Losing on easy tracks

[AG-wolf]

WTF. I may not be the best phantom pilot for HD just yet, but I like to think I'm not awful. Why is it, then, that I find myself losing miserably on courses like Anulpha Pass and Moa Therma?! Someone gets in a bomb, a bomb, mines, then you get hit with a quake from behind and you're essentially boned for the rest of the race. Every weapon you pick up is useless for advancing further in the pack. Every barrel roll you attempt doesn't register. GOD DAMN IT MY NECK ITCHES HOLY CRAP I JUST FLEW INTO A WALL. Or like just now in Metropia, that first hill? I managed a barrel roll, landed successfully on the rail on the right side of the track, was flying for a bit, then the game just resets my position.

Does this happen to anyone else like frequently enough to piss you off? I hate racing people whom I know I could probably beat, and then having to succumb to a series of unfortunate events and take last place.

And how can anyone legitimately complain about things like this without simply sounding like a sore loser who's just making excuses -_-;;

EDIT: I also have had my controller arbitrarily disconnect or lose signal while playing, which results in my ship stopping in the middle of the track and spinning in a circle. THAT's retarded

EDIT 2: And I can't count how many times I've ended up UPSIDE-DOWN just to sit there for five seconds before the game realises something's wrong. you can ask TheFrostE for proof of that, he has personally bared witness to me breaking every wipeout game

[rushin]

hehe all the time, although i am more philosophical about it these days :)

what really gets my goat is hitting objects on side of track and going straight up in the air then down very slowly, 5 seconds gone easy. metropia and ubermall reverse i'm looking at you. This must be an unforseen error in track design not working as intended.

I still feel deeply ashamed having to race in same room as assayeah. when i first started playing online i was 25 seconds behind, these days its 12, but still. not worthy :banzai

[leungbok]

Don't care you're not alone to live this situations. I understand your frustration. But on anulpha, vineta and moa the competition is very tight because those tracks are the easiest of the game (not sure for the reverse versions) so it's not all about piloting here but the winning will be decided by the items pickup. And you need to be on the good side of the gun ;). Even if i really love HD (for online and SL, TT) something else i'm persuaded, is that this game was made to balance the players skills. Pilotassist is made for that, the persistent bomb's are made for that, the quake which can hit a player in front from 6 seconds is made for that. So we have in HD a very competitive wipeout, that's good news, no ? ;)

lol rushin, you're right, i feel very nervous when Wellington, Mad-Ice, Kingheim or Asa are in the room :D

[Wellington86]

The problem with the easy tracks, and particularly Anulpha Pass, is that the better players have a much smaller edge over the lesser players. This means that the race is decided much more by the luck of the weapons than by the skill of the racing. Anulpha Pass reverse is pretty much a crapshoot. (Edit: I see Leungbok got to this first!)

And it does get annoying when the run of the weapons is completely against you, but it can happen on any track. I have suffered some horrendous instances of bad luck, but no doubt everyone has. The solution is to treat it like poker; sometimes the luck will be against you, but over the long run your better skill will pay out. I can't say I'm usually so level-headed during a race though, lol.

[AG-wolf]

"I can't say I'm usually so level-headed during a race though"

Yeah, I know where you're coming from :P What started this whole post was when I was racing two other people, EACH of them got mines and laid the entire strip when their ass was right on my nose- dead stop for 5 seconds each time, boom they're both ten seconds ahead of me the entire rest of the race. I was going BALLISTIC, it was a wonder my controller didn't find its way through the tv screen or drywall somewhere. Those aren't situations where you can improve your racing or weapon-avoidance skills, though... it's just like DHUR, RAPE.

[yeldar2097]

i've had many a similar on metropia (reverse as well), that track hates me. i'll jump on the bandwagon and agree with the fact that on anulpha it's very much luck of the draw. worst it when you get hit just before the overpass and slowly crawl to your respawn doom. i find swearing my tits off and hitting the sofa is the only thing that works in these situations.

[lunar]

I think even on the easy tracks there are enough "tricks" to enable the more experienced pilots to pull ahead and make a difference. Weapons increase in importance, but skill can still win the day. A Moa Therma turkey shoot where every turkey has a chance can be quite exciting however ;)

I`ve been there with all of those awful situations you and everyone describe, Wolfie. The other day I was on an unsuccesful streak of a few races versus some top pilots and was playing badly. Got to Vineta K, decided I was going to win. I had an average start, but was totally determined and after 3 laps I had a 2.5 second lead. No-one was going to catch me :mr-t Then I heard "quake" and it hit me just as I crossed the gap into the second tunnel. Naturally I fell down the hole, respawned into a wall of bombs and finished last. Sometimes I think I`m the unluckiest pilot in the world, but what Wellington says is dead right, your skill will get you what you deserve in the end. If you are really honest with yourself, even within the context of a single race you can often say that your "bad luck" on that occasion would not have mattered if you had been just a little bit quicker.

