Basically, I reached my wits end last night racing in career mode. It was the B class coupe series, and we started on Buggati where my choices were the Audi RS TT Coupes (Day One and regular), the Ferrari California, a BMW Z4, and a Mercedes. Even when hanging back and dropping to 16th to avoid the inevitable pile-up in the first sharp switchback/chicane, the drivatars were behaving poorly in the extreme. Much of the 3 laps were the drivatars making NO attempt to improve their place or win the race, but instead were attempting to disrupt my race at every opportunity, including racing up and into a corner at full speed and ramming into me with no effort to turn into the corner. I would race on the edge of the track just to allow the drivatars the maximum space to make manuevers and they still would deliberately swerve 10-15 feet laterally just to engage in a collision with me. I restarted the race dozens of times to try and produce an environment where the drivatars were not being ridiculous and just bashing into others (into me especially), but to no avail. I know that those I have friended are not driving like this in races.
I’m left wondering, how simplistic is the learning/mimic’ing algorithm that the drivatars are using? It appears to me that the drivatars have absolutely NO consideration what-so-ever for the presence of others on the track, and that they take their preferred driving line regardless of what is happening in front of them. Is there ANY collision avoidance built into the drivatar’s behavior, or is it strictly a representation of whatever the human avatar does on the track (even when alone)? At this point, I’d rather be racing a dozen M.Rossi’s than playing “bumper cars” on a track where the race is designed for smooth and precise driving, not seeing who can cause the most damage and chaos.
My frustration level is very high, so I need some ideas here…what can I do to encourage my drivatars to drive with more purpose than to simply punt others from the field?** .
In my experience, I havent seen it THAT bad. There re definitely some times that the drivatars ram me, or swerve or brake for no reason, but only in certain circumstances. One thing I notice is that when a drivatar goes off the track, and attempts to come back onto the track, it has no regard for human life, nd seems to just ram anyone in their way. Its obnoxious and broken IMO. But honestly I dont get rammed very often, but I also play on unbeatable which may have something to do with it. But i totally understand your frustration. I hate how the first turn is a mess. I like to race clean but its impossible to.
You must be really lucky, Jawshe. I cannot make through the first lap without being rammed into or someone clipping my rear quarter resulting in a spin. Bathurst seems to be the worst of all, I’ll often restart that race 2-3 times just to get clean line on the first corner without losing my rear tail lights. There are reports though that driving on unbeatable does make a difference and I think it does but even on unbeatable when I try to be conservative for the first few turns I end up losing paint and body work. Personally I think there should be some incentive to drive clean. Maybe have a Maximum payout and Minimum payout for a race depending on how clean you drive. If folks have a need to pay attention maybe their drivatar data won’t contain impacts on every thing moving on the track.
But driving in the Rival hot lapping will train the the drivatar to pay attention to only their own line, so there needs to be some default level avoidance built into the drivatar code. Otherwise they are just wreck machines.
Hang back at the start of the race and start to pick them off one-by-one as the field quickly begins to straighten out from group formation to a single file line. This keeps you from getting caught up in any pile-ups and allows you to build and sustain momentum throughout the race.
i usually just do the exact same thing i do online: i get on my mic and let everyone know that if they hit me, i will find where they live and will permanently dye their skin hot pink while they sleep. and shave all their pets.
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just kidding. i simply wait for an opportunity to make a clean pass and go for it. while they are better than any other AI i’ve ever raced against, they are still mildly predictable, just as the humans they are based on. they will usually brake too early, or when it is not needed at all (again, just like human drivers). i just keep the spots this is most likely to happen in mind (my tunes are usually geared towards handling, so i can late-brake them on most corners, and they always useless-brake on certain sweepers. especially T1 of the bugatti circuit at LeMans).
happened all night tonight too, recorded a couple so I can revisit how absurd some are. Such as, letting the drivatar have the inside line on a corner (which they took properly) and as I pass on the outside they brake and then swerve out to collide with me…grrrrr
I think its pretty clear that Drivatars have no AI at all, they are just dynamic ghosts driving pre-determined lines. They cannot avoid collisions because they dont have the ability to “see” the other cars on the track.
