One element curiously absent from the recent Gran Turismo 7 State of Play presentation was a lack of detail regarding the upcoming racing game’s online multiplayer. Now details are starting to emerge, and it has been confirmed that online player data will transfer.
Both Driver Rating (DR) and Sportsmanship Rating (SR) will carry across from GT Sport to Gran Turismo 7 thanks to a transfer of data between servers. The process is said to begin from Tuesday 15th February ahead of the new game’s release on 4th March 2022.
Sport mode levels remain
This specifically entails the two main rating systems in the previous Gran Turismo title. The ‘Sport Mode’ is a form of ranked online racing that takes into account your recent form and how clean you race, before placing you into a hopper lobby with similarly skilled racers.
These events are called ‘Daily Races’, the playlist for which is updated every Monday.
Driver Rating (DR) is earned by achieving great results in Sport Mode online races. You start out on level ‘E’, then progress through D, C, B, A, A+ and S.
Sportsmanship Rating (SR) is based on your behaviour. Again, there are levels: E, through D, C, B, A and S. Force someone off the track, and your level will reduce.
So, if you’ve worked hard for an A+ and S rating, this is where you will start in Gran Turismo 7.
Liveries, decals, helmets and suits too
The Gran Turismo website now also clarifies that livery and decals creations will also transfer across. This includes helmet and racing suit designs.
GT Sport had the option of creating your own paint schemes for cars within the game, plus importing your own decals, and sharing them with the community. Provided you designs were created after 22 December 2017 at 4:30 am (UTC) and were shared as ‘Open to All’, they will appear in Gran Turismo 7.
The Livery Editor within the next instalment does feature improvements, such as being able to place stickers over windows, but this backward compatibility will no doubt please those who spent many a painstaking hour creating their da Vinci-rivalling design, especially considering further editing of an existing design is possible.
There are some limitations, namely, a maximum of 100 livery designs can be saved and wheels are exempt. If your design includes purchased paint, you will also need the requisite credits with Gran Turismo 7 for the colour to be transferred – however, colours are very affordable, costing just 500 Mileage Points.
Further multiplayer questions
Apart from a very brief mention of online Meeting Places, little is still known about the online functionality of Gran Turismo 7, other than game producer Kazunori Yamauchi stating in an interview that “Gran Turismo 7 will really contain everything that was in GT Sport.”
The transferring of driver levels from one game to the next does hint at little in the way of structural changes, but we’ll hopefully be able to test out that theory when Gran Turismo 7 launches in just a few weeks time.
