A Message to the Motorsport Community - January 2024

Forza Motorsport Forza Motorsport (2023) Discussion
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Status update as of February 7:

See the dedicated discussion thread here.

Today we’re outlining important changes to the Car Progression mechanic in Forza Motorsport. These updates will give players freedom to equip the parts they want to install to their car regardless of Car Level, while retaining aspects of the system for those who enjoy it.

Firstly, we will remove the locked part mechanic so all car parts can be accessed at Car Level 1 for every car in the game. Once a car is added to your car collection, you can install upgrades to it in any order that you wish. Whether it’s engine swaps, race tires, aspiration changes, body kits or any other part available for your vehicle, you will have the freedom to build cars your way.

Secondly, in addition to earning Car Points through levelling up the car, you will be able to use in-game Credits to acquire Car Points. This means you can begin to immediately install upgrades to your car if you have sufficient Credits or if you would rather save your Credits, you can still earn car parts through car leveling as before.

We’re testing a ratio of 4,500 Credits for 500 Car Points and based on the feedback we’ve collected, we expect this to provide a healthy balance. That means if you’re upgrading the 2021 Volkswagen Golf R with all available parts at Level 1, for example, it will cost 89,775 Credits. In the case of the 2021 BMW M4 Competition Coupé, for all parts it amounts to 125,325 Credits, or for the 1969 Nissan Fairlady Z 432, it totals to 133,875 Credits.

Brand discounts will remain as they currently are. When a car reaches the maximum Car Level 50, a Showroom discount of 5% is applied to future cars you purchase from that same manufacturer. If you get 5 cars from the same manufacturer to Car Level 50, the loyalty discount stacks to 25%. The time needed on-track to reach Car Level 50 will remain between 2 and 3 hours.

We expect these updates to Car Progression to roll out with Forza Motorsport Update 6 in March 2024, and we will let you know an exact date closer to availability. Once these changes are made, we would like your input about the updates once you’ve played it, and you can share that feedback with us on the Forza Suggestions Hub .


Status update as of January 26:

In January we shared with you all a status update on 3 key areas of feedback from the Forza Motorsport community that our team is working to improve – Car Progression, Forza Race Regulations and Drivatar AI.

For Car Progression, today we began collecting feedback from various sources on changes that will give players freedom to equip the parts they need regardless of car level. We have additional changes to the system in various states of design and testing with plans to implement these changes as soon as possible. For Forza Race Regulations, we have enabled Race Marshals and some content creators the ability to flag in-game incidents for review to help feed changes to the adjudication model that will improve the system. Lastly, we’re testing out fixes to the Drivatar AI to alleviate competitors bunching up around Turn 1 and causing the first few AI opponents to reach insurmountable leads. Beyond those key changes, we’re investigating other priority fixes for the AI that improve their overall driving behavior and reduce how aggressively they stick to the racing line. These are just a few examples of where we are prioritizing work in these areas, and we will be sharing more on each soon.

While we have 3 distinct teams here at Turn 10 working on these key improvements, we’re also actively developing fixes and improvements to other areas of the game. These will begin rolling out alongside Update 5 in February and will include a Skip Practice option to the Career mode pre-race menu to make it more discoverable, and a save point after finishing a Practice session so you can complete the Featured Race later. We’re also developing fixes and quality-of-life improvements to the Livery Editor based on the reports you’ve shared with us, including custom advanced zoom for applying decals, the ability to paint upgraded brake calipers, and a prompt to save your design when exiting the Livery Editor.

A MESSAGE TO THE MOTORSPORT COMMUNITY – JANUARY 2024

9 January 2024- Turn 10 Studios

To the Motorsport Community,

We are taking a moment at the start of this year to thank you for your support and feedback since launch, reflect on some of the things we have learned, and share what you can expect from us in the coming months.

In addition to our streams, our update blogs, and the Suggestions and Troubleshooting Hubs, we will commit to publishing quarterly updates like this one to let you know where we stand on items the community is passionate about.

