Career mode. A positive experience

Forza Motorsport Legacy Motorsport
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This is a meaningless post really, but amidst all of the complaints on a litany of issues with the game (some I’ve also made…) I figured I would present a positive experience with the game, the likes of which keeps me coming back to it.

I’m making my way through Career and racing E class cars (can’t remember the race series name). The particular car I’m using, a tuned Mazda RX3, is actually very good and I’ve been dominating with the AI set to unbeatable. But “dominating” isn’t without the use of the rewind feature. I’m not catching the first two cars that still leave the entire pack behind by a half mile if I can’t get through the first one or two corners without major incident. So I will use rewind until I can find a way to mosey (to put it politely) my way through the melee on those initial turns and then I can catch the first 2 cars soon enough. But for this particular race on Road Atlanta that I’m writing about, I decided not to use rewind at all and truly test myself. So the race begins, and there’s the typical crash 'em up derby at the first and second corner and I made it thru all that in around 8th place, when I’m usually 4th or 5th using rewind. As always, the first car is gone. He’s literally an eighth mile ahead of the pack. I continuously pick off the rest of the field, and then finally car #2 by the middle of the 2nd lap. But car #1 is on a mission. He is leaving the pack even further behind. I laughed at the beginning of the 3rd lap and said ‘I’m not catching that nut’. But I continued to try. I got closer and closer starting the middle of the 3rd lap so that halfway through the 5th lap it looked like I might actually catch him. At the end of the race, me pushing my car as hard as it would go, slicing the turns as much as possible while staying clean, he beat me. But I was right on his bumper crossing the finish line. It was a great race.

So, clearly, there’s still an issue with the first, and usually, the second car being much faster than the rest. But more importantly, usually racing in career mode is really, really fun. I don’t tire of it. Is it perfect? No. But I think only 2 things prevent it from being perfect, the strange PI requirements and the inability to switch to a different car for the next race. Outside of that, I think Turn 10 did a really good job with career mode. I love it.

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I agree with you,the career mode is good , mainly because of the drivatars , some of them take some beating and the fact you can pressure them into making mistakes is very well done. If you come out of the series back into the menu then back into the series you do get the option to change car by the way and you will need to in some of the career to remain competitive. Hope that helps

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That’s the key. I find that the way T10 has implemented this is actually quite ingenious. It doesn’t happen all the time–nor should it–but I recall a recent race at Sedona where I made my way into first by riding the bumpers of the cars in spots 1 and 2. Eventually, they put a wheel wrong and that was it for them. Really made me feel like I was racing actual people.

Yes; the way we’re limited in which cars we use throughout single player (I feel like the strictest restrictions should be in the Showcase events, and nowhere else) and how some cars are unusable anywhere in SP career is annoying, but it has made me sample cars I may not have otherwise; I may never have discovered the lovely '66 Silvia or '94 Miata had the game not restricted my car choice. My guess is that was the goal, and it’s a win-win in that more manufacturers get their cars driven, and we get to experience a greater variety.

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Yea, that’s what I do in order to change cars. It’s just ridiculous that you have to quit in order to change cars. When you select “next race” the following screen should give you the option of selecting a car.

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I’m currently playing career and enjoying it. The AI is very good especially in the wet. The top 2 cars are usually running top 250-500 times consistently and considering you start much further back it offers a decent challenge.

PS I did see one set a top 20 the other day had a great race with it . It was like it was possessed by the devil and meant business. I messed up it won, Stigs digital cousin is very fast on unbeatable in the showcases.

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I’m at my stopping point in career already. Only because I don’t actually like the R class cars much. Worse yet I’m in a wet series…oh well. I did like that I had more options s for career in 4 and 5, but it’s just not as fun when I use race cars for some reason. It’s my fault not Turn 10 though.

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Forza 2 and 4 had better career structures than this in my opinion.

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I like the event list from FM4, and the freedom it gave to make progress through the career in any order you liked.

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I do agree that the freedom afforded in the Forza 4 career structure was much more enjoyable. But this can fun despite all the limitations.

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I have to agree the career mode is good now that the issue of some drivatars running away has been fixed. The difficulty level seems similar to the earlier FMs. I still have an issue with starting in the middle of the field. I found the career modes better in FM3 and 4 but this isn’t bad. To be polite I won’t talk about FM5’s career mode.

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I guess it’s been fixed for some and not for others… Mine still gap the pack regularly.

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I guess I’m just still spoiled by FM4. I find career mode great in FM6 the first time you run though, after that it feels like a very monotonous grind as it’s just doing the same series over and aver and over. The showcase events are good but seem to have been an afterthought because they simply lack variety. Example: Only 11 Top Gear showcases and out of 400 cars they chose to give us two separate events for the Land Rover and Cherokee. I think it would have been a bit more enjoyable had the cut the number of Stories of Motorsport by at least half and tripled the number of Showcases.

Personally I have not noticed a change in the AI as it still is often a race for 2nd place on the shorter tracks. I have seen Expert level drivatars set times that would be top 100 on the rivals leaderboards. The wired thing is when you finally take the lead, the former lead car ends up falling back by 3-5 sec a lap

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I’m enjoying the heck out of career mode, I’m not even finished and I’m looking forward to doing it all over again.

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I’ve found the career mode in FM6 excellent. The only better one for me was.FM3, which showed you at a single glance what races and tracks the car you had selected could compete in. All in one simple grid screen…

In FM6, I’ve gone through the first 3 segments 100%, second last is at 79% while the last and most difficult is currently at 22% (which is one complete run through the segment in order to officially finish the segment).

The only real issues I have with the second last segment are the races required for Formula E Class. Dislike those electric cars immensely. But I’ll preserver

The thing that expands this iteration is that you can race every race in each segment with each car that qualifies for that race.

I’ve found that by doing so, you experience each race differently, as each car behaves differently, you need to tune it differently, and attack each race from a different perspective.

And, as Turn10 supply us with new race cars, or any car for that matter, it gives us yet another race around the various tracks, thus expanding the game even further. In fact, one could race competitively for months if they used trust the best 5 cars on each race track in each segment.

Sure, you might be going around the same tracks, but that’s what real world drivers do… And in doing so, they get to know every possible attack line, bump, dip and curve in order to know when and where to apply pressure, or back off etc.

The possibilities are endless really.

The enduro races can be done over and over as you bump up difficulty levels, as well as use each available vehicle for that race.

I personally don’t see the value in the Tenpin bowling events or the various TV show events. 50-70% of the Showcase events are worth the effort, the remainder are simply “stocking fillers” to broaden the appeal of the game for a broader audience.

Which is fine by me, they need to do so to keep the series viable to new players, but my focus is to proper racing…

It seems Turn10 have fixed the “simulated steering " that was extremely twitchy at launch. Now it’s what it should be, direct, responsive and predictable, unlike the “normal”, which I’ve always found b"wanting” today’s.

My race lines are more preside now after switching steering options…thanks Turn10…