As I worked my way through the career I was normally setting the difficulty at 5 or 6 and using challenge the grid to start at the back every time. I would still win almost every race and I think I podium’d on all but one single race by doing this.
Now that the career is complete (it was significantly too short) I’m doing freeplay exclusively. I refuse the frustration of the multiplayer events, even though I was hoping the rating system would help, it hasn’t at all to me. Since freeplay always put you in the middle of the pack (why are we missing challenge the grid here and practice & qualifying), I decided to bump the difficulty.
Within a few races I had it all the way maxed at 8. I’m consistently winning races by a decent amount and I have nowhere to go from a difficulty standpoint except to somehow limit my vehicle or boost the opposing vehicles if there’s a way to do that in settings. In previous Forza titles I could never win races with the difficulty of the AI set to “unbeatable” unless it was this very specific track and car combination that I had practiced a lot.
Maybe I’ve just gotten better at upgrading and tuning with the new system having me tinker more and test drive to improve my car. Maybe I’ve actually gotten faster because the sector score bonus has pushed me to really learn the tracks and apexes. But it seems like overall the AI have just slowed down a bunch.
Are others finding the AI to be slower as well? Not to open the discussion about their driving characteristics, but just their raw speed and lap time.
Thanks for your input and opinions. Any suggestions on how to increase the challenge without altering the enjoyment of the actual race are appreciated.
Edit: for reference I play on PC in hoodor driver view (65 FOV) with a motion sim setup and 49" ultra wide monitor. This is the same setup (with some slight upgrades) that I used on Forza Motorsport 7. So I don’t think it’s equipment related.
I think the ai can post quick lap times in practice, but never in a race. So imo i wouldnt say theyre technically slower than past games but they are certainly worse then in any forza i can remember.
I dont think we have actually received a finished ai, or at least not the one Chris Esaki was talking about. They have almost zero awareness for more than 1 car at a time and when they are aware that youre near them they promptly drive off the track. They also completely give up after being passed, this is similar to past games but id say worse in this one.
I think one of the reasons we dont see endurance races in the career mode is because of them not being complete as well. Its a shame they couldnt have gotten it right, but its shameful they made it worse.
Uhh… I think you’re sadly on to something here. They seem to have pretty good awareness of one car next to them, but if I come up on them and they are already involved with another car they are oblivious to me. However, if I go side by side with them in a corner with no other cars around they recognize I am there.
Additionally your point about them driving off the road is accurate. If you are on the inside of a turn and drift out towards them even a little bit they will often dart off track, or… turn violently into you like you don’t exist.
The claim is that the AI is trained using machine learning. Machine learning is basically taking a large dataset and creating a formula out of it. Where would have T10 got a large dateset… from their staff driving. What you see in the AI is how the devs drive and makes sense when you see that in youtube showcases.
The claim is that the AI is trained using machine learning.
That’s the claim, but beyond that the AI behaves exactly like in every other Forza before and does mistakes that no sane human would do so I highly doubt that there was any machine learning at all.
Basically it has been claimed that drivatars would learn from humans even before machine learning was a thing. This time they actually showed video footage but if that wasn’t simply manufactured then obviously none of that made it into the final game.
It looks to me that the AI is real AI rather than a bunch of algorithms put together and then adding elastic band bonus to look real.
It is real but it is limited. I think they drive well as long as there are not too many cars around. They have ADHD
I would like to see an AI rivals when you keep beating different AI cars racing with the exact car as yours. That would be interesting.
So the foundation is good but they need to work on it. Pretty much like everything else in FM23.
This is an interesting video about making an AI, in this case for Trackmania. I am pretty sure Forza AI works similarly, but of course you have to add the racing and collisions
I’d say they perhaps have too much awareness of the car next to them. I’ve definitely noticed the AI is very willing to get itself into the gravel when I’m making a move on the inside. It feels the AI prioritises not making contact over anything else, even if it means mowing the lawn.