While we have been heads down adding cars, tracks, patches, and other improvements, we want to acknowledge the top three areas of feedback we haven’t addressed directly first – so here’s what we’ve heard from you.

CAR PROGRESSION

We know that the progression system in Forza Motorsport is a divisive topic among our players. We’ve been gathering feedback from a variety of sources, including the Suggestions Hub, socials, forums, long-time players, and surveys to players who may not be as active on our traditional community gathering places.

It is clear from looking at feedback that while many of our players are enjoying the system as is, for many others it isn’t delivering the upgrade experience that they expect from Forza Motorsport. To address this, we are exploring changes to the system. Our goal with these changes is to retain what is working for those that enjoy it, while resolving the issues many of our most dedicated players have with the system.

Addressing this feedback is a top priority for the team going into 2024, however it will take some time to properly evaluate options, make the necessary code changes, and thoroughly test those code changes.

FORZA RACE REGULATIONS

We are aware that Forza Race Regulations are not working as intended in some situations. We have heard about inconsistent or unfair penalties in instances of intentional ramming, being pushed off the track, and spinning cars pushing drivers off the track. We have also heard that high speed collisions sometimes have no penalties while low speed collisions have mild penalties. It’s important that we capture all the data that we can about a race when FRR rulings happen in error, so over the next few months, we will be working with some long-time competitive Motorsport players to gather direct telemetry from them while they’re playing. They will be capturing these instances and feeding data to our team so that we can issue tweaks to make FRR more accurate and reliable. We appreciate your patience as we work on improving the system.

AI

We have seen feedback about our AI’s driving behavior: abruptly braking and slowing down; not accelerating out of exits, braking too hard on mild corners, and following racing lines too strictly. We understand how important it is to have fair and competitive AI in Motorsport and are our top priorities in early 2024 are addressing overly aggressive AI, while also getting a cleaner race start into turn 1 where many of the issues above most severely manifest and impact players.

The 3 areas mentioned above are just a few examples of what we have seen most often and know you care passionately about. We care about these issues too. These and other issues are constantly being worked on, iterated, and given careful consideration. How and what we implement and when is driven by the desire to improve the experience regularly and consistently in a way that does not sacrifice stability and minimizes any downtime.

Thanks,
Andy Beaudoin, Forza Motorsport Game Director
Chris Esaki, Forza Motorsport Creative Director
Trevor Laupmanis, Forza Motorsport Executive Producer

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We’ve been waiting for an open and honest message like this for a long time! Gives me some optimism about the future of the game that I was beginning to lose hope in! Best of luck T10!

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My suggestion would be to keep the level system for the manufacturer rewards. Make upgrades obtainable with cr. Boost cr gain by ~30-50%. And maybe keep the part unlocks as they are currently or make them available from the start.

And just to see what others on the forum think I’ll leave a little poll:

  • I would like that, with unlockable parts.
  • I would like that, with all parts unlocked from the start.
  • I don’t like the suggestion at all.
  • I have no opinion on this.
0 voters
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:ok_hand: Thanks for the honest update

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Sounds like we’re a few months out from any changes (understandable, game design is a complicated science), but it’s good that we know what Turn 10 are focusing on.

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If you don’t want to give up the auto level system, then choke on that $100 that bought your last game!

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Finally, some level of communication directly acknowledging issues.

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You are saying nothing. Just post something if you have to say something interesting.
You know what the community want.

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I still think the best fix for the CXP system is to just make levels purchasable with CR (obviously balance the price per level so that it’s somewhat equivalent to what it would’ve costed in previous games to buy the same amount of upgrades). This solves so many issues:

  1. Allows players to purchase upgrades immediately after obtaining a car. Satisfies the players who want to just upgrade and/or tune and jump into a lobby.

  2. Retains original grinding system for anyone who wants to gain car points for free. Doubly-rewards players who do the grind because they get the free upgrades + their credits can go towards leveling a different car.

