Fix the AI Drivatars

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The AI problems are most noticeable vs Unbeatable AI.

Unbeatable AI is:

  1. Too fast
  2. Ignores physics unless in nameplate range, then it completely forgets how to drive
  3. Ignores players’ car
  4. Takes impossible corners - for mid and high speed corners it doesn’t even care about slowing down but on any slow corner after a fast straight it complete forgets how to drive
  5. Has higher than top acceleration and speed on all cars

Winning vs Unbeatable AI is no longer about skill, it is only about LUCK. It is impossible to win without abusing rewind/restart. And then you have to hope that the lead AI messes up and crashes. As a player it feels like a cheap gimmick instead of a challenge. AI is cheating plain and simple.

What is even more jarring is that the AI completely fixes itself in co-op. In co-op the AI behaves exactly like it did in FH4 solo/co-op. How is that even possible???

The problems with the AI trickle down to ALL LOWER difficulties as well.

The majority of players are unable to even win vs Highly Skilled AI in seasonal championships. Many players have stopped playing the game for this reason as well.

Fix the AI!

Look at your own data:

Only 42% players are able to win races. 58% players aren’t even winning vs the Highly Skilled difficulty in weekly championships. That is just sad.

AI needs to be fixed as soon as possible. Game has been out for over 4 months and this is a core gameplay problem

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I agree the AI needs some work especially for Cross Country. That said I’m only an average driver and in the Trial yesterday I scored, 3rd, 2nd and 1st in the last race with my team losing the first race. Then in the Cult Classic against Highly Skilled Driveatars is was probably the easiest 3 wins I’ve ever had in Horizon 5.

One tip for winning in S1 and S2 class is to tune your car down as much as possible. The driveatars will also have their tuning reduced and the race pace will be noticeably slower. This is what I do with S2 as I can’t beat the Driveatars on Highly Skilled e.g. rather than S2 998 you have a car tuned to S2 901. This of course doesn’t work with online racing against real people.

What amazes me is in the build up to the launch of Horizon 5 it was all about graphics, sound etc improvements. Almost zero about about game play improvements. Think all I can recall is supposedly better support for wheels. I find wheel support is just as bad as it was in Horizon 4. Fine for cruising around but hopeless when you’re racing. I gather some top racers are on wheels but I find the car spins out too easily at speed.

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This helped for me:

In short: try using unusual cars for the type of race. I used the Bronco WP with 1775hp engine for some Dirt and Cross Country races and they were quite easy to win. It completely messes up the AI, especially the ones in the MINI X-RAID. They will crash, drive on 3 wheels, they’re all over the place which is quite funny to see.

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Don’t forget that the AI also skips checkpoints.

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The AI fixes itself to FH4 levels in co-op so it’s not just the Trials that are easier, you can co-op with friends vs Unbeatable and breeze past them (if you were comfortable vs FH4 Unbeatable).

Championships are pretty easy but I also know several players who can’t win them irrespective of road, dirt or CC so it’s disheartening.

And I do agree with the down tuning thing, it does work very well. As does changing the difficulty multiple times before race start (5+ times) and the AI mellows out.

These are just band aid fixes however…

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Hey thanks for that! Didn’t think about using weird cars tbh :rofl:

While I don’t have trouble racing vs Unbeatable AI and can always finish 2nd, getting that 1st win depends more on the AI messing up than my own skill or talent or whatever. Which I guess is also the point you’re making :smile:

I would honestly like some good quality racing similar to FH4. Yes even though the FH4 Unbeatable feels easy after months of playing it’s still challenging if you mess up.

They only have to fix the AI not following physics (even if they leave the crazy speeds as they are) and the AI will still be in a better place than where it is now. In fact the AI not following physics is what causes it to crash as you mentioned - it ignores physics, then when you get within nameplate range it tries to follow physics but messes up due to that sudden ON state lol

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This game and the AI is an absolute joke. Terrible AI. Always way too fast and other stuff. Laughably bad, fix the game or go find another job devs :slight_smile:

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Q: Does the AI need to be fixed?
A: No, its not broken!, its doing what its intended to do… which is the problem itself!

