That’s a fantastic idea!
I think that we need to keep the discussion of various solutions separate. The solution that makes racing more competitive by grouping racers of similar skill level does not solve the problems of crashers in public lobbies. And the solution that fixes the issues with crashers in public lobbies does not solve the problems where one good player is consistently dominating a lobby.
The OP made it clear that his intention with this thread was to find a way to get racers of similar skill level grouped together in order to make races more competitive.
To that point - I agree with Worm. Any forced system that tries to group racers together based on skill level will ultimately suffer from racers that never get better.
I’ve only been playing FM games since Horizon came out and I would not be as good as I am today if I hadn’t consistently got my butt kicked in public lobbies by faster racers. Losing is a great motivator for getting better.
Sure you can learn some things by racing against the faster players in rivals events but it’s not the same as playing online. Getting beat forced me to take note of many things that the better drivers were doing (car choices, build stats, racing lines, etc…). It also gave me opportunities to talk with people in lobbies and learn from them “in the moment”. Grouping bad players with bad players takes away these opportunities so I don’t agree with a system that forces these people to be grouped together.
I have to disagree almost completely. This is too contradictory to itself for starters. But lets say you have a lobby of 10 racers. All different skill levels. In fact lets make each of them at a 1 - 10 skill. So player 1 cant even begin to stay on the track for a whole lap. Player 10 is an “alien” and runs top 25 times while in race lobbies every single lap. Are people learning? Absolutely! But is player 1 watching player 2 and seeing how they are faster? Is then, player 2 watching player 3 and picking up pointers? And likewise all the way to player 10? Not at all. Player one cant find the track let alone a player to learn from. Player 10, 9, and 8 are trying to lap the slowest players cleanly while trying to have a great race most likely. (somebody is probably just waiting to crash into you when you go by on the straights don’t forget) Or maybe players 8 and 9 are stuck in the slower pack getting smacked around BY ACCIDENT while player 10 stretches a huge lead. That happens all the time. Use your imagination for 10 seconds though and realize what standard class lobbies are everyday. That’s how it goes. Valid learning experience? Yes… occasionally.
Imagine based on the skill levels in the silly example I just wrote, players skill level 1-3, 4-7, and 8 -10 were grouped respectively. There would be far more opportunity for learning once you break the bottom bracket. Bracket 1-3 would be learning to drive, NOT how to carry the most momentum through the apex. Group 1-3 would learn nothing from group 8-10 from racing together. Maybe through chat, or a classroom setting. But being dominated race after race by times that don’t even allow them to finish the race isn’t teaching them anything useful.
Plus if somebody asked if you were good you could reply “Im a 2” or “Im an 8”. I think that would be sweet.
I think you generally speak from the perspective of someone at a very high level, which I respect, but your perspective might not be shared by some of us folks who just wanna have fun, and compete within the game, within out limits. I have noticed this in your posts, which I tend to agree with, but at the same time, I don’t think you’re speaking for the majority.
We need a set of lobbies with rules and enforcement. At this point multiplayer lobbies equate to racing digital bumper cars. Bumper cars are fun and take little skill or respect to drive. Actually they are more fun if you take people out. Turn 10 has spent vast resources creating laser scanned tracks and cars, making cars that can be tuned to simulate their real world counterparts, only to allow this investment to be enjoyed in a pinball machine filled with bumper cars. Why not take this high quality driving experience that is visually and mechanically stimulating and give their customers a choice between participating in bumper cars or allowing them to choose to race where going out of bounds has consequences and if you impact a vehicle or object with your fender, your car doesn’t drive quite so nice anymore.
Take this virtual masterpiece and allow it to be an accurate representation of the experience of racing not just driving around on really nice tracks in very accurate looking and driving cars. Lobbies with strict rules that govern and keep real world races safe and mostly fair would eliminate trolls and wall riders and crash teams and…
Codemaster’s figured out how to give both types of races to their customers in their F1 games.
My opinion is that the only way to solve the issues in MP is to give players a choice where they want to spend their time. Bumper car land which we already live in, or racing land, a land where the rules of law and physics create an environment that fosters competitive, respectful racing where disciplined drivers that make good choices can still win races over the fastest hotlappers.
