How about rolling starts? I personally dislike them on gt5 but if it spreads the pack out and cuts out the shunting it would be worth a look? Maybe just for a few of the races like gt etc.
While I love variety that seems to be a lot of work and a long shot for forza 5. Im pushing this hopper/rival time thing because it seems to be a pretty easy to implement. That is, it could be equated to putting up a collision free lobby, or special even track. At least to test with the player base. In fact, after pondering this for a couple days, I’m confident that if just one class got thrown into the monthlies, next to the collision free lobby, it would catch fire. Furthermore, I think the intoxicating nature of great competition would make us forget about a lot of the games issues.
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I don’t really have too much of an issue with the first corner pile up, it can usually be avoided or damage minimized if your expecting it. I would way rather see lobbies set up based on skill that keeps the races exiting, then spread everything out so people don’t hit each other.
I really don’t think there’s much they could do to change things. Its not gonna work with separating people by rival times, firstly not everyone sets leaderboard times for every track nor every class on every track. What time would they choose that one good lap u had on a single track that one night you were in the zone or average all your times which would take some good drivers out of good lobbies cause they didn’t set times on the drag tracks or that stupid airfield one. Secondly, I don’t know about anyone else here but I’ve always liked racing faster people, it makes you better so segregating players based on rival times would never allow people to get those experiences. Thirdly, and this is the big one I think, how many people do you think are actually playing this game, nevermind the hopper you might have chosen. Lets say the top 1% is about a 1000 people what are the odds that out of the 1.5 million people that bought forza that one of those 999 other drivers were online at the same time, chose the same type of race you chose and then put into the same lobby. If the top drivers were the only ones allowed to race against each other their lobbies would almost always be empty. There is nothing much that they could choose to separate people, other than make some type of ratings system where we could rate other drivers on like a 1-5 star system. But even that might not work because if someone kept winning, or using leaderboard cars when others aren’t they would be rated low even when they shouldn’t. The kick system they have now doesn’t really help much either but tbh it never made much of a difference in past games either, people would vote out the worst drivers but also the best ones as well so every lobby was filled with mediocrity. The last thing that I could think of would be to create different difficulty tiers to the hoppers, they already have the beginners so they’d just have to add few more. You’d get some clowns, but I think for the most part if people could choose a difficulty they’d most likely choose the one they had a chance of winning. Maybe if they did take some of our drivatar data and lap times they could recommend where people belong at that time. They should put that power of the cloud drivatar data to some good use besides for single player ai which is really meant to lose all the time anyway.
The idea being discussed really isn’t much different than the one I proposed about having different circuits based on driver ability. For instance, the tippy-top guys would be in the “World Circuit”, next level down would be “National Circuit”, etc…The names really don’t matter so much as the general idea, which is very similar to what is being discussed. I said at the time it really does not make much sense for me to be racing folks like Raceboy77.
And, yet, when I proposed this, I had people saying that I just wanted to make it so “everybody got a trophy”. So, you can’t please everybody, I guess.
For anybody worried about circuit mobility, there would be ways to get promoted (something like time trials on three random tracks) and private lobbies where everybody could race, regardless of skill level.
I’m not going to suggest implementing something like this is easy, but, I have to think it is doable.
AX
I think its very doable if they use a format similar to the one on Forzastats. The times for everyone are already in the system, its just a matter of assigning a point system to it. Forzastats only gives points to you if you have a top 100 time, so they would need to broaden that substantially. Everyone is ranked anyway, so why not just reverse the numbers? The last person on a leaderboard gets one point, and the top driver gets however many points as there are players on that track. When you go into a class lobby, would it really take so much to have your point total for that class used to put you in a hopper with similar players? No, it wouldn’t. You couldn’t do this on a track by track basis, so it would have to be based on classes, which most of the hoppers already are. Lap times are recorded from racing in lobbies and career mode as well as hot lapping, so people don’t need to be hot lappers in order for this to work. I know its harder to run a good time in a lobby, but its far from impossible. I’ve been in many lobbies where I pull out to an early lead on the first lap and then the rest of the race is basically like hot lapping anyway. I’ve recorded some pretty darn good times in lobbies, even a few personal bests.
