Please overhaul the AI system, fix the 1st corner pileup situation that seems to occur in every race in FM7, and give the AI some life!
I would like to see AI making mistakes like braking too early or too late, coming off the track and so on. Anything that a player or driver would do when he/she is overdoing it.
Yes the odd mistake would make races very interesting, maybe scaled amount and severity with difficulty? Or make it another difficulty setting altogether so people can balance difficulty with predictability. For instance a higher AI difficulty with more mistakes could be fun, but be similar in overall challenge to lower difficulty with no mistakes by the AI (for those who like more predictability in the races).
Maybe a 3 setting system to replace the single Drivatar ‘difficulty’:
a. AI Speed/Skill (in other words; do they accelerate out of corners right on the limit of traction, brake on the limit of traction, or run well within grip limits?).
b. AI Aggressiveness (blocking, diving, and AI-AI interactions behavior).
c. AI Consistency (ie major mistakes, and regularity of poor line choices/missed apexes etc).
Yeeees, I’m all for it - give AI personality.
Dirt 2 RX AI is probably my favorite still. Being the first racing I had 2010 and still play on 360. If you dent someones car in one turn he could get back at you later in the race with a funny remark. Not robotic, but some human character to it.
AI also prolongs single player long after online servers are dead or thin competition etc. One reason I stayed single player so far, you can buy older games and still have as fun.
totally on board with this, and give us the option to customise the AI. instead of the half-baked drivatars, let us create custom AI, give them names, customisable attributes such as aggressiveness, passing ability, pace, defense, mistake slider etc etc. it would give every driver in the race a personality, and you could use it to replicate your favourite IRL racing seasons in game.
for example, the 2021 F1 season. verstappen was ultra aggressive, while hamilton was more measured. being able to replicate this sort of feel in forza would be an amazing feature.
@Schnooblers that’s a brilliant idea.
Machine learning could be cool. Like in the campaign, the AI should grow with you and learn from mistakes at the same rate as you. If they begin to get too far ahead, they could plateu in learning until you catch up, or they could even get dumber slightly to maintain a reasonable difficulty level for the player.
I like the idea that if you don’t set your preferred level of difficulty, then it’s automated in the background, matching your level could give the game a consistent feel for new and more skilled players.
Would still want the ability to set it manually though, to fine tune the level desired for experienced players in particular.
And I think any automated/learning system should advertise it’s adjustments too, so the player knows if doing better/worse. If there wasn’t feedback, or any reference point for a players skills increasing (like getting better places in races/further ahead of the pack) then the AI could start to feel like a cheat, bit like the rubber-banding/catch-up in games like NFS where no matter how much better you drive, the AI just seems to match it, which is annoying for me at least.
I just did a 1h race in FM7 and enjoyed it immensely, AI certainly needs work at the start of the race as it took a couple of restarts before the pack got through the first corner without a pile-up… AI was somewhat interesting while the pack was a bit more dense, but then once spread out nothing much happened, would be great to have AI slowing each other down a bit by battling and making the odd error.
Thanks for the responses, keep the ideas coming!
I guess you could make a difficulty slider with more customization. But reading through more comments made me realize that a combination of the two would be most ideal. There are 5 levels of AI drivers: beginner, club, pro, unbeatable, and undetermined. A list of each can be made as follows:
Another idea that can be made is a safety/race pace system. The higher class you are, the more difficult the AI will be. They will adjust to the rankings that you have for safety or race pace. You can combine this idea with a slider like in the F1 games. The higher you set the difficulty slider, the faster the AI go. You can implement machine learning to this like this:
Turn10 already did a learning system and called it Drivatars. It was not the best.
Drivatars are very bad drivers indeed… I genuinely hope we don’t see them in the same form in this next version of the game.
They also seem to break the laws of physics regularly, almost like they can bend physics to make up lap times after mistakes and horrible line choice; it’s so frustrating to make a good pass only to just be flogged on the next straight. No idea if I’m imagining things though, alternatively it could be due to Drivatars emulating power builds all the time, because that’s what wins races online, which is also frustrating.
Well this explains a lot:
So its undoubtedly already AI/learning, and it also has some big limitations, like binary throttle and brake, intentional rubber banding and physics mods.
The end makes me very hopeful however, talk of modulated brake and throttle, and removal of many layers that were previously necessary to keep the AI on-pace. And if that was 2 years ago then could mean great things for new FM.
I also experienced this, and i think that’s one reason AI isn’t available in Multiplayer.
