Drivatar behavior

Forza Motorsport Legacy Motorsport FM7 Discussion
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I have a “theory” on how the Difficulty level is currently working in the game. This is based mainly off of AI behavior and the possibility that I believe I caught the game accidentally reporting to the “laptime board pause menu” that it was erroneously boosting lead cars.

A bit of a preface: I race on unbeatable with long race length. My laptimes are generally top 100 (usually top 50), that isn’t meant as a humble brag, I just want my pace to be known so anyone else who may usually have 100-200 lap times on unbeatable and sees similar behavior we can get closer to confirming the behavior.

Alright, so the boosting I’m talking about. At the time that I saw this I didn’t think anything of it, and I’ve tried catching it again but I haven’t seen it happen again. Basically I was 4 to 5 lap into a 14 lap race and I was wondering why I was leading the rear pack in 6th place, but not making any head way into the top 5. So I paused the game to check the lap times and the lead car had run a 1.11:xxx, my fastest lap I had (first clean lap not effected by traffic) was 1.13:9xx. I wanted to know what kind of pace I should be running to catch up. It was a track I was very familiar with so my lap times don’t move around much, +/- .2 is my usual. So I knew I should not be catching this guy at all. So I keep running the race because I’ll take a 5th, I just like driving, maybe I’ll magically find 2 seconds somewhere and I can just restart after the race and I still get money. Eventually on the last lap I catch up to the leader and pass them on the very last turn. Which shouldn’t have been possible. I looked at the leader board and my fastest lap was a 1.13:7xx which was 13th in the world at the time… 1.11 was still a full second faster than the best time… Except now at the end of the race the leaderboard is showing the AIs fastest time as 1.14:2xx. I’m positive it showed 1.11, I was purposely checking the AI time and looked at it closely compared to my time and the car that the AI was running. I think this was an inflated time get the leader out ahead.
I’m hoping more people can pause the game and see if they catch the leaderboard reporting these impossible times.

On to behavior: I think it’s pretty clear that during the first lap the AI is pretty standard in speed when you are bogged down in the rear of the group. I feel as the lap progresses they get faster, impossibly faster, where you will go side by side through a corner and accelerate out the other end, and halfway down the straight the AI will find an extra 100hp and you get passed. This kind of nonsense seems to only happen in the first 1/2 of the race. 1/2 way through the race it seems they normalize in speed, where they match their reported laptimes. And then comes the last 1/4 of the race, is it just me or does the AI seem to slow? Running on long races which average out to be about 15 minutes, it’s easier to notice this odd behavior, because the 1/4 of the race plays out over multiple laps, as opposed to just half of a lap if you are on the usual length.

Now my theory is the difficulty isn’t tied to an AI programming per se. I don’t think unbeatable will run defensive lines, or learn from a lap and try harder to increase their time. I don’t even think they are tied to pace in general. I think the AI is tied to your pace in the first 1/2 of the race. So if you run a very fast time in the first half of the race that you can’t beat, you will never get close to the AI leader. I think the game artificially keep the top 3 out of reach until the halfway point where the AI starts running laps with the car without an artificial boost and then at the 3/4 point actually starts running slightly slower.
This would explain some of the unbelievable speed given to AI cars at times. It also helps to explain why you always seem to catch the lead AI at the tail end of races (something I noticed in other Forza titles, but harder to really see because of the shorter races). It also explains why races are so comically easy on tracks that “break” the AI (Long Beach, Mugello, Silverstone), just off the top of my head) and why the AI is just unbeatable on certain tracks like Sebring. For some reason the algorithm never kicks in to take the AI off of boosted times. My assumption is that on tracks where the AI is really slow, I’m assuming that there is some kind of programming that gives the AI a weakness where you can catch them or make a pass, the problem is maybe the section where they are slow is just too long.

Has anyone else noticed this behavior? Maybe even thought they caught the laptime board showing AI cheating midway through the race. Or maybe a dev can chime in on if this is actually how the AI functions and that they are looking into the issues?

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242

All of that matches exactly to what I’ve experienced and why I’ve started racing on ‘pro’ as opposed to ‘unbeatable’. I run similar pace to you and long race lengths. On pro there’s much less of this strange behavior and consequently I find the races more enjoyable because of it. Especially the lack of ridiculous acceleration boost where one second I need a pair of binoculars to see the car behind me on the Conrod straight and the next second he’s on my bumper (GTA V police anyone?).

The only difference in opinion I have is that I DO think the AI are tied to a laptime and that’s what causes the ridiculous acceleration boost. They’re trying to achieve a laptime (presumably linked to someones drivatar?) and the AI simply cannot go through certain complexes fast enough to hit these times without the acceleration boost on the straights.

