A few changes will be seen in Gran Turismo Sport’s titular mode starting December 5th. The ranked online multiplayer races will now be split into five different regions across the world instead of three.
North America, containing the US and Canada, will now be split from the rest of the Americas region, now labelled as Central/South America. Asia and Oceania will split as Australia and New Zealand will compete amongst themselves as their own region.
No changes to the Europe/Middle East/Africa regions, which remains to have the most countries in the same region.
The change is to ensure better racing by reducing ping time. It’s common knowledge that players further apart will have higher ping, hence the need for local servers and regions.
It is yet to be seen if the next season of the FIA GT Championships will be affected, since the qualifiers were based on the three regions.
In addition, a slight quality of life change will now let players participate in the same FIA race multiple times. Before this, players have only one shot of the round and can only race in one of the time slots. Players can now choose to join the race multiple times, though only the best result of the day will receive points.
This is a response to issues where players can get disconnected from the FIA race, mostly due to server issues. They are essentially screwed, missing out points to no fault of their own.
Developers Polyphony Digital are still committed on improving the online racing aspect of Gran Turismo Sport. A new content update is set to hit the game this week, adding new track layouts and new cars, including the Ferrari F50.
Source: Gran Turismo, via GTPlanet