I tend to avoid most of the five star designs I see when buying a car. I have a list of artists whose storefronts I visit and choose from there, in an attempt to get the REAL artists some recognition.
The problem with this is I’m sure there are people I’ve missed for whatever reason.
Wildcat, all very valid and very well made points.
Having looked a little more closely in-game, I have a theory on what’s happening here. Newly-shared designs (irrespective of whether they are brand new, or re-posts) - are no longer being shown on the initial “suggested liveries” screen that appears when purchasing a car, or in the initial “Find designs” screen, as they used to before the update. The only exception to this seems to be newly posted items from “followed” players.
The only way for a player to see other new liveries (from creators they do not already follow) is to actively use the “search” function. Doing so (leaving all search parameters blank), results in 1-star cars for miles, seemingly in the order they have been shared to forza’s global storefront.
I’m going to venture out on a limb here and guess that most players will never make it that far – instead they just pick one of the liveries that pop up on that initial screen when they click “find designs” or select a livery when purchasing a car – and again, these screens now seem to offer only (a) featured designs, (b) designs (including new designs) from followed players, and (c) “popular” designs that are all already 5 stars.
This explains both my observations and yours. My new and reposted cars are not getting exposure because people are only seeing them when they actively search… It also supports your comment that you have not seen a significant change in your numbers. Since all of your liveries are already 5 stars, and because you likely have a fair number of people following you (a guess, based on your total number of downloads) your stuff is likely still featuring, at least to an extent, on those initial screens --meaning people do not have to search to see it.
If this is what’s going on, it’s great for established painters. For newbies like me – not so much!!!
At any rate, thanks for the thoughts, and looking forward to hearing what you find in a few days time. Cheers!
I am very curious what Wildcat observes and discovers with his traffic. I am a new painter and my second competition entry won. That one win has caused thousands of downloads. Around that same time, any design I shared would get about 100 downloads per day. Then suddenly all of my new designs had zero downloads while my contest winning design still got hundreds per day and still gets downloads daily after 21 days.
I have stopped sharing new designs because I feel like no one is seeing them.
If JONK1969 reads this post, Please enlighten us JONK, what is happening with our new designs getting zero downloads? Was the system changed or is there a problem with the system? Thank you in advance. I appreciate your recent activity on the forums.
Okay … checked out my download situation from yesterday to see how I’ve been affected. These numbers reflect downloads over the last 24 hours.
I have 34 designs that I’ve shared since the game’s launch. Eighteen of those paints were Forza livery contest winners. Yesterday I had downloads, likes and uses of all 18 of the contest winners. These are all 5-star designs that have been shared anywhere from a couple of weeks ago all the way back to release date. Numbers for those 18 paints for yesterday:
788 downloads
58 likes
1,259 uses
Now … for the other 16 designs that were not contest winners … only 1 download and 2 uses combined. All of these designs except for one are also 5-star designs and have been shared anywhere from a couple of weeks back to release date as well. These paints only have about 50-250 downloads each over the entire time they’re been shared … so it seems about right for these to only have a download or two every once in a while. One day is too short of a timeframe to see what may be going on with these 16 non-winners … so I’ll keep monitoring them for a while.
As for the contest winners … they must be added to a rotation of some sort where they are randomly shown to gamers in the Recommended Designs feed in the AutoShow and the Find New Designs feed in your garage. And they must also stay in there permanently. Because I am seeing just as many downloads, likes and uses of recently released paints as I am paints that were shared over 6 months ago.
So I can’t really say for sure that anything different is going on for me. Those download number are lower than some other days I’ve seen … but I’m sure the exact numbers can fluctuate on a daily basis. One other good thing to note … the credit reward system is very accurate. I also checked the credits I received and they matched all the combined download, like and usage numbers I tracked exactly down to the single digit.
Good info, Wildcat. I haven’t taken a detailed look at my activity yet, but I’m pretty sure it mimics yours. I’m getting about 200-250 each in downloads and uses per day, up just a small bit from where it was before this started. I’ve only had 3 winners and their totals continue to climb, even though they are months old. The others aren’t seeing much change at all. I thought there might be a chance of my Dart seeing activity since it’s prominent in my HW design contest, but last I looked a few days ago, there were only 2 downloads. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to finish and share a few new designs that are underway. When I do, I’ll update my gallery thread with some, but not all, of them and see if that yields anything significant.
Useful info, thanks for checking Wildcat.
