PG absolutely must stop rewarding dirty driving. That much I’m certain of. Enough is enough with the dirty driving garbage.
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I noticed the FH4 drivatars were updated to become more proficient (and aggressive) in the last year, almost like a beta test for the FH5 release. As a result, I decreased my FH4 difficulty level from Pro to Expert since I play games for fun, not to indulge a masochistic streak. The drivatars in FH5 continue this pattern of ramming, swerving in front of you for no reason then braking, crashing into you in turns (in both meanings of the expression)… I’ve observed them miss a corner then defy physics to come flying in from the side of the road to t-bone me. Rewinding and attempting a different line sees the drivatar adjust in an effort to t-bone again. Appalling sportsmanship.
Given poor sportsmanship is a major reason many Forza players have reservations about online racing, why would PG program the drivatars to emulate this behaviour? Competing in offline races against drivatars was an opportunity to not get smashed into repeatedly and simply enjoy the racing. Not anymore.
Some might contend the drivatars are developing to reflect the player base, but that misses the point; Forza rewards players for “clean driving”, but there’s little to indicate drivatars are held to the same competitive standard. Indeed, drivatars should set the standard for players to aspire. And, if you are in the mood to mess with them, that’s your prerogative. Who would think imbuing an AI with a “Revenge Objective” was a good idea?
There’s an apparent approach from PG akin to: “if it’s hard, it’s good” (driving through the jungle in 15m stop-start increments because of all the damn logs, anyone?). This could stem from an incomplete/evolving understanding of what makes a racing game enjoyable, or it simply could be laziness. Regardless, the drivatars shouldn’t be programmed as obstacles. I want to beat them because I raced better, not because I managed to elude the pack.
[On that, I’ve found the trick to winning is to go hard as possible until you reach first place. Sounds obvious, but if you advance through the group until say fourth and then bungle a corner, good luck catching the leaders; they’ll disappear into the distance irrespective of how fast you’d previously been gaining. However, once in first place, the drivatars seem content to follow… with blatant rubberbanding, of course]
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This almost never happened in FH4, not even in the last month before FH5 was released. In fact i cant even remember in three years being rammed more than once in about maybe 20 races in FH4 lol.
Its completely different from FH5, the AI behaviour is soooooooo different that is like if they basically picked the little annoying things that you could barely see in FH4 and boosted them for FH5 to make players realize how bad the AI really is. As i said in other posts, the AI in FH5 is so inconsistent that you dont know most of the times if you are winning because your driving skills or because the AI is not “good” enough. And then, you find the opposite, you are driving like a pro, but it doesnt matter, the AI will switch to god mode and lightspeed and nothing you can do will sufice to finish even 2nd.
That’s great that not everyone encountered it, but that wasn’t my experience.
The Horizon franchise is almost the only game I play, and prior to FH5 (…) I was playing FH4 almost everyday for 2-3 hours at a time (or more. Thanks for hooking me with the need to complete daily challenges, PG!). I observed it as I described: the FH4 drivatars were definitely updated in the last year to be more aggressive, including ramming and t-boning. Like a beta test.
I had concerns that the trend would continue into FH5, and maybe I should’ve raised them at the time. More people talking about it might’ve seen the current situation avoided. Or maybe not… calamity has a funny way of opening ears.
I kinda think it’s a good idea, vanilla, passsive drivatars make it a bit pointless having them.
You can always race a ghost car on rivals if that’s what you want - I think its interesting to see the ‘AI’ developments. Yes it’s frustrating when a slower drivatar blocks you from overtaking on purpose, but it makes it more fun, for me.
I agree that passive drivatars aren’t the answer, and players have the option to select a drivatar difficulty to make their game spicier/less vanilla. PG developing proficient drivatars to compete against allows me to hone my skills as a racer and a tuner, and makes investing that time fun. Personally, I don’t find racing the ghost rivals delivers the same experience, but I’m glad other players have and enjoy that feature.
I’ve no particular ego involved in my efforts to become a better gamer, so if PG introduces drivatars that are more challenging, I’m fine reducing the difficulty to match my skill level. However, drivatar aggression brings nothing positive to the game, and provides a terrible example for the players.
If Horizon teaches us poor sportsmanship is the goal to winning, how can PG be surprised that online races are full of rammers, the scoreboards are topped by cheats, and Event Lab is overrun by AFK farming routes?
Again, the drivatars should set the standard.