All that talk about cloud computing allowing for 600% better AI is just a lie, much like the same drivel spouted by EA with the latest SimCity…Cloud computing was gonna make it so all these advanced simulations could be run in the cloud. Turns out none of that is true either.
I am not sure why companies are so happy about cloud computing but seem to have to lie about its actual benefits to consumers.
Just restart the race, chances are that you can find a path to scoot past and suddenly find yourself in 6th by the end of the 1st lap. Do this enough and you prove to yourself that it’s not you, it’s a matter of the heavens opening a channel for you to avoid the initial half lap of bump and grind.
I get the feeling the drivatars don’t like each other amongst themselves either. Their in-fighting causes problems and it’s up to you to stay out of their battles. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t.
But they are still slowing in front of you and hitting you from behind. I don’t know the solution to that. In that case they would seem to be designed to interact with you regardless of whether you’re faster. Otherwise, you’d just glaze past everyone and it would have been a waste of time to even develop the drivatars.
A few tracks, restarting doesn’t seem to help, notably Buggati @ Le Mans, that first chicane and the follow-up sweeper are basically Bumper-Car Avenue. I’ve tried upping the drivatar difficulty level, and that seemed to have a little bit of an affect, however the majority of career races are 2-3 laps, and there are some tracks where I cannot catch up to the #1 spot if I hang back for the first few corners while the drivatars sort themselves out.
My supposition is that if the drivatars have the ability to sense other cars on the tracks, then they should have a level of collision avoidance built into their ‘intelligence’, since surviving the race and going through cleanly are important to finishing and winning. Winning should matter to the drivatars, and since we know they know the tracks, then they should be able to take whatever learned behavior they get from their real life driver, mix that with some basic collision avoidance and finish with a goal of placing as high in the standings.
Some more noted behavior that suggests that the drivatars do “see” you, and react to those around them.
They will swerve laterally to contact an opponent without need.
They will dive into a corner at full speed, not brake, and aim for the player.
They will brake in straights if the player is drafting off of them.
They will abandon the proper line on a corner just to cause a disruption to the player’s line.
They will slam into the back of the player on straights or corners when there is sufficient room to go around the player.
They will pass a player and then swerve in front of the player, even if that means that they will lose control of the car and go sideways.
They will initiate side contact with a player and then maintain that contact, using their ‘infinite grip’ advantage, to push the player off the course even if there is room for both to drive.
I’m hoping that there will be an update in the near future to address the radical drivatars that I’m seeing. It gets very frustrating to be on the last lap of a race and have a trailing drivatar abandon any chance at a podium finish simply to slam into my car on one of the final corners. In the real world, there would probably be bans, fines and fist fights for the driving that I’m experiencing every night.
In my experience the drivatar difficultly level mostly impacts how fast the AI is in the turns. Turn the difficulty down and the drivatars are slow in the corners. Turn it up to unbeatable and they are very fast through the turns.
Here’s my advice: Just try running clean races without worrying about where you finish at the end of each race. If you want to improve your finishing position then turn the drivatar difficulty down all the way. The important thing is to avoid contact with the other drivatars at all costs. Do this for a session or two to establish a pattern of clean racing. After a few sessions I think that you’ll see the bad behavior decrease.
Drivatar is by far the worst thing in this game. I avoid to play online because of the way the online players drivers like they are playing a Demolition Derby game or something, and now Turn10 brings this kind of 'drive" to offline play too with this Drivatar nonsense.
Does someone really imagine 16 real drivers with 16 real $100.000+ cars driving like a bunch of 6yo kids driving bumper cars in a carnival or state fair?
Give us at least the option to turn off this complete mess called “Drivatar” and to drive against M. Rossi, P. Muller et al. again. Let the offline play to be a real offline experience. The way it is now, it makes FM5 the worst Forza ever made IMO, even worse than the FM2, because FM2 at least had a decent rivals AI.
