even if you have a breeze with the F3000. That is a fact. It's not speed of your car, it's the man inside what counts..

The career mode is missing, it would be a nice addition but i have not missed it. For the first month that would've been nice but i was happy that i could take any car from the list and drive on any track without having to drive the same car/track combos for ages to unlock new content. So there's an upside to it.

Now look at that post. This man knows simracing.
 
If you're an alien it's easy. For the rest of us finding and keeping the fast pace is the key. I'm always 2 secs behind the fastest drivers ONLINE and that is where this game is really meant to be played. On some tracks i know exactly where i loose time and on the others i still don't have a clue. The AI will never teach you how to be a good driver, other people will.

If you can not drive the Minis fast, then you are not a perfect driver even if you have a breeze with the F3000. That is a fact. It's not speed of your car, it's the man inside what counts..

The career mode is missing, it would be a nice addition but i have not missed it. For the first month that would've been nice but i was happy that i could take any car from the list and drive on any track without having to drive the same car/track combos for ages to unlock new content. So there's an upside to it.

QFT.

Besides. If you are a fast the driver it doesn't mean that you can race with 25 people online. It's a different approach.
 

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