What we should be asking is:
Q: Does the AI need to be redesigned!
A: Absolutely yes!, let me explain…

THE DIFFICULTY DISPARITY
The AI in 1st place is very fast & very good at avoiding mistakes, so catching up to it can create a tense battle on the race track fighting for every inch, every 1mph to close that gap more and more… until you succeeded in overtaking it… then the AI buff immediately gets removed and now its slower, makes mistakes and rapidly loses ground creating a larger gap too you, ensuring your success provided you, yourself don’t make a costly mistake!

THIS CAUSING DEGRIDATION OF RACING
We all want a challenge when we select harder AI to race against, but the artificial buff & debuff negates the entire reason-to-race in the first place, the current system encourages you to ram the AI because when you get the lead you can literally win without even using full throttle, the debuff is that huge!!.. so a “Horizon-Race” is now officially: how soon can you go full-send into the bend to wipe out the lead AI car?

RESULTING IN LACK OF ACCOMPLISHMENT
Because of the above Horizon only acknowledges 1 race position, 1st!.. every other position is void. if you fought a hard battle and secured a respectable 2nd or 3rd… horizon acknowledges this by?.. yep totally ignoring it… no silver crest, no bronze crest… infact no crest at all as if you didn’t even have a race!

This is the entire-system that needs to be looked at, reassessed and redesigned… its flawed but only because its built around a flawed logic system and until that system changes, we will get more of the same…

GOING FORWARD

The original thought that drove horizon forwards was:
“How do we make gamers, car people & how do we make car people, gamers?”
Horizon has achieved this, they have a built a fantastic franchise that wins awards and captures peoples imagination and passion… the next driving force should be something like:
“How do make the gamers, “better” drivers and the drivers, “better” gamers?”

IN REGARDS TO THE AI SYSTEM:

Encourage effort! - If you get a podium finish “celebrate it!” give players a bronze, silver or gold crest on the map, not gold or nothing, it would also be good to have the inside of the crest colour match the class so best of the best end up getting 4 little gold crests with:
1 yellow inner (C), 1 orange inner (B) 1 red inner (A) & 1 violet inner (S1)

Encourage Challenge! - The AI should be built around the players build/tune stats with a minimum stat floor to prevent players from trying to trick the system by out-tuning a built-in flaw. The AI then receives a stat that’s built on balance and distributed out across all AI cars, this stat stays in effect for the entire race not removed when they no longer have the lead, basic example:
PLAYER HAS: 5.6sec 0-60 / 130mph t-speed / 4.1 handling : so the AI receives:
1 of the following: 5.6-6.1sec 0-60 / 130-140 t-speed / 4.1-4.6 handling : stats
1 of the following: 5.4-5.8sec 0-60 / 125-135 t-speed / 3.9-4.3 handling : stats
1 of the following: 4.6-5.6sec 0-60 / 120-130 t-speed / 3.6-4.1 handling : stats
Which will result is a race lineup with cars balanced around “you”, some with quicker acceleration but less top speed, some with faster top speeds but less grip and so on resulting in:
P1: 5.6sec 0-60 / 130mph t-speed / 4.1 handling
A1: 6.1sec 0-60 / 130mph t-speed / 3.6 handling
A2: 4.6sec 0-60 / 140mph t-speed / 4.0 handling
A3: 5.1sec 0-60 / 120mph t-speed / 4.6 handling
etc…

To aid in this, the AI also has access to 3 racing lines (early, perfect & late apex lines), the AI can then switch between them based on the stats & traffic position, this will avoid the AI seemingly ramming the player of the only line but instead give the illusion of adapting to the conditions, making for a more tougher race… (eg: higher top speed AI favours early apex lines etc)
the harder the AI level, the better they are at utilising the race-line - ie: better drivers not buffed drivers…

Encourage Improvement! - Once a race is complete, you get to view a stat sheet, this highlights goods and bads about your race, ie:
“ahhh… so close!, was a great race though, i might have an idea on how to use those 20k credits you won!
Here’s your stats with some recommendations:
Your suspension, hit 100% compression 8x’s, we could stiffen your springs or raise ride height alittle…
Your Tires reached a max temp of 230’, we could add more tire-pressure or upgrade the compound…”

Well that’s my thoughts anyway, I’m sure there are lots of obvious flaws with it but i hope you get the idea…

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My expectations for AI is the following:

  • AI should obey by the same laws of physics that we do
  • AI should be able to drive in a straight line and should not swerve into players as they pass by
  • AI should be able to detect when there’s an obstacle in front of them such as a car and slow down as a result instead of ramming them
  • AI should not rubber band in a choo choo train
  • AI should compete with each other based on the strength and weaknesses of their respective cars
  • AI should be able to navigate around custom blueprints without getting caught
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It’s AI, of course they are going to be better at racing than humans. But you gotta learn how to compete against them, even if it takes a long time.

