Hey, I started to play Forza seriously with Horizon 4 because I liked the game so much. After some time I had around 600 hours which is not crazy high. But I was thinking how many hours do you need for a good skill? I have decent skill but far far from the best so I guess it needs much more. What is your racing games story? How many hours do you roughly have or what is your miles driven stat? Thanks for the info!
There is no correlation, it doesn’t follow that someone with more hours is better, or that you will get better if you play more. Some people have a better aptitude for it than others, some people learn better or faster than others and so on.
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OK, I need minimum time for average people I guess. Because I can clearly see I don’t have enough experience. It’s like music instrument, you can’t be good immediately.
Well 600 hours is more than enough then. If you want/need to improve then more hours doing what you’ve already been doing, won’t be enough.
You could try playing rivals and learning from people’s ghosts for example, if you aren’t already doing that.
Yeah, it’s possible but like DaReoCharmer wrote he has 500 in Eliminator itself. Many people played racing games for years. Currently getting into best 1 % in monthly rivals is very hard for me but possible. And I think 1 % is not too good. So there must be something else in the game.
It’s a matter of perspective and what feature is in question. Time I did for this moth Rivals was within top 6% and I did that while listening to music via Spotify. I did one of the Vintage Racers in top 1% in the past, but I don’t really pay much attention to monthly rivals in general.
Being in 1% in anything as popular as in FH4 is achievement itself. You are not asking how to be good, you are asking how to be terrific and actually being in 1% is right there already.
Rivals, excluding monthly events it’s about tuning. There is other way to play it, I set time in top 46% with stock Citroen 2CV, had to see if there were others with D 100 and there was someone with VW Karman Ghia LOL. Sort of Rivals within Rivals. Stock can’t be competitive against tuned cars, but it can be fun to see how far you can get. It comes just by playing the game.
Da Reo Charmers skills and dedication in Eliminator are something really exceptional and he was about Grandmaster Level player in leagues before that. IIRC he wrote that it took 3 months of playing to get from league 2 close to Grand Master (and he lost those 3 months worth of points because of server issues).
So if you aim for leagues why not to ask from man himself? PM him about this topic.
For Playground Games, after certain point, once you are familiar with maps, I don’t think it helps that much to grind with those events with random team but it takes joining in a good club to practice and get good with coordinating others, also tunes. So it may be not about how much time but instead how do you use that time.
I don’t claim to be good in many aspects of game, but write from perspective from someone who is more of casual player. I have work, I have social life, other hobbies and goals in life. While FH4 is a great game, that 1% just isn’t worth my time unless it just happens. All respect to those whom have skill and dedication to get there though.
Because I play mostly Horizon 4 I wanted to know where I stand. So monthly rivals are good but they are a bit harder than I thought or mostly good people are there. It’s just some sign if I can drive a bit.
I thought 1 % is not much because it plays many people just for fun so it should be relatively easy and not big accomplishment. Maybe I need some friends from here to check. I know I am far from best but I am not sure how much crazy are the best 
I have very limited time for playing so I can’t play much and don’t expect to be very good.
Normal Rivals could be my next step and you are right, tuning is important too.
Da Reo Charmers is very exceptional and I don’t need to be the same level
Leagues? Currently probably not, I have a lot of research too. I don’t know much about dirt. Playing adventures could be very good skill booster I guess.
LOL, casual player? You are not casual at all. I like your research and dedication. But we have it similar, I have a lot of other stuff but still I want to have some decent skill at least in Horizon.
Monthly rivals is not the best indicator perhaps, because the playlist encourages all players to participate and do one clean lap. That will often mean that in circuit races they only do one lap and don’t even attempt to set a competitive time. That isn’t to say you are not competitive though, I added you to see your time and you have set a good time in the Speedtail which is a couple of seconds quicker than me, even though I did make a bit of an effort to do a decent lap. That car on that damp track is like handling a wet bar of soap.
You are right. That’s the reason I thought I could be higher
Great, I added you too, it’s always good to have some good and known players. Exactly, the car is really hard for good time but I thought it must be better than AWD Chiron… not for me Chiron was pretty bad and Mclaren is not much better. I was slightly above 1 % with Chiron and I thought it’s because of AWD which I don’t use too much now.
You are probably getting better and better gradually and not realizing it.
Just yesterday I realized that I only had two stars on most of the Drifting “story” activity, which I had done quite some time ago. I got at them with my favorite drift car and 3 starred most of the remaining chapters the first time I tried them and the other two only took 2 attempts. I had no idea my skill level had improved that much (I am still not what I would consider to be an outstanding drifter, but still…)
Keep at it, and best wishes.
Thanks. Yes, I should be better and better. I was just thinking how many years are ahead of me I know many people here so I thought it would be nice to know how much time they invested. Maybe I am big anti-talent so I need much more time to accomplish the same as them.
If you want to be as good as Don Joewon Song then 1 Million hours… lol!
Well after playing racing games for 30 years (first being Test drive on Commodore 64), I am what I am.
Maybe I could be better, if I could be bothered to follow racing line and those mentioned ghosts, but never did I use that.
I just play to relax, besides FH4 doesn’t feel to be meant as houghly competitive focused. Motorsport or GT sport seem to be better choice for that.