Imo, despite all the PR talk, we still race AI as usual, its just injected with a larger pool of variables than before. In a way its still Rossi and Muller, just trained by users instead of Turn10.
On pretty much every track there are sectors where all Drivatars display the exact same unnatural behaviour, like taking turns way slower than any player would do, or braking on a straight.
Sometimes its even the same spots like on Forza4. When it gets to split-second decisions like avoiding collisions I think its almost pure AI, maybe slightly influenced by early/late braking of the drivatars owner. Well, only Turn10 knows for sure, but thats how I see it.
On topic … I find that racing clean and somewhat “realistic” usually leads to relatively clean races.
My races got a lot better the moment I started to look at Drivatars as if they were human beings, with the same right to be on track like me.
That includes granting them the space they need, even if it`s to my disadvantage. Accepting that a slow car on the racing line means braking or passing wide, not cutting & ramming.
Correct speeds on turns naturally help the ramming from behind.
Unfortunately Drivatars seem to have some kind of crowd AI, once you hit one of them (or get hit) the whole field around it goes mad.
And yes, some Drivatars are just mad by nature. I think a slim friends-list might be an advantage. I have three friends playing Forza, two of them rather casual … and that`s the Drivatars causing most of the havoc in my races.
Excellent points. If the drivatars are driving without a concern for, (a) winning the race, (b) maintaining the integrity of their vehicle, or (c) their own well-being (I can see an autobiography now, “How To Survive a 200 MPH Impact Without a Care” - by DrivatarA), then the drivatar system is impossibly flawed. It is not logical to have a system that does not do the basic purpose of the game, which is racing. It isn’t a race if the drivatars aren’t racing to win, but instead are driving to engage in the disruption of the race or the real life player. It may not be an intended consequence, but it needs to be addressed, and that could be most easily accomplished with some AI parameters.
To the poster above, I drive as absolutely cleanly as possible, but when drivatars purposely brake or swerve into me, I cannot control their behavior and I’m already spending waaaaay too much time restarting races because of this. I suppose in career mode I could just go through and finish 16th in a few races, but even then I don’t think that will have much of an effect because the drivatars are based upon the real life players, not me. I’m not driving against my own drivatar, I’m driving against others’ drivatars. My driving cleanly is already inconsequential, I’m not sure why driving without contact at all would make any difference now. BTW, I did two races last night where I purposely did not contend for podium (I was determined to hang back until 1/2 through the first lap and no cars were visible before starting to race). In the first race, the car behind me rammed me even though I had two tires off the track. In the second race, the guy to my immediate right started and then swerved into me, forcing me off of the track. The third race I was expecting them to try something, so I was able to avoid the ‘rammer’ behind me, and then raced the rest of the way clean. I caught up to the main field about 1/3 into the 2nd lap, and they were just slamming away at each other. It was impossible for me to get any closer than 9th place because of their crazy behavior, so I just hung back and finished last. I got bored/sleepy after that and quit for the night.
I race clean and avoid cutting corners when racing online. My morals are far more lax when racing against driveatars though. My tip for LeMans circuits against driveatars. Don’t hang back, just go. In the fast kink before that chicane prior to the Dunlop bridge, get all the way to the right. Be inside the curbing when taking the high speed kink. Doing this will get you pretty far up through the field of driveatars and being all the way on the right will get you out of the pile up that happens when the driveatars are dive bombing over on the left side of the track entering the chicane.
Up until the last couple days the Driveatars haven’t been that bad, then all of a sudden it was like playing Mario Kart with out the banana peals. Cars literally swerving into me on straights, straight lining corners into my car or other Driveatars, basically all of the odd behaviors that have been mentioned. I just spent 45 minutes trying to just finish a race on Yas in the B class Class Competition series with out having my car destroyed and undriveable.
I don’t know what happened or what the fix is, but the game isn’t fun right now,it’s frustrating.