Like a public area for everybody anytime, and a ranked area for when its time to get down to business and you want real competition near your level.
maybe i worded it badly. they player moving up would have people to race since there is a winner for every lobby. 3 gold medals aka “winners” per race if the lobby is full and there are multiple lobbies, probably hundreds at a time. only the worst player wouldn’t have anyone to race after everybody else had enough default wins to move up.
what you are describing is true skill. its in past forzas. what really happened is people of lower skill would band together and kick you from the lobby as soon as they seen your level, you wouldn’t even last to the 1st race. most people want to win, they dont want to be dominated.
if 100 WILL dominate there are 1000 that think they dominate, just other people keep wrecking them, into last place. and not the lappers. net time you are online do an experiment. to into the r class lobbies that are for experienced racers. you’ll see alot of people who aren’t as skilled as they think they are. then go to the beginner lobbies. you’ll be suprised to see the average driver level is higher than it was in the skilled lobbies. i got on at 6 am cali time and i was the only one that spoke english. alot of french, german, and arabic and some languages i dont know what they were. it was a demolition derby race after race. i decided to go to the beginner lobbies where i could give tips to people who understood my language if i was going to be stuck with beginners anyway. i was suprised how many high levels were going all out for every win. they weren’t trying to give the real noobs any advice other than “get out of the way”. even the people at the top dont really want competition. they want an advantage. look at the no telemetry in replays thread. ask worm the mod.
he believes he has a tuneing advantage and believes tuneing should not come back to replays because it will eliminate his advantage. back in true skill days he used to spend hours intentionally losing drag races since they were the most losses per hour to bring his true skill down intentionally so he could race against less skilled players. you over estimate the the desire for competition in forza. people want to win, they want to dominate. they dont really want competition. people take the game way to seriously sometimes.
elite turn 10 believes they already have that via rivals. to me and you soloing around the track is different than raceing but to them its the same. to me rivals is qualifying, not racing. their logic is it removes randomness of getting your finish affected by other players via accident or intentionally wreching, pushing, drafting, etc…but then they still allow tunes. to be real competition i think rivals should be spec only. but yes separate areas for playing the game vs working the game would be welcome.
I would be fine with an approach like this that provided the option to race in an open public lobby versus a ranked public lobby. The OP’s idea seemed to be that everyone should be “forced” to be ranked and to only allow participation in lobbies for your current rank. I don’t like the idea of forcing people into groups. In any aspect of life - that type of scenario only serves to limit potential and stifle progress/innovation.
I also think you’re underestimating the amount of learning that can take place in the public lobbies today. Just because a guy can consistently run top 25 laps doesn’t mean that he always starts in the pole position and no one else ever sees him again after the first turn. There is a lot to be learned watching faster racers make their way through the pack. And even then - just because the lobby has one really, really fast guy running top 25’s doesn’t mean that there aren’t another 2-3 guys running top 500 or top 1000 times that other players can learn from.
There is learning to race better (which is more important to some than others)
and
There is playing a video game for enjoyment. (which we can all agree on) improve leisurely, looking at relative lap time improvement .
…
I am in camp 2, I could care less about how great my video game skills develop, if they do, great, but I am in it for entertainment reasons first and foremost, and I would love to be separated from the extremes (people who take it too seriously, hotlappers, LB addicts) and trolls (crashers, disrespectful people, exploiters).
There has got to be a way for the normal guy to enjoy his game.
I hate losing but I enjoy having fun. You can have both, I race because it’s fun to race. I just happen to be a little quick but there is nothing better than randomly finding some good races in lobbies. I can pick and choose cars to make that happen. I don’t enter races to pick a LB car and hot lap, there is a place for that and it isn’t a lobby.
If you raced with us when we do you would enjoy it, anyone would. We race clean, we help one another, laugh, and yes we run into crash teams like anyone else. Don’t segregate yourself, I’ve had some of my best races with people who aren’t running top 10’s in a lobby and running way outside that. I’ve ran more races with my friends Jeff and Bearcat in FM3/FM4 than anyone else and they aren’t tearing up any leaderboards. I race with Duekacer and have fun doing that, he isn’t tearing up leaderboards but we have fun actually racing.
I can understand not wanting to race against “crashers, disrespectful people, exploiters” and, to avoid them, you have reporting and blocking via Xbox Live.
But the other comments - sound like you are looking for lobbies where you can win consistently without working on improving your skills. If you don’t care about how your skills develop - why do you care about people who “take it too seriously, hotlapper, LB addicts”? How does someone in your lobby who’s fast and winning consistently take away your enjoyment if you don’t care about how good you are anyways?
