The AI in a coop championship race is much more aggressive and faster than the AI in a solo championship race. Running the “Racing in the 90’s” race in both modes.
In solo mode I can easily beat the AI in an untuned Toyota Supra. Without having to fight with being bumped by the overly aggressive AI.
While in the coop race the AI will go off the race line to attempt blocking and ramming of human drivers. The coop AI also runs considerably faster. As in the coop I can rarely get higher than beating the #3 AI car. And oftentimes an AI car in a coop race will pull out the race victory even though the human team still gets the overall win.
It’s pretty evident, at least to me, PGG has programmed in various levels of difficulty into specific difficulty levels. Simply put PGG is cheating.
My suspicion is that they’ve hired the programmer that’s responsible for the overly aggressive AI in GTA V and told him that they want exactly the same behaviour for the one in FH5.
On a more serious note. Yes, it’s ouright ridiculous what kind of stunts the AI pulls in for example the Tours and how outright aggressive and unfair it behaves towards players. It’s as if it’s programmed to provide the most unpleasant experience possible!
I don’t notice much difference in the speed and difficulty of the AI between the two. Obviously in co-op there are other cars that the AI have to be measured against so that is an added complication.
The FH5 AI uses rubber banding, and this is also true in coop.
So if one of the players playing coop is highly skilled, the AI in the top group will run at his pace, and inevitably the rest of the players will be up against an AI that is significantly faster than the AI in single player mode.
And when that happens, it will be difficult for the player team to win against the AI team.
I don’t know what combination of players the team was when the OP played coop, but this is an example of how this can happen.
This doesn’t generally appear to be the case. It seems in coop to be more that the AI is split into 1 or 2 cars which are reasonably competitive and 4 cars which are very slow.
This isn’t a bad approach really because it means better drivers can have a reasonable race and the team still cruises to a win as most players will beat the bottom 4 AI. Single player seems to usually (for the Highly Skilled level champs at least) just have all the AI be slow, which probably explains why the OP is experiencing some AI be faster online.
Try running a drag race at Mexico festival. Pick AI skill level. Run it. Used car you know well.
Bump ai skill on replay. You can run same time and get beaten.
Total nonsense
@Jezza14 generally speaking, your analogy sounds good and it looks like what could be happening in part.
But “highly skilled” should be a constant and expected level. Otherwise the AI component of the game is “skills matching AI”.
Either way, it doesn’t explain the changes in AI aggressiveness and general driving habits or blocking and ramming.
Also doesn’t explain the occasional race where there are those breakaway packs of four AI cars who just leave the rest of the human drivers in the dust. And that’s usually given that one race has been relatively competitive so we (the human drivers) all know we have the cars and abilities to beat the AI.
I just want to add that the AI in this game sucks. It’s something I would expect from a racing game in the 90s, but not one in this day and age.
In fact I can’t say one good thing about the AI in this game. The issues for me in order of biggest to smallest are:
AI - The AI in general is atrociously bad. AI shouldn’t attempt to ram players or swerve all over the road for no reason. Even the AI driving and breaking lines are bad. It’s complete and utter garbage. In short, the AI needs a complete overhaul in future titles.
Difficulty - The max difficulty of Unbeatable is it not challenging enough. I would argue there should be no difficulty cap.
Rubber banding - Of all the issues surrounding AI this is the least important to me as most players can easily pass the AI so what they do in the back doesn’t really matter.
Sorry.
The AI changes with drag race. Straight line. Repeatable times for me, say 15.000s flat.
Change drivatar difficulty from expert to pro. Run same time, same car, you’ll get beat.
I’ve also run at expert, won, then X back to start.
Restart screen comes up, reset difficulty to next level up, rerun same race.
You’ll lose running same time.
Only change is drivatar difficulty. Most my times vary is about .005.
Makes no sense when PI, everything else is same.
To be honest, the AI always seem to be alot faster in solo mode, than in co-op, pretty big difference actually, they are also much faster in championship events than in exhibition events, came across an uncatchable op ai in one championship, made a blueprint for the same cars, mine and the ai, and used the same tune, won the blueprint event easy several times on highly skilled, so yes, the ai is faster in the championships than in the free play races
AI is buggy too, doesn’t scale well, defies physics and does things that would send us off into the weeds trying to keep up and or stay ahead of us. Brake in the dumbest places, and generally like being rolling pylons in most cases in online races/team races.
I honestly don’t like it so I leave it at Highly-Skilled because why suffer any more than needed in solo play… and yeah, some races, I still get stupidly bugged out AI I cannot catch. I’m sorta glad they seem generally more manageable as unbeatable in trials I’d probably skip trials entirely if the AI acted exactly the same in co-op as it does in Solo… you think trials are bad now… yikes!
At least the online AI behaves strange since a couple days. Here are two videos showing something I call “3D Rubberbanding” by the lead AI in the second race of the current Trial.
Watch from 0:50 mins in.
Watch from 1:10 mins in.
I never saw such behaviour before. It looks like the cars get pulled back on to the racing line if they get to far from it and they can also corner in absolutely impossible ways.
The AI during Tours also behaves more strange than it did before already.
The big difference in speed between co-op and solo mode is also the reason why a tune that will smoke the ai in co-op mode can be really sluggish in solo mode and leaving you scrambling for 3rd or 4th place, with the lead ai 10 seconds in front
Last week’s Trial was especially egregious. B-class super hot hatches, so everything should have been fairly even, but my team didn’t get close to winning the stadium circuit on either of my attempts because the top two or three AI were off like rockets and completely uncatchable. Even worse was that D-class buggies championship, where I had to keep retrying and rewinding the circuit race who knows how many times to eke out enough points to win because the AI had superhuman grip and acceleration. I hate that restriction so much because they always cheat like crazy.
I’ve been playing FM(haven’t figured out what it is yet) lately. In some regards, the AI is much better than FM7 or FH5. In other regards, it’s good old copy and paste AI. There are times where it will be rather competitive and decent to drive against. Then there are times when it reverts back to the FM7, FH5 AI. Cutting into the driving line, pitting your car, and worse of all brake checking you for no apparent reason. And if you try to pit an AI car it’s like trying to pit a brick wall. They just stay glued right to the driving line no matter how long or hard you push them. All you end up accomplishing is losing ground against faster AI.
But it seems if you keep distance from the AI they stay fairly close competitive. However in the higher level of competition you do see that one lead AI streaking ahead. And catching the lead car can be a challenge. So in a solo race you want to make sure and set the lap count high.
Ai also mirror the players, so in solo mode they only have to deal with 1 player and 1 tune. But in trial they have to match all players, in some races 1 ai is alot faster than the rest of the ai and thats bec one of the real players have a really good tune/upgrade/cheat ect. But something is really wrong in trials ai, its like they dont know what they should do anymore while in offline they all are in sync and know their place
…this was one of my races in the first trial, I got passed by a player in a power build VW, and literally watched him pull the AI I had just easily passed myself right by me like I was standing still. I never saw either of them again and finished 3rd well in front of the AI and other players.
