F1 2017 Difficulty levels and car behaviour.

[Carlitox]

Hi everybody,

So as the title suggests, I'm having quite a frustrating time when actually racing. I should clarify that I'm no monster ace like you guys, top difficulty on any game would destroy me. I blame lack of equipment and the devs (kidding of course, I'm bad by default and my time to practice is scarce, though I'm getting better ). So for this game, I thought "well, in last year's game I could ace the AI at Hard and Expert was kind of a fair challenge. So to start out, I'll set it to 75 (Hard) and see".

The AI just pulled ahead and never looked back. I thought at first "yeah, silly me, I'm driving a Sauber, lemme step it up a notch with some Rosso Corsa". So try again aaand same issue. The AI is way harder for me at the same(ish) level that I used to blast past last year.

Now a bit of the problem could be stemming from the new physics. I've found myself spinning violently when trying to get out of slow corners, and facing understeering in tight bends (examples in China, Monaco, Belgium, Abu Dhabi and more). I tried to face the game with confidence, since the new cars are supposed to corner like a god, of course I wasn't trying to tacke La Source at 200kph, but generally in tight bends, the car understeers horribly by default.

In summary, my questions are, do you guys feel that the difficulty has been upped? That the "Hard" for 2017 is not the same "Hard" that 2016 had? And have you noticed the understeering and the massive wheelspin getting out of tight bends or could it be just my pedals settings? (Wheel set is a DFGT for reference)

TL;DR: AI looks too hard and car understeers and wheelspins like crazy in the hairpins. Sorry for the long read. thanks for any opinions!

 

[Hatsu]

I agree that the AI is harder. I have it on Expert now (80).
At my first race at Expert with a McLaren I didn't have any chance. Now, I mostly finish 8-12. So I guess I could make it harder. I wait for the wear patch for career and will test difficulty for me until then.
My experience is the cars are much easier to drive than last year. I don't experience that much understeer. Exiting corners isn't a problem, either. I never use 1st gear besides start and box, rarely use 2nd, most of the time 3rd and 4th. La source f.e. I use 3rd.

 

[Coffer]

Definitely harder on 110% compared to last year's Ultimate, though how much of that is down to actual realistic handling on the AI's part I do not know. They definitely seem to have too much grip in fast corners right now, especially front grip. In slow corners they're more manageable, but I feel that's more down to me being better in slow corners than fast ones, as their apex grip still seems to be astronomically high compared to mine.

For me it's been the opposite experience to Hatsu's so far. In China in particular it really feels like there's LESS grip of any kind than before. On turn 1 I tend to lose upwards of 3 tenths relative to the AI as the car never actually grips but rather either initiates a weird 4-wheel drift or understeers crazily, in most slow corners (such as turn 2 (the left-hander), or the slow left-hander before the run up to the back straight) the car is easily prone to spinning, while the right-hander before the back straight is similar to Australia's final corner in the sense that the car has no grip whatsoever while accelerating and just understeers off instantly.

I'm driving the Haas, and the car, like most other modern cars in the game, feels painfully unintuitive compared to either 2016 or AMS right now, which should not be happening. In particular I get absolutely no response from the FFB when I'm understeering or close to it, or while gauging how much traction I have, or while testing out how the car reacts when the back end steps out. The latter feels a lot like rFactor 2 in the sense that there is absolutely no countersteer force whatsoever from my G27 - the front wheels literally just stay straight all the way through, which is utterly ridiculous. It'd be fine if I was just slow, but I did just beat Grosjean by a minute in Australia and outpaced the Red Bulls on merit.