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What I think is on races where you run slower laps in the first half of a race the AI will overall run slower laps period. Basically any can play on unbeatable (to an extent) as long as you decrease your lap time as the race goes on.
I still think there is a minimum time they will run, probably a time tied to a position in the leaderboards, but overall what gives them difficulty is their outright pace compared to you.
I’ve had races where I’ve restarted after the full race because I didn’t really get the track. After resetting and running the race I placed worse because all the AI was running faster and my fast laps near the beginning of the race were extremely similar to laps near the end of the race because I had the track figured out.

I’ve also noticed on tracks where the rain comes in around the midpoint of the race, the AI crashes a lot. As if it’s trying to maintain a certain pace no matter how impossible, then as you enter the last quarter of the race where they start to slow, they stop crashing.

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After your post I watched drivatar lap times over a 10 lap race and I saw the same thing. In lap six a drivatar drove a 1:13,xx as his best lap. at the end of the race he had a 1:15,xx as the fastest lap. It might be a bug where they always show their last lap and not the fastest.

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They are complete cheats and I don’t think they are even drivatars anymore. In F6 different drivatars would take different lines, in F7 they are all following the ideal line, all braking in the weirdest spots.

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First Forza Motorsport game (PC gamer). Had tons of fun with FH3 and thought I’d try the more “realistic” version. Boy I was wrong.

The AI is hilariously bad, T10 should give the drivatars some turtle shells because it’s the only thing they still miss to definitely ruin your day. I didn’t see such a catastrophic AI in years, it litterally does not acknowledge your existence. The first turns are a crash fest and in the meanwhile the first three get away with godly speed. Superpowers they curiously lose in the last turn(s), allowing you to overtake them. Clean pass in a turn is a forbidden thing unless one wants to find themselves off track. Can’t count the times where I have been spinned out, trashed, rammed by the pack.

I often ruined my race by braking too late before a curve, fearing that some god awful drivatard behind me would take me out if I ever put the foot on the brake pedal. I consider myself as a relatively good driver who likes to win clean, yet I found myself ramming opponents and cutting chicanes to compensate for the unfair advantages given to a brain dead AI. An AI that doesn’t seem to experience tyre wear or the necessity to pit.

In Formula E I had to drop the difficulty as I saw the AI breezing past me in curves at speeds that should not be possible without losing traction / going off / spinning out. Good luck trying to catch them after that.

This game should have qualifying for starters, I find it incredibly frustrating to have to systematically fight my way Destruction Derby style at every race just to chase the first three flying on NoS. There is also absolutely no point having 24 cars on track. It’s just unnecessarily taxing the hardware and you won’t see the last ten anyway, Neither at the beginning nor the end.

Another baffling point are the lapped drivatars who absolutely refuse to make way and stubbornely stick to the racing line like there is no tomorrow. I could tolerate it in FH but I’m less forgiving in a game like FM.

Currently very frustrated by the game. The cars are fun to drive (bar the Formula E), halfway between arcade and simulation, and the game is absolutely gorgeous. But the AI is really ruining the mood.

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AI needs some kind of fix, the behaviour that McFuu describes is absolutely right.

The game is broken and I hope Turn10 realize it.

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Just for sake of comparison, I went back to try racing against the AI in Automobilista and Asetto Corsa. The difference is hilarious. But they don’t have the arrogance to try and market their AI with some jargon like “Drivatar”.

Even if the AI in other racing games does cheat, they are consistently faster than you, and you can finely tune the difficulty. This means that they will be faster around the whole track, which feels a lot more fair, even if they are still technically cheating by not racing within all of the simulated physics sets, because they’re not parking in the corners before drag racing along the straights. It encourages you to actually get faster, and you can literally increase things by like, a percentage point, so it’s just a teeny bit harder, and it makes you push just a bit harder for that win.

And while I’m comparing to racing games/simcades made by people who know what they’re doing, why in god’s name does this not have qualifying? We have testing, custom multi-class racing, a whole slew of rules for upgrading cars to make them all competitive, pitstop requirements, all that (which is fantastic, by the way) - but random grid positions?! Seriously?!

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Because FM is not about racing. It’s about driving cars, collecting cars, looking at cars… and open loot boxes.

If you are interested in racing, there is

  • Raceroom
  • iracing
  • PC2
  • Assetto Corsa
  • rfactor 2
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So let me get this straight.

The game that includes 40-50 minute long career mode races and multi-classing isn’t about racing, it’s about “driving”. Dude, Euro Truck Simulator is about driving. That weird Russian game where you just drive around is about driving. This takes place on a racing circuit. A game about motorsport shouldn’t omit one of the basic parts of racing - determining your grid position.

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Let me get this straighter.

No qualification (and that is where it already stops to be a racing game)
No tyre choice
Tyres switching magically when it gets wet (btw, at what point do they switch, at the first drop, and when do they switch back?)
AI is all over the place and often even worse.

