Was excited to use the Stratos today for some good ole classic rally racing, put on some big offroad tires and rally suspension and a good amont of power to put it to B700, and… all the races were hyper painful slogs. Which, right, silly me, how could i forget, RWD IS ILLEGAL FOR DIRT IN THIS GAME. Even for a entire class of vehicles that were all RWD dirt cars, the AI is all timed on AWD because the devs thought “oh the Dirt AI in FH4 was too weak and easy, better take the easiest and Lamest way possible to inflate that diffculty back up!”, which, yes, for the record it was to easy in FH4… when you were drving a AWD car; RWD was a fun challenge in that game and felt pretty fun most of the time. Now anytime i try to race in the classic rally class in this game, it feels herrendous no matter the build. The AI is all swapped, and swapped AI gets a MASSIVE Accel boost, just look at the renault 5 turbo in retro rally if you don’t belive me, even if it starts toward the back it will be in 2-3 at race end.
Devs ruined one of my Favorite ways to race from the last game, and i needed to vent about it.
So why not do online racing against real people?
I feel your pain buddy. I play a lot of Rally Adventure and I build as close as I can to exact replicas of old rally cars. Even the time splits on RA seem to use AWD. I can’t keep up, even on tarmac. I’m pretty sure the time splits use AWD in all circumstances for the Rally DLC. Which just feels wrong for Classic Rally.
This wasn’t a problem in FH4, I drove RWD on dirt all the time and I was able to easily keep up with the AI on Unbeatable. Perhaps it’s just the AI was better balanced and more consistent but after driving the 037 in FH4 today, I think the physics have changed for the worse.
Not OP but…
Rammers, bad servers, ridiculous meta, and a general lack of driving ability in Open Matchmaking is a good start.
The problem is even worse there due to it being a no restrictions meta fest.
Besides, can’t drive my C class classic rally cars there anyways.
Best solution is to race with friends in a convoy, which isn’t an option for everyone. Besides, PGG went ahead and entirely ignored the single player and convoy only aspect of the game.
I don’t because of most of the reasons that KnightOfRen8514 listed, but also because thats mostly not for me.
I usually enjoy singleplayer in games like this more, only online racing i really do is the weekly trial nowadays.
Also if you think i could get any enjoyment trying to race a RWD Rally car against the meta nightmare that is Online, your crazy. I know the kind of racing i like may be a niche, but its niche that was fulfilled in FH4, and one i can’t enjoy in FH5.
Well said. I think they changed the physics for RWD on dirt/gravel, and not in a good way. And no, it’s not possible to get any enjoyment out of getting decimated by 6 Boneshakers in an 037. I don’t remember FH4 having this issue. You had the Atomic Punk as the ridiculous OP car but the grip physics on dirt allowed RWD to keep up.
Which RWD was able to keep up with the Dirt meta in Horizon 4? It was even more AWD-swap focused than 5.
There are viable RWD builds in Horizon 5 but none involve any rallye cars. They are the ultra high mechanical grip cars that also dominate road racing - Elise GT1, '99 Elise, XJR-15 and so on.
The new Abarth 131 is really fun at B700 and very easy to drive as RWD. But since nearly every lobby has a 510 Datsun, Scout or Jeep in it you won’t win much.
Did you try the weekly championship? They’re locked on Highly Skilled so shouldn’t be too hard to beat, even with RWD. I think I did it in a stock Stratos
Yeah the weekly championships are fine, though it is still frustrating and pulls me out of the experience to see the AI all pull away like AWD cars off the line when doing a classic rally race. You have to bring the difficulty down to average in order to stop that, which makes them too easy.
I’ve even managed to beat unbeatable drivatars on the odd occasion using RWD dirt, though there is a high level of inconsistency in the AI’s performance that makes winning in that situation more an application of luck than skill.
In the end though it’s always a disingenuous experience. The only way to get the real deal is PvP with friends in a convoy, and all agree to the same restrictions, including drivetrain. Hard enough to find a good group of like-minded individuals that you enjoy hanging out with, never mind getting them all online at the same time and all on the same page. And this is coming from someone who has accomplished all of that, many times.
Honestly these days I go to Dirt Rally 2.0 to get my classic and retro rally kicks. Very fun, but not very relaxing.
I never said anything about the FH4 Dirt meta, The entire post was supposed to be about my expericnce VS AI only. In FH4 you could beat Pro diffculty AI in Classic rally car races using a RWD/FWD vehicle, and it was a fair challenge. In FH5 the AI is timed to a AWD Swapped tune, making the class garbage to play unswapped, and i don’t like that.
I don’t do much online racing in FH5 or FH4, and even when i do, i use cars that i know should at least do well. I’m not a good enough driver/tuner to attempt races vs Real people at a known handicap lol.
While I’m inclined to agree on some level at least, isn’t that just how it is in reality? I’m no expert but didn’t Audi kill off RWD rally cars?
Forcing RWD is easy; make blueprints with restrictions, find like-minded people or race the robots, job done. I also don’t see why there aren’t more such in the playlist, though, I’d like that.
I replied to KnightofRen with my take on meta.
Imho Classic Rallye works really well as RWD up to B700 against the AI.
A800 requires too much power which these cars can only handle as AWD.
The mentionend Abarth 131 is stable and decently fast.
The new Lancia 037 is even more stable but very underpowered.
Maybe it’s a matter of setting up the cars?
