Hello from the development basement here at PitSkill, we’ve tweaked our ranking algorithm and updated it to work with a few changes SGP have introduced for our community, which also makes it easier for you to go racing and increase your PitSkill, and have great racing on the track and a fantastic community off-track, which we’ve grown and love seeing get involved with each other to discuss how to improve and race together!
Let’s talk about our 2023 focus!
Our focus for 2023 is to be the best place to race for all drivers who are serious about racing close, clean and competitively and foster a community that swears by those values; those that want to race in ranked daily and weekly series with no commitment to racing in every round to win, and those that can commit to a weekly schedule, we want to focus on providing you with what you enjoy racing, and we want to provide something clearly unique that works for everyone!
PitSkill Hourly Races
We trialled Hourly Races last year, and found it wasn’t right for us or for the community we currently have; so we have decided to remove these going forwards, and will be providing Ranked Daily Races instead, these will be at times that suit the majority of our player base based on previous seasons attendance stats so 99% of drivers WILL be able to race at a time that suits them and increase their PitRep and PitSkill!
PitSkill Daily Races
The format of our daily races will allow for drivers to race all night, in both EU and US timezones if they so wish, with a Weekly Race to round off the night’s events, this should give you ample time to practice the track of the week for your leagues that week, or for the weekly race that day (or if you so wish, beforehand as well), all of these daily races will allow for you to race in them all back to back, as well as have our new Daily Race standings applied to them which are based on the SoF & your driver rating, with the best race of that week counting towards your points, so you can get involved in as many as you want and not worry about losing out on points!
PitSync – The PitSkill Livery Syncing tool
We recently announced that PitSync is now completely free for everyone, no matter who you are, league, driver, or streamer, to use, including any leagues that wish to use it and we’ve already seen a few new leagues pop up in the livery packs, and we’re hoping to see more, so if you do race in other leagues, let them know that PitSync is easy to use, and completely free, we’re currently fronting the cost for all of you, however, if you want to support the community (it still costs to run it) and help us to pay for server costs and maintenance costs, you can still do so by becoming a VIP here:
https://pitskill.io/patreon-benefits
We do have some planned changes for Livery Syncing that will make it easier on a race-by-race basis, however, that requires some fundamental changes on how PitSkill works which we’ll be looking at throughout 2023, but as long as people are using it, and enjoying its current functionality, then we as a development team are happy, as a voluntary team, our payment is based on how many people are using the things that we develop, as we believe it’s the best tool on the market right now for everyone to use, rather than being tied to a specific community, and that was always our goal!
Leagues that already have Livery Packs on PitSync
Big Brain Racing
https://pitskill.io/livery-pack/7e4a5354-e72e-4f06-a815-d31e1afc08a9
EVAL GT
https://pitskill.io/livery-pack/6ce1ff08-b086-406b-ab38-c13c295e6329
GT Meister Racing
https://pitskill.io/livery-pack/ce126144-993c-40c0-8eb2-cac7cdabce13
Partnered Leagues & Events
We’re slowly bringing in more Partners to run events, series and leagues for everyone to compete in to allow for the development team to focus on making PitSkill great for everyone, refining features and making the whole website overall more accessible for everyone to get into our races and have a great time!
We are always looking for more Partners who want to run events and series with us, so if you’re interested, feel free to drop us a message via our admin help channel on discord, or send one of our Staff members a Direct Message and they’ll point you in the right direction!
Account Upgrades
We’ll be introducing a change in how you log in with your account in the next few weeks, rather than logging in with Discord, you will be required to log in with steam, this is because we have had numerous issues with multiple discord accounts, and the ability to link to our partnered platform for all of our ranked races, SimRacing.gp, please ensure you link your steam to your account so that you have no issues logging in and finding your account in the future.
If you forget to link your steam to your current PitSkill account, don’t worry, as there will be an account upgrade process that’s really easy to do when we release the steam login!
PitSkill Ranking Algorithm Updates
Ranking of Team Endurance Races
We have not forgotten about you and our Promise to you is that by the end of 2023, you will have your team endurance races ranked, including races from last year and this year, even if they currently do not show they will be ranked (because we don’t know an exact date of when it’ll be implemented) we can confirm, that they will be ranked in the future and will start to show on your profile!
Why the changes to the Ranking Algorithm?
We feel that we’ve needed to make some changes to how “harsh” the ranking algorithm is, as well as allow drivers to want to race continuously to improve their PitSkill, we’ve made no changes to PitRep and PitPace will be phased out in the next year or so and replaced with a different system, but more on that later.
We’ve also removed DNFs causing bans from racing and as such, we will be introducing more leagues at a minimum of C Class, to ensure that drivers are committed to racing on the platform before they sign up for a league championship and take a position away from another driver, this will also be the standard for most leagues we feel can fill the numbers.
We also felt that the decay on PitSkill was a little harsh under the hood, and we’ve had a look at this and resolved it starting this season, previously if you didn’t race for a month or so, your PitSkill “confidence” would have been reset to its initial number, we’ve now decreased that so it should take a little longer, meaning if you have a one-season break, your PitSkill won’t change drastically on your first race back.
The ranked race minimum drivers to start has now been reduced to 4 instead of 6, you will also be ranked by PitSkill at 4 drivers as well, so keep an eye out for that!
What’s Changed in PitSkill Ranking System (Quick Version).
- Ranked races now start with a minimum of 4 drivers.
- Ranked races are now ranked with a minimum of 4 drivers.
- The decay on your PitSkill has been decreased as we believe skill usually doesn’t change too quickly over a month if you do not race.
- Banning for DNSs has been removed, in both championships and series.
- We will be introducing other measures to ensure that drivers who DNS do not race in any of our races that require “commitment” and have limited grid slots, such as Leagues and Endurance events.
- Drivers who DNS from events don’t get points in races (this started in Season 15) for the Daily/Weekly/Championship formats, and will lose PitSkill as if they finished last.