I’m sorry but the A.I are bad, their effectively teaching you it’s okay to not respect driving lines and collisions. The carrier mode is good but the A.I need to be sorted. They randomly break on corners like they are break checking you, they never respect the line your on even when next to them, they drive unit like your not even there. It makes the Career not enjoyable and sometimes punishes you for sticking your line but then you get the penalty, for the a.j going into you. Not everyone plays in 3rd person especially now since my sim games are popping up, players want a more immersive experience.
I upvote this. I bought Forza to enjoy some racing (against AI), starting near the back of the field and advancing corner by corner past AI.
Currently I have quit playing the Career modes, due to issues similar to those mentioned in the main post above:
AI do not respect my racing line.
AI ram into my car, very often spinning my car, and ramming me off-track.
If my car or an AI car has spun, the AI will often prefer to run directly into the spun car, even pushing it sideways or backwards… Instead of slowing, and steering to avoid the obstacle, and quickly moving regain speed on-track.
AI cars seem to make minimal or even zero effort to avoid cars (my own or other AI) which are attempting to rejoin the track after going off.
AI brake at inappropriate places (on straights and fast corners).
AI fail to accelerate in appropriate places (exiting corners and even the starting line), which causes other AI to back-up into traffic jams. .
AI will make a move like they are trying to protect their race line, but they do this too late (once my car is far along side) and too aggressively, and it essentially becomes a ramming action, instead of blocking my clear line past them.
AI often make VERY aggressive pass attempts, on a racing line which is completely unsustainable. After the pass, their car is unable to stay on-track, and often goes wide into the dirt, and loses places rather than gaining.
AI do not seem to value the significance of AVOIDING COLLISIONS and thus AVOIDING DAMAGE to their own car.
Trying to race in a respectful, skilled manner doesn’t feel like it’s being reinforced by how these AI drive.
Thank you.
The current AI model is based on being the fastest car on the track. With this model the AI focuses solely on its preferred racing line, entry and exit angles, along with braking zones.
For the individual AI car this is fine as it has the width of the track. Where it falls apart is in pack racing or when dealing with a car in its path.
The AI does not race other AI cars or the player. The AI is simply avoiding collisions while trying to get back to its preferred line. This causes the AI to behave erratically causing it to brake check, brake exceptionally late, or when in a tight group over correct to cars around causing collisions. The goal of this AI style was to present a challenge to players by givjng them a car to be faster than, however this fails to do that becuase the AI is simply “driving on rails” and removes the challenge of picking the best place to overtake or defending against a pass from an AI car and reduces the races to avoiding the pack and getting out front. Then defending by using the AI weakness of collsion avoidance to stay in front.
I suggest the AI is retrained to win by finding the best way to defend and overtake with the goal of being in P1, not being the fastest lap time. If the AI truly does not have any artificial cheats or boosts as Devs have mentioned before release this should present a more natural and realistic single player racing experience. If the devs marry this type of AI training with the new AI track racing knowledge they will create perhaps the best AI racing system around.
Something needs to be done about the way AI races. I got brake checked on a long straight today. Had to switch the game off afterwards. Frustrating.
I swear the developers have never watched motorsports in their life.
Fix ai braking on a straigt or during mid corner and braking randomly making me ram in to them on accident. Fix ai is a must
Dropping a note about progress on this topic:
Recently we made small adjustments to the Drivatar AI to correct race start behaviors and provide a smoother experience into turn 1.
The next update [Update 8 - May 13th] will reduce unnecessary braking by AI overall. This includes cases while the AI attempts to pass, 2 cars wide in corners, at the apex of corners, and on straights.
Future updates will tweak additional areas to support better AI behaviors related to slowing down after being passed by the player, when the player is alongside AI cars, and passing improvements in multi-class and endurance races.
Thanks for the follow up! There’s certainly been big improvements since the initial release. I’ve been getting back into Forza with some mates and solo over the last few days, and generally enjoyed racing against the AI.
To keep the discussion going, and hopefully provide constructive feedback, I noticed the following areas could still do with improvement:
When the AI enters a corner on an inside line (generally due to being side-by-side leading up to the corner), they will often hold the inside line all the way through the corner, even when the track has opened on the outside. This caused some unexpected brake checks on corners, and slows down the AI unnecessarily.
When the AI rejoins the track after an off, they often do so in a hazardous manner. They seem to be trying to rejoin at full throttle as they can be seen sliding left/right/left/right until they finally get back on track. They need to back off significantly when they’re off track and very gently rejoin.
AI often (edit: i.e. far too regularly to be the occasional mistake) runs wide off track at the following locations, E class, Difficulty 8:
Nurburgring Turn 11
Lime Rock Park Turn 2