Don’t get me wrong, I like FM for what is is and for what it is doing right.
But not for the so called racing part.

It might be a racing game, in a sense of a fantasy game where you race to win an event.
But it is not a racing game with regards to reflecting motorsports from real world.

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Let me get this straightest.

The reason why qualifying is important and tyre choice is not, is because it directly affects how the race works, and how the AI can be designed. Specifically, it limits it, and contributes to a design problem. Every race in Forza is effectively sort-of a passing challenge, not a race.

If the AI are cheating in weird ways, with discussions about them doing odd things with their lap times, then qualifying will of course not work. They’d be posting ridiculous lap times - qualifying would be meaningless. The grid may as well be random. OK, fine.

But, if you fix the AI, such that they are well tuned for the player’s difficulty and they are consistent, then grid position actually matters. Which means that it becomes important for there to be qualifying, or else all the AI cars have to be intentionally dumb so that you can pass 11-13 cars inside 3 laps. Effectively, the way that the “racing” in Forza is set up due to having random grid locations needs to have the weird, cheating AI that we’re complaining about, and the odd AI necessitates a semi-random (because you just get dumped in the middle) grid.

Imagine racing against AI that was genuinely competitive - AI that maintained speed across the laps and maybe only made mistakes here and there like a real racer would (IE, a proper implementation of the “drivatar” system)? So imagine it did not do odd rubber-banding or adaptive super-boost nonsense, but you’re always in the middle of the field? You would either have to manually scale down the AI intentionally exactly enough that you make those 11-13 passes in a way that makes it look like you’re racing (because… you’re not, you’re basically some sort of ubermensch just trying to pass a load of rookies before the race ends), or you are always at a genuine disadvantage for no reason.

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Forza 7 has the most dirty AI drivers I have ever played against. They are worse than multiplayer for trying to wreck you. If this was a real race they would be black flagged and parked.

All this does is teach people to drive dirty. Because you have no choice when the computer does it to you.

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This is spot on. I have been gradually improving my driving since the original Forza, and trying more and more to be a clean racer instead of an arcade smasher. This game though has brought me back to square one it feels like. I hate that I have to either rerace, rewind, or go Mr. Plow on the AI so that I can stand a chance at winning, and ‘completing’ a series. I loved how FM6 was more about the race and not the pressure of winning by allowing first through third place to advance the game. FM7 though is about having to win all races, all of which are given different series points value for the same length race, and you have to try and win them against unrealistic opponents.

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Here is an idea: Link difficulty to leaderboards. Unbeatable grabs the ghosts of the top 200 and has them run races as drivatars (reacting to obstacles but othwise following the ghost data), Highly Skilled from top 200 to 500 and so on. Switch between ghosts for each lap and there should be nice variety. Then do an open beta before release to fill the leaderboards with entries and iron out the worst bugs and you have a winner.

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I don’t think it is a bug that has to do with reporting the last lap, when I noticed it happen the lap that the AI ran was a full second or 2 faster than the #1 lap time. I think the bug was the game reporting a boosted lap to get the AI a certain distance out front.

There are a couple of problems with this, “leaderboard cars” and player population. Basically you’ll need to throw out the top 50 times or so, because they are statistical exceptions, and you’ll need expand to top 500 or 1000 for unbeatable. The problem is that say 100000 play the game, if you make the unbeatable times reflect the top 200, that means only 200 people will really only be able to play on unbeatable. And it will basically be all hot lappers who are probably not that great at circuit racing with other people.

I get what you are trying to do here, but it doesn’t seem feasible.

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What I hate and it´s making me have bad time is how the AI cant detect you on the track , they keep crashing me because I´m in the middle of their racing line, since I like clean racing this leads to lots of rewind, racing in Forza has become like making a puzzle of how to replay a situation to avoid a stupid car crashing me from the side.

Please Turn10, fix this AI.

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Agreed, it is, at times, really upsetting. Although I find that rewinding and then severely crashing the culprit at the next corner, then rewinding back and continuing the race helps some, ;).

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Crashatars! The worst AI of All Time! Turn 10 needs to patch this broken AI now. I don’t know of any other racer where I have to restart a dozen times just to avoid a train wreck into the first curve. I hate to play the Single Player Career because its a bumper-car sim! I have to be a defensive driver and take evasive maneuvers the entire race. It’s brutal and tanks all the other brilliant features of Forza Motorsport 7. I just spent a load of cash to get a new Xbox One S, Fanatec CSL Elite Wheel and pedals, all for this? Awful AI!

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This is hilarious. You’re basically using time travel to punish the offending driver. hoping that in the future he will remember what happened in the past and adjust for it. I see a very bad Michael Bay movie in the works.

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