I’ve had this game for a long time but I’ve never jumped online, I’ve just been playing offline. I did play online a bit in Forza Horizon 2 and this game seems to largely be similar in online structure to that game.
So where’s a good place to start?
Just do an online adventure. You can do collisions on or off if you select custom. You will be rammed, that’s Horizon.
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You might want to play without a headset and mic… at least in “public” games… if you can find a good club or a group of like minded individuals it helps…
I do Online Adventure. If you’re good, you really won’t have to worry about much. Most of the lobbies end up shaking down to 2-3 good drivers and 9 bad drivers (unless you get in a lobby full of one clan).
You can find good clean racers. I’m always clean, but if someone hits me on purpose I will retaliate 10-fold. Don’t dive bomb or try to push me wide of the flags and you won’t have a problem 
You can do free roam too but good luck getting more than 1 or 2 other people to do a real race that’s not a drag race with you.
Oh yea, build good AWD cars, almost a necessity in a dirty online lobby. I set mine to be 75-80% rear biased, just need front wheel power to help prevent getting spun out.
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All good tips. Pretty much every car you come across in Online Adventure will be AWD swapped (or just naturally AWD and left that way) simply for the ease factor. Even when you do find a RWD car in a lobby, there’s a higher chance that it’s just someone new to the game who hasn’t resorted to RWD swapping, rather than someone who has made the decision to stick to RWD.
If you get frustrated easily, probably stick to non-contact racing. People in Horizon 3 tend to race dirty quite often, and it can get a tad annoying. When I play Online Adventure I tend to get smacked around a bit, but I’ll really only retaliate if it happens a handful of times over multiple races. Honestly one of the best things you can do is just race harder when others are racing dirty. There’s plenty of times where I’ll pass someone cleanly and they’ll end up in a wall because they were more concentrated on trying to take me out than actually making a corner or braking.
One big tip I can offer if you’re just getting into Online is try to focus on a class that you’re comfortable with. If you have trouble with some of the Hyper Cars in the game, try sticking to S1 or A class and easing your way into the online mode with lower horsepower cars. The Custom Adventure feature isn’t as extensive as I would like it to be, but it still allows you to specify whether you’d like to do racing and playground games, racing only, playground games only, or non-contact racing only, and whether you’d like to vote for a new class after each series, or just have one set class that you race in each time across different disciplines.
Other than that, just race clean and try to get noticed by other players who do the same. You’ll find it much more enjoyable if you’re able to race with a Club or Party than if you’re just by yourself, at least from my experience. You can still be competitive, but you can also trust the other drivers around you.
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Start with Free Roam because Online Adventure is full of High Level Try hard Players. Move to Online Adventure when you feel ready for it.
All good advice. Jump right in and don’t let the dirty players get under your skin. Take your lumps and learn to beat them. Eventually you will.
Along the way you will acquire friends who appreciate a good racer, maybe a good club too.
AWD, lots of power and no weight reduction work best in car builds for online adventure. Do tire upgrades last. Get used to a powerful loose handling car for best advantage. Power away from the pack and drift a bit to score high XP as that is what wins online adventure.
Sometimes it’s best to hold back a bit in the first few turns and take the inside while many others pile up against the wall. Taking a proper line could result in you being in the pile up also.
Good luck!
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This is great that you asked. It was never my intention to go online, so I never did the free one month of xbox gold offer. I just checked and Forza Motorsport 5 is on sale for $10 for gold members. So I cashed in the free gold offer. Soooo, as a gold member, I’m gonna try out some online for at least a month👍
(Although it doesn’t seem like I can connect at the moment. I’ll try again when Forza 5 is completely downloaded.)