Rubberbanding in SRL? An experiment. (Destiny)
I wait a full 9 seconds before I even touch the controller. Then I suck at racing. And I'm totally not dead last for more than a few seconds. Watch the video and you decide.
I caught up with stabbim multiple times
by ZackDark 
, Not behind you. NO! Don't look., Wednesday, December 14, 2016, 16:26 (3144 days ago) @ Kahzgul
I even won once. I think that's more than enough data to confirm extreme rubber-banding.
And I beat IGolding a few times
Buddy of mine was one of the top SRL players in the world last year. Just looking over his guardian.gg page, you can easily see that there's a massive difference between last year's results and this year's.
I caught up with stabbim multiple times
by stabbim , Des Moines, IA, USA, Wednesday, December 14, 2016, 17:24 (3144 days ago) @ ZackDark
Not really. Every one of those times, I missed gates or otherwise had some "incident."
Even if rubber-banding really is a thing, if done properly it should only get you within a certain distance of the pack. Rubber-banding that keeps speeding you up until you're ahead is broken - if you want to see what that's like, get a copy of the original Need for Speed: Underground. Worst racing game I've ever played.
Implying you were driving any worse than I was
by ZackDark , Not behind you. NO! Don't look., Wednesday, December 14, 2016, 18:52 (3144 days ago) @ stabbim
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Don't see the problem.
by Ragashingo 
, Official DBO Cryptarch, Wednesday, December 14, 2016, 16:38 (3144 days ago) @ Kahzgul
edited by Ragashingo, Wednesday, December 14, 2016, 16:44
Waiting at the start was always a good way to avoid that initial pileup and give yourself a nice clean racing line. I often did that last year and felt it helped me win races. As for the rest of the race, you made mistakes and died, and so did most of your opponents. The red guy who passed you a few times often made bad choices and missed gates or hit pillars allowing you to pass him back.
Of course there's rubber banding, at some points on the track when you were in last place the gates were so wide that you literally could not miss them. But is it different from last year? Or is there an additional rubber banding effect going on? You have far more conspiracy theory that evidence given that video. Do note that someone did beat you by several seconds and you never even saw them much less caught up to them.
Ultimately, whatever rubberbanding is in place, obvious or not, did not make you competitive. And, again, your delayed start probably helped you just because you didn't have to fight five other racers during the start of the race...
Exactly
by kidtsunami , Atlanta, GA, Wednesday, December 14, 2016, 16:46 (3144 days ago) @ Ragashingo
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Don't see the problem.
by stabbim , Des Moines, IA, USA, Wednesday, December 14, 2016, 17:34 (3144 days ago) @ Ragashingo
And, again, your delayed start probably helped you just because you didn't have to fight five other racers during the start of the race...
Can confirm this. I think it's fair to say that I'm reasonably fast, but I have to separate from the pack before I start seeing good times. When there's people near you, the constant knocking about really slows you down, due to either missing gates or hitting obstacles. There's even a thing where you can't trick if someone's directly below you on a jump.
So there's that stuff, plus the people up ahead have narrower gates so they're more likely to screw up, which we know to be an intentional rubber-banding mechanism.
Also, watch the speedometer. At the beginning, far behind, your top cruising speed on level ground without a gate is 130Km/H, boosting to between 170-180 on gates. Your speed later on, in the pack, is the same.
Don't see the problem.
by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Wednesday, December 14, 2016, 17:56 (3144 days ago) @ stabbim
There's also a significant and lasting speed penalty for each gate you miss. In long sections between gates this can add up to a lot of time going slower than the person catching up to you. Haven't really done it this year yet, but I seem to recall that you can be stuck at a virtual craw (well under 100kph, I think) for a long time if you miss a few gates.
But all this is the same, as far as I can tell so far, as it was last year...
A thing I noticed from the video:
by CyberKN , Oh no, Destiny 2 is bad, Wednesday, December 14, 2016, 16:51 (3144 days ago) @ Kahzgul
Check the boost speeds Kahzgul achieves when he hits the gates while in 6th place (175-185 km/h). Now jump ahead two laps and compare those speeds to the boosts he's getting while in 2nd place (155-165 km/h).
It looks like (for racers in worse positions) not only are the gates wider, but grant you a more powerful jolt of speed. I usually do quite well in my races, and have never noticed the gate boost speeds exceeding 170km/h.
A thing I noticed from the video:
by stabbim , Des Moines, IA, USA, Wednesday, December 14, 2016, 17:59 (3144 days ago) @ CyberKN
There is quiet a bit of variation, but it's explainable. The speed you get out of a gate can be affected by the speed you're going when you hit it, and whether you're turning. Most of those 155-165 instances were either a result of his cruising speed being reduced below 130 due to having missed a gate (2:56) or being knocked into an obstacle (2:58), or because he was turning hard at the time (for example, several of the gates on the long right-hand "bowl" section just after that 2:58 gate).
At 3:45, he's in second place and hits a gate straight-on, while cruising at 130. Result: 178Km/H.
Oddly, things were far more normal last night
And there was far less rubberbanding. I wonder if bungie changed something?
Lag could have cleared up
by kidtsunami , Atlanta, GA, Friday, December 16, 2016, 12:27 (3142 days ago) @ Kahzgul
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Lag could have cleared up
Maybe, but it didn't seem like lag. I could be two or three lengths behind someone, and then I would pass them even though we both ran a good line through, say four gates. This calmed down a lot after the first day, so I wonder if they dialed up the cheese to make early matches more competitive or something?
Lag could have cleared up
by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Monday, December 19, 2016, 17:05 (3139 days ago) @ Kahzgul
Maybe, but it didn't seem like lag. I could be two or three lengths behind someone, and then I would pass them even though we both ran a good line through, say four gates. This calmed down a lot after the first day, so I wonder if they dialed up the cheese to make early matches more competitive or something?
Super highly doubt it. More likely, you took a corner better or they just missed a gate, or they brushed a wall you didn't. There's lots of easy explanations for passing someone that don't involve conspiracy theory level back end changes..
Lag could have cleared up
Maybe, but it didn't seem like lag. I could be two or three lengths behind someone, and then I would pass them even though we both ran a good line through, say four gates. This calmed down a lot after the first day, so I wonder if they dialed up the cheese to make early matches more competitive or something?
Super highly doubt it. More likely, you took a corner better or they just missed a gate, or they brushed a wall you didn't. There's lots of easy explanations for passing someone that don't involve conspiracy theory level back end changes..
Very true, but (a) Bungie has a history of actually doing those conspiracy theory backend things and (b) my decade + as a trained game tester have made me pretty aware of wonky game behavior. Day 1 felt very different from subsequent days. I wouldn't be surprised at all to learn that Bungie was adjusting the rubberbanding levels throughout the event in order to get races at whatever their target for competitiveness is. They seem very interested in that sort of tweaking.
The racing is still fun as hell (I LOVE going through the trees at the end of the snow level); day 1 just felt a little "off" and later days no longer feel that way to me.