The problem is
this is not need for speed.
In normal arcade game the AI also pulling player faster by game mechanics (extra NOS or heavy slipstream boost)
And the front AI also adjust itself slower if the game unfairly blocking you.
But not in forza. in high difficulty if AI brake-check player it mean player lose the matches already.
So everyone want the AI drive “normally” and play with same physic.
and aggressive AI =/= AI brake check or swing-block player.
It is about the AI make move when they see a gap or chance.
when you drive into middle of the pack. You can see AI behind you almost gave up and front pack alway getting away.
It isnt how racing work.
The same problem also happened in Real Racing 3
They put like 16AI in 3lap race and block player from winning.
Worst thing is. The AI are crashing into you and player have to PAY for fixing their cars.
I am talking REAL MONEY or WAIT 4 HOURS (In early version)
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Solo vs AI race are boring not mainly because it is fast/slow.
But the game itself is a empty sandbox.
Many race game also come with boring AI but they have other things for fun.
In Hotwheels unleashed the track itself is a technical rollar coaster.
In Need for speed you are also playing with traffic-avoiding-game and nos management. You got funny-exciting crash presentation.
In Project cars 3 or PGR they have self-target to chase. Do objective to unlocks thing or collect kudos by better driving.
Horizon is just putting a AI from rival and let you play with untuned AI.
It is not competitive as GT sport but also not exciting as need for speed.
It become a lack of direction boring sandbox.
And it is not colorful as NFS. Everywhere is dark with no street night. No one is watching you race.
As other people said. There is no “happy medium” in AI.
Maybe they are collecting AI data from rival instead of SAME RACE TYPE.
Normally game dev tune their AI by looking at public clear-rate at the same mode.
But we are fighting 11 “obstacle” form back.
So player always have to choose a slower AI in result the AI gave up after 1 overtake.
And lack of track space in short race dont feel good and fair.
Maybe the AI suit for motorsport since race track have more space and longer. (And with pit but did forza AI pit their car?)
Need for speed shift 2 has a very aggressive AI it alway try to overtake if there is a gap. It feel like all of them are trying to win.
But overly aggressive AI may causing problem like driveclub their AI bumping your rear non-stop in straight line.
Don’t forget that in NFS Heat at least you get the High Heat races and to unlock them for the night you need to build your heat up. The most dangerous races with the quickest cars, and one mistake can end in a bust. Really good game design IMO, much better than Super7 since you build your heat by just playing the game normally, not browsing through hundreds of trash Challenge Cards.
In Forza there’s no stake since you can just spam rewind.
From my own subjective observations, I think the AI has mostly settled down to a certain extent. There’s always the usual shenanigans and sketchy behaviour, but I haven’t seen any runaway first place in over a week, unless I mess up and crash or something. I’m able to win consistently with the possibility of loosing. I’ve finished all the races, so I’ll be moving up to Expert, and we’ll see how that goes.
Somebody up-thread posted a link to a Youtube video where the advise was to restart the race, turn your AI down all the way to Tourist, save settings, then put your AI back up to where you want it, and save settings again to force a refresh. I did that like a week ago, and it seems to have helped. So if anyone is still having trouble with the lead AI boosting off into the sunset, try that, and see if it helps.
Moving up to Expert? The runaway Drivatars are Pro, and Unbeatable. That has probably not been mentioned, but Highly Skilled, and Expert are easy.
Yeah, they’re easy now. They weren’t just a few weeks ago. I play on Pro in every previous Horizon game, but had to come down to Highly skilled to keep from pulling out what’s left of my hair. And even still, there were occasionally runaway drivatars. 2 weeks ago, they were worse than Horizon 4’s “Unbeatable”. Now I’d say they’re more or less on par with Horizon 4’s “expert”.
10min in New season
New funny AI to share
This is my 1st try in new trial!
So there is a lambo AI, skip track. jump from hill and drive into wrong direction into Our teammate!Then the other mustang AI skip a checkpoint! Dive into my other teammate! push him to wall and other Lambo AI finish him with a tail ram! and my teammate crashed into me!
Both Ai skip checkpoint but they dont need to respawn
GOTY
That made me laugh! The Ai singularity when they take over from humans.
When that AI jump from hill you can see our position changed. So AI could overtake us without following the track.
