How do people pick there difficultly

[Grumpy OAP]

I want to play a realistic as possible as was wondering how do people pick there difficulty currently on 85 on f2 season and i won the first 2 races at bahrain 1 by 3 seconds the other by 20 (only cause i didnt pit) i would like to here your advice for picking difficulty

[Maya-Neko]

I've played around 95th difficulty, because that's the difficulty i played the last few games with.

But there's no real guide for how to pick it. It's mostly just trial and error. If you're too far away from your teammate or the expected possibilities of your team, then you're propably not playing in the right difficulty. Training programs also get quite challenging, but should still be doable with some training (they're not made to be easy, so don't think, that the difficulty is too high, just because you don't get a program first try after like 3 laps done in the training)

[Janfin]

You wanted as realistic as possible so put it on 110 (max).
You dont have difficulty options in real life :p

[True]

see your teammate's rating and then see the gap between in quali/races fixing the difficulty throughout and there you go. The only real issue being that if you are really bad on some tracks and really good on others the difficulty might not be enough/too high for you to be able to enjoy the racing

[Husky]

Usually a good way of testing your pace is with spec cars like F2 for instance. load up a GP and do one shot qually and start on lets say 80 difficulty. Do the qually and see if you can get within the top 5. keep adding difficulty until you start losing a lot of time. ideally you will only get pole on a near perfect lap.

After you found your difficulty keep in mind some tracks the AI is quite a bit better than others. so what i do for instance is per track i change the difficulty from a range of 100-103 % depending on the track. this is a bit of trial and error every year. it's hard to find a sweetspot for every single track but usually after a while the community gets a general consensus about which tracks are harder than other and then you can adjust accordingly.

[yar2000]

I'd recommend playing Grand Prix mode with a short qualifying session and a 25% or 50% race on a few tracks if you really want to assure you're on the right difficulty. I would not recommend F2 cars as they are VERY different to F1 cars and my personal skill level is lower in them so the AI difficulty might not be representative. Try tracks you find easy (for me thats tracks like Austria, Monza, Spa, Silverstone, etc.) and some tracks you find more difficult (for me thats tracks like Bahrain, Singapore, etc.) and just see how you do, especially compared to your teammate. From there you should be able to make a good guess on what difficulty suits you.

I play on 100 and my teammate is very close to me every race so far, sometimes I'm faster, sometimes he is faster. I haven't got points yet in my first 3 races but that is to be expected with a slow car. Feels like the perfect difficulty for me right now. I can definitely recommend to NOT go too low, because its probably not fun and realistic.

[Neo King Arthur]

I usually play on 60 (Hard) difficulty. Because that's just where my skills at. I like to always win from pole constantly from the very start, without having too much big of a gap to everyone else. I like to optimise my practice run with as few laps as possible always nailing everything right. But again, without too much of a gap from the required times.

I also play on a gamepad, so that maybe one of the reason why I choose that difficulty. And I drop it down to 50 (medium) when I race at Monaco.. That place is scary for gamepad user with my skill level. Loew's hairpin is practically impossible to turn using gamepad without setting up your car to have max downforce which severely compromises your lap time since you're running slower top speeds. Hence, I had to lower the difficulty on Monaco, even so I always lose on speed trap objectives and during the race, Even on Mercedes my team mate is tailing me really close at that difficulty.

[Joe the Smoe]

hmm maybe i played on Dark Souls Mode with 95% on keyboard xD

luckily i have a wheel now, which is much more fun, but had to go down to 85% since i have to train my skills on this new thing :D

But I think that the difficulty between Training and Race should get slightly balanced. I tried to find the correct difficulty settings with the wheel in Training modes, got the Race Strategy very close with times between -0.1xx and -0,3xx just to finish the race as 9th which is a bit overperformed with my very bad car.
So i'd personally say, choose your difficulty in Race Strategy (that you just get your purple bonus, but with good laps and as a challenge to get your points) and add 5 to 10 points for the Qualifyings/Races.

