Analysis on Why The Car Leveling and CarXP System is Driving People Away from Forza Motorsport

Forza Motorsport Forza Motorsport 2023 FM 2023 Discussion
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The progression the vast majority of Forza Motorsport (series) players want harkens back to older racing games where you start with a below average road car and gradually upgrade and tune it, so it can compete at the top of its performance class. Once it hits this level, you take the funds you’ve been winning racing and upgrading that car to buy a slightly better one, and the process starts all over until you’re at professional motorsport levels racing GT3 classes, F1s, NASCAR or Hypercars.

It’s literally the “Zero to Hero” concept that’s often touted as the Holy Grail for racing games, but for some strange reason, developers and publishers just don’t get it?

I’m not a game developer, but is it really this hard to design a “story” or “career” mode where (broken down) it’s just a series of races and events that get progressively better (and harder) in terms of car performance?

Also, when I say, story, I don’t mean something like Grid Legends, NFS or F1’s “Breaking Point” story mode that’s fully voice acted, mocaped and tries to be an interactive movie. I mean, a simple progression that does what I outlined above that many racing fans seem to want, but no modern day publisher or developer seems to be able to deliver, for some reason.

You would think a series of well-curated races with increasing car upgrade progression wouldn’t be this Herculean task from a bygone era, but here we are. It baffles me from a consumer standpoint, but again, I’m not a game developer. Maybe there are too many things that go into campaigns of old I’m not considering that would be much harder today?

This is another major flaw in an already flawed system: Repetition.

Leveling anything (character; gear; vehicle; etc.) isn’t inherently bad as long as the system is fun, rewarding and there is a true sense of progression from when you started. Different genres and even hybrid genres know how to do this well e.g. MMOs, Hybrid-MMOs like The Division, Destiny, Call of Duty, etc.

The issue with Forza Motorsport is it takes so long to grind a car to max level… You get sick of it by the end and don’t want to drive it anymore. It’s because of the sheer monotony and repetition this system is built on compared to more engaging systems we’ve been analyzing.

This begs the suggestion, maybe T10 could compress the max level (and everything associated with it e.g. Upgrade unlock levels and Car XP requirements) down to 30?

If by level 25, you’ve unlocked most of the upgrades, five additional levels wouldn’t be that bad IF it also granted some kind of reward and/or other benefits while players continued to level to the (new) max level. They’ve got to do something if they insist on keeping this egregious system because it’s not working as intended, no matter what they believe.

It’s ironic T10 wants us to “bond with a car”… What a shallow and fetishized concept, btw… But by the time we’re done, we don’t want anything to do with that particular car afterwards. Ha!

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They never cared about people bonding with cars. They want a grind to boost player engagement. Even if you werent sick of the car once it hits level 50, what use is the car anymore if it doesnt unlock the most important currency which is car points. Money means nothing in this game, winning free cars also means nothing, the car point grind is the only thing that matters. This is why the game sucks. Im happy everyone hates it, im sad no media outlets report on any of this debacle as it would probably be the only way things would change.

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It’s interesting to read the different opinions about the car leveling. One trend I seem to notice, newer players to the game are much more receptive to the system than older players. And by older, I don’t mean age so much, but those from the FM1 era. Although age is a factor as well. Older players understand the roots of car culture (from whatever country you may hail). Whereas younger players have a video game view of car culture.

But getting back to the analysis. That’s a long read. And I have to be honest and say I didn’t read the entire article. I skimmed through most of it. I would like to offer my shorter version analysis on why it is driving players away from FM8. - It Sucks. -

There have been a lot of good ideas posted throughout these forum threads on how the game can change for the better. But I think @Jezza14 hit on the nail as to why it will never happen. The system the developers put in place, is there to artificially inflate the game play time metrics. It’s not there so you will learn about your car and know what makes it faster. It’s there so you will spend approximately three hours on each car you want to own. Just so you can have it have completeness. And they do this knowing the majority of people playing will have to have all the cars, and have them all maxed on points.

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This is the simcade racing game concept that just works. If you alter this concept you basicly break the game (for me at least). It might still be a good game for someone else but then it is not what I am looking for when trying to find my next racing game to spend a lot of time with.

Could it be the new car leveling system is an attempt to fix something we as gaming community broke and / or forgot? Gamers (or people in general) tend to always want more of everything. More credits, more prizes, more free stuff and we tend to forget the reason why a lot of people (maybe most of us?) enjoyed these games in the first place. It wasn’t what we got, it was what we didn’t get.