For aspiring painters here, the takeaway from this change is that the work you post to the storefront from now on is likely going to be seen by a lot fewer people than before. This is because in the current system, it appears that only people that have tagged you as a “followed creator” will see your new liveries in the initial design selection screens, eg
Community → Paints
Garage → Designs and Paints → Find New Designs
Autoshow → [select car] → Recommended Designs
The only way people who do NOT follow you will see your new work is by actively triggering a search from inside one of these screens.
TL;DR
Basically what I’ve been saying for the last 2 weeks…NO FOLLOWERS NO DOWNLOAD!
not that a big a deal
There definitely has been a change. I randomly unshared 6 “Five-Star” paints and re-posted them a few days ago to test the theory of the dwindling downloads. These re-posted paints are now attracting little to no attention. My contest winners and other “Five Star” rated liveries, on the other hand, are continuing to show high downloads, uses, and likes.
I posted two new paints today, I suspect they won’t garner much attention either.
That’s the worst part. Why bother working on new stuff if no one is going to see it?
This is essentially the whole scheme of the situation that I can’t think around. I uploaded a whole bunch of random old designs I had created months ago all with the same keywords:
drift drag jdm hotwheels hot wheels race carbon stripe
This was all an attempt to see if I could manipulate the system by using certain stereotypical keywords. NOPE. Literally zero downloads, none for any of the eight I had uploaded, in the week that they were up. What exactly is the goal within the bigger picture here? I’m going to halt my design making process for now and just stay off FH3 in general. The only reason I got on was to collect design and tune payouts, and with that gone I might as well just not get on until this gets changed.
Yes, everyone hates seeing the well beyond crappy designs showing up in recommended, but most of the time (from both what I’ve heard from other players and seen myself) a majority of the designs that initially showed up were legitimate race designs or other notable replica liveries (speaking only for race cars). Very few people actually try on their paints, and even fewer obsess over the small details when creating a true replica. The players that start learning and practicing now literally have no incentive to even begin because they know their content will not get widespread attention due to these things being changed around. Basically, only the popular benefit now. I guess I should be glad that I got up to at least pro…
I’ve only recently started making better paints and sharing them, what a terrible time to start. My older not as good paints got instant downloads, not loads but enough to make me feel it’s worthwhile. Now I’m making much better stuff (I think) and it just bombs, a handful of downloads if I’m lucky. At least my cars should sell for mega millions as they are probably one offs 
even posting photos in the paint booth doesn’t generate much interest. Maybe il take out a tv ad. Seriously though, will the new paint situation be fixed again as it’s mostly pointless now?
well all of these results are a real bummer. If established excellent painters get almost zero downloads, there is definitely a change that seems to leave new designs lost in the muck. I had new painter fever and now my desire to paint has changed. I know I am supposed to paint for me and me only, but I enjoyed sharing and now it seems dejecting to share good work and get zero downloads.
I think I will just start sharing designs and ignore the zero downloads. It is difficult to ignore because the first thing you see in the pause menu is 3 new messages. Todays messages: my Drivatar was in 3 races, Tunes had 10 DL, 0 likes and 21 uses, Designs had 21 DL, 2 likes and 30 uses. Everything used to be 10 times that amount. even my Drivatar is used less. I guess Horizon 3 is telling me I suck, LOL.
Just checked mine, and am still getting a steady 250 a day because of previous competition wins, however, anything new has died a death. Vinyls are still going okay, and I haven’t seen much change in that, so it seems to be liveries that are suffering. I can see this putting a dampener on any new livery artists, I was quite happy when I first started to see even a few downloads and uses and encouraged to continue and improve, but if there are none at all, then anyone is going to feel a bit unloved.
I’ll carry on, but I hope Turn10 address this.
Okay … after some conversations with someone at T10 and some more research … I have some updates on this issue.
Painter/Tuner Status Level
First, some quick housekeeping. I asked about the exact requirements for star ratings on individual paints and tunes as well as requirements for painter/tuner levels. The levels take into account all downloads, likes and uses and apply to both painters and tuners. Here are the confirmed thresholds for each painter/tuner status level (did not get confirmation of individual paint/tune requirements but have asked for that):
Amateur - 500
SemiPro - 2,500
Pro - 5,000
Elite - 10,000
Legend - 50,000
New Design Download Issue
Now, on to our sharing/download issue. I was told that this was just a temporary issue and that it should now be back to how it was working before (more on that below). They recently moved to a new livery storage configuration at their datacenter and the “new” curation source was temporarily turned off during that migration. This is why no one was seeing any of their new designs being downloaded … because they were not being shown to anyone. The “new” curation source has now been turned back on. The timing of this happening when the Hot Wheels expansion dropped was just coincidence and there was nothing intentionally changed in the code or the sharing/download rewards system.
