I’ve never found a reason to just quit out of multiplayer sessions, but lately I do just that, leave.
A typical session will usually go the same way: 1-2 fast guys up front (of which I am usually one of). 3-5 average pace guys mid pack who are decent humble players and are just looking to get better, and then back of the pack “OrdinarySausage” and “TTVmeme” who are just playing Wreckfest.
The result is I’m racing maybe one guy for 10 mins. This individual will then leave after maybe 30mins and I’m left hotlapping alone for the rest of the night.
I then cycle through lobbies for another hour until I switch off the console.
If you win a lot and get bored of it, you can get a less competitive car but it’s always possible someone who is on the same skill level or slightly worse to join randomly with a better car and that can result not being able to fight for the win fairly.
It does boggle my mind that they can’t even implement a match making system to pair equally skilled opponents together. That’s not even ranked racing. It’s basic match making… In a car “racing” game… Like come on… Seriously…
Sadly, I feel your pain.
My passion in this game is building cars that can compete online against other players.
But, the scenario that you laid out is exactly the result of how most races evolve.
When cruising around the map for the love of just driving in this game, I rarely come across players that are above Prestige 2. Most of the time, I see not even 100 ranked players sitting in the festival doing 360 burnouts.
My theory is that many higher ranked players have found a crew they exclusively race with - (which is my case), or have moved on to other games.
The only open forum online racing I do is the Trial. I rarely race in the Open or the Tour because it just isn’t fun.
Not always, but most of the time, new player RWD PB’s seems to be the main genre whenever I try them - no fun.
I have found my home in the XBOX Group online racing forum.
I have also created my own Online Group, and have gotten to know many other players who migrate from one online race forum to another. If a player is toxic, they are booted = clean fun racing for all - and - I can also set the skill of the players I want to race with.
I have created an Event lab for every road race on the map:- EX:- we all race against 1 Unbeatable AI.
I can set the type of car - NO OP builds, or one of my favorites is bring a car you wouldn’t dare use online to test it out.
Why would I want to subject myself to anything other style of racing?
So to sum up: I control:
Player ability - or - matched ability
Car type - no OP or just crazy builds
Clean racing - kicked if toxic
Winning at all costs - doesn’t always have to be the goal.
Everyone can use only my - Leader car to race, or only Hyper Cars . . etc . . .
IOW - everything that is the main problem in this game - is no longer a problem.
If PG have no intention of adding back ranked then I have to bang the same drum of old fashioned lobbies again.
At least with a lobby menu you’d be able to see what you’re up against and choose your car appropriately, 1 of my most disliked things about every FH’s online aside from FH1 + 360 FH2 is how you go into it completely blind with no information fed to you until you’re on the starting line, leading you to often resort to your go-to cars.
Of course it wouldn’t fix the massive gaps in skill in races but at least if you were made aware you’d been put in a poor standard lobby with no meta cars you’d be much more comfortable picking a left field car that you don’t get to use much or aren’t 100% sure about.
If you paid any attention to the OP or the title of this thread or any comments by other players in this thread then you would realise this thread is about racing and not photos.
Only issue is the game fails to provide basic racing tools like custom championships, making playing with friends a far more tedious process then it ever should be.
I’ve been doing pen and paper championships with my friends, because that’s what this game has reduced us to. Even forgetting about the actual writing I have to do, setting up an event is still way more work than it was setting up a custom championship in FH3.
I also really don’t get the implementation of other game systems, even when they’re good ideas. Like Horizon Tour. The base idea was great: a sort of quick settings championship that provides a low effort setup for both groups and individuals, but then they make it PvE only and open matchmaking only, and barely support it after launch. What the heck was the point in the first place if it’s not even going to be properly supported?
Add that on top of a lack of a car meet mode or any other means to find like minded people to race with or against and it’s like they’re trying to actively kill playing with friends and forming communities.
Oh yeah, and let’s not forget that the in client grouping tool stopped working about 3 weeks in and they’ve done nothing to fix it or even acknowledge the problem.