I still remember when I started playing the first Gran Turismo (yes, it’s been a while). When the game started I think I got 10 000 credits to spend. A car I would have wanted cost somewhere around 50 000 cr. so obviously I started my career with some slow used city car and struggled a lot while doing it. I was all the time out of credits but the game never felt forced or boring. There was always something to conquer. Finally buying that shiny new 50 000 cr. car after all the races felt like I had won a lottery. While I still hope some game payouts of high tier races would have been a bit bigger I understand what Kaz and his team were trying to do and in my opinion they succeeded really well to keep the game really entertaining for a long time.

After less than two months of playing the new FM I am pretty much out of interesting things to do. Some new spec series here and there but otherwise it’s just driving around the track to level up a car after car, day after day. No new cars I would really need to buy (or want to level up) and even if there was some I would “just buy it” with all the credits I have, doesn’t really matter what the price would be. A million credits for a NC Miata? Sure. 3 million for a Porsche 911? Why not, let’s buy it.

I haven’t played early FM games enough to know if it was similar to my experience with early Gran Turismo games, but if it was, it is pretty easy to understand why many people don’t find racing entertaining anymore even if the game is otherwise really good.

It used to be: Low credits = gradual game progression.
Now we have: High credits + gradual game progression = car leveling system.
As a gaming community, we should always be careful what we ask for, we might actually get it.

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I Googled “why does the Car XP system in Forza Motorsport suck so much” and this was like the second hit. Excellent write-up though, shame it has to exist. Pretty depressing really.

I guess I would categorize myself one of the disgruntled veterans in this case. I dabbled with Forza 1, put somewhere around 2000 hours into Forza 2 and was consistently in the top 10 of the leaderboards in A and S class, and then got married and gave up online racing. I’ve just run through the career modes and occasionally taken a crack at the leaderboards (you know, to see if I still “had it”) of every Forza since when I had time.

My kids are now off at college and my wife works a few hours in the evenings, so I was excited to have a little free time and maybe get back into the online aspect of Forza. What has happened instead is that I’m spending those few hours driving around Le Mans endlessly trying to level up cars so that I can build and tune them to my liking (or realistically to even make them remotely competitive in a lobby or rivals).

Sure, I could just grab the meta cars from each class, run them up to 50, and go play online - but that’s not me and never was. The group I ran with back in the FM2 era (AMG) never ran meta cars - in fact, we mostly tuned obscure crap and ran it to the top of the leaderboards. I can’t do that anymore, like at all. I get at most 2-3hrs a day to play. That equates to being able to “unlock” at most 1 car that I can then go spend a couple hours building and tuning only to realize it sucks and start the cycle over.

Had I paid for this game directly (rather than GamePass), I would be absolutely livid. It is such an absolutely unnecessary and boring progression system. I don’t think it’s going to go away, but I absolutely love your idea of adding additional ways to earn car XP. It would at least make “the grind” a little more rewarding and enjoyable.

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Grinding in these games isn’t all that bad if you want reality and a sim. I mean a real life sim not a racing physics sim. When I first started playing GT(1), the prize CR and prize cars were so extreme. Your credit value and car collection went up extremely and extraordinary fast. We got conditioned to that faster and liked it.

When I built my first real race car back in 1977 I have no recollection of what I spent building the car but it wasn’t cheap. It was, i would say, a grind. My first race cost $150.00 forr the entrance fee. Plus fuel and food at the track for those were my pit crew (and some food for myself). I finished third that night in the Jalopy B class. And walked away with $18.00 in winnings.]

When you look at FM8, or any other gringy racing game from a real life racing perspective, it isn’t really any more of a grind than the real thing. At least the games don’t charge us large entry fees to start a race.

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Someone else on another thread tried to express why they feel games aren’t made for older generations any longer, and to some extent, this is true.

Games have always been marketed toward the younger generations, but what has changed drastically in just 20 years is games are now a multigenerational fixture in our daily lives. The industry itself eclipses movies, music and TV revenue, combined. Big, AAA game budgets rival Hollywood studio blockbusters and can take half a decade (or more) to produce. Everybody plays games even if that means something like Candy Crush, during their morning commute.

So, the gaming landscape, it’s overall appeal and scope has definitely changed since the days of the early GT and Forza, games.