But maybe someone else has some good other tips on this Training/Race Difficulty problem?
(and yeah i'm not talking about the Qualy Training bug^^)

[Dreagon]

Originally posted by Joe the Smoe:

hmm maybe i played on Dark Souls Mode with 95% on keyboard xD

luckily i have a wheel now, which is much more fun, but had to go down to 85% since i have to train my skills on this new thing :D

But I think that the difficulty between Training and Race should get slightly balanced. I tried to find the correct difficulty settings with the wheel in Training modes, got the Race Strategy very close with times between -0.1xx and -0,3xx just to finish the race as 9th which is a bit overperformed with my very bad car.
So i'd personally say, choose your difficulty in Race Strategy (that you just get your purple bonus, but with good laps and as a challenge to get your points) and add 5 to 10 points for the Qualifyings/Races.

But maybe someone else has some good other tips on this Training/Race Difficulty problem?
(and yeah i'm not talking about the Qualy Training bug^^)

I think passing the race program with that margin results in pretty good race difficulty. It generally allows you a small margin for error in the race. And finishing 9th with your I assume myteam car doesn't have to be overperforming, unless you do it consistently. If you succesfully pulled of a one stop race while others tried the two stop and failed to overtake you or you did the one stop with faster tyre compounds then the difficulty isn't really the problem. You simply beat them on strategy.

And your position on the performance chart doesn't say everything either. In my save I have the third (or second, not sure) worst car. And I started the season with the third worst car. But in Australia the gaps between all the teams is relatively big. But now in Belgium I have Haas in a pixel above or below me and Alfa Romeo, AlphaTauri, McLaren and Renault are almost equal in performance and just a little above me in performance. Everything in the midfield is very close so my P7 finish in Hungary sounds like overperforming but it was a combination of two DNF's and a handful of people who went for the two stop and failed miserably at that.

[AoD_lexandro]

Simple rule of thumb for me is the twistier it is, the lower I make the AI. This is simply because the AI is vastly more consistent than us humans, and with more corners its easier for it to make up time by being a fraction better on the brakes/throttle every corner.

Tracks like Monza are very easy to match or beat the AI as it has less corners to lose time on. But places like Mexico are harder to make time on due to the slow speed corners and multiples of them. We as humans are much more likely to snatch a brake or be off line a fraction losing a 10th here or there.

Atm Im in the 70's range, because I am still working on getting the controls and setups right first before trying to "bang my head against a wall" attempting to beat higher AI levels.

[Dreagon]

Originally posted by AoD_lexandro:

Simple rule of thumb for me is the twistier it is, the lower I make the AI. This is simply because the AI is vastly more consistent than us humans, and with more corners its easier for it to make up time by being a fraction better on the brakes/throttle every corner.

Tracks like Monza are very easy to match or beat the AI as it has less corners to lose time on. But places like Mexico are harder to make time on due to the slow speed corners and multiples of them. We as humans are much more likely to snatch a brake or be off line a fraction losing a 10th here or there.

Atm Im in the 70's range, because I am still working on getting the controls and setups right first before trying to "bang my head against a wall" attempting to beat higher AI levels.

That's basically why I try to complete the race pace program with 0.1-0.3 margin. It allows you to make small mistakes without immediately losing your place to someone close behind you.

[Joe the Smoe]

but i hope they fix the qualify training soon.
this was a good hint in former F1's.
But this is actually really strange...
In most races i just go to about 60% and it is hard but you can get your purple points, but Bahrain i.e. i took 55% and was still 1 second behind O.o the faster the straights, the more it gets harder to get those silly times

[Dreagon]

Originally posted by Joe the Smoe:

but i hope they fix the qualify training soon.
this was a good hint in former F1's.
But this is actually really strange...
In most races i just go to about 60% and it is hard but you can get your purple points, but Bahrain i.e. i took 55% and was still 1 second behind O.o the faster the straights, the more it gets harder to get those silly times

The quali program is weird. It was basically impossible to beat in Australia but now halfway through the season it's fine. I'm not beating the purple times regularly but I can manage the green times fairly easily. It led me to the conclusion that the fact that my car is no longer a boat helps out a lot. But generally it's smart to do qualifying 5 points or so lower than the race. While 95 AI provides me a decent challenge in the race, I can't keep up with them in qualifying.