Yes, AWD is better on dirt.
However, the whole point of the PI system is to remove the concept of “better”. PI is supposed to act as the great equalizer. It’s why we’re able to race vans vs Ferraris and similar situations.
Now PI was never going to be perfect. It covers too many possible combinations, in too many conditions, on too many surfaces. It’s practically impossible to make it flawless. However, that being said, there are obvious oversights and errors, even outside of the topic at hand. Offroads are way too overpowered, both for how they should act IRL (tires like that should get less grip when they hit tarmac) and for how little pi they cost. Meanwhile, sports tires are horrible value for the pi they cost, especially since for a whopping 2 pi more (usually), you can get the much more meta rally tires (the A class tarmac tire of choice).
RWD dirt and CC is one of those obvious errors, especially since it was so much more competitive in 4. I could beat unbeatable on any course in most well tuned RWD dirt or CC builds. The issue there is threefold.
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Drivatars are more difficult. And by more difficult I mean they cheat more. The cheats got turned up to 11 in FH5. The way that they cheat makes them particularly difficult to deal with in RWD. I’ve had more than a few RWD dirt builds that make the AWD builds sweat when driven by a human, but bring that same build into PvE and it unlocks the cheapest, most cheating AI ever since they base the AI mostly on your power to weight, so they get more power but with AWD launch and impossible grip.
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The speed of the game went up and all PI levels went up. This is especially true of A, S1, and S2, but even D for faster by a significant margin. RWD dirt and CC was viable up to the top of A in 4. Without viability in A, a lot of potentially great RWD cars becomes useless. The game needs more pi thresholds to cover these wider performance gaps.
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It feels like a background calculation got messed up. In 5, RWD got more viable on tarmac compared to 4, making it is therefore more PI efficient (more performance per PI spent). Yet it got less viable on dirt and CC compared to 4. How is that possible? The system is universal!
I’m not entirely convinced that the previously mentioned egregiously horrible tire balance doesn’t also contribute to the RWD viability issue.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. You nailed it right on the head what the main problems are with the way the game currently is.
I completely agree on the RWD physics feeling better on tarmac in 5 compared to 4, and how strange it is that, that seemingly either didn’t apply to/or helped to screw up RWD Dirt and CC.
First they need to make that all tires other than off-road/rally sort don’t work on dirt/off road surfaces for racing pretty much at all… After that, all the cars without any ground clearance or off-road ability should get stuck on dirt like in FM.
I f-ing hate when purposely built rally car, off-road truck gets destroyed by some hypercard with off-road tires!
It is arcade, but that’s stupid… it defeats purpose of having trucks and SUVs in game completely.
No matter upgrades Ferrari P4 CAN NOT be better in Cross Country than Jeep or in rally than f-ing WRC rally car. And also 4wheel drive swapping should be nerfed greatly it’s simply stupid, everything you see and need to run online is 4WD, it breaks immersion and lowers impact of driving skill.
As much as i a agree with you that Purpose Built Rally cars should be the go-to when going dirt racing in this game, i hate to say thats never gonna happen.
Playground have been embracing a more and more Arcadey style, “do whatever you want with your car” mentality ever since FH3, and they Tripeld down on that sentament in this game when they started to allow most cars the ability to equip every possible Tire compound.
To be fair, i don’t think its a bad thing at all, it was just the style of racing game they have decided to take Horizon in.
At the same time however, the freedom they have granted players has devolved into its logical Extremes in this case, such as classic le mans racers being better for CC than trophy trucks, or a Hot Wheels Hot rod destroying actual supercars in circuit races.
It can be ridculous, but they have chosen what side of “Sim-cade” they want to fall under more.
You might want to look for a diffrent Racing game at this point, i don’t think any of your problems with how the game currently is, are going to be changed anytime soon.
What is odd though is certain cars higher up can’t equip Offroad tires including several of the FE’s , you’d think them of all things would embody the nature of FH, instead they can only equip Rallies at best and they just don’t cut it for dirt/CC.
Also there may actually be cars out there that could be better or at least as good as the CLK/911 GT1 for S2 dirt/CC if they could equip Offroads but sadly for some unknown reason they can’t, the only other cars that can even somewhat challenge those two are the Ultima which is nuts to drive + control or the Venom F5/McLaren F1 GT which are situational being more like CC powerbuilds.
Everything is subject to change. Even if they don’t want to remove ability to add off-road tires to everything, maybe they’ll upgrade physics engine to be aware of ride height…
But all in all I’m not expecting realisam, just bit of common sense, bit of logic… If you are adding trophy trucks, make them useful, if you have off-road tires don’t let them be meta for road racing also…
I don’t know many Forza players that don’t have issue with 4WD Off-Road tires meta…
It completely ruined online racing for me, It’s not fun to run build that you like, and be completely destroyed by some noob in broken meta.
I was gonna say if you’re getting beaten by supercars with off-road tires, it means you’re in A-class, and it’s already a stretch of realism in terms of off-road speed.
if you want some semblance of rally purity, then I wouldn’t be racing above b-class, which would disqualify a whole ton of inappropriate cars, and allow no off-road tires on quite a few others. custom racing supports b, although unfortunately no lower.
the game is fine, the classes work, there’s just a middle ground in A class where almost every car is eligible and it becomes a mess. some people like it, others don’t, it’s the crux of anything goes and open world hodgepodge.