It also seem to me the AI has a lot more troubling dealing with rewind than in previous game. Some corners too are noticeably cursed. Like there’s always an AI in the grass at the chicane at the end of the Nürburgring.
I’m not too miffed about it though. Even if sometimes a little quirky, I find generally the challenge is sufficient.
This is my experience of the AI today. I decided to do the achievement of winning a race series in a stock car, which you can do by redoing the intro series of three races. I used a Vauxhall VXR and because I just wanted to get it over with, put the AI on easiest. (edit - I also chose to start from 3rd each time.)
What happened was, the AI were much faster than me off the line, to the point where I would end up down in 10th or so within a couple of corners. They were also hard to catch. I’m not the best driver in the world but nor the worst, so on easiest difficulty it should be a cakewalk. But then… I find I am catching them easily, because they’ve all significantly eased off the pace. I soon find myself in 3rd, but 2nd place is hard to catch because he obviously has NOS and can boost away from me on the straights! I end up having to barge past in a corner and do the same with the leader. And then just like old Forzas, they completely submit and give up. I think I must have made them feel very sad, they just didn’t bother after that. Oh, I even tried slowing right down and the 2nd place car just sat behind me not even trying to overtake.
It also seems to me that stock cars with or without parts added are a lot better.
From FM2 through FM4, several cars were un-drivable without parts AND a tune.
“Every Forza title includes an artificial neural network used by its AI racers, called Drivatars, a portmanteau of driver and avatar. Drivatars were developed and designed by Microsoft Research Cambridge to learn and adapt to the player’s driving. In early Forza titles, the Drivatars ran on a Bayesian neural network, which calculates possible solutions to a problem and their probabilities based on player data collected from previous races before selecting the one with the highest confidence value. Such a problem may be reaching a certain turn, at which point the appropriate angle at which to turn and the amount of pressure on the accelerator must be determined. Initially, the only way to share the learned Drivatars was to copy them onto Xbox Memory Units for use by other Xbox consoles. Since Forza Motorsport 5, the Drivatars have used a reinforcement learning paradigm, and have recorded racing data of all players connected to the cloud as part of the Xbox Network. In this paradigm, the Drivatars track the player’s car position and speed and the consistency of the behavior and guess their turn angle and speed for a given segment, enabling the Drivatars to infer solutions for courses the player had not yet raced on and input for cars the player had not yet raced with. The data is then uploaded to the cloud to update the Drivatar behavior, and the new Drivatars are then downloaded to other Xbox consoles. Each upload is timestamped, and older uploads are treated with less confidence. There have been concerns that players could abuse the system to rubber-band the Drivatars’ AI back to them, but Turn 10 has stated that the only thing that is rubber-banded are their cars, whose performance is slightly modified based on how far they are ahead of or behind the player. Turn 10 inserted a layer of control between player and AI inputs that allows for the developers to modify Drivatar behavior so as to prevent unexpected results.”
So i dont know which route turn 10 chose for this game, its either the original or the post forza 5 version but its one of the 2. It has always been a form of machine learning so its not some brand new to the franchise change.
Maybe like some other things like “all new damage modeling system” and the driver skill and safety ratings its not exactly new. Maybe it is the same as always, or maybe since i kind of think this is an early access game, its not finished and we have a placeholder for the time being.
If you didn’t please take a look at the link on my previous post. It is about an individual doing some fun project. Programing the AI so it can learn on its own.
Interesting, great project well explained. The problem is… if you recall the AI demo prelaunch of FM8, we saw AI hotlapping and are faster… but that’s not really was a concern. The concern is how professionally can the AI race others including themselves. I don’t know how Raceroom and iRacing etc make their AIs but they can race door to door lap after lap.
I end up having to barge past in a corner and do the same with the leader. And then just like old Forzas, they completely submit and give up. I think I must have made them feel very sad, they just didn’t bother after that. Oh, I even tried slowing right down and the 2nd place car just sat behind me not even trying to overtake.