Curation Process
Also asked about how designs/tunes are chosen to be shown in the “Featured” areas of the AutoShow, Garage and Community sections. There are automated and manual components of the curation process that determines the 20 designs that you are shown when searching for designs. Here’s the curation source priority order:
(1) Featured Designs - These are contest winners, community team selections and liveries in active auctions by Legend painters with their own liveries applied. I have asked for clarification on this last category … I assume that the same curation process is used to determine what paints show up in the Elite Designs section of the Auction House and this is what they were referring to. One note on the active auction featured designs … there is a minimum # of required layers on the paint to qualify as a ‘Featured’ design.
(2) Friends/Club Members - These are works by members of your XBox Live friends list and any club members of clubs you belong to.
(3) Followed Creators - Paints/tunes of creators you have chosen to follow in game.
(4) New Paints/Tunes - Newly shared paints and tunes for the vehicle you’re currently in.
(5) Popular Paints/Tunes - Paints and tunes flagged as popular. Not sure if the ‘Popular’ flag is given by someone on the community team or if it’s the result of some automated process.
To confirm the list above, this morning I searched Recommended Designs on the Porsche 911 GT3 RS … and the results of the search were exactly as was listed above. The first design I was shown was a winner of a recent livery contest and was marked as ‘Featured’. The next 4 designs I was shown were paints done by people on my XBox Live friends list. The next 3 designs were from creators that I follow in game. The next 5 paints were all 1 or 2 star paints of creators that I do not follow. (These are the new designs that we did not see being featured for a couple of weeks while their datacenter changes were being made.) The last 7 paints I was shown were all 5-star paints that were marked as ‘Popular’.
Based on what I saw there, it does appear that new paints are now being shown in the Recommended Designs sections now. Also … on my own shared designs, I shared a new design 3 days ago and it now has 3 downloads, 1 use and 1 like. This is not a new or popular car, so I was not expecting huge download numbers, but at least it is getting something.
Wildcat, thanks for your efforts in following this up and getting official feedback. Sounds like good news.
As of 5/18 everything with the store front appears to have returned to normal. Shared a new design and it’s almost 5 star in less than an hour!
Thanks God!
A few more bits of information…
I had asked for confirmation of star level thresholds for individual paints/tunes. Evidently it’s more complicated than just the combined download, like and usage numbers used to determine overall painter/tuner levels. The popularity rating (1-5 stars) for individual paints/tunes is more of a moving target. Each paint/tune does get a popularity score which is its combined downloads, likes and uses … but the thresholds for the different levels is the part that is dynamic. The servers builds percentage thresholds for the levels based on the existing popularity scores in the system and then each file is slotted into those 5 buckets based on its score. So there’s no fixed number of DLs, likes and uses to make a certain level … the percentage thresholds change over time as new paints/tunes are shared and added into the mix.
I had wondered about that- I’ve had designs go over 100 combined without hitting 5 stars, but also had 5 star designs that weren’t quite at 100…
Not by much either way, but definitely not reacting to the magic number of 100.
My carbon FXX and SV designs constantly get five stars not even five hours after I reupload them. 3 to 8 likes with roughly 50 downloads and usually over 100 uses (for whatever reason).
The garbage they’re telling WildCat is essentially irrelevant to every legend painter. If they get within 2,000 total to 50k, they’re going to get legend no matter what. At that close of a threshold, players will strive to get them to legend regardless of how ****** their designs are. This is why some of these “legend painters” got there only from sharing the same groups on every car lol. So like I said, just a bunch of irrelevant junk up to the legend status. Now, for the lower four levels, I’d assume that does give a slim bit of insight. But the numbers stay relatively constant unless the player has gotten thousands of downloads and uses but close to zero likes (which almost never happens).
A little note for everyone looking to hit legend painter: do what everyone else is doing. Don’t make quality paints, don’t spend hours on making a perfect race replica. Make one awesome design and save each side (top, bottom, sides, etc) to their own vinyl groups and paste each of them to every car you can get your hands on. Most of the time you won’t even have to reposition them between cars. Share them, and so long as they’re “buzz paints” you’re stats will skyrocket. Ideas for paints I guess I could point out: Spiderman, Batman, basically anything a younger audience would adore. Mountain Dew, Monster… the possibilities are endless.