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Thanks for the info. I think you could have pretty good skill. But playing just for fun is completely fine.
I don’t know, it’s competitive enough for me. Too many leaderboards everywhere. I just do some and it’s very time consuming.
I also bought Test Drive on C64… was very excited to find it in my local computer shop one day (on cassette tape)… having previously seen the Amiga version which of course was very impressive for its time. The C64 version was pretty good too! I had a lot of fun with it.
It is hard to believe how much technology has advanced since then.
That narrows it down a bit. I don’t think you need hundreds of hours more to get good in Rivals. What I think is important is to find your scene and not to try be top 1% in every event type there is. Focus on something, like Road Racing and start from your comfort zone, because tuning adds to challenge.
For what comes to myself. I was never really driven by competitive aspects, but it was most just about being curious and also share in my own way what I find to be great in this game. Then I thought that players doing all that work to spot inconsistencies in car models are doing pretty good job for everyone playing the game, but I’m just not hard core car nut to be able to contribute in that. So I thought that I find out about Unbeatable in tarmac events. I hope developers would leave what works like it is, and would just iron out few oddities on a few routes, and that would be my contribution.
That said I have come to think of new game feature I may post about on one day or another.
My take on multiplayer is that it’s good to do at least unranked at least some times because there are really good players in there. Tuning makes it totally different world. Leagues, unfortunately Free Freeroam rush makes it different world too. I think players who are complaining about few things regarding MP are fighting a good fight, but I also think it’s designed to be convoluted time sink.
IMO it’s yes and no. For me it appears that while lot’s of times are set just in process to get it done, top 3% or so is as hard core as in any event. It also shows up in Horizon Story leaderboards. I set top 1% time in one chapter during Wednesday and checked leaderboards for other chapters and it looks like top is as competitive as in any event. For Monthly Rivals, it might be that while there are incredibly poor times, overall participation rate may be higher.
“You were flying back there”
Sometimes, I wish we had abandoned gas station in Horizon, just to take picture of Lotus Esprit painted blue and caption it like… you know.
I’m not into having functional gas stations, fuel consumption and all that at all in game, but sometimes I swear, I have been very close to post to feature request topic, add abandoned gas station please. Just to make reference in a photo, that maybe 1% of players could get. LOL
What I find great in this game is that figuring out different aspects of whatever I take on road can still surprise me. Few days ago I took stock Ferrari 365 GTB on Street Scene run and had to run Edinburgh New Town few times to figure out how to get in x.26.xx territory, but it’s fun and relaxing as speeds aren’t really a problem in B-class. Where I think I peaked was when I did that with S1 to low S2 RWD’s, I could take anything on road after that. Didn’t find it relaxing anymore though. Haha
It’s just mathematics… to get into the ‘top 1%’ of an event where thousands of people are not making any effort to be fast, isn’t as meaningful as the top 1% of a self-selecting group who are all trying their best. Granted, if you get into the top 1% of monthly rivals it still means you’re pretty good. But you’re 1% of (say) the 50% of players who do the playlist, whereas in normal rivals you might have to be top 1% of the (say) 5% who do rivals. A much higher bar.
I get the math and it would work if players in top percentages wouldn’t tend to be outliers in general in how competitive they are. Let’s do some more math with practical examples. During Spring (IRL) there was a bit of debate about Porsche 959. So I took it to Rivals on Marathon bone stock and set top 8% time. Later during Autumn, IRL I encountered odd Drivatar at North Coast Rush and took my stock '97 BMW M3 to Rivals to see where that Drivatar would end up in leaderboards. I set time of 3:06.320 which was within top 10% and spot 20 on global leaderboard (did actual race once with time 3:03.984, never could figure out how exactly, note, unbeatable, start from 5th row in Street Scene)
So how? Because sample size was so small, my 3:06 was among world top 20. My best actual race time had likely taken me to top 1%. Same goes for the Marathon time, with very little tuning, when gaps in time are not in tenths or hundreds but in seconds, it’s easy to climb up. While percentages are relative of course top 1% is bigger. But absolute limit what is achievable isn’t really, it’s something every player looks for, but there is one. So we end up with lot of times within hundreds of each other. It’s true that there is bigger 0,1% portion, but as there is absolute limit that can be reached, it comes to a matter of splitting hairs over if 0.00,02 seconds slower time really is that bad.
It could be also thought in reverse. Some players set really good top 1% times in say… May. Lot’s of players play after that, but say old times stay on top. Even if player count and participation percentage goes up, top times value don’t inflate unless they are beaten, no matter how many players try to beat them.
Edit: Trivia - Drivatar Car at North Coast Rush was Can-Am Maveric and was pulling times at stock PI equal to top 11th. player on Global leaderboard, with B700 Chevelle and rest of the ~top 6% of leaderboard, that were Trak-Tors IIRC. Maybe a Can-Am was a bit broken… 
I just improved on the monthly rivals but had to use TCS, I can only marvel at how people can set fast times in this event without it. With TCS it’s very much tamed.
Exactly 4 secs are there somewhere and they don’t use anything I can imagine wheel but it’s probably not true.