Everything we know so far about Gran Turismo Sport indicates that the game will take a departure from past games in the series, particularly in its online multiplayer-centric game design. However, the success or failure of Gran Turismo Sport potentially hinges on the online experience, i.e. a room of childish players that want nothing more than to ruin your race.
It’s a somewhat unavoidable issue (even a competitive player could have an off-day), but the team at Polyphony is aware of the skill gap among players and have taken active steps to mitigate it: enter a new “reputation system,” which will be used to measure players’ skills and maturity. Competitors of similar skills will be matched on online lobbies for a more competitive racing experience.
“You’ll notice – if you go online in GT6 – the world out there is very rough. It’s like the African savanna,” said Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi at E3, via GT Planet. “That situation is obviously not very good, and in order to achieve clean online races, you need some type of rating system.”
The two driver rating systems are “Driver Class” and “Sportsmanship Points.” As the name suggests, “Driver Class” represents a player’s overall speed and skill on the track. Meanwhile, “Sportsmanship Points” keep in touch of track behavior such as contact or corner cutting.
“These two scores will affect your driver rating,” explained Kazunori. “For example, if your Sportsmanship Points go down because you have been driving very rough in some races, you will only be matched with other players who drive rough on-track. On the other side of the spectrum, people who run clean races, will be matched with other clean drivers.”
There are a total of six driver classes, which will rank drivers based on qualifying results, race results, and the rating of fellow drivers in the player’s lobby. As for Sportsmanship Points, the metrics will consider positive parameters such as race distance, course difficulty, race category. Negative parameters include driving off-track, wall contact, ignoring flags, ignoring speed limits, pushing other cars off track, or causing collisions.
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