Why do tires add 3 letters? Why can you load a car up with 150 extra horsepower and it’s only 30-40 points higher? Why does an AWD swap add 12 points max and have such a drastic performance change?
Like, i haven’t played forza since 4, but i don’t remember it being this broken. Why can i get the same laptimes in my D-class 49 merc as i can in my A-class datsun 240Z? That shouldn’t happen. That’s why there’s classes.
Like, i can accept the lazy rubberbanding AI. It’s just a staple of low-effort racing devs. I’ve dealt with it for over two decades now. Sure i’m a bit mad when a chevy sedan beats my ford GT somehow because it’s the umpteenth race on dirt in the rain, because obviously if you add rain into the game you need to make 4out of 5 races in the rain; especially when the rain does not affect the AI, but classes are supposed to keep things even between humans. This is especially frustrating when i see yet another AWD CRX beating my laptimes i set in a bone stock countash pop up in my notifications at 6am when i’m trying to sleep.
And that’s another thing, Rivals are completely mishandled. There’s no drivetrain limitations as we’re back to FM3 where AWD Is once again OP to the moon and back. Classifying them by laptimes is alright, Like when i get someone that’s a couple fractions of a second off of my best, that’s fun. But when i get some guy in an AWD swapped viper 12 seconds off pace of my lap, i really don’t care that he beat my laptime.
I don’t recall the PI system being as broken as it is in FH3. I know tires added a lot of PI points on classic cars because the tires from the 50s and 60s are junk, but it is pretty ridiculous. I’m not against another rebalance and leaderboard wipe, like was done in FM3.
This game is based largely on cross country racing, so tires are much more beneficial than engine upgrades. So tires can upgrade your car hugely. That’s why they jump so much and engine upgrades barely move it.
The PI has been explained repeatedly by the devs. It’s different for each game. It takes into account surface types, vehicle specs, weather, upgrades, literally everything in game. Then it boils it all down to a set of numbers for each car with each upgrade. They are all tested to make sure they are close to what the devs want and then they are released upon us in each game. This is why a car in Forza Motorsport may be A700, but in Horizon it’s S2906 because it’s better for grip.
It may not make sense to you, but when you think about it carefully this game is all about the grip. I build my cars with rocket engines and not so much tire upgrades. Then i take care of cornering myself. It means i can outrun the drivatars pretty easily and then just ease around corners myself. Try it and you’ll see what i mean.
Quoted for truth. It may not be what we want out of this game, and I would agree wholeheartedly that a sure-footed car is more fun to drive than a wet noodle; but the game is what it is. The AI always goes for balanced builds, which means it doesn’t have a chance against acceleration/speed builds in this game. The highest classes are perfectly doable, though. Once you get experience with the course and how the cars behave, you can take on AI opponents with more competitive cars, and still come out ahead.
I wouldn’t mind a rebalance if the AI rubberbanding is cut back drastically, or better yet, implemented properly, with a set mild performance boost or cut, depending on whether it’s behind or ahead.
One thing I don’t understand is why I keep seeing complaints about the rain. I’ve detected no advantage in AI driving on rain, at all. And the asphalt becomes more yielding on the rear end of AWD cars, which tends to stick like glue to dry pavement (leading to serious understeer). So overall, it can be a good thing.
That is in essence broken. The P.I. simulation A.I. seems to limit itself with low-grip AWD cars, where players can power out of their lack of grip, completely negating the disadvantage of stock tires. I doubt we’ll PG change anything, as that would mean rewriting the simulation, which means pretty much every car would see their P.I. change.
You’re right they won’t change anything because they made a massive error in the coding. It’s actually pretty funny. I’m surprised no one pointed out that a stock Ford Focus is in B class. That should have been the sign right there that something isn’t right. There’s plenty of D and C class cars in stock form that are faster than those older focus models.
I find it absolutely hilarious that the FM3 car building insanity is back.
I’ve also noticed stock tires grip really good after AWD swap. Hahaha
It certainly takes some getting used to. In the past 2 weeks I have been rebuilding everything in my garage to H3 standards. In Horizon 2 my default build would be all of the adjustable stuff, weight reduction and tires for either width or actual rubber upgrade. Now I don’t even consider weight reduction and typically only widen tires and pretty much the rest goes under the hood. For the cost of max weight reduction you can often get 100+ hp.
Handling upgrades way too expensive and power upgrades way too cheap. I am adapting though and stuff I found uncomfortable to drive a month ago I am now thriving in. It can get ridiculous though. I tend to stick to B, C and D class and you can get some ridiculously over powered rocket cars. Guys take these online too knowing they just have to careen off of walls and barriers and some of them actually do pretty good because they are so fast in the straights and some have learned a few proper angles for wall bouncing. They have absolutely no chance at ever running a clean lap but they can win online careening off of walls (and other players!).
I would prefer it more like H2 but I am trying to make lemonade out of the lemons they have served up.
This difficulty to begin with is completely ridiculous. I just lost to a car on New Racer, as someone who has been Forzas for the past TEN YEARS, and it makes utterly no sense as to how their driving lines are so completely and utterly perfect on what is the lowest difficulty in the game. Much less how PI is completely nonsensical in this game in the relationship between PI and actual performance, giving everyone who wants to swap a centenario engine into their lotus Cortina an absolute field day and discourage driving with actual skill - and encouraging driving like a complete moron.
Tl;dr this game is complete nonsense and I am seriously rethinking what I liked so much about it because of the horde of problems it has. No, I’m not going to ask for a refund. Yes, I’m still going to play it.
With sim damage off and rewind on, maybe, maybe not?
Bounce off walls at turns, top speed between?
On a light hearted note, did anyone else think about cracking a joke about our fellow forum member PPiDrive on reading the thread title?