This ties back to your comment because the person was ignorantly trying to blame the younger generations for how FM, turned out. They also used the worn out, “Back in my day, developers cared about the games they made! Thanks to TikTok and the Zoomers, they’ve completely sold out and gaming is doomed! Get off my lawn! You lousy kids ruined Forza! Grrr!”

No.

Forza Motorsport turned out badly because of corporate greed, plain and simple.

Xbox wanted/needed FM to launch before the Holiday sales, and also because GT7 was dropping a huge update that was reported to be game altering. What a better opportunity to steal their thunder and launch a long awaited competitor, but… It didn’t quite work out that way, did it? In fact, it completely backfired. Now, Xbox/MS has mud on their face and looks like a complete fool. But it’s not because this person grew up and “kids have ruined gaming”. SMH

I apologize for this tangent, but it also highlights how diverse Forza’s player base is, and why this current grind system has angered everybody, regardless of their background, or history with the series.

Wow. I didn’t know that. Thanks, for the heads up! :+1:

Thanks, for the support.

Yeah, I also don’t think this system is going away, unfortunately.

It needs to go away, but if they do that, it’s an admission they screwed up and big companies like MS never admit their failings because it can effect the value of their stock… And that’s what they’re more concerned about than whether or not a video game is being well-received in the grand scheme of things, unfortunately.

On the other hand, T10 removed the Loot Boxes from FM7, due to the backlash against them being included in the game, but also because of the backlash in the greater industry of them being included in full price games at the time.

Hopefully, they come to their senses, sooner rather than later, because I don’t see how they can win back players unless they do a scorched Earth policy with the grind mechanic since this is the number one thing most people want to see changed.

It would not only represent the biggest change in the game, but it would help convince people T10, MS and Xbox are committed to improving FM, but also the fractured relationship with their fans.

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I don’t know if the explanation for why new-to-Forza players are more receptive to the carpg system needs to be any more complex than their lack of context or reference to the old system.

That’s not to say I disagree with the idea that younger generations are looking at car culture much differently than it’s been viewed in the past. I’m not sure being a car enthusiast is much of a thing for a modern teenager. Not to say new, young car fans aren’t out there. It certainly doesn’t seem as cool to be a car guy as it used to be.

When you look at FM8, or any other gringy racing game from a real life racing perspective, it isn’t really any more of a grind than the real thing.

Blockquote

For me personally, the ENTIRE POINT of a game like Forza is to circumvent EXACTLY this portion of being a real world auto enthusiast. The barrier for entry to drive a Koenigsegg is SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER in real life than it is in the game. The price of admission to twin turbo a fox body Mustang is much lower in game than in life, etc. etc. The reason I pay $100 for a Forza Motorsport game is BECAUSE I don’t need the associated seven digit number to drive a Koenigsegg. I’d grind to be an eight foot tall, cybernetically enhanced supersoldier. I can’t experience that. I could make a bunch of shrewd, malicious, and predatory business decisions, engage in a bunch of rent seeking behavior, and get myself a Koenigsegg. But if I wanted that grind, I’d already be taking advantage of people. I don’t. Therefore, Forza Motorsport. Well, FM7 since I have no intention of giving my hard earned money for FM’23 until the carpg system is gone.

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On a related point, has anyone done any testing as to whether the overtake 10XP actually works? I can’t see any obvious sign of any increased points even if you overtake 10 or more competitors at the start. That should be 100XP and should lead to a big increase in the bar.

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It’s not the car leveling or other xp is putting me off. It’s the wait for the favourite (A, B, C, D) multiplayer lobby to appear for the coming week.
The game simply lacks for interesting content and more racetracks to keep me occupied during those waits. And I don’t think I’ll play this “waiting game” for long.

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@Jezza14 , actually, I’ve been doing a fair bit of comparison on leveling on various tracks. Catalunya, Grand Oak, Kayalama, Mid-Ohio. And Spa, and Yas.

Ive done 4 and 8 lap runs on the first set of tracks and 2 and 4 lap sets on the Spa, Yas set longer tracks.

I’ve done rivals laps manually and via AFK. I’ve done race laps where I’ve hung back at start to pass all 23 cars. Running a live race. I’ve set up a race on level 1 and let it run AFK.

What I found, based on my driving skills and abilities. (Other drivers may hold the line better or maybe not as good as me). On the shorter tracks, regardless of the setup, I got two levels per every four laps. On the longer tracks, on the Spa, Yas set I could get a level each lap if I could hit the lines clean on each segment. It’s tricky to judge just where the segments are. Only clear segments are the timed marks.

