Figured out what is causing the unbelivably fast drivatars in career mode

Forza Motorsport Legacy Motorsport
22

Now my curiosity has the best of me, so I’d like to ask one of my once-rhetorical questions:

  • When you’re beaten by these stupidly fast drivatars, in what position do they start on the grid?

If they’re starting behind or right near you, then that could be an issue. However, if they’re starting at or near the front, it’s perfectly understandable they should become unicorns, because they’re essential racing a time trial with zero traffic to overcome.

If you’re coming in 2nd, I think you should count that as a win, because keep in mind the 10 other drivatars you passed to get there.

Do this … keep an eye out for the ‘Ghost’ boost. Then, next time you’re in a race against a unicorn, restart and apply the Ghost. What you should see is that you will become the unicorn.

23

What Kevin Syslo is trying to say is that it may be a bug in the game that if you have friends it makes the drivatars faster. I have a lot of friends who have played forza, and they’re never the ones winning, ive also seen friends who never played forza and they’re in the game, but also never win the race.

It doesn’t happen every time, but more often than not there is one drivatar that’s posting a top 20 time with a car that’s not at the top of its class. I dont think this is a bug at all, I think it’s been designed this way to make people get used to not coming in first every race, to feel like they accomplished something by getting top 3. In forza 5 they wanted people to feel as though even if they didn’t win the race, they were always battling someone and should feel good about it that’s why they implemented the whole 1-3 get gold, 4-6 get silver and 7-9 get bronze. They got rid of this and went back to the whole podium finish, which it should be, but the problem is the mad rush to get to within the top 3 only to see one guy out in front that you’ll never catch.

I can understand if things randomly happened during a race, that the lead driver would get a lead, but it’s always the same formula race after race. You start in 12th, the ai always has super traction control, your now in 15th before the first turn, crashing insues,you may jump up to 8th, the next few turns you gradually catch up to the top 5, the lead drivatar’s seems within reach, 2nd lap starts your in 4th right behind 3rd, the lead drivatar’s makes a mistake, your able to pass 2nd and third because 1st slowed them down and now your within spitting distance of first and then bam the 1st place drivatar takes off, shorter braking distances, better grip, faster accelaration, and of course faster on the straights, you spend the remaining race in 2nd sometimes getting pressure from 3rd place who you had a 4 second lead on a minute ago, then when its all over only you check the race results to find out you’ve posted a top 50 time dirty of course from getting drafted, but the lead drivatar’s is a top 20 time, you never stood a chance…

Now like I said it doesn’t always happen like this, but usually this is how it plays out for me. I can deal with not coming in first if I made a mistake, or my car was slower, but that’s not the case, the lead guy is always faster even when they don’t take an optimum racing line through corners, or drive through puddles that would send me out of control. It’s set up to make us fail.

2 Likes
24

In short, the game is broken. It’s a joke this hasn’t been fixed yet. I was so excited to get this game. This issue has dampened my enthusiasm completely. Not that Turn 10 give a toss, they’ve already got my money.

25

While it is true that in many races I have saw 2 or 3 cars run off and leave the others the biggest issue for me has been the slower ones making it difficult to get past them in order to chase down the leaders. The races are short and those slower cars can hold you up enough that there isn’t time to catch the lead cars.

I have on a couple of occasions used the ghost mod in these races and absolutely no problem becoming the rabbit myself.

For me though it is not really an issue, I do not care much for the career mode races thus far. Haven’t been in one yet that i enjoyed. Free Play is much better

26

yap, some on me.

1 or 2 Drivatars are 10 Seconds faster then the rest of the field. And only 2 - 3 cars from a 23 Drivatarfield are my friends. But I have over 20 Friends who playing active Forza Motorsport 6.

Bugs are still after october patch.

1 Like
27

I have never had any friends on my list (really don’t care about that) and I am also experiencing the drivatar issue. Not saying TS is wrong, but even players like me who DON’T have friends at all on their list are having the drivatar issue.

1 Like
28

I don’t see this as a bug – an unwanted side effect, perhaps, but not a bug. (I don’t particularly mean to ‘defend’ T10 or FM6, but I really like this game and would hate for a casual reader to see this thread and start thinking the sky is falling.)

