Hi my Name is Patrick and i am the WR holder for F1 2015-F1 2018. Today i tried running the Any% category for F1 2019, and at first i really liked it, that you dont have to race at all the curcuits, because it brings the element of Strategy into the mix.

But! After running it for like 6 Hours (multiple runs), i found a few problems with it.

The Biggest Problem is that this run is 85-90% RNG. Because:

• you loose about a minute+ each time you get given a rain race. -> even if you skip the track and drive another track instead you would still over all loose time because we dont drive the longest tracks....
• Winning the Championship is a nice goal for a speedrun, but it implies that you have to beat AI. And the AI will finish every Race diffrent from run to run.... -> This means i had to drive Abu Dhabi, and wait for Bottas to crash him out because i couldn't have won the Championship otherwise, altough scoring the same amount of points as WR (390 = 15*25+15(FL)) (he had 384 Points before the last race) -So i lost a lot of time to this, and it wasn't even my fault.

Please don't think that i am only salty because i didnt beat the WR, wince using no Assist im considerably slower, so i wasn't really expecting to beat it. I Don't even think it is a bad category! because of the element of strategy and crashing on purpose could mix up runs, what i am concerned with is: that this is main category of the game, and it has not much to do with the skill of the person.

I will upload the run anyway although loosing 15 min in last split xD. As i said im not salty because i didnt get WR, i m salty because i think its more RNG then anything which it wasn't for the past few years. If i could have had a clean race, i would still be Third in the standings, so it is really not because i didnt get WR.

If you disagree/ agree with me, please let me know. And i don't know if you guys knew that the speedrunners from last years game made a discord server for F1 Speedrunning :D https://discord.gg/tzjrgT

First of all, welcome to the board!

So here's the thing about the points you brought up:

For weather, there's nothing we can really do about it. I'd love to be able to specify Dry weather instead of Dynamic in the championship setup, but that option is greyed out as of the current patch (v1.09), and has been since launch. This source of RNG is an inherent element of the game and I know it isn't fair to be screwed over like that, but the same thing goes for speedrunning other racing games like Colin McRae Rally; it's part of the game, it doesn't immediately trash the run, just push through it, you can always try again later. Hell, it's even worse in games like Dark Souls where the WR run strategy depends on getting a weapon that only has a 20% chance to drop from a few specific enemies. So in the end I don't think it's that big of a deal.

For the AI, the same thing applies; it's part of the game, they've been programmed this year to be particularly racy and unpredictable compared to previous years, and there's no way we can get rid of them without destroying the spirit of the run. What I have noticed, however, is that their on-track performance is somewhat predictable. Bottas will be weak (and by that I mean he isn't pulling a 2s lead by the end of lap 1) compared to the Ferraris at Germany, Australia, and COTA, and weak to the Red Bulls in Japan and Monaco... I find those are the best opportunities to "gently nudge" him off the track and widen that points gap, and I believe doing that whilst losing the least amount of time takes skill. If you notice in my own run I don't do it in Abu Dhabi or in any part of the second half of the season, I do it at lap 1 turn 12 in Australia, and he scores no points when he would have gotten 18 otherwise.

All of this plays into the number of race skips we can get. I don't believe that skipping the longest races completely nullifies all of the skips we can do. Right now it should be no problem to be able to skip 5 races because of Bottas' performance, but with that "gentle nudge" in australia I was able to get a gap wide enough for me to skip 6 races. As it stands there are four tracks where the lap time is solidly above 1:40, those are Belgium, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, and Azerbaijan. All four, immediate skip. That leaves two free skips that can be used on the four other tracks that will most affect your run time due to rain. I believe a dry France is longer than a dry Britain, but the opposite is true when both are wet. Which do you skip? Japan is shorter than USA, but is easier to make mistakes and will punish you harder. Which do you skip?

And if you analyse the other competitive runs, most of them are far more violent with Violent Cousin Melvin and have managed to give themselves 7 skips, but in the process have wasted more time than they would have saved, so I think 6 is the best before diminishing returns... at least for me. As for picking someone else that isn't hamilton just so 2nd place has more competition... I don't know, might work, might not.

So tl;dr I agree with you about the weather randomness, but not the severity of how badly it affects individual runs, and the AI randomness can be circumvented by exploiting team performance and AI behaviour in a way that also helps to mitigate the randomness from weather.

edit: I type so much about strategic race skipping and I completely forget to mention China and Russia... I am stupid

First of all thanks for the awnser, i agree with you on nearly all points, what i still think, is that it shouldnt be the Main Category in the Game/run. Espacially when the main category from F1 2014-F1 2018 was the 3Lap% which was every track, which gives less room for strategy but more room for driving skills.

Another Idea is that you may can do in grand Prix Mode, with all tracks, then we could eliminate skipping qualifying which is an advantage for people with better PCs because of faster loading times (just an Idea). And you can define Weather in Grand Prix mode :)

Just catching up on this thread, and thanks for your thoughts Fiftylaren! I agree that the RNG element of Championships isn't ideal and doesn't create a true contest of skill, but I also think that's a good deal of what makes those runs exciting, and strategic.

I think for now, Championships will remain the first category listed BUT I will create a Grand Prix version of the rules, which will allow for the 3Lap% in all clear weather as a true skill contest category. I think this is the best compromise, because I really like how the strategic elements of the current Championship any% category have developed out.

Will be interested to hear your thoughts and feedback on the Grand Prix ruleset :)