With players varying in skill level and even different styles of racing communities, providing tools to those communities would bring more content to the Forza scene, especially in the competitive scene. I will be proposing three ideas. Leaderboard API, tools for commentators/casters, and more data out values.
To forum moderators: Please don’t lock this post as these three ideas relate to each other.
I wanted to start off and thank the dev team and related parties for taking the initiative to remove cheated times from the leaderboards. It is greatly appreciated.
First, I wanted to bring up a Leaderboard API. This would contain the current players and their respective rival’s times on each track. Be it a package or a set of tables tucked away in forza.net or even something that is hosted on Microsoft’s end, for example, Azure. The benefits for implementing this would be very beneficial for the image and content of the Forza Horizon franchise. Projects like websites, leaderboard applications, discord bots, and so much more. This can lead to competitions, championships, racing divisions, and so on. It is a valid point to deny this idea, given that there is no monetary gain for the game. I can agree with that to an extent. However, new players may be eager to join communities as these tools would be available.
- Perhaps giving the community some data, and allowing the community to build something? Like if we get the tables, I (or many others) can attempt to build an API wrapper around it.
Next, I wanted to delve into in-game tools for casters and commentators. Again, this may seem like it would only apply to competitive players, but there are many communities out there that I believe would benefit from such tools. I have two approaches to implementing such an idea. This would ultimately go into the third topic I wanted to bring up, more UDP values.
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One idea is to add a standalone spectator mode to races, specifically custom blueprints. I understand that adding to base-game tracks may be tedious and possibly exploited, however, I feel like custom blueprints may receive the most benefit from this addition. Tools that can be within this spectator mode/overlay could be a more detailed leaderboard that would contain split times, car name, zoomed-out minimap (with live pinpoints of other racers’ positions), and an event (toast/popup) container which shows contact, slow down and missed checkpoint events. Please see the below-attached image as an example overlay setup, please excuse my drawing skills, I am not an artist.
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The second idea is rather than creating a whole spectator mode within the game, the UDP values can get more variables. For example, holding each player’s position, getting other racer’s split times, and the like. In addition, the gap value breaks on pause and on rewind. In summary, allowing a player to see other racers’ values during a race, in addition to adding other values. I am not too well-versed in the caster scene, but I am sure there will be members in here who would like to add on which values they would like to see.
Lastly, I want to thank the dev team and the forum team for working hard to improve the game and to allow the community to offer ideas. It is greatly appreciated. In addition, I would like to thank the members who read this post and contributed.
Thank you for your time,
YoYoGavri