Ok so I did a little testing with this “RWD and AWD” issue about how RWD can’t drive that straight at high speeds. What I found out is of course no surprise to me, the main reason why RWD can possibly spin out a lot more than AWD is due to how much the RPMs redline. Meaning unlike AWD automatic, rear wheel drive can tend to have a hard time driving straight when starting to accelerate out of each gear. The way the game makes automatic work is quite sad because unless you drive manual with rear wheel drive, it’s going to spin out almost everytime, unless you can control it quick enough. In all wheel drive cases, when the gauge redlines, it won’t have as much of an issue as the opposite because the front tires spin along with the back tires. Meaning, when you spin out, you can instantly gain control again, but with rear wheel, you have to what until the back tires are aligned straight with the front tires. So, it’s best to try to do manual with RWD, and leave automatic to AWD, that way you can simulate automatic by just shifting right before it hits the redline. I’m putting this on this thread, becuase I’ve heard some people have a hard time using rear wheel vehicles on the drift adventure, and that possibly doing manual might(keyword MIGHT) make it a little easier. Usually shifting up to second or third gear is better for drifting unless your car goes fast enough in first gear. 
I hope this wasn’t too long to read and it was a little bit helpful to someone.
I always drive manual w/ clutch and it seems pretty obvious why RWD spins out more easily than AWD. AWD has more longitudinal grip keeping the car straight during a lateral slide. This isn’t an issue and reflects real world physics. In other words, AWD cars can easily pull massive drifts at high speeds because they are more capable of countering the cars inertia as it gets sideways. RWD can also drift at speed in FH4, but it just takes a lot more fine controller input and there is little incentive to build much speed going into a corner with either RWD or AWD under the current point system and race format.
You’re right that gearing is an important factor in drift tuning though. There are multiple methods of tuning, the most popular is probably long gears to avoid ever hitting redline. Youtuber Hoki Hoshi has a video featuring another method that is interesting, it involves tuning as you normally would for the first 2-3 gears and then making the rest of the gears very short. You basically extend the drift by up and down shifting with this method rather than using throttle input. The former method seems more realistic to me but both work.
So what does it take to hit grandmaster in this mode? I see a ton of names in the top 100 that I recognize, and a lot of them were top 100 in points drifting in every forza title, so is it a lack of elo right now? Is it even attainable in this mode?
There is no difference in my AWD vs RWD cars because the AWD diff setting are biased 100% to the rear, front accel and decel are set to 0.
One of the problems in current drift adventures is that they are “High speed manji (also called Scandinavian flick) adventures”.
So how about adding a new adventure of “corner only” to the drift adventure.
Only the corner divided like the drift zone is the target of score aggregation. (Like “Tokyo Xtreme Racer Drift” series)
This will also reduce the possibility that small cars like Abarth 595 or Classic Mini will be treated as OP in the drift adventure.
And the current drift adventures do not tolerate even a slight stick out of the courses.
This is also one of the reasons why cars like Abarth have advantages, so let’s ease this score judge a bit further. Specifically, about one tire.
With such a fix, you will be able to enjoy drifting adventure with big cars like Cadillac Eldorado and Cadillac Limo.
(First of all, sorry for my poor English.)
The scoring system is ridiculous.
· How is it possible to be first, winning all rounds and only get +2 points when other times you get +7 or +10 or +17 points?
· How is it possible to be second and get some times +4 points and others -5 points?
· How is it possible to be third and sometimes get +1 point and others lose -10 points?
It’s ridiculous, that way it takes eons to level up, the points to obtain at the end of the all rounds should always be the same, for example; first +15 points, second +10 points and third +5 points. It’s frustrating many times to finish first and win +5 points and in the next round to finish second and lose -7 points when you are only 2 points away from the first.
Please PG, fix the scoring system.
