Horizon 3 Assist

I was wondering, do you play Horizon 3 with assist off or on?

I play with all the assists off, except for rewind and using manual shift with auto clutch. Rewind feels like a necessary compromise since I’m easily distracted.

The bonus from disabling most assists feels worth it more than the aid they provide. Also, TCS and STM probably make drift zones impossible to complete.

I guess the assists may help a bit more on Blizzard Mountain.

I drive with them off other than auto gears and break line. Learning to get my gear changes sorted properly in manual though

All assists off, manual transmission (w/o clutch) , no replay, Drivatards on Pro

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I play with ABS, manual w/o clutch, braking line, and rewind. Of them all, the only one I’d say I really ‘need’ is the braking line. I have a bad habit of fixating on only a handful of courses in single player, so I find the guidance useful until I begin to build a recollection. I also subconsciously use it to analyze fault in online racing incidents. It’s not always optimal, but it does a fair enough job of highlighting turn apexes so as to visualize whose tactics had absolutely no chance of working without using their neighbor as a brake.

Everything else barring rewind is an effort to make my experience relatively realistic. I do turn ABS off for cars that don’t have it, though I steadfastly refuse to use manual w/a clutch. . .at least for as long as I use a controller. I drive a stick in real life, and I’m not keen of how the controller inherently forces you to run through the gears sequentially. Rewind is merely mitigation for the AI’s sometimes brain dead or exploitive driving.

Thanks for the replies, the reason I wanted to know is I am new to the Horizon series and thought it to be less of a simulation. I am trying to figure out which is the best way to play this game. Seems though that Assist are usually turned off from the replies on this thread. I tried playing a little with the assist off and it is significantly harder to control the vehicle. I automatically hold the gas button full at the start of a race and I’m mostly burning tires as all the cars have already left. Any tips?

The AI almost, always gets better launches unless you’re using an AWD car. . .partly because it’s absurdly better at accelerator control, and partly because you don’t get much time to set up your launch before the race goes green. That said, practice easing onto the accelerator trigger from a standstill in free roam. A little wheel spin is okay, but the goal from that point on is to quickly let your RPM fall (or rise) just enough for the tires to hook up and for you to accelerate smoothly. Your launch won’t beat the AI’s more often than not, but you’ll at least lose less time than if you’re generating plumes of white smoke throughout the first two gears. As ViperDemon said, “Spinnin’ ain’t winnin.” You might even gain ground before the first corner if your car has better rolling acceleration.

Technical solutions include upgrading your rear tire width or converting you car to AWD, though I personally think both along with TCS are crutches. All can provide consistency or significant performance improvement, but will only go so far if you don’t develop decent accelerator control.

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Spinnin ain’t winnin, and throttle isn’t off and on, it’s progressive. And yes running no assists once you get a feel for it is the faster way to drive, abs has the least effect but you can stop faster without once you learn the lockup threshold, stm and tcs will apply the brakes to try to keep things in check but it usually hinders more than helps especially on awd. Never ever ever ever use assisted steering. Throttle modulation is important especially in a rwd drive vehicle. In muscle cars or any car running a v8, depending on where it makes torque in the power curve is where I try to launch especially naturally aspirated or supercharged. Turbo I try to launch where it’s starts coming into boost. The sooner you can get it to hook, the better off you’ll be. Lower tire pressures, softer suspension settings and running aero will all help. Try tuning, if you feel it’s made it worse you can always reset it to default tuning settings and try again. Goodluck and happy racing!

I play this game as I play all others, with all assists off except for manual w/o clutch. I see no need for the clutch at all as the computer can do a more efficient job at shifting it than I can.

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