As for the 10XP overtakes during a race. I think those can be a bust or boost. If you have to move of the line to pass a car you lose the segment points and get only 1 point for the segment. If you can get a segment ultra clean, basically score a 10. You can get anywhere from 30 to 60 points for a segment.

So basically I think the developers have the level up algorithms set to run at a specific time of play. Planned out to get maximum player engagement in gametime.

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Yeah, all of the above is cool. But, uh, you’re forgetting something. People who make vinyls and paint jobs for cars. They just like to put on the right dodger and paint them. But they’re not allowed to do that. There are very few coloring cars in FM. They all just go back to FH

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@lightbulbsocket , re; your rant on the real life perspective. I couldn’t agree more. It’s that resl life grind as why I quit real life racing. I play video games to escape the grind. As I said elsewhere, if I want to grind, I’ll grind coffee beans. :coffee:

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In case you missed, my post was not to point (hence terms such as “gamers”, “people in general”, “we”) any person or group in community nor I think it is a generational problem unless I count myself to that “generation” too being sometimes impatient to get enough credits to buy a car in the older games and hoping for bigger payouts just to later figure out that oh, I got everything already, now what? After that game starts to lose it’s meaning and this had me thinking about this problem.

Couldn’t we achieve a good progression to game with just a nice payout structure without throwing a lot of credits to anyone right from the start or without using car leveling or other systems? This does not mean there could not be very high payout for some races / series for those who feel they need to have everything as soon as possible. I think this would also be much more realistic than the current system.

In real life many people are lucky if they get paid at least something when starting motorsport hobby / career and the other end of the spectrum are F1 drivers etc. with a salary from millions to tens of millions per season. That replicated in the game would be fantastic in my opinion.

There may or not be other reason(s) for this car leveling system but that would be just a speculation for me so I rather keep myself completely out of that part of discussion.

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This is how the vast majority of racing games structure their career modes, or basic progression if there is no formal career mode. Or at least, this is how a lot of them used to do it, but don’t for reasons I’m still trying to figure out?

Even Forza Horizon 5, does this as you unlock the different venues (disciplines) and all the races and activities associated with them.

First come the smaller races and then the big, longer endurance races that cap off the division like The Goliath, for road racing, The Colossus, for street racing, etc. Those longer races are designed for bigger payouts because they take longer to complete. The average is 15 minutes depending on class and PI.

This is exactly what I did once I unlocked all the PR stunts, races, etc. I grinded the longer endurance races because that’s what I was building up to as far as having a reason to tune the cars. I raced the endurance races almost daily because I wanted to build up a hedge fund of millions, so that I could just buy whatever car I wanted as well as all the upgrades, too.

It’s a self-perpetuating system, and for the life of me I cannot fathom why T10 and the PTB at Xbox, thought destroying this basic game play loop was a good idea for Forza Motorsport?

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I think that’s driver xp or something like that, I don’t really know. I believe we once tested that but I didn’t notice any change on car level after overtaking other cars (if that’s what you meant).

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Kind of related to car leveling since it’s part of the builder’s cup and other race winnings where we can level up cars But it just leaves me shaking my head every time I finish a race and the announcer comes on and says, “you finished P1”. With six years of “groundup” work and “P1” is the best they could do? Couldn’t find time within those six years to come up with “Great win”, or “you finished in first place”. It just echoes the care that went into the fit and finish of this game before it was released.

Maybe the reason people are giving up on this game in droves is because the game was given up on before it was even released.

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Not as irritating as “you have penalties of around 1 second” when you have 0.6 seconds. The exact amount of penalties is fairly important - just smacks of pure laziness.

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Not nearly as irritating as you have penalties of 0.5sec for avoidable contact when the stupid AI is the one that hit you!

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I preferred the premise in earlier games where you got free cars through career mode and you could earn credits to buy what you wanted for multiplayer. If you dislike career mode, skip it and earn credits in multiplayer and free play.

I feel NO incentive to do career mode right now. That’s a first because I’ve played every game since FM 2. Why grind in career mode when I hardly get any cars, and the credits are effectively useless because I still have to grind with the cars in freeplay to level them up.

I’d enjoy it if you could have a cooperative career mode option with friends. Then I have a bit less AI to worry about!

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