FH4 undoubtedly utilizes a Bayesian skill rating system to determine the skill points for individual players. There are 4 different ranked game modes (Team Racing, Team Games, FFA Racing, and now FFA Drifting) that this rating system is analyzing and scoring for all the players participating in ranked gameplay. The skill point number associated with your account is only one small piece of numerical information being factored into a complex algorithm to determine the number of points you should be awarded or deducted following a win or loss in a game. Factors that most likely affect the number of points you will be awarded or deducted are: Current Skill Points, total # of games played/time spent playing a game mode (wins + losses + quits + disconnects), # of total disconnects/quits (left early from a game), # of total wins, # of total losses (stayed till the end of the game), whether you are in a convoy or playing as a lone wolf/solo (for team based modes), and all of these previous factors for each opponent in the game.
To put it simply, the rating system is calculating how likely you are to place in a certain position at the end of a match (1st place, 2nd place, 3rd place, etc. etc.) based on the quality of your opponents in that specific match. The LESS points awarded or deducted are a result of you placing close to where you were “calculated” to place in the game as well as factoring how confident the system thought you would place in that position. The MORE points you are awarded or deducted is a result of you placing in a position the game did not expect you to place in. The more games you play the more confident the system will feel it knows where you will place at the end of the match. This is why they have a 10 game qualifying period, where it is actually adding/deducting points during these games because if you saw that you were gaining (or losing) 100, 200, 300 or even 1000 points in a match it would be startling. In your first 10 games the system is trying to calibrate and determine your true skill/abilities relative to others playing the game.
If you win a lot of points it is because you “surprised” the system and placed well above what it thought you would relative to the given opponents in the match. If you lose a lot of points it is because again you “surprised” the system and placed well below where it thought you should place. If you gain or lose a small amount of points, it is because you did exactly what the system thought you would do.
The only broken thing about their point system is that this game does not have nearly as big of a player base required for a Bayesian skill system to be used and the point spread becomes too large across a small population. You must be in a situation where you are relatively high ranked in terms of points compared to the rest of the player base and as such you are getting 1st or 2nd place just like the game thought you would. The more games you play placing where the game thinks you should place the more “confident” the system becomes that it has an accurate skill assigned to you. The only way a Bayesian system works accurately is if the population is large enough and a matchmaking system is in place that places similarly ranked players in lobbies with each other. However, with the relatively small population that plays ranked FH4 this is not possible and you are matched with anyone that is available, including very low ranked opponents which results in your small amount of points for a win because you were so heavily favored to win versus those specific opponents.
One could argue that skill points won should always be the same for a 1st, 2nd, 3rd,… last. But by doing that, the people that would be at the top of the leaderboard would just have to be the people that are slightly above average and are able to play the most games. For example, say the game awarded set points based on positions lets keep it simple: +5=1st, +4=2nd, +3=3rd, +2=4th, +1=5th, +0=6th, -1=7th, -2=8th, -3=9th, -4=10th, -5=11th, -6=12th. Say in a given season a truly skilled player goes undefeated and wins 10 matches or gets 10 x (+5) = +50 points. Now say an above average player plays 30 matches and gets 3rd 27 times and last 3 times or 27x(+3) + 3x(-6) = +63 points. The ranking system would then place the above average player that gained 63 points by at best placing 3rd and losing 3 times higher ranked than the undefeated player that won every game, but played less games and earned only 50 points.
Bottom line, the system they use isn’t broken, they just don’t have enough players to implement proper matchmaking and their Grandmaster point level is too high for the current ranked player population. Until you get more people playing drift adventure and getting to skill point levels close to you, you will have a very difficult time ranking up because you are always expected to get 1st or 2nd place. You would have to “surprise” the system and beat a bunch of people that it didn’t think you would beat (be an underdog and beat goliath). The other flaw in their system is that the Grandmasters have no incentive to play more than one game to get their rewards, thus they exit the player pool upon reaching Grandmaster and you have little to no opportunity to play against them and get a chance to beat a “goliath” you are then stuck playing the low ranked bottom of the barrel players where you are the “goliath”. PG would have to implement a minimum number of games played in a series to maintain your ranking or automatically be dropped to a lower tier to provide “incentive” for GMs to play more than one qualifying game each series or all ranks have to be reset or dropped say 1000 points to force everyone to rank up again.
