Drivetrain swaps ruin tuning; 6 needs to ditch them

Forza Horizon Forza Horizon 6 FH6 Discussion
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Forza’s had a game design issue of never actually challenging the player or even encouraging them to improve, and drivetrain swaps are a result of this.

First off, they’re unrealistic. I get Horizon’s far from a simulation, but a little bit of authenticity goes a long way. The fact you can drivetrain swap anything including literal cutting edge hypercars is ridiculous.

Second off, it ruins the personality of the car. Choosing a car shouldn’t be like picking a skin in a video game, but that’s what drivetrain swaps do.

Third, it’s a comically cheap upgrade. At 10k credits it is pricier than most, but still far from unaffordable. In reality if you were to even drivetrain swap a car, it’d be a massive undertaking more expensive than the car itself.

Fourth and worst reason, it’s a crutch. AWD swaps in this game are common for a reason and it’s because they make the car “easier” to drive. How about you have some respect and actually learn how to drive the car as it’s platform was designed and build skill around actually learning throttle control and cornering.

The amount of new players I see complaining about stock car handling makes by blood boil.

Just remove it entirely. Or at least keep it for older slower cars like IRL. I dunno, I’m so blackpilled I’m more ranting than actually making a request they’ll follow through on.

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On the one hand, my passion for cars makes me agree with you.
On the other hand, I remember that this is a mainstream arcade game, with all that that entails. So I’m not surprised to see the improvements that we’ve been seeing for at least 10 years now, tirelessly accompanying a formula that has been successful for so long.

That said, I completely agree with these comments. It could be included much more sparingly: when it’s technically possible and at a price that’s consistent with the work involved.
The risk is that it will make some cars very demanding to drive, that certain models will quickly be categorized as too hard/uncompetitive, and that this will harm the game.

For that reason alone, the $10k AWD conversion satisfies the vast majority of players, despite myself.

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I also wouldn’t mind if engine swaps went back to being manufacturer specific. As in Mazdas can only have Mazda engines, Chevys can only have Chevy engines, etc. That was a feature in the older games I sorely miss.

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No it dosen`t , an awd swap is sometimes the secret that turns a car that is not all good on dirt racing into an unbeatable machine.
Awd are essential for dirt racing, that is why real players use awd cars for dirt and cross country racing.
Also cars, like the various Nissan 350Zs we have in FH5, really really needs awd conversion since it`s rear tyres are way to narrow to give any traction, even with racing tyres and only around 500 hp, big wheelspin out of every corner, even with traction control on.
With awd swap, no problem.
After all, all the successfull top tier real life rally cars have been awd since the 80s.
The last 2wd rally car to win the wrc championship against 4wd cars was the Lancia 037 in 1983.

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So don’t swap your own cars and let others play the game as they want

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As someone who almost always avoids drivetrain conversions, I’d much rather that we keep them.

Some cars do have AWD versions not present in game, and stifling all of our build options just because some people abuse them doesn’t sit well with me. I’d much rather have drivetrain restrictions (AWD, FWD, RWD, original drivetrain, etc) in events and custom championships that can be played PvP, encouraging players to explore other builds and driving styles, as opposed to forcing the issue.

Besides, if we want to be tackling crutches, I think there are higher priorities, like the smooth, unbroken walls around every corner that players can abuse and wallride. Even just removing every other section of wall would catch 99.9% of cars that missed the corner while preventing the no brains all power wall riding builds from being successful.

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I think the game should make every car drive like an AWD.

The current problem is that the game cant balance RWD and AWD.
(Pretty much every Forza title has had the same problem I think)

If the game tries to nerf AWD through PI, then we re going to end up with two very different types (pacing) of cars on the same small, narrow tracks, which would cause a lot of crashing.
Since the game doesnt have regulations in public multiplayer,
the best and simplest solution is to make everything handle like “AWD” (more arcadey)

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Dont like drivetrain swapping ? Then dont swap. Some of us love having the freedom to build whatever we want how we want.

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The “don’t like it, then don’t use it” argument is meaningless.