When I race in SP and I don’t want to subject myself to ludicrous HP, I Blueprint so the Drivatars are in close to stock cars compared to the PI of the car I am in.
Works a treat.
Lacking Rivals motivation though. I loved it in previous Forzas but the ghosts I’ve seen already point me to builds I am not interested in.
LOL! funny you say that. I got on today, saw this title, and thought it was about me.
the whole tire upgrade thing is a little bonkers though. I mean, I built a 166MM in C class and B class that is crazy, it’s basically an S2 car but it’s not because it has stock tires. You have to really think about braking and plan it out because the brakes suck and the tires can’t hold the car in a straight line that easily while braking or turning but who cares, right? Funny thing happens though: I upgrade the tire width and I gain a couple PI. I upgrade the tires and the game tells me, “PPiDrive, you’ve reached he PI Limit, please downgrade your car…” really?
I always figure there will be some wonky builds but shouldn’t the game be coded in a way that somewhat mirrors the physics or reality?
Thing is I don’t think the PI system in the context of this specific game is broken. I think the drivatars are.
Yesterday i had the best day on Horizon 3 so far by removing the differences between rocket ships and the drivatar’s all rounders. How did I achieve this feat? No i didn’t build like they do, I set up several championships with pre-1950’s cars then chose the stock Ferrari 166M Barchetta. As no other car is close ALL the drivatars choose it too. Then it’s a more level field. Even with the difficulty cranked up i still beat them easily. Something I shouldn’t be able to do.
Two years ago i severed almost all the tendons in my left hand in a rather unpleasant accident. This means i have to run ABS, No clutch etc. Which slows me down. The slowed reaction speed of my hand also slows me down somewhat. I’ve been playing at highly skilled level ever since as I had to drop down. But in Horizon 3 i’m currently running rings around the Drivatars at Pro and that displays to me a problem with the Drivatars not the PI.
Maybe they wanted to make it easier for people, but then what’s the point of having high skill levels if you nerf them so noobs can play them? NONE. ridiculous. lol
But if you want some fun racing guys do the 166M Barchetta thing, it’s the best day of racing i’ve had since owning this game. lol
Gotta agree. It’s insane how much tires affect the PI, whenever I use a car with balanced upgrades and tunes I struggle to keep up because the AI cars literally have about 200 additional kW compared to my car. However, if I use a car with insane power but vanilla tires, it becomes a piece of cake. Best example is my Alpine A110 which I use for drifting. I use vanilla tires, and it’s in B class. It destroys the Drivatars completely, they can’t keep up on straight routes at all (even during corners they can hardly keep up, playing on Pro difficulty without driving assists). It becomes S1(!) when I equip racing tires. Not to mention that S2 is also completely broken. How are cars like the Ford GT HE with over 1000 kW in the same class as an Audi R8 LMS with about 370 kW? I know the Audi is a track car, but the GT has almost just as good handling and beats the Audi and the other track cars by a LONG margin on straight lines. I feel like this game needs to have more classes and power/tire upgrades rebalanced. I mostly played Forza 4 and that game felt almost perfectly balanced.
The pi system is actually quite balance when you do testing on multiple tracks. On a single track, yes some cars are far faster but different tracks, with different demands, will result in a car that was slow on the other track being fast on this track. To truly balance the classes each car would need to have multiple pi’s for each type of race with how vastly different they can be within horizon.
Yes each track has different demands but the builds aren’t all that different since you can’t fit tires more often than not. Either the car works or it doesn’t. Build wise there isn’t much control. The only difference depending on starting PI you may not be able to get more than 700HP until A class.
I’ve built close to 50 cars for all surfaces and here’s the recipe for every car:
Street or mixed surface = use race springs
Rough terrain and sometimes mixed surface = use rally springs
AWD swap and do a v8 or v12 engine swap if stock motor is garbage
Add race diff and race sway bars
Add lots of power until desired class
Fill in PI with other upgrades as needed to reach max
Car has terrible gearing? Add race or sport transmission
Car understeers or brakes badly even after tuning? Add race brakes, take off rear tire width, add front rim size
Car oversteers to much? Add front and rear aero or roll cage, or rear tire width
And you’re done. That’s it’s. Every car for D-A no matter layout.
That’s what you have in a car game that is a trade of all jacks and does not actually encourage winning races:
XP multiplayer championship
broken AI
broken PI system
unrealistic upgraded clown cars
flying ships
that stupid fan gameplay mechanic which is just a lazy trick for unlocking stuff
The next FH game should be a space simulator where you race to Mars and other billion planets to earn “fans”.
And do not forget to make the ships upgradable.
The drivatars and pi system are 100% garbage in this game. Theres no sort of balance to be had with upgrading and the ai are inconsistent. Time and time again i see the same rehashed games not just forza make either no changes to things people had issues with or break things that werent broken to begin with. Theres no reason to have altered the pi system yet again for this game. Power is op in this game not grip, 9 times out of 10 a power build will win. As usual this will not see any changes made because we’re already 2 months in and people have times set and builds made, theyre not gonna wipe leaderboards over this.
I believe I know what they tried to do, they just went too far.
People have complained about leaderboard cars but moreso that you can have 2 cars with similar looking stats yet one is a LB car and the other not. And for most tracks it was almost always the lighter car was LB.
So I think they deliberately tried to tweak the PI system to make grip costly and power less costly.
I just think they put a multiplier in somewhere of say 1.30 when 1.05 may have done the job.
I believe they tried to improve something that was decent but broke it in the process by going too far.
Overall I am enjoying having to do different things in this game.
If they had given exactly the same as last game then someone would come here and accuse them of being lazy etc
