The Giant Bomb DiRT Rally League

@iron1c: Surprise! That was actually me and not @joshd from the site. That dude totally took my unimaginative screen name, so I made another.

I'm sure woodoouk will be back with a vengeance next time.

@jjd: Nice one, we were neck and neck all the way through

Oh, thanks for letting me know! I fixed it.

@khann: That was pretty awesome, we were only a few seconds apart. Same for third place I think, the level of competition in this league has been really good.

Just finished the first week of the championship. That was not fun at all. Incredibly frustrating; I don't even feel that I learnt anything that I didn't already already know about how to drive RWD Group B cars.

I could have got better times using a 1970s class vehicle. Seriously.

I had a disappointing run in Monte Carlo but I think I'm finally beginning to get the hang of Sweden. Hopefully some points to build on for next week anyway.

I was going to try the Lancia this week but I had a bit of a practise and... I'm not ready. The Opel is fun though.

I just can't drive consistently through Sweden, I was slamming the Manta all the way through, at least I'm faster in Monte, a 3rd place (for now) it's not so bad.

Yeah, the 037 feels like an F1 car, it's fun in Finland or Monte, but in Sweden you end up trying not to slide all over the road, which is almost impossible on a DS4.

Joined! I'll do terribly at this event, since I haven't played this game in months and could never get a hang of the game once I graduated to more powerful cars, but whatever!

@yummytreesap: Yay! We need more mid tier racers in here.

Oh god Sweden is so hard to drive in this Opel Manta.

I went straight from a Mini Cooper into the WRX and wrapped it around a few trees while cartwheeling through the snow. Hopefully I'll do better in the April events!

You misspelled bottom tier. I am at the bottom. I forgot how much this game makes me want to throw things through other things.

Well... I was happily racing somewhere midpack until the last stage where half way through I clipped a small concrete wall next to a huge drop. Needless to say it flung me right over, and alas, unrecoverable 86% damage. Wanted to throw my TrackIR hat pretty far... Better driving next time, I guess.

With this Dirt league, can anybody join in and also, can console players join in or is the set up system specific?

@johnlocke: Anyone can join in and is more than welcome to do so, but the leagues are system specific. This is PC only since it was started during Early Access.

@iron1c: Ah ok cool. That's a shame as a cross system league could have been really cool.

Well that quite an awkward set. Got some top times on the first couple of stages driving at about 1/3 throttle, which I guess shows it's sometimes better to just be smooth. Then I completely fell apart on the first Monaco stage when I thought I could push it more, but only got it under control in the last two with 2/3 throttle heh. But the damage to my time was done. Looking forward to some less stressful events coming up, where I will inevitably do way worse.

Do we have an xbox league? Im also realizing i don't know anything about rally lol

Man, Sweden was rough.

I just created a league for the PS4. Search for Giant Bomb PS4.

I don't know what I'm doing as far as setting up events, so give me suggestions if needed.

I made the first event a 3 rally thing.

I just posted a top 50 global leaderboard (out of 30000+) time on a Sweden track with the new Renault Alpine A110 completely un-upgraded. With a controller. My current best of any class is around 250.

I think it's broken, it doesn't belong in the 1960s class. It's obscenely easy to drive. Perhaps it should be banned if we do a 1960s event in the future?

Number 21 on another Sweden track!

And Top 30 on another. With 2 major contacts with the snow wall black holes. Yeah...

Bummer, been working away from home for a couple of weeks. Missed the first round of the Championship by hours :(

Looking forward to this longer event. It can add a new layer. To push hard or just get to the finish?

Well, I had some bloopers in Greece, but fourth so far and even a fastest time on the final stage.

I'll take it!

I like this game, but I find it to play it with any semblance of precision on a controller. Shit just starts getting too loose and uncontrollable and I can't deal with it.

BTW, how much of a time penalty is there for recovering your vehicle? I seem to make one idiotic fuck-up every round.

Vehicle recovery is 15 seconds I think.

Also, using a controller is far from impossible. I consistently beat Masters level stage times by around 8 seconds+, sometimes being 2 minutes+ ahead by the end of the event in all classes, using an XBox One pad. I have put the hours in, though.

Edit: I'll add that I hit a plateau of coming in at 3rd-5th place in the rallies until I started treating the game in a different way. Much how Payday 2 is actually a bag throwing simulator and Dark Souls is really a stamina management simulator, I began treating Dirt Rally not as a racing sim but actually a weight management simulator. With this in mind, you can throw the car around at what you might have thought were previously ridiculous speeds because you can accurately predict the very physical status of the car at every moment from a, quite cold, purely gravitational aspect and completely trust what your car is about to do. Even when your eyes are saying "I shouldn't be able to do this with this vehicle".

Joined a bit late but a respectable mid-tier placing on the second week. Am not looking forward to Finland next however. My goddamn nemesis.

Hello past me, you were correct.