It’s just like V12 racing swaps or the ugly Forza aero.
The root problem is the game’s design, which leaves us with no choice but to use them if we want to be competitive. (“Competitive” is not just about winning. you can’t have fun if the game does nothing to stop people from ramming you when you’re not using AWD. And 2:30~3min short online race you only got a boring lonely drive since everyone is AWD and there is not enough lap to have a chance to get close racing to somebody(have fun) like other track racing game)

In Horizon 4, there was random bad weather, so about 70% of the time you ended up racing in rain or snow, or doing Freeroam Rush, which required off-road capability in what was supposed to be a road race. On top of that, everyone was pushing you around.

If you look at S1~S2 tuning and PI, a lot of cars don’t have extra handling options when you stay RWD, like wider front tires or front aero.
Most of the time, the only upgrades you can add are extra power parts, but the car still doesn’t get any faster compared to an AWD swap.
(The only exception is Track version of the car. But why the game dont allow us to “track tune” the car if track version is possible in the same car?)

Some cars even feel like they are designed to require an AWD swap just to reach the PI limit for their class.

The game doesn’t even have public custom lobbies where you can quickly set regulations to limit drivetrain choices.
And I’m sure someone is going to say, “You can just invite friends and set up a private lobby…”

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Hell no, need a downvote buttons if that thing come on the shub

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We don’t need downvotes on this forum. That is already abused to the moon and back on Reddit. If you don’t agree with a take, saying so should be enough.

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This “solution” sounds dumb. But if you look at the history of Forza and the specs of modern cars, it actually makes some sense.

AWD dominance was also a problem in Forza Motorsport 3.
Back then, pretty much everyone swapped to AWD to get a rocket launch and pull away from the pack.
In Forza Motorsport 4, AWD was nerfed with a big PI penalty. So if you used an AWD swap, you had to run less tire, more weight, or a lower top speed.
As a result, everyone switched to RWD, and that made sense in the motorsport world at the time.

So maybe RWD for road racing and AWD for rally sounds right?

But nowadays, electric motors are small enough to fit into almost anything, and new supercars and hypercars come with front-wheel electric motors for AWD, like the SF90XX and the ZR1X.
So how are you going to balance them? By forcing those cars to remove their AWD systems?
Make the ZR1X into a ZR1 again, and remove the whole reason it exists?
Or make them understeer badly, like what they did with road-going Koenigseggs in FH4-5?
But modern electric AWD systems do not understeer that much anymore.
So how are you supposed to balance that?

Also, I remember that back then player could not swap every car’s drivetrain. But that caused balance problems too, so the solution was to let everything swap to AWD. (correct me if i am wrong)
So we are already in the “everything is AWD, so just accept it” situation.
And I remember some track cars already feeling like they were basically AWD in the physics.

If you put AWD on a Koenigsegg road car and test it with a rear-wheel-drive bias, it suddenly changes the car’s character.
It will still drive like an RWD car, but the rear-wheel traction becomes much better.
So why not make that the physics standard and still list it as RWD?

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Not everything need to be “optimized” for the sake of competitivity.

I don’t know how to word it well, but i mean, why my RWD should handle like AWD for make others able to compet against these cars ? They should find a solution, if one exist, for this problem.

But for us, who enjoy driving RWD cars, we should be able to keep this feel of driving a RWD.

And in term of balancing, they’re already a lot to adress like some cars who are more performant than others while using the same PI /supercharger who doesn’t use the power at redline, so on the PI calculation it cost less than it should / rear aero who decrease PI, but since everyone use min aero, they can reduce the amount of top speed lost, and put more power because of the PI lost.

In FM, AWD perform bad in general, and swap the drivetrain isn’t really a good option.

So i believe their a way to balance it for be more fair than it is actually, even if it can’t be 100% fair

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There are so many arcade open world racers and so few even remotely simulation ones. Please don’t take away another one. Please don’t hold the best car selection in all video games hostage behind looney toons physics for the sake of balance.

Again, I’d much, much, MUCH prefer race restrictions by drivetrain if it truly is impossible to balance via PI.

Actually I want the ability to restrict races by drivetrain as an option regardless of if it’s needed or not. But it does also solve this whole conundrum quite neatly.

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It’s not that I don’t want RWD,
but the game never seems able to give decent grip to a lot of RWD cars.

Even if they nerf AWD or buff RWD in FH6, is the game also going to fix contact and ramming physics in multiplayer?