I could care less about winning. Man, I usually use cars that are 50 PI below everyone else, just because I enjoy the tune I put on those cars. Or if I do feel I’m faster (rare), I will use my slow cars so I can stay in the pack and enjoy just driving alongside others. You’ve got me 100% wrong on that, I like to win in real life, I save my energies for that! In video games I am the perfect underdog/sand-bag kinda guy. I enjoy allowing others to have fun by driving in the same pack everyone else is in, if I’m in front of that pack too much, I leave or switch cars. All I want is a happy lobby.
Its not that fun to race with LB guys that are gone racing amongst themselves, especially if they are using the same LB cars built to win everytime at any cost. The funnest times are 14-16 cars all grinding (cleanly), similar level drivers who use various cars. The fun is in choosing cars that you think “well this time I got ya buddy”, pull out a Neon, get 4th, after getting 14th is fun. Getting a better lap time than last is fun, WHEN you have been grinding with other and comparing scores. There is a certain attitude and camaraderie that I can’t explain… which is why I most enjoy Friday nights EST when guys have had a few beers and are just out to have fun and not have it spoiled by Mr. Serious LB guy.
edit LOL Sandbag?? bad word?
I totally get where you’re coming from. But, isn’t that what private lobbies are for?
I understand what you mean about the “attitude and camaraderie” but how can we reasonably expect Turn10 to group people based on what they’re thinking? What you’re looking for isn’t going to be solved by a license system or a ranking system or anything like that. It sounds like you had a good group of guys that you could party up with in past games and that those guys either aren’t around any more or aren’t on Xbox One/FM5 yet. If it’s the half-baked Friday night crowd that’s your go-to game - talk with those guys in the lobby, get them on your friends list, and then find other times when they’re online and party up.
Andy Stitzer: You know how when you grab a woman’s breast… it feels like… a bag of sand.
Also you would be surprised. There aren’t that many of us that fall between trolls and being really good. For the most part the fastest racers are the cleanest.
I used to play Cat & mouse with Bearcat back in those days Worm LOL
there was a whole crew back then!
I just think there needs to be some work on this lobby thing, I know it’s not easy to please everyone, but the FM2 system was very good imo.
I played everything with those guys up until I got an Xbox ONE. We had some awesome Minecraft worlds and played a lot of Borderlands 2
Crunchy… We are obviously all in it for the best experience here. You, me, everyone on this thread. but…“how can we reasonably expect Turn10 to group people based on what they’re thinking?” Nobody is saying that. When people say licensing or ranking system to keep players at least SOMEWHAT similar level across a lobby, IF that’s what they want, they aren’t asking for Turn 10 to throw their names in a hat. It just might be nice if you are somewhere near average to not have first day players in the lobby with you. Or to have players so fast you don’t even get to finish your race.
If Im in a lobby with all slower people I win almost every time. (obvious statement sounds obvious). If Im in a lobby with all fast people I lose almost every time. Sometimes, one player, or even a couple, are similarly skilled and we have a great race. Or several. As long as the lobby isnt half full of people who crash, be it on purpose or by accident, constantly. Being in a lobby where as far as player skill isn’t QUITE so mixed would be awesome.
That’s my interpretation of what Payne is saying. For him it doesn’t seem to only be about the skill level of the players - it’s also about the attitude of the players. To me - that’s getting into a territory that shouldn’t be the responsibility of the developer to analyze and segregate for. That’s what Xbox Live friends lists and private lobbies are for.
So take the good races with the bad. When you’re winning - offer encouragement and advice to the players you’re beating. When you’re losing - observe the better drivers and ask questions to help you get better. When you’re in the heat of battle with players of similar skill - go all out and try hard for those podiums!
There are so many angles we can take as players to get a great experience out of the current system. As players we need to take some personal responsibility for our experience and not just expect that the developers are going to “fix everything for everyone” so that each players gets the perfect experience “handed to them on a silver platter”.
I want everyone to have the best experience possible in FM5. I just don’t think that all the responsibility for a good experience falls solely on the developer’s shoulders.
I see what you mean. And you are right about private lobbies being just for that laid back, everybody knows your name type lobby 
And to be honest, I am VERY happy with Forza 5 as a whole. I do my best to help others and learn just as you said. And I think if more players (many do already) had that way of thinking it would be great. Also if more players had headsets but thats another topic.