Top Drives Update 24.1 Release Notes
Introduction
Welcome to the 24.1 Update Release notes! Headlining this update is the Car Rarity Changes feature and the related change to the RQ system.
But first, we've put together two documents:
A more detailed FAQ answering your questions about the system.
And now, for the cars changing Rarity:
Please find the full list of Wave 1 (Commons and Uncommons) Rarity Changes, Car Corrections & RQ Changes here.
RQ System Improvements
Read on to find out our reasoning for improving the RQ ranking system. In summary, versatile generalist cars are becoming cheaper in RQ relative to specialist cars.
Why change the RQ and rarity of cars?
Here at Top Drives we periodically review the RQ (Race Quota) values of cars, but due to the disruptive nature of higher Rarity changes, the ability to balance cars has been impaired, locking many cars at RQ values very different from how the RQ rankings actually rate them.
There are two main reasons a car changes rarity. Either, a car’s stats are changing to become more accurate, or we are changing how cars are assigned RQ (and thus Rarity).
Current RQ system
How the current RQ system works
Cars are raced in three different groups of ~20 challenges each: dry, wet, and offroad, giving them three different winrate scores.
We give cars the best of their three categories’ scores, and a fraction of their second and third categories’ scores.
A car that is good at drag races has a good drag score, but they’re losing slaloms and other twisty tracks, which reduces their ‘dry’ category score. In addition, they still have their wet and off-road scores to water down their score further. A great drag car ends up with a low RQ and rarity.
For a long time we made manual exceptions. Many of these are still in place.
We rank these scores and determine the RQ/rarity boundaries, mainly on the basis of historical lines.
We later introduced post-hoc tests that try to identify specialists based on if they have any stats that are much better than cars of a similar RQ, and move them up in RQ if so. This reduced the number of manual exceptions. There are also changes in how Slick tyre cars are scored (if you use their Wet score, their RQ is very low; if you ignore it, their RQ is very high).
Areas of improvement we're targeting
This system cannot easily detect certain kinds of specialists.
It’s too complex a system for anyone else to work on efficiently. I (Hutch_Robin) started working on this 8½ years ago in 2016. (The core of the RQ system was designed a year before any player had played a PVP event).
Players have highlighted systemic issues with RQ that limit the usefulness of many cars:
4WD cars are often too expensive in RQ
STD cars are too expensive in RQ
‘Jack of all trades’ cars are often outclassed by specialists being ‘must play’ cars. Such cars are often the most versatile cars: 4WD and STD, so it’s all the same effect.
What the new system hopes to achieve
Thus, the goal of the new system is to a) Create a more automated, easy-to-maintain, system for assigning RQ and Rarity, and b) Rank all cars with an appropriate RQ that makes many more cars worth collecting through more cars being competitive.
New RQ System
The new system - in simple terms
Cars are raced in 14 subcategories e.g. dry drag, wet city.
The 14 subcategories are grouped into 5 larger categories (off-road, drag, twisty, lightweight, speedbump).
Each car takes its best score of the 5, and a percentage of their second and third best.
The more advanced explanation
Cars are raced on 14 different subcategories of ~4 challenges each, a combination of every major surface x race type, e.g. dry drags, wet drags, off-road drags, dry speedbumps, wet speedbumps, off-road speedbumps. Cars thus have 14 scores reflecting their winrate within each domain.
The 14 subcategories of challenges each are represented in a larger category: off-road (all off-road groups), drag, twisty, lightweight, speedbumps (which all include the dry and the wet groups that fit that challenge type). Each car is assigned its best subcategory score within each category, giving them five scores across those five categories.
To calculate a car’s final score, we take the best of its five category scores, and a fraction of their second and third-best scores.
A specialist will have a strong primary score, but weaker secondary and tertiary scores. The balancing at this stage ensures a majority of a car’s ranking comes from its top stat, but that is tempered by its decreased versatility, represented by its second and third-best states.
We then rank these scores and determine the RQ/rarity boundaries.
N.B. In the old and new systems, off-road scores are adjusted because the worst All-Surface car is so much better than non-off-road-suited cars. This ensures that off-road cars are represented across the rarities. In the new system, wet scores are also adjusted to minimise the RQ cost for wet surface proficiency.
Expected outcome
The outcome of this change is that cars are rated for what they’re good at, and not for what they’re not good at. As we rate cars across highly specific subcategories of challenge, a car gets to ignore its worst-performing track types that are currently taken into consideration. This mirrors how a car is likely to be used by players in-game. The system is good at working out if a car is good at something. This ensures ‘jack of all trades’ cars are cheaper, relative to specialists, than is the case in the old system.
The system more effectively identifies versatility, by looking at cars performing well in different racing challenge types, rather than looking at cars performing well across dry and wet tracks specifically. The more challenge types a car excels in, the more versatile it is.
The difficulty is finding the balance in RQ attribution, which defines how cheap or expensive a specialist vs. a more versatile car is. As we change car rarity gradually, changing Commons and Uncommons first, we can hopefully observe improvements to the RQ system in play.
Future Tweaks to the RQ System
- Points accrued in different challenges should be updated to ensure lower point-scoring challenges are higher relative to the highest point-scoring challenges.
- The dial between specialist and versatile car may need to be adjusted.
- Challenges and event designers should use the same categories we’ve established here, so that cars have the opportunity to race in all categories they have been assigned RQ on.
Hopefully this gives a clear enough explanation for how the new RQ system will work!
Bug Fixes
Fixed performance of RQ85 2015 Audi RS 3 Saloon (8V) and RQ46 2022 Peugeot 607 Pescarolo.
Fixed the issue with Tri-Series event names taking up two lines, causing an overlap with the Tri-Series Event/Challenge panel image.
Fixed crashes on some devices when loading the Miami tracks.
Fixed the issue with the Manufacturer name for Automobili Pininfarina not being displayed fully in the manufacturer filter.
A possible fix to having different race results when playing the same events with the same cars and opponents.
Fixed the issue in the tutorial that allowed the player to exit prematurely.
Fixed the issue with Objectives pop-ups often appearing with outdated information.