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I had an issue in this exact same spot this morning in the Trial. I was in second place, the leader WAY out in front, but two AI up my tailpipe. Coming down the switch back, exact spot that video was taken, one of the AI comes up on my left, and proceeds to start ramming and pushing me against the rock face. I brake to let him ahead as I’m afraid of hitting the wall, knowing it will bring me to a dead stop, and the second AI comes up on my left, and does the exact same thing, except this time, because I’m off balance from breaking, it succeeds in driving me into the wall and bringing me to a dead stop. Why, in the world, would the AI be programmed like this? Have the people who make the game ever seen a car race? Do they not know the distinction between a race and a smash up derby? Bad enough when your team mates pummel you into the walls, but having the AI do it is crazy. What do they think this is adding to the game? So frustrating!!
Was in a dirt trail race that ran through the Baja festival dirt track, and was in 2nd place at the time. The AI were racing on the inside of the bleacher stands, and I watched 2 of them cut ??under the bleachers??- to rejoin the race on the track that is on the other side that runs behind the bleachers . . . I’m now in 4th . . with no chance of winning . . .restart . . .sigh . . .
I’ve stopped playing FH5, for the time being.
I may come back depending on what the DLC offers, but as of right now, until the AI is fixed, there is no need because as another poster mentioned, there is no happy medium with this garbage AI. Meaning, Average difficulty and below is a cakewalk (as they should be) if you’re a seasoned racing game veteran, but because the higher difficulties are flat out broken, it’s not even fun or remotely fair to race against them unless you resort to dirty tricks and custom made courses that fool the AI because PG can’t be bothered to fix, or develop AI worthy of a AAA game in 2022.
To the poster who commented on the AI racing through the solid bleachers… This is because the AI don’t physically exist in the world until they are within a certain radius of the player. This is the point when the world physics kick in so they can ram you, and/or your car can interact with them. This is the root of the problem of how the AI is unfairly given advantages against human opponents since they don’t abide by the same world physics the player has to until they reach a certain threshold because they physically don’t exist IN the world.
The above also explains some of the clips that have been posted in this thread about how the AI comes out of nowhere, damages the player, then speeds off like nothing happened. None of it is real, but not in the obvious video game sense. It’s only “real” when they interact with the player… Which is to usually mess them up… And not when they’re racing because they are literally racing on a completely different plane of virtual existence, physically and metaphorically.
The reason the root of the problem will never be addressed is Forza is a mainstream, AAA title that is all about graphics vs. function.
In other racing games like GRID, the graphics are serviceable, but don’t blow you away. However, the trade off is more cars on screen during a race, and the fact all the cars exist in the world around the player at all times depending on render settings. So, the AI are beholden to the same in-game physics as the player, and this means no spawning out of thin are to mess with the player, actual penalties for missing check points, etc. It’s such a simple thing PG fails to get right and the fact some posters believe this is acceptable is why it will never change, right or wrong.
I’ve done almost no online multiplayer racing on this game, so that may be why I don’t see a lot of the issues people are bringing up - some of the AI appearing to ignore track limits etc driving through objects in game all could be lag/ online related. Plus speed boosting at unrealistic speeds - all of these things I have experienced at one time or another when playing online with friends who have connection issues (or my connection was at fault who knows) in other games.
Anyway in terms of the AI difficulty, yes they can appear to be erratic at times but I’m not convinced that they are out and out cheating - certainly in the single player races. I’ve just run the S1 race on dirt that we are currently running in the rivals challenge on unbeatable. I finished 3rd with a low 1:29 - the AI certainly the top 4 making up the first 5 places all did 1:29’s - my rivals time is a low 1:28.
The guys at the top end of the rivals challenge are running 1:21/1:22 round that same track and it’s not like only one guy either - there’s half a dozen or more of them. So when I look at that - sometimes, just sometimes - I have to stop and think. You know what maybe I’m just not good enough to be beating the AI at their hardest difficulty. I mean I start way down the grid, I’ve got to be lapping consistently quicker than the guy at the front just to catch him. This doesn’t mean they are cheating - it may just be that they are meant to be that hard & if you can do lap times even close to the top guys I mean within 4/5 seconds a lap you have a chance.
Braces for inevitable criticism.
The times don’t count, because the Ai are rubberbanding ahead of you which means that the faster you go the faster they go. So if you come 4th you are actually slowing them down to a reasonable speed. When you go faster like 220mph they do up to 300mph. being as none of your cars can go 300mph they are cheating.