My experience playing Forza Horizon 3 with the Drivatar difficulty settings is kind of off-putting and somewhat out of description, due to inconsistent rubber-band system, even sometimes on lower difficulty settings.
Almost of the cars (including production and track toy race cars) have no sense of weight, that allows them grip like a Formula 1 car to catch up at insane speed during high speed corners, and sometimes to produce quicker lap times on circuit races.
No matter what upgrades or tune setup I use, they seem to catch up quite rapidly, but not all the time in some exhibition races.
During the hot wheels expansion the Drivatar AI are sometimes a little too aggressive on some of the races, in which leads to crashes and losing skill chains. Even some of the stunt connectors, including loop the loops they gain so much speed while climbing and down then brake unexpectedly.
Despite the problem I really enjoyed the challenge of the game so far with some races as a whole.
I know what Playground Games are trying to do, is to make races fun and challenging.
I’ve read quite a few post from people who had this kind of problem.
I hope for an update fix, but I’m not sure it’s going to happen anytime soon.
P.S It’s my first time using the forum, please feel free to share your opinions about the discussion.
I’ve done some experimenting, and one of the reasons the Ai cheat are due to certain upgrades you have on your car. When equipping race tire compound, i’ve noticed the drivatars will rubberband a lot more. Try using default tire compound, and you’ll notice the Ai will act a lot more fair.
My experience with the Forza franchise is mainly the windows counterparts, FM6 Apex and FH3. I do understand the need for the FH3 AI’s behavior since it is more widely played as an arcade racer, but I also do wish the AI was more like FM6 Apex.
I prefer the player detection in Apex and how the AI train is malleable around the player, they even give way on collision and spin out with more realistic physics. The lack of player detection in FH3 becomes frustrating, because it creates artificial difficulty on top of the chosen preset, especially since the AI do not deter from their racing lines on contact. Together with the lack of detection, they simply bulldoze through the player causing the player to spin out while they remain unaffected in speed and course. This also makes them seem very aggressive, but it is more how they are programmed to stay on course, and remain at high speed.
As such it creates two extremes, you can either build for a lot of acceleration and higher speed and break away right from the grid making the race incredibly easy, or have a much harder time with a low powered car getting knocked around for half the race before you pull ahead.
Apex’s AI can be left behind if you are a fast driver, but FH3’s AI rubber bands to keep pace so you rarely clock times too different from the AI, or the AI from each other. This I can understand, since as an arcade racer, the player can get away with many things with the car setups and tunes, since it has to accommodate controller play and appeal to casual gamers and yet remain challenging and fun.
The point on AI’s taking corners fast is just programming. All racing sims I’ve played has the same issue, AI’s are not affected by realistic traction while the player suffers from it. The better sims simulate slower AI on turns and braking before turns, but they are still unaffected by rain, wet roads or dirt roads. It is usually easy to counter the AI’s cornering behavior once you become familiar. In FH3, they brake hard before turns and accelerate mid turn to exit at a high speed. It’s not the type of acceleration and speed the player can easily match, however, the player can choose not to brake on gentle bends unlike the AI, and brake late and hard on tight corners to counter the AI.
It can, rather easily with a S2 or build for godly acceleration and speed. That’s why once you know the game, players can get away with too much against the AI. Even rogue drivatars can’t stand out.
Which falls into one of the extremes, where the races becomes incredibly easy. The programming only compensates to a certain extent.
Ugh, this so much. I can hit any track on the main map and race it flawlessly and easily, but I can’t finish a race on HW without using 30 rewinds. The AI is much more aggressive about keeping their driving line on the HW tracks (as in murderous, not even competitive).
I was on Hot Wheels just the other day and I recorded a video clip of extreme AI Grip. It is about a minute long and covers this topic exactly. Give it a look if you want.
The way they exit the corners, its like they have no sense of losing traction or any wheel-spin, even on wet conditions, but at times its kind of frustrating.
I prefer Forza Horizon 2’s Drivatar AI, because they have a little sense of losing traction in weather/terrain conditions or sometimes wheel-spin if they accelerate too early on tight bends (including Rear Wheel Drive Cars).
What I saw on the video, it clearly shows how serious the AI can be on the corners, in which it makes it almost impossible to get first place or a podium finish.
To me thought they don’t actually represent of how players drive in the game, I could be wrong about it, but it seems to be the case.
Even though they don’t have a sense of competition in which I find it kind of sad and silly.
I think in future that Playground Games could add a catch-up difficulty setting, to add about 5% credit earnings, but I don’t think that idea would make any sense in that matter.
During Head to head races, I was racing a Drivatar AI in Surfers Paradise, and it lost its way trying to make a U-turn, while I’m ahead on a suggested route.
A few seconds later it re-spawned itself very near towards the finish line and I lost the race entirely. I do not know it happened to anyone before.
I actually had the AI go offroad and cut through everything by making a beeline for the finish on head-to heads.
It’s happened several times to me at least, so it could be what happened to you too.
May have been programming for the AI after losing it’s path to just go for the finish.
The drivatars copy the ghost saves from your rival leaderboard posts as well as your friends. My drivatars beat the top 0.1% of the best times in the world while set on new driver.
If you swap out cars or change difficulty settings mid race you can cause the game to reload new drivatars. Some times this resets the AI to normal settings but it’s rare for me. In campaign races 9/11 cars beat my lap times and I usually have to abuse the rewind and cheat to stupid high lap posts to win races. I have a lot of top 50 and top 100 s2 rival posts so I’m screwed haha.
Other problems would be the check point penalty times, skill chains breaking by hitting blades of grass or the smallest of destruction skill points, xp is more important than getting the checkered flag first. You can finish last every race and still take the championship if you’re an xp chump.
Fail. Take away the money and xp, all cars are free, all shared files are unlocked always etc
