I’m too lazy to dig up discussion about how Friends list influenced Drivatar car selection possible other consequences. As I like to keep my networks separate, I don’t have any friends in Horizon, which is also convenient in sense that’s one less modifier to worry about. That also means I don’t have any personal experience what possible influence friend list drivatars may have to Drivatar speeds and behaviour, to say for or against.
What I can say however is that based on certain baselines to eliminate modifiers, bone stock cars is one, no custom blueprints, for difficulty easiest and hardest are only ones usable, as for what I have heard sometimes in gaming industry to have planned “normal” difficulty named “above average” in final product for end users as psychological trick, as perceived experience feels better when most play that “above average”. We don’t know how this is in FH4 so for end users like us, so it’s unknown target which makes it a null point.
For hundreds of races I made for each class in Street Scene, seasons are modifier, but I think my sample is big enough, 10 cars from D to A and 10+ for S1 as there was separate discussion if Track Toys are somehow underdogs. All RWD’s and raced on every 21 Street Race events game has, no props, no wall riding, against whatever Drivatars game throwed in lineup. I actually finished all that in December and determined “The Peel” effect in D-class and about PI-threshold where it doesn’t matter anymore but didn’t ever came to post it. I probably will tomorrow or coming week.
Without friend list possible influence to Drivatar car selection etc. Ultimately races aren’t about Drivatars but time, beat the clock, win the race. For most part FH4 rubber band works very well between about D 407+ to S1 900 creating illusion of race and helps player getting faster by presenting reasonable challenge even on Unbeatable difficulty. I base this to fact that lower PI car can win higher PI Drivatar. Most races I did couldn’t be winnable without rubber band, lower PI RWD starting from 5th row (Street Scene, note) winning over higher PI Drivatar AWD(s) starting from first row.
On 3 out of 21 Street Scene events it could happen on S1 that rubber band didn’t compensated enough for player car against some Drivatar lineups. Routes were Ambleside Ascent, the Highland Charge and the Monument Wynds. I don’t know for sure if Monument Wynds got some sort of patch or has it been just dumb luck, but I haven’t encountered super fast AWD’s starting from first row when using RWD myself there on Unbeatable since, perhaps after November update. There is also Otleydale Dash where I got inconsistent results, but can’t say for sure if it’s about my skills as player that is a bottleneck or something else.
Furthermore, I encountered two additional anomalies on Highland Charge and Coastal Charge where getting faster times led into situation that boosted, not only one but two Drivatars, creating a situation where player getting faster didn’t result better position, winning the race, but losing positions. I recall there was something weird like that also on Glenfinnan Chase So there are situation where rubber band can “break” and starts punishing player for better performance. That only happened with '16 Dodge Viper ACR (S1 893) [Track toys] so as far as my tests went, extremely rare scenario.
What comes to lower classes, besides “Peel Effect” there are some problematic scenarios on lower classes too, they are rare, but exist. On B-class North Coast Rush Can-Am Maverick could finish in time equivalent to ~6% of the world Rivals leaderboard (at the time). LOL
One more anomality specific to Street Scene is “no traffic” issue. It happened to me only one day during my test runs, but for some reason Drivatars appeared to get huge speed boost if there were no traffic at all, it was not just one race, but few. IIRC at the same time my connection to Xbox servers, or whatever they are was choppy. I don’t understand what Internet connection has to do with single player events though. I recall I had one race on the Marathon sometimes during last summer or spring, where there were no traffic at all, but I don’t recall Drivatars getting any sort of speed boost then.
For AI besides rubber band, for my experience it appears to reward clean racing not being overtly aggressive if player isn’t and Drivatars can mess up pretty big at times, colliding with traffic, or with each other (latter is rare) and sometimes they can get in a bend too fast and slip off from road, that is extremely rare. They ability to react player moves is limited, sometimes they ram player car behind simply because way they are programmed to corner and / or they are in pack with limited options for racing line and braking earlier would cause other Drivatars collide with them. Still annoying. I rarely encounter them blocking on purpose, most of the times it happens because they appear to be somehow aware what’s behind them and predict other, faster Drivatar moving to their line, they are not always perfect at executing that. Many of these things could be considered as flaws, but I think errors Drivatars do makes gaming experience better, more lifelike and immersive.
I’m not always sure if everything attributed to Drivatar speed is about AI, but Drivatar physics. Speed, rubber band is relative to some sort of estimated player performance based on player car PI and difficulty level at least. On higher classes, most notable on S2+ on tarmac races at least, Drivatar super grip in rainy conditions is misleading players. People learn a lot by intuition and good gaming experience relies a lot on that and here’s a problem, learning by following Drivatar lines on S2 rain, isn’t always intuitive experience but opposite simply because player has different set of physics to deal with. There are things that favours player, weight transfer, alternative racing lines that plays on strengths of player car but they do not apply to every situation. It isn’t always a matter of S2 or rain either.
On Ambleside Ascent for example, on S1+ there are very few stock RWD cars in game that can out torque Drivatar acceleration on last third or so. Practically race is often decided in segment where’s Ambleside Approach Speed Zone or in some cases, S-Bends Drift Zone segment, who ever gets there first wins and there’s nothing else player can do about it. This creates additional issue with players having very different, yet genuine experiences. Ambleside Ascent is great route on lower classes with stock cars, it also favours certain kind of tuning, leading to some players having great experience there and others figuring out how to heck to win it, even if they used the same car, on same difficulty but different tune. I think issues like this lead players here often talking past each others and if there is much that could be harvested from this topic to build better product, I’m not always seeing it. PG contributed themselves for this issue to exist and If they ironed some things out, this topic and peer support in general would work so much better.