As has been mentioned, if you use the ‘Ghost’ mod or manage to breeze quickly through the pack, it’s not hard keeping up with the leader and/or becoming a unicorn yourself. I believe it’s probably just coincidence the OP’s unicorns have been friends.

The issue, then, is not a bug but an effect from some other cause. Simply put, I believe it’s because they start at the front while we start in the middle.

Every driver is racing for first place while also protecting their current position. So, stupid driver or not, those 10 drivatars in the way of first place are supposed to be doing exactly what they’re doing by blocking us at every opportunity.

By the time we finally bash our way into 3rd or 4th place, the drivatar(s) who started at the front have their 5+ second lead not because of some bug but from simply not fighting traffic like we did.

This doesn’t absolve T10 in the least. While this is perfectly logical, it can be immensely frustrating.

What can T10 do to alleviate this? I think the simplest, quickest, & best fix would be for T10 to change their drivatar starting position algorithm in such a way that the best drivatars start farther back in the pack nearer to (or even behind) the player. Otherwise, rubber-banding the AI to some degree is probably all they can do (btw, I detest rubber-banding).

If T10 does nothing, what can we do? The first thing is to limit driver aggression – which makes it much easier to quickly weave through the pack in the first lap. Next, reduce the drivatar skill level until you can place 1st. Finally (if reducing difficulty isn’t your thing), consign to not placing first in every race.

Deleting your friends may solve this, but it’s a fluke if it does, IMO. I have no friends and still see these unicorn rabbits all the time. I just don’t see them as a bug but simply as a side effect of them having started first on the grid.

29

So I have already reduce to average/medium. But the first and second unbelivably fast drivatars are tricky.

30

Starting position isn’t necessarily the cause. I’ve gone into a race’s final lap 5 seconds ahead, only to have a drivatar speed past me with speed the car could not possibly actually manage and end up 10 seconds behind despite running a clean final lap. This has happened on more than one occasion. The AI in this game is broken and I can’t believe T10 haven’t fixed it yet.

Secondly, drivatar difficulty does nothing to resolve it. This also happens on New Racer AI difficulty, and whilst I can’t talk for Forza 5 as I didn’t own it, back on Forza 3 & 4 the lowest difficulty was set so even a complete moron could storm to an easy win.

31

I’ve been playing on unbeatable with no assists manual clutch… I had the same problem with caparos showing up when the pi ratings won’t even let you pick the car which is dumb, However I find that usually I can overcome the drivatards by patience they take themselves out, especially in rain conditions, aside from a couple times where it really was a matter of needing a faster build/tune.

And also out of curiosity I was looking at my badges and haven’t got the badge for being VIP, I own the ultimate edition so where’s my VIP badge? (In the badge section of menu)

But there are times like nurbur and spa where turn one is downright chaos, still it’s a matter of picking a line and making it stick.

32

Try this. Set up a free play race on new racer difficulty with 23 drivatars and 5 to 10 laps and make sure you limit the class to the same class as whatever car you use or there will be cars in the race with a higher class than you. Now start the race . It will start you in the front so when the race starts let all 23 cars go by before you start to race them. You will see that they are all really slow and you won’t have any problem passing them and by the end of the race will lap most if not all of them. There won’t be any cars jumping way out front and there won’t be any cars come from way behind and catch you. Before the race is over pause it and look at the lap times you will probably be about 10 to 20 sec a lap faster than the fastest drivatars maybe more depending on how long the track is.

Now hit restart race and set the drivatar difficulty to unbeatable and this time when the race starts don’t let them pass you just take off and try to stay out front. Unless you have the right car and setup for it and if your not an experienced racer you probably will not win on this difficulty level. But it is not because they are cheating. Now if you pause the race before it ends and look at the lap times you will see they are all faster. Not just one or two cars. This is the way the game is supposed to work and free play races don’t have your friends drivatars in them. This is why free play works right. If you do a race in the stories of Motorsport though your friends drivatars are in them and the difficulty level does not effect them and they will be just as fast or faster than you even on new racer difficulty unless they get wrecked in the beginning of the race and get too much damage to keep up and if they do then one of the random drivatars replaces them as one of the fastest cars in the race. This is why it’s not always your friends drivatars winning the race and if you play on pro or unbeatable then the random drivatars are just as fast as your friends drivatars which then it just comes down to which drivatar is more skilled and does not get in a wreck that wins the race which is more the way the game is supposed to work but people new to the game don’t stand a chance on unbeatable.

