Paper figures and actual performance are two different things unfortunately, and fact is no older cars from GrA should match with 1992 DTM cars in real life, in any way. I can see the pay-to-win point etc, but for me personally this kind of balancing means less R3E playing to me.
Can't you just assume that you're racing in some modern-day 'historics' class, which allows cars from slightly different eras to compete via BoP?
I understand the pay2win aspect, but as we are all no professional drivers there are many ways to win with a inferior car: - don´t crash - drive constant fast lap times, don´t make mistakes - don´t kill your tires, don´t drift every corner - setup your car properly - just be faster as the other guys, train withe the car-track-combo - don´t give up How often we see crashes at the start, people giving up, people drifting wild, people divebombing. Also when you look at group5 online-races, i don´t see many people taking the superior fabcar. The cars in Raceroom have enough character, so that many people drive rather their prefered car than the fastest one.
I've done a MP race with the Volvo 240T before and I could not hang with two M3s whose drivers I've beaten in other classes, and believe me I tried just about anything in practice and qualifying to get more speed from the car (And I did, to a point, I was 1-1.5 sec quicker than the other Volvo in the race). Simply put, there's only so much you can gain from setups and mistake-free races. Like Mr. belowski said, just view it as a modern classic TC series with BOP in order to get good, close racing. It's good racing we're all here for, right?? Like anyone in their right mind would race an online F1 league w/o league physics and pick a Minardi.
(I've run in GTR2 ILMC leagues with no BoP as a Lola and been hammered by Audis and Peugeots when they are on form, and preyed on them when they've struggled - lots of fun)
If not mistaken we'll soon get a tool to add weight no?! Maybe we can create a "Real life BOP"? Give the Older Beamers and Volvo some more weight and there you go, problem solved no?!
I know that when they create modern historic touring series they balance the cars as best as possible. Take enzed touring car masters for example they run toranas, mustangs, javelins, falcons, 911's, firebirds, camaros ect so they give out ballasts and various other penalty's to balance the cars (which are still faster than they ever were back when they originaly raced) which span a decade in age. while sector 3's balancing is a stretch but its not inconceivable that it would happen in real life.
Arguably the BoP is skewed against the Fabcar there, they're not top of any leaderboard I can see! In single-player I think the difference is due to either different stats for the AI physics simplification (which all sims have) or the AI 'talent' (drivers abilities).
Since the announcement of Touring being BOPped to DTM92 I went from a "Oh this is cool!" to a "Oh this is NOT cool!" very rapidly (~3secs). Reason is that in my opinion there's actually no point of applying a "forced" balance to this category cause we're dulling the whole experience having every car that matches in performance. I understand this has been done mainly to avoid 24 monocar grids but then... what is the fun of having the entire grid at the same level? I'm partially ok with the BOP within the class but not between different ones. Honestly speaking this has been done mainly for the online, right? So, again, instead of forcing this balance between classes, I'd rather see this transformed into a weight penalty on a server-side. Wanna balance everything? Make it an option in there! I don't know what's the opinion of the majority, but I'd like to have as much as possible fidelity in regards of historical/modern accuracy. If a car was a crazy horse and couldn't handle nicely then let be it! Have fun taming that! ;D So yeah, for me is... BOP within the same class: if we really have to... BOP thru different classes
It's not different classes. It's cars from the same class, split due to some of them being licensed through a special championship.
Even tought they are all GrA spec cars, they are from different eras ans specs and their performance should never match in real life.
BoP is not to make the whole grid perform at the exact same level. Each car will still have it's own strengths and weaknesses but they are tuned to be competitive to each other. Without any sort of BoP, there wont be any reason to put the Volvo and 635 with DTM1992. Then, the Skyline will be a single class because back in 1992, it was a beast that destroys almost every car on the grid. The BoP in the real life cars back then often do not work as expected which it is why motorsports is fun to watch back then and also unfair for other competitors on the grid. What is the point of playing Group A if Skyline destroys each car in it's class or having it as a single class? I rather have more cars in the class but I do prefer if the Volvo and 635 is moved to another class with cars accompanying that class.
I agree with that, but make it an option (weight penalty) so people can handle that the way they want and not being forced to have cars with "similar" performances.