I know that a lot of players like to be included with the faster players, I count myself among that group. However, what about what the fastest players want? I only consider myself fast in D class and I know it gets very annoying to be put in lobbies with people that have no chance of keeping up with me unless they run me off the road. Not only would a system like this promote far better competition, but it would also get the crashers away from the people who are serious about racing. It doesn’t need to be tiered in any way. Just when someone goes into multiplayer and picks a class, the game simply would put them in a lobby that makes the most sense based on who is playing at that time. It makes 1000 times more sense than the way you are placed into a lobby now.
To the poster above who said what are the chances of the best players being online at the same time… I’ve seen it happen many times.
What’s being discussed isn’t about making more lobbies or adding a License or tiers. It’s about using a different way of organising the current lobbies using info already In place. The gamerscore may or may not be working as intended since there’s no way of seeing it.
In response to 2fast I also question many top drivers are online at a given time and how often they are searching the hoppers and not in privates. If LB times were to be used you wouldn’t need a time on every track in every class. I think taking your best 10 places on the LB in the given class would give you a good idea of the skill level of the player.
The question is can this be done? It might or might not be better as there’s no way to tell how many people are in the hoppers at a given time.
Raceboy will always have trouble trying to find someone close to his skill level if in the hoppers, but it should put him in with people who can almost keep up, not people he can lap.
Regardless of the format it takes, I think most people ultimately want the same thing. They want a competitive race environment for them; to know that if they really pull out a great race and give their all, they stand a reasonable chance of winning. The current system puts the equivalent of NBA developmental players against LeBron James in a one-size-fits-all model. There is a time and place for going against the best and learning from them – I think that is better suited to rivals, not so much to MP. The current system, IMHO, causes frustrations for newer players (and the less mature of those often become wreckers) while also forcing folks like GreekSniper to wait 20 seconds before starting to prevent him from being terminally bored. So, I think there is room for change going forward.
AX
Problem 1… connection… alot people cant connected to each other.
Problem 2… The pool of players might no be that big.
Problem 3… You want to give the fastest people the pole??? That give fastest drivers a huge advantage…
That’s an issue for T10, Microsoft, or an individual with a bad connection. Its a problem no matter what and I don’t see how it has any impact on this idea.
So? If you base things on a point system, it doesn’t matter how big, or small the pool is. The best players online are simply put in a lobby with the other top players who happen to be on. Sometimes, you’ll only get people that are a few seconds slower per lap still, but its better than being paired up with people that you can easily beat by 20 seconds a lap. I don’t know about you, but that isn’t any fun for me… I got to do a little bit of lobby racing tonight and a guy named ARxMack was in there. We had some awesome races because our abilities were so closely matched. That was fun… With this idea, you’d get a lot more of that. Before I get paired up with someone like that again in a public lobby, I’ll get another month of watching newbs trying to force a square peg into a round hole by driving a 900HP muscle car around Laguna in D class. Its just stupid…
Who gets the pole in real racing? You want the pole, then earn it… You would be on the pole most of the time anyway in c class…
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Who gets the pole in real racing? You want the pole, then earn it… You would be on the pole most of the time anyway in c class…
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I probably would be on the pole almost ever race and probably be out front pulling away. While every body else would be fighting for position. I dont thinks its fair.
I probably would be on the pole almost ever race and probably be out front pulling away. While every body else would be fighting for position. I dont thinks its fair.
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It would certainly make for entertaining races having the fastest drivers having to overtake john q moar horsies muscle car sideways action man.
… And what are they gonna do when they hit the first corner with no-one to assist in their stopping.
