License Tests | Circuit Experience | Learning Tools

Forza Motorsport is in need of a major feature that is simply missing from the current game, and that revolves around learning the basics. The career takes you along a pathway to “improve” by racing different types of cars in a variety in classes and drivetypes, and that’s good, but it assumes you know the basics from the start. The reality is, with this game being on gamepass especially, a lot of the people don’t know what they are doing at all, and that’s reflected in the online quality of racing. How do you fix the issues with the multiplayer? You provide an area to learn. Something like license tests, a circuit experience, or any other tool that teaches people the basics of a corner and helps them build upon those skills.

GT7 is a good example with license tests and circuit experience, and if you that’s a no no, you can just look to older FM titles. I remember older FM titles on xbox 360 having these tools in place to help people learn how to act on a track. Remember the older titles that had the pieces of the track with slower cars on the track and had you hit times? Something like that would be helpful to allow people to learn how to move around the track and enjoy the love of racing instead of ramming each other off the track as they have learned to do against the aggressive AI.

A simple license test mode would be an amazing tool to help people learn the basics of cornering.

A circuit experience would be helpful for learning the tracks.

A mode with slow cars on the track circuit experience (like the older FM titles) would help people understand how to move around traffic on the track without ramming them [they used to fail you for hitting the slow cars]. This will help teach racecraft basics.

Let’s take this last one, even if we looked to keep it friendly to the most people possible, you can take out the times and just put the traffic on the racing line in track sectors and have people get to the end without hitting other cars, going off track, hitting walls, etc. Emphasis is on safety.

This game can bring a lot of love for motorsport to a huge player base, but it needs the tools to help them learn from the ground up.

3 Likes

I think this is very well said, I do want to add to this a bit more. I think this could be the REAL CarPG idea. Instead of gatekeeping things from level to level, you drop the gatekeeping all together and give the community tough challenges to complete. That could be part of the single-player experience. Take the Horizon Racing Academy for example, a community that I and the OP are part of the admin team. I have attached the website link for your convenience: https://horizonracingacademy.com/

HRA is not only widely recognized, but also a Forza Official Community recognized server, found in hte community servers channel in the Forza Official Discord Server. With over 2800 members, new players join and progress through several tiers of licenses and challenges within Horizon EventLab blueprints. That is one way to increase player retention. Add prizes and other gifts for completing the licenses, and people will grind it more. Use the sector mechanic in FM to split tracks up into challenges. Add AI-filled races to teach players how to have good racecraft and more.

But licenses! Doesn’t that mean the game will be locked to players who progress past X or Y? Nope. Consider this an asynchronous series of challenges that don’t prove to be a requirement or a prerequisite to any other part of FM.

It’s one thing to flaunt the featured multiplayer and the rotating events. But imagine a whole new mode, where players can race individually, learn their cars, learn car classes as a whole, and bring that knowledge back into multiplayer, where they race cleaner and faster, to make their way to the top.

4 Likes

Love this idea. They already have a good base (the Career mode)! Just need to rework it somewhat, and it’ll be much more rewarding.

3 Likes