I quit ranked Team Games in August 2019 after studying the Trueskill and Trueskill2 and comparing the current system incorporated in team games. Long story short, those systems were optimised for individual player ranking and may work on other games like Rocket League where individual points counts the most. With the current state of the ranked system in team games caused in Update 17, the majority of the team is focused on optimising the game in the final stages for XSX and a small team should be working on the Project xCloud. Between both teams and the pandemic, they need a lot of people to currently support the game till October next year or when Motorsports drops.
The Increment towards the garage slots and the reduction of races to acheive rank, it clearly shows that despite the numerous complaints I’ve heard from other teams as well as personally filing via the Support website, you might be inclined to come to the conclusion that adjusting the issues present in team games might be at the bottom of the list at the moment. Coupled with the fact that certain cars are a preferred favourite in team games such as the Hoonigan RS200, which always has had an advantage in summer in most arenas and a partial advantage in wet and winter arena perhaps to prolong the agreement between Hoonigan and Forza is another blow to the motivation of team games. Whilst hiding in small area with small cars is an interesting concept, both the HRS200 and hiding does have a negative impact to potential team players. Nice to know that the respawn will be fixed - with highlights to the Eliminator.
There is nothing wrong with the current arenas, as all of them are different and require an individual tune for all three weathers, which most people don’t do. However, I find there’s an issue with the point system in general. With the current bugged system actually creating a fair matchplay, this is where you can see who has the most skills. However, with the amount of PC players hiding their skills behind speedhacks will discourage any fair play to the system and then the legitimacy of that team having members with the grandmaster rank becomes a total farce. The previous sentence was based on multiple evidence from different teams on an individual and is no way implicated to the current OP team.
To me, grandmaster in Horizon is an illusion - ranking systems such the above mentioned TrueSkill or Elo is rather difficult to implement on the current team games. There are too many variables that influences the end result. First, there is no proper fair competition as cars that are too OP tend to dominate the game giving players a limited amount of cars to effectively compete in team games. Random team players are discouraged easily when a team leaves the match and these players are a nuisance and a hinderance to fair competition on both sides. In turn they leave the match as well leading to a final match against one player. This should be discouraged from Trial as well as ranked team Adventure and Team Games.
Set your eyes on >Jan 2021 for a possible fix. At that time, we will most likely be reaching EOL status. Whether or not a solution for the current system appears in the coming update - God only knows, yep him - RNGesus. Above everything else, score values should NEVER be shown next to the rank and should be hidden as it introduces an abstract hierachy in teams. In addtion, GM should be a grind with a requirement with a number of events per month as to keep the rank alongside the point allocation system. The end result should be a cumulative result from the individual matches for the entire games, not the final result. Perhaps an added motivation would be to reduced the session integration after a team event has been completed. The whole ranked system needs to be replaced with a new ranked system - that should tell you when a fix will appear.
PS: On another note, unranked is slowly becoming more competitive than ranked. I mainly use unranked to test my tunes against other players for a short duration. However, leaving unranked games invites seem to invite unfriendly messages from other players as well - which is mind baffling since its unranked. Unranked should be a place for teams to scout fo potential players for their ranked events. Most of my cars are upgraded stock tuned and if you outsmart a player with an OP car, the cheater accusations are really de-motivating compared to my rally simcade games.
However, due to studies, I will take a break till January 2021 with occassional logins in Assetto Corsa and will login only on Thursdays in Forza to get the new car.