Shocked he didn’t wreck you for keeping up. Don’t tell him you are on my friends list. It’ll get ugly…
There’s a trueskill rating that’s been around since fm2 but was hidden in FM4. You basically get an online rank based on how well you do against other people. You beat a lot of fast people, your rank goes up and you got paired in lobbies with higher skill.
The amount of people online effected the result and at times it worked great and other times not.
Im not sure if this hidden ranking still exists. It probably wouldn’t matter because most people online are really slow. Implementing a similar system based on leaderboard ranks would work occasionally. It wont make the lobbies that much better. What would need to be done is fixing/adding features that would bring back the really good drivers and keep them playing all the time. Only then might a leaderboard based lobby pairing system would work pretty good.
Seemed like a good guy to me. Clean racer with plenty of skill, even complimented me whenever I won.
I mentioned your name to him, he said he knew you, but there was certainly no ugliness.
Any of these suggestions we’ve made are definitely doable but the fact of the matter is over the course of 5 forzas nothing has really changed with how we’re put into lobbies. I consider myself a good racer,I’m pretty confident that I can hold my own with anyone. For the past 3 weeks I’ve raced a handful of competitive racers but for the most part I’ve been in lobbies with sub 100 level drivers from totally different countries. I know driver level doesn’t equate to skill but when I see drivers at those levels I’m not that concerned, I was using stock cars and beating people. But the fact that I keep being put in these lobbies it leads me to believe it’s totally random, they just stick you in any available lobby. For the most part I don’t care, I just use slower cars to keep things competitive and here or there someone will pop in and I can get my race on but it starts to become monotonous after awhile. I hope somebody from turn 10 does read this thread and something can come from it, in past forzas we had a few more tools at our disposal to choose how and who we raced where now we have to rely on them to make these changes for us. I’m still waiting for cycled production to come back that was my favorite hopper, it was always more competitive because the best drivers would win not the best car with the best tune.
The monthly hoppers dedicated to more expensive cars are generally self-selecting to those putting up a few extra bucks for the game. I’ve had generally better results in such hoppers as the vintage racers, Indy 500 event, Catalunya F1 event, Long Beach Indycar event, etc.
The long wait times for more stratified lobbies could be overcome somewhat if there were a way to enter a lobby, pick a race, then go paint or tune or do rivals til the game’s got 3 or more racers to call together.
There’d probably be a good spread of skill level still but even at worst it would even it out some. If the overall leaderboard score were still captured it’d be perfect for this. I know it’s not visible to us but maybe the data is still captured.
everybody has a drivatar so just do it off drivatar ranks. they already collected the data, all they have to do is use it.
I may have missed a similar reply but: what if a top 50 hot-lapper decides for a day to go online drunk, gets matched with 12 people very eager to race “because of their leaderboard matches” and they still get taken out by the drunk person in the room?
Or not even drunk; I know several good online racers (clean drivers, friendly voice, good skills) that sometimes organize a group of friends and if all falls apart in the first 2 corners, it’s free-for-all bumpercars.
Everybody has an off-day here and there and rammers will be rammers. Still see no technical solution to seperating the good from the bad at any time of the day on any leaderboard on several million sold copies of the game.
Nothing will ever be perfect. Nothing. Ever. That said, this idea seemed the most feasible, and most probably as the elements are already in game and for the most part being recorded about us. Right now, its guaranteed if I log in, that the lobby joined will be a mix of super fast, noob, and crasher. Virtually every time…where as if this were implemented the hope is that the paradigm would be switched. That is, most of the time we would have competitive racing, with the exception being jackwagons. As mentioned previously in the thread, this increase in competition would provide all sorts of psychological benefits to racers as well, notably, and not to be understated, the feeling of being competitive. Many have mentioned concern about the competitiveness of the top racers, of having them online at the same time, etc…but…when you think about it, thats almost silly. Hoppers max out at 16cars, with most races averaging about 10 cars. Millions of copies of the game sold, 10car average hopper. Given these numbers, I don’t really see how such a low number of people, who would need to be competitive, around the world, could not be online in the same moment.