Difficulty improves later on?

[Baguette]

Game seems wayyyyyy too easy to begin with, the other cars don't seem that bad at driving (They defend quite aggressively at time which is fun) I think primarily it's that they don't seem to use ERS? So most the time you can just boost to extreme speeds and get past or make distance quite easily.

Tyre Wear aswell seems very lacking, it's not hard to just do a 1 stop on softs as even if there is a drop off it's very minimal on lap times until close to blow out.

Damage as well seems very very minimal, I can crash into the back of people and into walls and my front wing doesn't appear to be damaged?

Would love difficulty options to increase this type of thing, so you could have damage on the minimalist of contacts that then limit performance of turning (If e.g. front wing) and then tyre wear could also be exaggerated so that it's much easier to spin when the tyres start to drop off instead of when they are almost dead.

And maybe with that comes price increases for parts so you have to perform better to get better.

Durability on parts aswell could be interesting! So cheaper to repair and much more costly to upgrade (And then repairs scale with the better parts)

I'll probably try a playthrough where I just don't upgrade the car and see how that goes!

Love the game so far though!

[Bill (New Star Games)]

To answer your question, yes, the game has adaptive difficulty, so as you progress, it should become more difficult. You will also notice on some later races that it's impossible to just do a one stop strategy, especially for tyres. The last race of the season in particular.

[manc80]

Hopefully any difficulty changes will have manual customisation so those who want a more realistic experience can turn it all up full, whereas those looking for a more arcade blast can keep things simple and forgiving :)

[Mr Bismarck]

Love the adaptive difficulty - that's good to hear. Would like to be able to control it manually in the Championship (non-career) events though, so I can put the difficulty wherever I like for a quick blast or a real challenge.

[Ludokultur]

I'm a fan of adaptive difficulty in general, but it doesn't seem to do that much currently. I won all but one race in the 80s (the one I didn't win was the most fun one btw) and now in the 90s won the first race by 30+ seconds. Where's the adaptiveness? :D

Great game btw, brings back MicroProse GP vibes!

[Bill (New Star Games)]

This is all good feedback. Thanks. The difficulty will probably have to be tweaked a number of times during early access.

[JP]

Yes, as others have said, the game is great fun, but it´s too easy. Haven´t used the rewind option, as I can always recover from crashes. I think I am in the fifth circuit of the career mode only, but it seems dificulty has remained more or less the same through the races.

[Baguette]

Yeah going into the 2nd season and 3rd race and it's back to being quite easy. It definitely got more difficult going into the last 2 races of the first season but I think that was partly down to me trying to force a 1 stop on hards and the rival system making the AI defend a lot more.

Definitely would love for it to be more adjustable!

I have found that using boost seems like the problem, I did a lap on the last race of the first season where all the cars should be max upgraded where I was 2 seconds behind 1st and didn't use boost and it was a really fun lap where I was able to just inch my way closer to just under a second by the end of the lap. It made finding the braking point and nailing each corner vital.

So I'm probably going to try a playthrough without using boost and see how that goes.

[Mr Bismarck]

Boost is a real problem for sure. You can line up a car in front, even a rival, and then hit boost as you move out and you're past them before they can react. Overtaking is pretty trivial as a result.

[Bill (New Star Games)]

Would love to see if you guys still feel the same after finishing the full 80's season. The AI should give more of a challenge starting around quebec. But as mentioned, we are really closely monitoring the feedback around this.

[Ludokultur]

Originally posted by Bill (New Star Games):

Would love to see if you guys still feel the same after finishing the full 80's season. The AI should give more of a challenge starting around quebec. But as mentioned, we are really closely monitoring the feedback around this.

Finished both 80s and 90s, won all but 2 or 3 races. Didn't really notice things getting harder except for some rival blocking shenanigans.

That said, difficulty is an incredibly individual thing so a "one difficulty to catch them all" is, even if it is alright for most players, bound to not be right for some.

[manc80]

Definitely think it needs some sort of difficulty slider for the career and a bronze/silver/gold difficulty option for each championship

[Mr Bismarck]

I would go for difficulty sliders, for sure, so that you're not trying to find a solution that fits everyone. Make the sliders adjust how quickly the dynamic difficulty reacts, or to adjust its baseline starting point.

I'd especially like a "Quick Race" option with user controlled lap counts and difficulty options.

I actually didn't win the Quebec race, but it wasn't because the AI was fast... I was in second on lap 2 when an AI car absolutely drilled into the side of me - nose to sidepod - at the hairpin. It wasn't even a rival.

The AI car hit me so hard it flipped onto its roof and drove down the straight toward the Wall of Champions upside down with its wheels in the air.

[euphoreonz]

Would like to be able to set a difficulty from the start... been playing over an hour and haven't got close to not winning. Feels like a hot-lapper at the moment

[ely]

The difficulty spiked suddenly in the 1990s championship for me. I won the first 5 races at a canter and then I couldn't get near the front again until the last race when I finished 3rd. I ended up losing the championship by 2 points.

[Bill (New Star Games)]

Originally posted by ely:

The difficulty spiked suddenly in the 1990s championship for me. I won the first 5 races at a canter and then I couldn't get near the front again until the last race when I finished 3rd. I ended up losing the championship by 2 points.

It's quite difficult for us to manage the difficulty expectations as essentially only 2 of the 5 decades planned are currently in the game. We always intended for the 80's to be fairly comfortable and then for the challenge to ramp up.