Last night I lost a tournament to a guy I considered slower than me and it felt like he had better weapons. When not many weapons were getting picked up I was a bit faster. But I knew I wasn`t faster by enough to really swing the balance my way. It`s like calling someone else "lucky" for getting a turbo at the end. It`s an illusion. Just because it was the last pick up of the race it doesn`t make it any luckier. Generally, if you fly fast and put yourself in strong situations you`ll get strong weapon pick ups too and other people`s weapons won`t matter so much. That`s my philosophy, but I`m not fast enough to live up to it sadly! :blarg

[Darkdrium777]

GOD DAMN IT MY NECK ITCHES HOLY CRAP I JUST FLEW INTO A WALL.Has to make the quotes widget HAHAHA :lol

[blackwiggle]

Everybody has suffered the same fate,you feel like nobody else in the race is getting hit, and it's a vendetta by all the other racers to really stuff you up.

I don't know what's more frustrating,getting bombed,mined and quaked to death, or getting a small breakaway on the last lap, only to slightly miss judge a turn and slow down to a crawl by scraping the side of your craft against a wall,that truly sucks.

[LOUDandPROUD]

Too funny, after reading this thread earlier, I hopped online and everything started in peachy fashion with me winning my first couple of single races (full house both times) by 10+ seconds. I was like, wow, I guess it's just one of those days! Like taking candy from a baby! NOT. For the next hour I ended up in a 4-race tourney hosted by mija7777 with between 6-8 people, which alternated between AP and VK only (didn't realize that going in, otherwise I would have passed). Anyway, in the whole hour, I came in first exactly one time. ONCE. And at no point did I feel that any of the other pilots were that great (4 of them stayed and competed with me the whole time)...I just kept getting annihilated with various weaponry within a few seconds on most races. And I kept on playing thinking ok I'll take the next one, but nope. It's not often I have a drought like that against competition that appears to be equal or inferior...seriously (then again, I rarely race you elite pilots on phantom LOL). And the few races that I shot out to the lead, I couldn't hold it. It was the most frustrating sequence of racing I've encountered yet. Oh, and during one race on VK, beginning on the lap 1, every time I got near the first speed pad a couple of rockets would zip right behind me at an odd diagonal angle, just missing, and hit the wall...I mean on every lap...as if they were programmed to do so at that point and coming from nowhere...truly bizarre. It was the first time I started questioning whether the game could be hacked. I wish one of you guys were in those races with me so you could have seen the mayhem and oddities.

OOH! That reminds me! Last night, on 4 or 5 separate occasions, I BEGAN the race with a weapon. Yes, you read that correctly. What gives?! I've never experienced that happening before...have any of you?

[IH8YOU]

Began the race with a weapon? Were you playing 2097, and at the start sequence hit pause, held in L1 + L2 + R1 + R2, and hit T S O X T S O X - Start?

Or was it S O X S O X T?

Or was it X X S S O O T?

It was soooooo long ago, I can't remember anymore. :lol

[stinkleroy]

It's happened to me a few times mr LOUDandPROUD. I've started the race with weapons, had weapons respawn constantly regardless of whether I go over a pad or not, a few weapons pads not working at all for the whole race.....there are definately a lot of bugs in this game.

Each time I've had a race with infinate weapons I've quit as it's an unfair advantage and just ruins the whole point of the game...I'm guessing there are probably others who don't though :lol

[IH8YOU]

Unlimited weapons? :(

I hope that gets fixed, the races where you get all cold pads is one thing (the "if-only" races), but the thought of some noob boosting his way to a #1 record is a nudder. :blarg

[stinkleroy]

Yep, thats why I quit....it's not exactly fair is it! But yeah I've also had people who seem to have had unlimited mines etc....like they drop 3 sets in a row only passing one weapons pad...gotta watch out for these bugs SL!!

As for getting beaten on easy tracks, it happen to me all of the time. My theory is that because it's an easy race it attracts a lot of new players. Because there's a lot of new players they are all over the track, shooting weapons as soon as they get them, which puts you off your racing line over and over again. I've been beaten many a time by lesser ilots, but just put it down to bad luck with weapons....it's infuriating but it's part of the game :lol:

[MarkXIII]

A few times I've noticed people boosting away from the start line, not just the usual quick start but it looked and sounded like the boost pick-up.

[IH8YOU]

That boost is lag - their race started before everyone else did - but the game "corrects" this at the finish of the race - so only the total race time counts. (this is why you sometimes see 1st and 2nd, 3rd place shuffle around at the conclusion of a race - even though they've "finished")

Still sinks because if they're ahead, they're also screwing you out of weapons, and dropping mines - this much the game won't correct for. :frown:

[MarkXIII]

Ahh, that'll be it then.