Here is a video of me driving two thirds of the stealth Finnish stage with 3 wheels, and I didn't do much better elsewhere except the last stage.

And before anyone brings up repairing tyres, I ended up 1:32 down at the end of the stage, so considering I wasn't going to be getting top time anyway with how rubbish I was doing today things turned out as well as they could.

Damn, was doing pretty well and keeping up with @woodoouk most of the way through, then had an absolutely awful Finland. Lost 2:33 and that was that.

Managed to get a stage win on the final stage though, so that's some consolation I guess.

Great to see the success of this league - pity it's not cross-platform. I have created a PS4 one if anyone finds themselves on that platform. Feel free to join below!

https://www.dirtgame.com/uk/leagues/league/38189/giant-bomb---ps4

Apparently, that long Finland stage in my video from the previous week has a grudge against my tires. This time I managed to lose a rear tire even earlier in the stage, and then lost a front later on (which helpfully actually corrected the sideways pull by being on the opposite side from the rear one). So a two tire finish and another 1:30 loss. Clawed my way back up to (currently) 4th, with one stage a near dead heat on the fastest time, so overall better than last week probably.

Damn, WooDoo killing it again. I'm trying to think where he finds the seconds to slash.

You guys are damn fast.

Another disaster for me :(

Wow, @woodoouk is in an extremely close second, and he missed the first event. *heavy breathing / wipes sweaty forehead*.

Since we are entering the last week of the championship I want some quick feedback:

Do you want another championship or go back to weekly series?

I prefer a championship.

Yep, me too.

@casinoghostt: Killed stage one by 25 seconds. grabbed another 10 on 2. then lost 20 seconds due to a puncture on stage 3 :(

I did horrible first week and forgot to check back in...then Dark Souls 3 came out. One day, I will finish one of these!

@woodoouk: The whole event was a wash for me. I struck a rock in Greece and got demoralised, and never recovered from that morale blow for all six events, which eventually compounded into a noisy radiator for 3 of the 6 stages and the most damaged car I've ever driven in Dirt Rally.. Kick, punch, it's all in the mind as it were, both positively and negatively. Total lack of focus,

I could tell this was a bad day when I lost a bunch of time on Germany, where I usually seem to make it up. These screenshots should tell the rest of the story:

Also, Finland assassinated my tires yet again.

Congratulations @woodoouk! Impressive championship win, even with missing a rally. Wow.

GET HYPED! For:

Giant Bomb Dirt Rally Championship Edition - The Sequel

It's another championship! 4 weeks of rallying with each week gaining you championship points towards an overall standing - the winner will be crowned at the end of May!

PSA!: Codemasters made changes to the website, long story short: all events will now end 15 minutes earlier than you are used to, then there will be a 15 minute gap to the next week. I also hope nothing got messed up while setting this up.

Week 1 - I thought Nintendo put a stop to selling R4's?

Instead of pirates prepare for a lot of grippy tarmac.

• CARS: R4
• STAGES: 6
• REGIONS: Germany
• SERVICE: S4
• CONDITIONS: great!
• CHANCES OF SURVIVAL: fantastic.

Week 2 - Some bad 60s pun

Couldn't be bothered.

• CARS: 1960s
• STAGES: 6
• REGIONS: Monaco
• SERVICE: S4
• CONDITIONS: mixed.
• CHANCES OF SURVIVAL: okay-ish. apart from those instant-DNFs at Monaco.

Week 3 - Damn Millenials - Part 2

They just can't decide on what they want. At least they got short attention spans.

• CARS: 2000s
• STAGES: some number, probably 6, I dunno - make it short.
• REGIONS: everything?
• SERVICE: how about you get served dude. I'll do it on S4.
• CONDITIONS: real depressed and moody.
• CHANCES OF SURVIVAL: whatever bro, I don't care.

Week 4 - The Dark Souls of Rallying

Driving this is even worse than the title.

• CARS: Group B RWD
• STAGES: 8
• REGIONS: Everything.
• SERVICE:NONE.
• CONDITIONS: who knows.
• CHANCES OF SURVIVAL: You died.

Oh man, week 4 sounds brutal.

A public service announcement:

For the current round of the championship, there is absolutely no reason why a driver should not choose the Renault Alpine A110. Whilst other vehicle classes have debatable clunkers compared to their other options (The Audi in the Group B class, for instance is arguably not competitive), as evidenced in my earlier comments in the thread, the Alpine categorically destroys the Mini and the Fulvia by double digits of seconds of time.

"Pick the Alpine: <corporate buzz slogan goes here>"

I should know, my home country exports the finest co-drivers in the world (NSFW):

Only tried the Alpine once, did seem quick.
Love that video :) I spend many days at Epynt watching the rallying.

Reminds me of this friendly Gentleman from Ireland. (Extremley NSFW language)
but i feel he gets what he deserved in the end. ;)

@woodoouk: Hah, that was great. Don't really blame him for the punt, but you can't do that I suppose.