RDRC S8 Round 0 - Test Rally (9th - 15th January 2017)

[bogani]

RaceNet name - 35. K Johansson, don't know who you are but you just destroyed my feelings, that Kadett time is crazy unbelievable, I want your FFB settings and your car setups, if you say it's stock I DON"T BELIEVE YOU!!!, anyway great time, really hope your not in 2wd-, go beat some of the 4WD+ guy;s

Maybe it's the famous Porkhammer behind that name. Maybe not. That time is wicked!

 

[bogani]

I really hope people are going to play fair and not drop out the stage after a crash or incident and run it again. Hopefully there won't be as many checkpoints in the real events?

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

I really hope people are going to play fair and not drop out the stage after a crash or incident and run it again. Hopefully there won't be as many checkpoints in the real events?

There will not be as many services in the actual events, and there will not be checkpoints on every service either

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

So, as my RDRC-car haven't returned from the workshop, I had to get another car for this event, with loads of small sponsors to finance the rally. A good old Focus 01
While I didn't take it too seriously, I must admit I am really surprised with the speed I had in Greece, other than that it was just as expected. Ok, speed in Monte, good speed in Sweden, Puncture in Finland, ok, slow-ish in Germany and good speed in Wales!

Fun times, and just slightly over a week until it really starts!

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

fun event all round, bagged two spectators and one cameraman (which wasn't much fun for them, I guess ...), produced a half spin at the second turn or so of the first monte stage, and - darn - it's so tight to turn around your bloody car there. Other than that I did some swell stages, still ended up way down the grid, but way ahead of all the chaps who dropped out and don't show up on the codie page. Looking forward to the magic spreadsheet as trying to remember which cars are in your class is a royal pain, so class standings are sth. one is certainly waiting for.

 

[Neilski]

I really do hate the first stage in Greece. Lots of dangerous places and the last part of the stage downhill I'm just keeping the car rolling avoiding to crash. Can't believe how people can push that hard and survive that stage.

Yeah, a lot of Greek stages are like that, but you'd be amazed how much faster you get with practice (I hated the Greek stages for quite a while but I'm improving.)
Try watching a Youtube video of it. That stage in particular has a bunch of places (early) where being about one foot off the ideal line means you flip.

 

[Neilski]

bagged two spectators and one cameraman

I must say, the spectator positions in this game are beyond stupid. They are positively begging to be taken out!

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

I must say, the spectator positions in this game are beyond stupid. They are positively begging to be taken out!

Quite realistic though, there are many idiots watching rally. As I said, survival of the fittest .

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

back in the 70s and 80s it looked like this:

so our dirt rally really is quite idyllic.

 

[Howard Jacks]

I enjoyed the event. I made a few errors and spins along the way and need to practice my 3 point turns. I did not know you can reset and retry and I thought the pit crew were super compared to the chaps I have in career mode!

Top organisation for this rally and hopefully the ongoing season! It would be nice to have stage by stage comparison. omewhere for console vs ps4 as there were 8 of us and 6 in the fast 4wd cars. It made it hard and a bit lonely to compare the escort speed vs the wrcs! I have learned and bookmarked the pc league for the next time There is something more right about the classics in the forests!

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

I did not know you can reset and retry

neither did i - shock! is this for real? spoils all the fun i'd say.

 

[Jan Larsen]

Finished the event, yay! Not fast at all, but I'm chuffed to be in the top half

 

[Gerben Kelly]

first 6 stages went well, on SS7 i got a puncture and went off on SS8. Those 2 stages costed me a lot of time. Driving fast to make up the lost time also caused a puncture on SS12. Nice pre season shake down!!!

 

[Sean Bell]

neither did i - shock! is this for real? spoils all the fun i'd say.

Same--did not know it was possible to restart, don't think it's a good thing if it is. For me (as a total newcomer to rally) much of the fun is in figuring out how much to push without binning it (didn't work out for me in Greece, where I rolled so many times I nearly vomited; crashing badly in VR actually hurts). If you can reset and go again then it seems like the laurels go to the driver with most free time to rerun, no?

