Balance Vehicle Performance Based on Time Trial Averages

Suggestions Hub Motorsport Features Gameplay
1

Hi everyone,

I’ve been playing Forza Motorsport for a while now, and I’m sure many of you have noticed that some cars in certain classes feel a bit unbalanced. This is especially apparent in Time Trials, where certain vehicles consistently outperform others across various tracks. I believe this is something that could be addressed by the developers to improve the overall experience for everyone.

The Idea

My suggestion is that the developers could calculate average lap times for each car across all tracks in the Time Trial mode. By doing so, they could determine which cars are consistently faster or slower than the others within their class. Using this data, they could then make adjustments to the Performance Index (PI) of each vehicle, ensuring a more balanced and competitive experience across the board.

Why This Matters

  • Fair Competition: Balancing the vehicles will ensure that no single car dominates a class, making races more competitive and enjoyable.
  • Diverse Choices: Players will feel more encouraged to try different cars, knowing that they won’t be at a significant disadvantage.
  • Data-Driven Adjustments: By using actual performance data from Time Trials, adjustments to the PI would be based on real-world performance rather than theoretical calculations.

How It Could Work

  1. Data Collection: Aggregate lap times from Time Trials across all tracks for each car within a specific class.
  2. Analysis: Calculate the average lap time for each car and compare these to the class average.
  3. Adjustment: Adjust the PI of cars that are consistently above or below the class average to bring them closer to the ideal performance level.
  4. Testing: After adjustments, run another round of data collection to ensure that the changes have balanced the field without creating new outliers.

Implementing this kind of system would likely require some work from the developers, but I believe the benefits would be well worth the effort. It would lead to a more balanced, fun, and competitive environment for all players.

Let me know what you all think! I’d love to hear your feedback on this idea.

2

How would the system handle outliers, like a certain car being only driven by slow drivers, another car being new and having no laptimes etc.?

3

You would actually ignore cars without a decent set of data. It’s obvious that they are not the dominating cars you want to nerf. For example, if the Exocet tuned to B600 is consistently at the top of the leaderboard, it’s clear that it should be nerfed.

But you raise a valid point. Relying solely on Time Trials might not provide enough data. I would be surprised if Turn 10 isn’t already tracking data from online races as well. You could incorporate that data by analyzing the fastest laps, perhaps even combining it with driver ratings. However, this could lead to meta cars being nerfed harder than they should be, since high-rated drivers often use those cars. On the flip side, because slower cars aren’t well-represented, this might balance itself out.

At the end of the day, I believe a data-driven approach to balancing is very feasible. Combining data from Time Trials with online lobbies provides a substantial dataset. You can filter outliers, model a decent Gaussian distribution, and analyze the mean values.