The Bayesian skill rating system is the epitome of a ladder system. It is designed to never let an “average joe” achieve Grandmaster until they improve their skill level relative to their opponents to warrant that title. The goal of it is to require you be BETTER than your opponents, it will not allow just putting in an amount of effort to reach the goal, you have to actually be better than a large majority of the ranked population and win a vast majority of your games and never lose when you are expected to win. To move up in a Bayesian system you have to play against good quality opponents and regularly win. Easy wins, will not move you up, you have to win the hard matches. But when there are no “hard” matches left for you and you are always expected to win and you still haven’t hit Grandmaster, that’s when you know the system does not work (which is where FH4 is, a broken matchmaking system due to a small online ranked population).
As others have pointed out in other places in the forums, one possible mechanism for their skill rating system in Microsoft’s TrueSkill program. You can read more about it here:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/2018/03/trueskill2.pdf
IMO they could probably fix this to some extent by moving to fixed timings for ranked adventures, like they already do with the Trial at 5 minute intervals, but I’d go for longer intervals than 5 minutes.
I agree. That would definitely help. They should also have a lot more feedback indicating how many people are currently in online ranked play and how many are currently searching for a lobby. The thing that keeps tripping the matchmaking up is that people have no idea how close they are to getting into a full 12/12 lobby and then they lose interest and go do something else, then someone else joins, then someone leaves and so on, resulting in looooong wait times to find matches. They have zero player feedback on estimated wait times and they don’t allow for enough available players to build “fair” matches. Their matchmaking system is so useless it is no wonder the ranked population is so small.
The fact you also can’t go do other things while you wait for ranked matchmaking, for example enter a seasonal race while the matchmaking is still going on and give me the option to just quit out and accept the session alert if a lobby is completed (which I gladly would do), forces people to be limited to things they can do in freeroam or in their garage while they wait for a match, resulting in people getting bored and leaving a queue.
Feedback of available opponents, their quality and ongoing lobbies is non-existent and a great flaw in the whole MP. Custom Adventure would greatly profit from an overview showing which lobbies are currently running and an option to join directly, too.
Back in the days when I played WoW arena competitively (Burning Crusade) Bilzzard’s implementation already was miles ahead of Horizon’s. There was an estimated waiting time, matchmaking by a hidden true skill rating which actually worked and once you reached the highest rank (Gladiator) there was a certain number of games that had to be played to stay qualified. So no “reach Gladiator and then relax”. Thus, it was more challenging, fun & rewarding than “Ranked”…which is just a big waste of time to be honest.
Thanks for all explanation, but I still reaffirm that the scoring system is ridiculous, not to say another word worse.
Today I played 4 rounds of adventure online drift (ranked), I finished first in 2 rounds and second in the other 2, result:
· First: +2 points
· Second: -3 points
· First: +2 points
· Second: -1 points
I have not won any points at the end of the afternoon after winning 2 times and to be second other 2 times, in this way I just feel that I throw the time to the trash and I lose the desire to play. I have been stuck in the same score for a week because if I finish first I do not win practically anything and if I am second, they take away points.
Why do I have to pay for the broken dishes of the scoring system if there are not enough players or they leave the game? It is unfair for those of us who are on the podium.
You are right that maybe it is not a good method to always get the same score, but the system that is right now is unfair and you should change it for a better one, at least if I am on the podium I do not want to be losing points all the time.
Yea, if someone leaves the game we should get points for beating them. 99% of the time when someone leaves it’s because they’re about to lose to lower league players.
I would strongly encourage anyone with questions and confusion regarding the ranked points system to look here: Microsoft’s Xbox Live TrueSkill Ranking System
It does not matter if someone leaves the game early, you still get rewarded points based on the system still analyzing the final outcome as if that person that left was still there. It has ZERO effect on the points awarded/deducted from people that stay through the full game if someone leaves before it ends. It WILL affect the person that left early though because the system applies an increased factor to the points that person lost. They will be penalized more points for leaving the game early. You can screenshot scores at the start of the game and then go search for people in the leaderboards to see how many points they lost. If the person is low ranked and left and was expected to lose, their penalty may be small/nothing because they were already expected to lose, but if a higher ranked player leaves, it will not only assume they just got a last place finish, but the system now adds a tick mark to their disconnect/quit column that will penalize them further when calculating future games and factoring how many points should be awarded.