  3. Retains car points system, so you can mix and match upgrades without having to purchase every individual part to do so.

  4. Solves problem of driving level 50 cars being unrewarding (because credits earned can level up other cars).

  5. Garage is still sortable by car level so you know which cars have all upgrades unlocked.

The key element here is choice. Everyone plays how they want and everyone’s happy. You’re not killing the CXP system, but you’re giving a reasonable bypass that is an obvious improvement over FM8’s current system, and the mix-and-match car points upgrading system is arguably better than FM1/2/3/4/5/6/7’s traditional systems.

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Otherwise, thank you for the community update. I’m sure we can all agree that developer transparency is very much appreciated and needed at this phase of the game’s life.

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We should have had something from them in the first few weeks of release, not 3 months down the line.

There is nothing in that statement or the fixes they are planning that will bring back the players that have already left or bring in new players, that’s my opinion anyway.

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I think it would make the most sense for the upgrades to go back to the standard system of just buying them with CR, with the car level affecting things secondary to gameplay like manufacturer and parts discounts. Maybe level 50 cars could get a CR multiplier, so we have a reason to use them.

Horizon does a pretty good job of this with the skill points. You can unlock a wide range of bonuses with them, but they don’t affect the core gameplay and you don’t have to grind them.

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So what about fixes and content that players want to actually keep any sort of player base left? Bump up that release of nordschleife that may save this game…

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Thanks for the update. I’m glad to know that these points, the AI and Car Progression in particular, are being reconsidered.

With regard to whatever change may come to the Car Progression system, I would like to add a comment reminding those designing these changes that I (and other FM players I know) are adults, with jobs and real life to live. And I do enjoy playing other games, too.

When a game progression system is too heavy, it makes me unable to play your game as much as I’d otherwise enjoy. And when that progression system becomes too heavy a burden, doing other things (or playing other games) may take priority. My friends already quit playing FM due to this.

For example, right now there are 4 JDM cars I was thinking about building in Forza Motorsport… But the hours it’s going to take to get the Car Progression… I just can’t do it. And that’s a shame, for the game to essentially be in the way of me wanting to enjoy it more.

Thanks again.

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Interesting. Expected but disappointed by the ‘Months’ timeline. Also what’s happened to Dan? Also there’s just no way they didn’t know about the broken AI before they released it. Impossible.

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Car progression is largely based on time. They should just reduce the time it takes to get to the maximum. If its 3-4 hrs, make it 1. Totally revamping the system will take months, i personally dont see that being beneficial. Using credits to buy parts might solve one problem but cause others. It’ll just devolve into the whole, people make or dont make enough credits which was the reason for the progression change to begin with. Keep it simple, the more time they seem to have the worse things turn out.

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Spot on. 1 hour, 1 car should be all it takes and is necessary.

Doesn’t need to be any more complex than that.

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Thanks for this message. I love that you put focus on making race regulations and punishment better. Change the car progression system however you want. I thought it was great but it obviously hurts the community.

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These won’t be small changes. Despite what some posters may think can be done in an afternoon if not done right it can cause as many problems as some may think it fixes.

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1000094650

Again, it would seem. Having turned “Built From The Ground Up” into a proper video game meme, are you aiming to have “In The Coming Months” join it’s ranks?

You know what, people here like to throw around the “you don’t understand video game development” card like it’s Captain America’s Shield, so here’s my one suggestion that can and should be acted on right now, doesn’t require any knowledge of coding whatsoever, and might actually buy a few extra weeks for Turn 10:

ELIMINATE FOMO.

No more time limited cars, no more time limited events. That, like CarPG, should have never been allowed in the first place. When new cars, new tracks, and new events hit the game, they need to stay there. Take the stupid Game Pass metrics and chuck them all the way out of the window; this game is lacking heavily in the content department, and dangling carrots only to take them away and lock them in a vault is especially stupid. If anything, providing more content should be a higher priority than attempting to figure out how to automate systems that can’t be properly automated.

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