Does this game have SBMM or not? The vast majority of lobbies are not at all competitive. It feels like T10 forgot to flip a switch on and everyone is randomly thrown in. I’m currently sitting around 3800 S, fairly average, yet I keep getting thrown into lobbies with the guys that have their clan tag in their gamertag who are certainly not near me in skill rating. They predictably destroy my times in qualifying (and the majority of the lobbies’), and just drive off to hot lap by themselves at race start.
I typically finish somewhere in the mid pack (if I don’t get punted off in lap 1 at least), which is alright, but it’s very disheartening for the leaders to be finishing half a lap in front of me nearly every race. It feels like I just don’t have a chance. I can’t even imagine what it’s like for the more casual gamepass players trying the game. If it continues like this I don’t see the game surviving for very long. The less dedicated players are simply going to leave and never come back in the same manner as Halo Infinite, especially with the career mode being a hollow shell of what was in every previous title.
After update 2.0 for me MP looks a bit cleaner then before, less rammers, but less competition. I’m getting in podiums now more often. And i climbed really fast in these few days from 4.5k to almost 4.9k.
This one scared me a bit. Looks like there are not enough players to create competitive lobbies.
I hope i’m wrong with that, but at this moment it is what it looks like for me.
Edit: and i play every event what multiplayer can offer, featured and open. And i play with many cars. When i reach lvl50, i change it to another.
The last few nights have been terrible for me! I’m S class safety and 4950 skill ratings and constantly getting taken out by idiots who don’t seem to know what’s brake pedal is for. I usually qualify on the front 2 rows and unless we get round turn 1 cleanly and get away from the pack it’s like playing wreckfest
its a true good MP where it has all skill levels and no SBMM. If anything it will help you improve as you can see better lines and braking points to take where as if your stuck with low level players youll never improve. Ive already seen improvements in my driving being S 4700.
I have a feeling they are prioritizing filled lobbies vs half filled (but skill matched) lobbies.
Consider how many races are going on at any given time, then split them all up skill rank… you’re going to have mismatches if you want full lobbies.
Even on iRacing for example if I run a race off hours like middle of the night I will end up in a lobby where I’m the number one driver going against drivers with half the rating as mine. But during peak hours a lobby can have a really small spread between the field in skill rating which leads to some super competitive racing.
Also any type of ranking/match making system takes time to be effective. For some reason Forza starts you at the top instead of the bottom of the skill tree. For a casual player they could be running in races well above their skill level for a long time before they finally find their competitive sweet spot (aka run enough races to drop their skill level to where it belongs).
This has been my experience as well. If I ever find another driver who can lap within a second of me, it’s usually just 1 other driver. Maybe 2 if we’re lucky. Hell, I had a GT Spec lobby last night where I was 5 seconds per lap faster than 2nd place (and over 45+ seconds for the backmarkers). I understand that the late nights aren’t peak hours, but good lord it was as if we were racing in two completely different classes.
However, I will add that a ton of the top guys I know personally aren’t racing in public lobbies really anymore. They’re racing in either private racing series or private multiplayer sessions.
From my experience yesterday, I think this is true.
I was doing the Vintage Le Mans Sportscar spec series. My qualification (1st) was 6 seconds ahead of 2nd place. In the race I was 12 seconds ahead by the end of the first lap and 35 seconds ahead by the end of the race. Besides me there was no one with a clean fastest lap (again 5 seconds clear of the rest) and most of the lobby had atleast one penalty.
Don’t think this matched my S4967 rating.
What I don’t understand is that I can’t see another players skill and safety rating (they probably hide it for a good reason). I would love to see that on the player list (xp level means nothing to me). I hope they add it at some point and also maybe a splash screen of how your skill and safety rating was affected after the race.(where they show the credits and xp earned). Seeing that they are going for a carpg kinda game that would be pretty satisfying to see after every race
ive been having the hardest time finding any lobby with more then 12 players in it, i quit out of 15 races yesterday because they were under that amiunt
Yea that’s no fun. I have had a handful where there were only a few of us… like the overflow lobby or something lol but haven’t experienced what you have.
I did some V Le Mans racing last night since I decided to pull out my wheel setup (I have been playing with controller from the start). I was surprised how on pace I was. I was thinking I’d be mid pack but it seems people have a hard time with those cars.
They also seemed pretty balanced (no walkaway winners).
In the past 24 hours SteamDB reports about 1,000 people playing concurrently at its peak.
Given this is a first party title, let’s assume 4x as many people are playing on Xbox/Windows at the same time. Also, easier math, but this is all hypothetical and made up to demonstrate the challenges of perfect matchmaking.
5,000 people online.
3,000 of them are likely in Single Player (pool is now 2,000)
500 of them likely in Private Multiplayer (pool is now 1,500)
Splitting evenly between Qualifier, Spec and Open Series that’s 500 people each.
We can ignore Qualifier for now as everybody is (in theory) unranked.
There’s two active categories in both Spec and Open Series, so that’s down to (say) 250 people in each playlist.
Of those 250 people, probably half are currently racing, so that’s 125 people you can’t match up against.
From your initial pool of 5,000 concurrent players, you now in theory have 125 people who are available to race in the same Featured Multiplayer event that you are trying to match for.
Somehow that 125 needs to cover 6 safety rating branches, and a 5,000 point skill rating system.
You may get some good pairings in that but not a lot I reckon.
We can only hope that MS look at the theoretical 5009 player count. Just over a month after releasing a six year multi- million dollar AAA game and take drastic steps to fix it. Despite the trolls and possibly bots saying how good the game is
There’s definitely the seeds of a great game in there.
I think solving all the major tech issues is the starting point, but after that there needs to be something meaningful content/feature-wise that draws people in. Maybe it’s a career rework, or the Nordschleife, or scrapping the XP system, I don’t know.
It’s much harder to regain players you’ve lost than to gain them in the first place.
There may well be the seeds of a great game but if they don’t do something quick there wont be the player base to play the game.
I’m trying so hard to stick with the game, its why i have a series x, i only play Forza games and have since FM3 and its always been about the multiplayer for me but everything about the game just seems a grind now.
Are better now but still not good. I’m 4927 S. In my games there are 2 or 3 who can compete with me sometimes. But for the most part I’m turning .8 faster finishing the race 10+ in front of them.
