I’m not arrogant enough to call myself elite. 
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Hard to say in Horizon. It’s really not a competitive game.
Also depends on where you set the threshold of elite. I often reach top 500 in the leaderboards of the games I play and have touched top 20 a couple times, but there is still a massive skill gap between me and the pros. I think if I really poured my all into it I’d have some more upside, but I don’t think it would be enough to bridge the gap.
I’m in the upper echelon of casual players but… That’s hardly elite. There is a level of skill way beyond what I’ve achieved.
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I wouldn’t regard being able to win most trials as being sufficient to class someone as elite. That said, it would be fascinating to know what percentage of the player base can do that. Certainly it’s very rare I see anyone in a trial who give the impression that they could do so.
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In FH4, for cutting the grindyness of weeklies, I just rode walls. That is, until a band aid was put over that after what… since 2012? So eight years. It took eight years to put a band aid on wall riding. On that side, I side with points made by others previously. Primarily that any Horizon game isn’t the best environment for evaluating “elite racers”. FM is much more suited for that, but nothing in comparison to more in-depth games like ACC, DiRT, iRacing, PC2, maybe PC3 (idk, haven’t tried it myself), etc.
Class-optimized tunes are meant to work with each player alongside their own play style, knowing the track you’re on relatively well, etc. Horizon is, again, a poor example for some assessment of who’s “elite”. Since FH2, you can just run a rear-biased AWD tune and smoke every RWD even with them having ABS, TCS, and STM all on full. In FM6 and 7 (for a recent example), AWD drastically cuts cornering capability in basically every car you swap it out for. Even with decent tunes, 98% rear with 0% front accel lock and 80% rear accel lock… turn response is trashed in every car I’ve tested with AWD swaps. Only thing AWD helps me with in FM7 is drifting, which Horizon’s physics are so dumbed down it’s not hard to drift 700+ hp cars running RWD and race tires. It’s much more viable to tune lower power for drifting on FM6 and 7. Horizon makes everything crazy easy. Remember running Atoms on offroad courses? Idk if that’s still a thing, but those Atoms slayed times. It’s not even meant to be an offroad car, but it’s Horizon so aNyThInGs pOsSiBlE.
Also, on another side note, apparently clean laps running assists are more commonly faster now than old days of garbage physics when running assist-less was stupidly faster. Would we consider using assists as less “elite”? Or disregard it because of the faster time? All subjective as each player’s definition of “elite” is different.
Just have fun racing lol.
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I do see a lot of people who seem to be in the elitely bad category of the Trials and can’t score or even finish the race before the timer elapses.
There are no more elites, at least not in this current game. Removing the rankings have made us all equally participants. I understand those who put up great times in rivals but its not really a competitive session. You can have all the turns and corners memorized but the second a corner bombing player or brake checking AI or Kree cheat engine enters the picture, that “walk in the park” is disturbed.
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I agree 100%
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So wrong. Just because their aren’t actual rankings does not mean we are all equals. An elite racer does not need an in-game rank to make him or her elite. All a ranking does is help show that to others.
His point is that without a ranking system there is no way to determine who may be good or not which IMO is absolutely correct.
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There is a difference between being able to determine whether someone is ranked as elite and the original question about whether there are actual elite racers. An elite racer is elite regardless of whether there are official titles given.
Without official titles or even parameters to determine what elite is…who decides? Its subjective.
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It’s subjective, but even official titles based on other things are subjective in that the areas measured and the weights given to each thing are subjectively obtained even though the measurement itself may be objective.
But in the real world there are elite people in other fields. We recognize Tom Brady (as much as I don’t like him with my being a Buffalo Bills fan) as being an elite football quarterback even though there is no agreed upon standard defining an elite quarterback.
I think you’re both right, I don’t need a ranking system to know I would have little chance vs several people on here even though I’m a solid driver myself.
Rivals can give you some indication of a player’s general pace, obviously in a race environment with more variables they aren’t going to be pushing their top 10/20/30 etc times but they’re likely to be somewhat near it just as someone at 200-300 is likely to be a few seconds off theirs.
But at the same time Rivals doesn’t ask you to put up with everything DRC said, know how to pass effectively or if it’s the be all and end all for someone what cheap tactics can be used and abused to their advantage, I still remember a League 3 in FH4 rubbing and pushing an unranked me off in just the right way that they weren’t penalised and in a position on the course where there was nothing I could do that would have kept me in the lead.
Something we can all agree on though I’m sure is it’s laughable we’re talking about the lack of leaderboards in a 2021 ‘system seller’ racing game.
People can hold me to this including the mods, if they eventually arrive and someone comes on here applauding PG for adding something as basic + fundamental as leaderboards months and months after release I will start on them.
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Theoretically it’s ‘you’. I’ll also quote De La Soul from 1989. ‘3’ is the magic number,Buddy. :o)
On topic, I’m of noob-level and unable to finish podium in a S2 Street Race.
But I have 3=stars in all the Speed-Traps,Drift Zones,Trailblazers & Danger Signs in FH4 &FH5.
Currently in the top 13500 in the Hall Of Fame. But not ‘Elite’ by any means.
Hall of Fame is a joke when it comes to evaluating player skills. If I can be in the top 1000 (some days in the top 900) with over 960,000 pts then it is definitely not a measure of true racing ability. With enough game time and moderate skill, just about anyone can climb on the HoF.
I would say 3-stars on all PR-stunts and high HoF would mean you are at least an average Horizon player (I did not use the word racer because you can do well on HoF without doing a lot of actual races).
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Look at it this way. I’m good, very good but I wouldn’t class myself as an elite racer. There are only 2 people on these forums that I know are better than me at ranked racing and that is Jezza and DeReo, neither of whom are grandmasters. An elite racer imo is just that, a grandmaster in solo ranked. But again ranked does not exist yet in FH5 so there’s no way to currently determine who would be a grandmaster, at least by my definition of an elite racer.
I also don’t consider top rival players as elite racers. That’s not to take anything away from these individuals as their times are impressive. But the thing with rivals is you’re not racing against anyone. You’re also “racing” under predefined predictably conditions which you can replay over and over.
Honestly if you ever had the opportunity to race against a grandmaster in FH4 you would be like wow that person is an elite racer.
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I couldn’t care less if I am elite or not. I compete against my own times and try to better myself every chance i get. if I end up in the top1% then great, but thats not my goal.
I was hoping HOF had something to do with racing, not just how far you advance in the “career.” I’m in the top 100 but the highest I’ve been as high as 44. I think I remember someone saying they don’t even track wins and losses in the Open, fairly sure that was deliberate.
I think I saw “Losses in Horizon Open” and “Wins in Horizon Open” pop up from time to time during the loading screens.
Judging by the shown numbers these reflect playlist stats and not Individual races.
Basically a meaningless stat when you are constantly getting thrown into ongoing playlists that are impossible to win.
On top of that one had to use meta cars to ensure a save win… in Unranked without matchmaking… pointless imho.
Horizon 5 has nothing to messure racing skill and given the game’s nature, I don’t care anyway.
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Its not that important except for ego massaging purposes of some people, so they can say they are in the top so many of so many etc.
As has been said so many times the leader boards are a bit pointless any way due to all the somewhat nefarious means that some have used to get to the top of them anyway.