I have some trouble competing well in the hopper lobbies. I put down strong lap times consistently on my own but for some reason I’m always in the back. My best explanation is that everyone in the hopper lobbies has every assist turned on and I refuse to use any of them. All sim all the way. But it just kind of stinks because I have a huge disadvantage for not using assists. Yes I could tun them all on and run quicker but what the heck is the point of that? I wish they had at least one lobby that everyone’s assist were forced completely off and could have an even playing field across the board. Is that too much to ask? It would also be nice if it was forced to simulation damage so the lobby would not turn into a destruction derby. That would be huge for those of us that like the true sim feel.
When you say you run strong lap times on your own how strong are we talking? Also you will find the really quick guys online tend to run very few assists mainly traction control and partial braking line. People who turn all assists on are NOT quick believe me.
Best advice I can give you is try and avoid any first corner incidents and contact in general and you should be able to do ok. Also there’s no subsitiute for practice, practice, practice! Keep at it and you’ll find your results will improve
No… assist dont make you super fast. If your always in the back your doing it wrong. Maybe tune/build/car is wrong, maybe you cant race with traffic. Are you keeping pace?
What do you consider strong lap times? I would think if you’re quick enough then by default you’ll do well more often than not.
I can tell you right now that occasionally you’ll run across highly skilled drivers running top 100-400s every lap. In other forza games, my rule of thumb was if my car wasn’t running top 1,000 lap times it was slow. With FM5 the lobbies don’t seem competitive at all, so maybe its top 2,000 now?
Based on everyone’s replies I might just stink lol. I just drive very courteous when I’m in the lobbies so I think my times are much slower due to that. I guess i am more concerned with respecting the other drivers and not enough pushing my way around the track.
My biggest downfall is that my tunes are just ok. Definately not super fast. Most cars seem to handle a little better than mine even when in the same car. Oh well.
Nothing wrong with being nice on track. You’ll always be slower if you race cleanly, but if you set your passes up well (easier said then done on some tight tracks) you can chop into the time lost. The problem is there’s no easy way to learn without trying and to a degree car choice can limit what you can do. For example, if you’re in a low acceleration high grip tune you’ll have issues with losing momentum which adds to the issue of setting up passes.
Post what class you race and cars you use. Chances are someone here may have or know someone who has a good tune. There’s so many ways to build/tune a car that there’s really no telling if their tune handles better.
If you check the leaderboards you can see the top times have most or all assists off. If you do it right racing with (almost all) assists off is quicker. But in some destruction derby lobbies you need a lot of luck too…
Fewer assists is definitely faster. If you can pull off even top 5000 leaderboard times you should be able to keep pace online just fine. Many of my leaderboard times fall between the 2000 and 5000 mark with some top 1000 and less scattered about. Point being that usually I can podium online 70% of the time without using a so called “leaderboard” car. You may just be getting a bit choked up racing in traffic but keep at it and you’ll gain more confidence. The first couple years I played Forza Motorsport I was terrible but I just kept at it and learned how to build and tune and honed my driving skill and eventually became good enough to stay competitive online.
As far as your point about lobbies, that is where custom public lobbies would’ve come in handy. Then you could set race parameters as you see fit and everyone else in your lobby would be forced to use those same parameters.