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This is my current biggest gripe with the game. AI’s cars are not limited to the RPM, speed, grip and other physics that ours are, or at least do not appear to be. When playing against AI and they simply accelerate suddenly and faster than we can, or take impossible corners, it simply ruins the experience driving against something that appears to be on rails.

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At a minimum force the Drivatars to post times that are representative of the skill level they are set to, even if the behavior turns out wonky. The challenge would be fairer and more consistent, and you’re not forced to spend tens of minutes extra to win a few-minutes race (unless you make an absolute mess of it, of course). Keeping us from spending wasted time on a futile endeavor, all because a gameplay system made it unwinnable.

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10 posts were merged into an existing topic: Fixing Drivatars

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Nothing much to say that hasn’t been said already, so here’s what should be done:

  • Vehicles used by Drivatars should be limited to the same modifications available to the player to keep things fair.
  • Vehicles used by Drivatars should be unmodified if the player uses an unmodified vehicle to also keep things fair.
  • Drivatars should be affected by weather, terrain, and smashable objects to, again, keep things fair.
  • Drivatars can be goaded into making a mistake and can make mistakes without being influenced to to make things not necessarily fair, but more interesting.
  • Drivatars should make greater efforts to pass each other, as it is more realistic.
  • Drivatars should use other racing lines in addition to the optimal one, as it is also more realistic.
  • Drivatars should retaliate if the player is rough against them to discourage players from attacking them and possibly other drivers online (though this will admittedly not work on everyone, as rammers are sadly a fact of life).
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They are as long they’re in your vision/visual range. Meaning they’ll get affected by obstacles or water as long as you see them. The problem is that everything happening off screen doesn’t gets affected which for example results in the AI being behind you suddenly blasting past because you just got slowed down by a fence or drove through water that “physically” wasn’t existing for the AI that wasn’t in your view.

You can actually do that and depending on which of the AI you’re racing it’ll make massive mistake all on it’s own (without player involvement).

It presumably doesn’t directly retaliates but will simply ram and generally try to make the racing experience as miserably as possible for you or anybody involved it seems. It’s one thing if the AI makes contact here and there or drives into your line to block you from overtaking but a totally different one if it delibaretly tries to ram and attack you at all cost. Which is especially noticeable in multiplayer races like the Tours for example.

Something they definitely need to fix is the uncontrolled swerving AI especially at the start of multiplayer races. At least from S1 upwards it’s ridiculous how unable the AI is to keep the car in something like a straight line and how often it’s losing control because it’s simply overdoing it.

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The Horizon series has always been notorious for rubberband a.i.

Ive learned to deal with it and memorize the courses.

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Good for you. I, however, am tired of how much the Drivatars cheat.

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I completely agree with your statements 100%. Horizon has become much more than a racing game, but at its core the Drivatars, and therefore the racing are very broken. I will add that any mistakes made by the Drivatars is the incompetence of their driving AI, and not a manufactured “realistic” mistake.

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I agree here as well, Drivatars are slightly broken. I feel they are tough to pass but then once your in first they slow down. and with the rewind feature theres no downside to using it as much as you want theres not much risk here. with that being said I would not care as much about coming in P1 if the game did not make you feel like you only win if your First.

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So we are one year after launch of the game and the AI is just as broken as it was.

I’ve just had some Cross Country races with C-class van & utility cars in the seasonal championship… Is it really that hard for Playground Games to make physics apply to AI just as it applies to the player? At least to make them struggle for grip in RWD cars on a loose surface? This is just frustratingly bad. Significantly worse than it was in previous Forza Horizon games, I think.

Anyway, after those races, now I want to make a break from this game even more than I wanted after the announcement of Series 14. And I think I will do that, considering what joke of rewards the Festival Playlist has to offer this month…

(Not to mention the pain that repeating Cross Country races is right now, with loading times two or three times longer than before after the last update…)

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