That’s why they need to be able to lower the difficulty which has no effect on friends drivatars which I think is just the way they designed the game so your friends drivatars will win races and earn credits for them. But it doesn’t work because on lower difficulty they are so much faster than the randoms that it just causes wrecks and almost makes it unplayable on lower difficulty and new people can’t hardly get 3rd place to advance in career mode.

But like I said if you don’t have any friends on your Xbox then career mode works just like free play races.

33

Yes but Kevin, as has been pointed out already, some of us have many friends on forza and are experiencing no runaway drivatars at all. So it’s not such a clear cut issue I’m afraid.

34

I’m not sure that’s the case. It could be, but my situation makes it difficult to imagine. When I got the game, I joined a thread on another site where people were adding each other specifically for Drivatars. I have about 120 friends, 80 of which play Forza daily or near it. I’ve never once seen any Drivatar speed off or be difficult to catch at all. I had actually started to wonder if they were always so EASY because they are all friends. Because even on the hardest setting they present no challenge whatsoever and one has to go online to find a challenge.

Granted, I’m not about to unfriend all my friends so I can’t say for sure if that makes them easier to beat since they’re already too easy… I don’t think it’s worth trying. Interesting what you experienced though! It’s not as simple as some seem to think it is. I mean, even thinking back to day one (before any patches at all) I never once saw a Drivatar just sprint away. I know some people actually do, but it’s not a clear cut problem as it’s not universal and nothing particular seems to trigger it.

1 Like
35

I have no friends (sad face lol), and still get the runaway drivatar issue.

Turn 10 i’m sure is well aware of the issue, and it sounds like they are just having a hard time trying to figure it out.

1 Like
36

What difficulty level are you playing on.

37

Easiest (New Racer).

And I should add… that I haven’t seen this happen just yet since the patches/fixes (runaway drivatar). I haven’t played too much since the patch so it is hard to tell… I recall them saying they had made improvements but that it may still be occuring from time to time.

38

As I posted before, I also haven’t added any friends as well and I am also experiencing the drivatar issue. I was playing on average difficulty. I have unlocked all volumes and I even completed the first 3 volumes twice now, but I had to start using the offline method as all of a sudden there were races on my second playthrough of the 3rd volume where I could NOT keep up with a Bugatti Veyron. After going offline, I was able to even RAISE the difficulty to above average and still have a good and fair challenge, the way it is meant to be. Also, I have noticed that the first two drivatar cars are very often red and yellow.

39

I just compared your forza 6 stats to mine and it says you have played 0 minutes and you have no achievements.

40

This gamertag is very old and I am only using it to post messages here. I am using another gamertag/account to play games. I’m at driver level 60 now.

41

No, this isn’t actually the issue. It’s an issue, but it isn’t the issue. I’ve had the super-fast Drivatars not be the guys up front but be guys that start toward the back, climb through the field, and then take off like they’re shot out of a canon once they’re clear of traffic. It isn’t gaining on someone who had no traffic to contend with up front but Drivatars that are simply dramatically quicker than all other Drivatars. I don’t mean they’re X-amount of seconds out in front but ten or twenty seconds per lap faster than the rest of the field. I don’t mean they climbed to so many seconds out in front, but rather they’re leaving the field behind at a rate of ten to twenty seconds per lap on every single lap. I’m talking about lap pace, not distance ahead because they happened to start in front. I’m talking even on the lowest difficulty settings you can get Drivatars that would place in the top 1% or at least top 5% on the leaderboard, so basically we’re expecting someone that’s an absolute newbie to the game playing on the easiest possibly difficulty is expected to race at a pace that would beat 95% or even 99% of the Forza community.

I did a race at Road Atlanta where we had one of those half-class limitations, like 650 PI or whatever the case was, and one particular Drivatar was making ground by several seconds per sector; not per lap but per sector. Ultimately his lap pace was so fast that his fastest lap would’ve put him in the top 1% on the Road Atlanta leaderboard for that class, even though his PI wasn’t anywhere near the top of that class. His laps were comparable to players who had over 50 more PI than that Drivatar, and this was on Above Average difficulty, as I recall.