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

I did not know you can reset and retry and I thought the pit crew were super compared to the chaps I have in career mode!
View attachment 168122

neither did i - shock! is this for real? spoils all the fun i'd say.

Same--did not know it was possible to restart, don't think it's a good thing if it is. For me (as a total newcomer to rally) much of the fun is in figuring out how much to push without binning it (didn't work out for me in Greece, where I rolled so many times I nearly vomited; crashing badly in VR actually hurts). If you can reset and go again then it seems like the laurels go to the driver with most free time to rerun, no?

I'll quote the rules.
3.3 – CTD’s, Saving During Rallies, Checkpoints.

There will be added checkpoints at some places in each rally. This may be on every service depending on how many services there will be in the rally. There will never be a checkpoint outside a service park. The checkpoints will be there for people to save and continue later, and for people that have technical issues to be able to finish the rally. There for, there will not be a large amount of checkpoints, as this can lead to rather unsporting behaviour.
Checkpoints in DIRT rally are points in the rally where you can save, leave the game and come back to continue later. In case of CTD or other issues, you can also continue from the last passed checkpoint. You will not be able to continue from the last checkpoint if you for some reason retire.

Basically this is because of the amount of random bugs, and stuff happening to DiRT Rally from Codemasters side, especially with RaceNet (as seen over multiple posts already). That means that in case something is f'ed up from a game mechanics point of view (like, the random workshop - racenet issue), people actually have a chance to finish.
This is not a "retry every stage" option. It is a option that enable drivers to continue from the last checkpoint if stuff happens. And it enables people to be able to save during a rally to continue another day - This can cause corruption issues and are not recommended though.
In the test rally it was checkpoints at every service, as it was a test rally. Not to spoil much for the RDRC season, but I can give a couple of examples. In Rally Greece, you'll only have 1 checkpoint throughout the whole rally. In other rallies there might be 8 stages between checkpoints etc.

But "reset and retry" is a very simplified way of putting it. If you mess up the last stage before a checkpoint and want to "retry" that, you will have to go back to the last checkpoint. Which might be 8 stages, 60km, 30+min of driving ago, and you will do all stages again.
If this game had been virtually bug-free from Codemasters side, and only personal errors would've led to the multiple game crashes and RaceNet issues, then we wouldn't have used it. But as many of the issues are happening due to people using features given from Codemasters for this game, and also happens on random. You can play for months without issues, and suddenly RaceNet decides to not work, then we'll need a "backup" for this.
But again, the RDRC events will have more stages, longer stages, less services and even fewer checkpoints than services.

If there are any more questions regarding this, fire away Better to get things squared out before the seasons starts!

 

[bogani]

I would be pleasantly surprised if none of the entrants took advantage of this when crashing out. I really do like that there will be so few checkpoints. I think that will combat some of this though.

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

well, it says above that if you are really seriously crashing out, you will not be allowed back in. the way ole has explained it, the system makes perfect sense to me now. i had forgotten that checkpoints are "save the game" points. i only ever notice them on the screen when it says "press 17 if you want to save and exit". thx for clarifying, ole. and if someone seriously wants to run the same 30mins or so two or three times ... let them, there's better things to do.

 

[Sean Bell]

Yes, thanks very much for the clarification. I was aware of the save-at-checkpoints (and appreciate it--being able to split the race session over a couple of evenings makes this series accessible to me). The reset/retry phrasing made it sound like folks could just restart a stage at will, which didn't sound so good. The system as implemented makes perfect sense, however.

 

[Howard Jacks]

I agree with Sean and was very grateful to be able to effectively pause and then rejoin every few stages. Certainly this is something to be mindful of if it can be an hour plus between breaks!
It was the concern of rerunning stages to improve or not crash the 2nd-3rd-4th-42nd time through!

 

[Martin Larsen]

57th place overall I think now, remove Greece from my times and it would had been ok... Within 15sec from the stage winner on both stages in Germany which just makes me think im not really Norwegian since im better att tarmac then gravel