And with everything else around it:
Can we quickly turn TCS on and off?
Can we have adjustable TCS levels?
Japan gets a lot of snow, so will the lobby tell us the weather before we pick our cars?

Public custom lobbies would be great, but is Forza going to give us a server browser?
Or are they going to keep hiding how many servers there are in each region, and then give us matchmaking problems later in the game’s life?

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I’ve never had this issue, and I play exclusively with all assists off. I tend to favour RWD for tarmac events and I even have builds like one of my S1 M4s, which sends 1114 n-m of torque exclusively to the rear wheels. That’s a problem in cockpit, not an issue with the game.

As for the rest of what you’re talking about, those are separate issues, and would remain issues even if you forced the entire game to be AWD exclusive.

Why won’t you consider my drivetrain restriction solution? It solves the issue without a need to turn this into yet another arcade nonsense racer.

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Just go play Motorfest there’s plenty of equally boring AWD-like cars that are stick to the road there. Downvote

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I’ve built plenty of FWD cars that win races, I’ve swapped in AWD on little cars and big cars alike, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t.

It’s all about experimentation and allowing players to do what they want.

Why not put that stupidly big engine in a totally unsuitable kei car, who needs the back seats anyway. Renault have shown you daft is possible with the V10 Espace.

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I did mention public custom lobbies with custom rules for drivetrain and other settings.

In Project CARS 3, the Sesto Elemento AWD is extremely overpowered, so people often set up RWD GT class lobbies that only allow standard, untuned GT3/GTE cars.
That works because the game has a public lobby browser.

The problem is that Forza Horizon does not give us a lobby browser.
When players add extra rules blindly, it only makes matchmaking harder.
Custom lobbies in FH4 and FH5 had the same problem.

So it’s like the game only has six lobbies active at that time, and if none of them are set to RWD-B class, you might get stuck on the searching screen forever if you search by this rules.
And because there is no server browser, there is no easy way to publicly say, “I want to play with these rules — is anyone joining?”

If the game is still mainly built around quick play, open world, and dynamic weather, then it still needs to care about balancing RWD and AWD in the same field.
Custom rules only avoid the problem in the short term, but they do not actually fix it.

I’m worried they will repeat the same problems from FH4.
In FH4, players could not change TCS in multiplayer lobbies, and TCS off was always faster.
The game would also randomly give you bad weather or snow through server rotation and seasons.
It was still faster to cut corners with two wheels off the tarmac.
The game also did not show RPM at the start.

So if I wanted to switch to an RWD Jesko but had TCS turned back on, I had to leave multiplayer completely. Or someone ram me off track I cant switch TCS back for recovering from the field.
All of these things combined to make the best quick-play option TCS off plus AWD almost all the time.

Japan’s weather and road conditions are pretty similar to England’s, so I can easily see the same thing happening again.

In FH5, it feels like they just added / change some new cars with magical RWD grip, almost like they are running on completely different physics.
But I think a lot of high-power RWD cars are still unpopular because they do not have the magical tunes or extra parts needed to fix the problem.

That is why, in another topic, I suggested letting us detune a car’s power and giving us more handling upgrade options. And use slipsteam to pull different spec car closer to get more close racing+better balance

I hope they improve in FH6 but I not sure
These AWD problem is over 10? 15 years? I want to believe too

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I don’t know how to explain the matchmaking problem clearly.

The experience is like this: I unlock a DLC or update road S2 car at 2 a.m., and I want to use it in online multiplayer

But the server rotation is something like this:

A class / dirt / bad weather
S1 class / dirt / winter
Road race! …but B class

And it just keeps going like that, so end up wasting 30–45 minutes searching.

Then maybe custom lobby gives me a room with only two people.
Very quickly, they leave because no new players join.

So I only have two or three hours to play, but I waste half of that time just searching.

If the game adds RWD, AWD, and FWD restrictions into the rotation too, then people who want to use a specific car they like may have an even harder time playing it when they want to.

Or sometime is maybe someone want to play rally but everyone now only play road race because they have option now.
That happened in FH3 so the game remove voting.

That hurts the gameplay experience for a quick-play arcade racing game.

Maybe with PS5 players base things will better. I hope.