TL:DR → This post is about my experience in Online Racing Free for all on my journey to reach level 10 for the star card
In season 29, I decided I would like to reach level 10 in online racing and picked Free For All as it seems like that was the best way to get to level 10 online racing for the star card. Of course, this sounds easy, but of course, it is not.
Things I observed:
People drop out regularly. I figure this is because of the rank system and losing rank is too costly to stay to end if you are losing and risk losing rank. Many matches would start with 6-11 players and during a race, a player with a higher rank was bumped off the map or was losing would drop out of the series. So many race series I have played have ended with 3-4 players sometimes.
Watch the top players in the run, you will see by their rank what they are driving. Get that car and find a tune. It’s the best you can hope for to even be competitive.
As a new player, you will lose. Often. Get used to it until you know the tracks so well that you don’t even think about the next turn.
Being Disconnected. I have been disconnected or lagged out, that alone is enough to ensure that you will not place well in any series of races.
Possible solutions to make this process more fun
Make the Star Card requirement to “Achieve level 20 online racing” instead of reaching rank 10 in online racing. At least the journey could be more fun for a new player and they can try all the online games types and find what they like the most
Split the rank races. If there was a Ranking system was broken down into two groups, Rank 20 -11, and 10 - 1, a new player could play with people with similar skill level of people and perhaps even win a race. If you are new to online racing and see people rank 12 or higher, it is VERY unlikely you are going to win
Give players points, even a minor amount, so they might stay in a race series and not quit. This would be applicable for Ranks 20-11. Once you hit Rank 10 and are swimming with the sharks, you get the current ranking system now.
I look forward to any players advice on how to become better in the Online
People who drop out of Free-For-All DO lose ranking points. Higher-ranked players lose a lot of points (relative to how hard it is to earn them back again).
As for the star card, reaching league 10 is a pretty modest requirement, it’s a low bar and I would leave it as it is.
Let me rephrase, when I state “drop out”, the do not leave the race and return to the game. The go to the home screen and quit the Forza 4 Horizon process. You do not lose no rank when you do this.
Whether a player is disconnected, turns their machine’s power off, or whether they deliberately go to the menu and choose to quit, and exit the game, it is all the same: they lose ranking points.
I quite like the idea of splitting the leagues. Personally I’d have overlap, so you could have 1-10, 6-15 and 11-20. Saves the complete waste of time adventures currently where someone like me ends up with three League 15s, wins each race by 10 seconds and gets -1 point for the trouble. I’d happily wait a bit longer for a match if I was guaranteed they would all be green rank or better.
People trying to bump me off the road
Free roam maps
People dropping out of races that I could get rank points from
e.g. I am third in the points and there are three people of higher rank that are lower in the ratings. The “disconnect” take a lesser points penalty than they would finishing the series and at the end, I get zero points because I did not “beat” anyone.
I think this process could have been easier if I had joined a club/group and did team racing or playground. I personally would prefer that but how I go about joining one of these groups is not clear to me.
You are mistaken. People who disconnect will lose MORE points for disconnecting than if they had stayed. I appreciate that you would have benefited had they stayed, but that doesn’t alter the fact you are mistaken in your belief.
Perhaps you can expand on your point and state how many points an individual loses if they leave the session? I ask this because I see many players doing this and wish to understand this ranking system more.
The answer to your question is ‘it depends’. Firstly, I don’t think any of us know EXACTLY how the ranking system works, so we can only observe and try to draw inferences. What we do know is that players who quit or are disconnected for whatever reason, are punished the most heavily. People like myself and Jezza can confirm this unequivocally because we’ve been on the receiving end of such points losses numerous times.
How many points someone loses will depend on factors like the relative ranks of the others in the session. So it’s like asking how long is a piece of string. The points you lose will vary, but it also seems to depend on how many matches you have played in total, ie. newer players are treated differently by the ranking system than established ones and points gains/losses can be a lot bigger.
you can also try RTA (ranked team adeventure). as newbie you start with 2131 point, it’s league 12.
the problem on RTA is, if someone left all players got 0 points. the good thing is, if you are a little bit lucky, you got in 1st try directly to league 10 - just for a moment, because in the next race you will have 2131 points again. but for the starcard, this league 10 will count!
in other words. in regular you just have to win 1 match with points counting. as newbie you got around 100-200 points per match. and then in the next winning race you could be league 10. no matter if someone left or not.
hint: you will not be punished, if you left the race.
from my point of view: it’s not sportsmanlike, but many many players also do it so. higher player do it more often, but i also see often blue players who left the race to save the points.
I too think it would be a cool improvement to be able to force play with similarly ranked opponents.
Maybe this is not doable because there are not that many high ranked players online?
You know something is poor when I am about to be applauding EA Sports, their games (well FIFA 09-12 + Grand Slam Tennis 2 from experience) gave you the option to search within a certain amount of skill levels of your own, that was helpful for any player of any ability.
It isn’t a good reflection on PG when arguably the laziest big developer of them all had more foresight nearly a decade before them on the issue of players being put against others far too good for them or on the flip side against ones where there is no value or difficulty in winning.
A giant effort was done on rendering the FH world that even 10% of the same effort would be done on the gameplay would just make it like the first step on the moon. Sadly it looks like people are globally more interested in spending 500 bucks to get raytracing than they are in the quality of gameplay …