The lack of caring from the devs about the situations people in convoys face is palpable.
Because the skill gap between players is huge in this game and that’s obvious in many parts of it. Each time they add one more difficult pr stunt or challenge in the playlist, so many people loses their minds.
Some players are just not good at racing, they don’t understand how to take corners and they don’t know the tracks. Some people also run poorly upgraded cars that usually are either very slow or too difficult to be driven which makes them even less competitive.
They should practice on rivals before they race. Even myself, i perform much better on tracks and classes i have first spent some time practicing.
The problem with Horizon Tour is the ridiculously easy ai and the lack of ghosting which turns it into a ramshow. They should make the ai more difficult and ghost like horizon open and it would be better but instead of that they ruined the weekly trial by making it as easy as the horizon tour.
There are simple changes they can make to online racing which would improve things drastically for players, while not being overly different to how things are currently.
Firstly, assign a rank or tier to each player. It could be a numerical rank like in FH4 or something as simple as bronze, silver, gold and platinum tier.
Secondly, add a rating system which updates player ranks based on their overall place at the end of a championship. Reduce rating for players that quit.
Thirdly, add a match matching system which attempts to pair equally ranked players together in a timely manner. If an appropriate match cannot be made quickly then the rank criteria is increased to include higher and lower ranks in order to form a new championship quickly.
Fourthly, don’t allow players to join an existing championship. If all players bar 1 leave a championship then that player wins.
Then add a free for all (unranked) option where players can queue for a single race which won’t be ranked. Players can also choose class/type just like in custom but there’s no championships here. They are all just quick join unranked races.
As if the difference between a disconnect and someone deliberately quitting by pushing some button isn’t clear. Surely that difference can be detected with a huge amount of certainty.
What do you propose then? Allowing players to quit rated/ranked championships without losing rating is not a solution. This was evident with how team ranked was implemented in FH4 where unskilled players could easily achieve the grandmaster title by quitting before the championship ended if they felt they would lose.
Also note if disconnections happens then it’s not the end of the world because what I’m suggesting is a focus solely on proper match making and importantly no focus on elitism. If you unfortunately disconnect and lose rating then it’s not the end of the world because you will still be matched with equally skilled (equally disconnected) players. If you constantly disconnevt then it’s a problem with your connection and or the game.
As much as I would want this, there is no way it would work without proper car balancing, car classes or something. I’m not even talking about meta cars, which is my concern too. Maybe some hidden “car win counter” that would take into account how often this model wins?
Let’s take for example “Mustang rivals” with hot hatches we did couple weeks ago. Even within only that class, cars built very similarly, there was couple (if not 10+) seconds gap between them. You can’t cover that gap when you play with someone on the same level. Unfortunately.
It would work and it would be a huge improvement over what we currently have. To clarify what I’m suggesting is an emphasis on proper match making opposed to a ranked system. The purpose is to better pair equally skilled opponents together where possible in a timely manner. It doesn’t matter how inbalanced cars are, or what cars players use because generally things will even out. Meaning bad players using meta car/tunes most likely will be paired with intermediate players in non meta cars. The issues around imbalances etc is a separate issue which can be solved indepdently of this.
[Please support “collisions off” racing in fh5 - #18 by DumbDriver49]
Same, am one of those that tries to race fairly and gets through the middle pack, but i rarely join open anymore because there’s always 3-4 rammers, even in co-op races. As the auction house keeps closed there’s no way of skipping trials and it’s really burning me out of the game already. The entire purpose of learning tuning was for racing online, but while these players don’t get punished for bad behavior, i don’t have reasons to play anymore. And no, i’m not going to take 500 photos of every car and die of boredom, thank you
I’m not a programmer at all, but it would seem pretty easy to me to create a simple player matching program by evaluating the players highest race wins percent indexed against the player difficulty setting being used that has those most wins.
Not perfect by any means, but it would be somewhat effective to match skills.
Many players who are somewhat good but not top tier play online only to win and that’s why they go only meta. They don’t want to be paired with equally skilled players because this will reduce their winning percentage.