This is one of the benefits of a TrueSkill rating system is that quitters/disconnectors do not affect the points awarded/deducted in a game. Quitters do affect a team though because now they have either given their team an advantage (in racing) or a disadvantage (in playground) by leaving early, however they have not changed any point awarded/deducted scenario. The only person they have significantly impacted by quitting early is themselves.
There is nothing worse you can do to your account/score than leaving a game early or disconnecting (even if it wasn’t your fault and the game disconnects you). The only time a disconnect does not affect the person is if the entire lobby is disconnected, then the game treats it as if the game never took place.
It is a common misconception that people think that people quitting games will prevent them from losing points and prevent winners from getting points they deserve.
Here is an applicable snip from an FAQ regarding the TrueSkill Algorithm relative to team games, but also applicable to FFA which prevents exploiting of the points system in a TrueSkill system:
Q: I am playing a team game and all the players in my team drop out of the game. Of course, I lose the game. Will I lose as many skill points as all the people who left me standing in the rain?
A: Unfortunately, yes. All alternative options are possible exploits for cheating:
-If the TrueSkill ranking system does not count the game at all then the losing team can always ensure not to lose points by dropping out early (entirely).
-If the TrueSkill ranking system only uses the team configurations at the end of the game then both the players that dropped would not be penalized and the remaining player can be arbitrarily boosted (that is, shortly before the end of the game all but one player drop from a team; for the update equation it would now seem that a single player has won against a team of, say, 4 players and would apply a massive positive update).
-If the TrueSkill ranking system would introduce an arbitrary lowest rank in which every player falls that drops before the end of the game, then, again, the remaining player(s) in a team can be arbitrarily boosted (he won against the losing team and all the players that dropped. This approach would penalize the players that drop, though.
But: Players who drop regularly from a team would eventually be identified by the TrueSkill ranking system as having a negative impact on the team skill and will eventually be matched with other players of that have a negative team impact. So, you should not see this happening to often if you are a player of average skill.
@Jadigafer7 I may be wrong but i think they have tell in stream that they use microsoft trueskill system.
But you are right that this system dont work because there is not enough players. But i dont really want see system where winning give you allways same amount points, i have play game where was leaderboard that was made that way and that leaderboard feel so meaningless when number one guy winning % was something like 50.
I just had 37 consecutive drift adventure lobby WITHOUT FINDING A S2 RWD ONE !!!
THIS IS STEWPEEDDDD… WHYYY ???
Why wouldn’t u add the option to select what kind of drift adventure u want to play???
[Mod Edit - Abbreviated profanity, profanity and profanity that is disguised but still alludes to the words are not permitted - D]
Im Absolutely blown away that theres still no option to choose between awd and rwd in drift adventure its rediculous should be common sense for the lazy developers to fix this huge overlook. and should be able to choose class too cause i only like A800 RWD drifting and normally i have to wait atleast an hour!! of entering events till i get that class. And also I just tried an S1 S2 class event and got 3rd overall and i ranked up from 11 to 8 and now i did a A800 RWD event i just won first place in all three rounds of ranked drift adventure and yet it ranked me down From 8 to 10!! im at a total loss this is obviously broken or something like what the hell. Its bad enough having to do the online races each week for the festival i get 1st place 99% of the time and almost always have to replay the championships like 3 times minimum which alone is like an hour of my life gone. and over 18 times once and even though i get first every time my teamates always get last and we always lose I assume its cause they put real good players like me with a bunch of first timer virgins to even out teams but like how is this a good ranking system the game never should have been released With this problem And like almost two years or something later still they havent fixed anything!. What are they trying to do cause a spike in suicides of forza players. Lol.