Online Ranked Racing

Forza Horizon Forza Horizon 5 FH5 Discussion
21

For me it is like lots of newly DLC/Playlist car are very under perform.
Without a proper fun single player mode and useless in online so I stop interest in playing the game/unlocking things.

And many “bad/Weak” cars in FH5 dont fun to drive.
It got push/ram alot by others in the track.
S1 bad handling cars around 1.9g ~ 2.0 not only understeer/heavy but they are very in imprecise/random.

In FH3 a bad handling cars can be a rocket in speed section. So it can still have fun.
but in FH5 the Handling cars are also fast in speed section.

New car like 2jetz is like that it is slow and not handling well so I just stop playing it within 15mins

22

I’d agree with @anonyyymous here. The primary differentiator online is still player skill. There is no adequate matchmaking, so the skill gap between two players can be huge. Rayne could drive a car 10 seconds off meta and I’d still expect him to beat 90% or more of the people he’d be racing against.

Of course, if you do run into someone equally good driving meta, then you have no chance in one of the slower cars. However, that’s a secondary problem in my view and it’s your own choice to drive it. Step 1 would be getting an adequate competitive system. If that was a place, car balancing could then be the next focus.

23

If you dont have a balanced cars list frist how the game know your actual skill level?
You gonna get higher win-rate/faster track time by spamming strong car only.

Then it also going to increase “meta problem” because now everyone got something(stats) to lose.
(And more rammer coming back too)

And

Those skill-matching game often come with fewer game mode.
You need a huge numbers of player to do skill-based matchmaking.

24

By your win/loss ratio at a given rating.

I despise comments like this. It’s completely false and misleading.

You’re really reaching here…

At the end of the day implementing proper match making (whether through ranked or a hidden system) is merely the first of many steps necessary to support good competitive racing.

It doesn’t matter what you choose to drive or what your skill level is. When you start to match players based on their skill level then those players start competing against players of their own skill level. If that means racing against a full lobby of “elite drivers” using meta cars so be it because your most likely an elite driver using a meta car. But if you’re inexperienced driving some Australian lemon of a car then you’re going to be matched with other Australians driving lemons (this is a joke btw I’m kiwi it’s allowed).

Now for the sake of argument let’s wave our magic wand and pretend proper match making is implementing. You now face the next issue which is car balancing which is indeed a big issue if you want to allow a wide variety of cars to be competitive opposed to a select few meta. The challenge here is that it’s comparatively far more difficult to solve at least imo compared to implementing a proper match making system. The simple solution to me is something along the lines of custom lobbies where certain cars can be banned. It’s by no means a perfect solution but balancing anything requires on going effort and PGG is not the type of dev shop to do this.

The other challenge with car balancing and meta is no matter what you do there will still be a meta unless you balance cars to the point where all cars are identical. Possibly the gap is reduced but as others have touched on many classes are already fairly well balanced outside of a few cars.

25

If it was up to me I would cater to as many players as possible by:

  1. Reintroducing ranked racing which is an optional game mode that YOU DON’T NEED TO DO.
  2. Introduce custom lobbies where players can fully and easily configure races and championships including car exclusions.
  3. Improve/implement a hidden match making system to ensure newbies aren’t matched with highly skilled and experienced drivers. Exception being when no matches can be found in a timely manner then the matching criteria widens. Take rocket league as an example of good match making.

That way PGG can simply implement (add back) these features and then forget about them like the rest of the game.

26

What actually happen is
If you putting a hidden rank system base on online win-rate and online track time.
You basically putting Actual Real Punishment on player who want to try different cars. (If the car list itself is not balanced enough)
It also mean “offically labelling everyone trying non-meta cars are dumb stuipid”

People from interent gonna found out this hidden system and upset about it.
Currently when we go online there are maybe 0-2 FXX/meta in online because people play it like a sunday-track-day.
(They still try to win with their own cars but not that try hard to use meta all the time.)
If you put a win rating thing it gonna be like over half of the room meta things again. (Just like FH4)
If you only put this system only on RANKED so it is not fixing PVP(including “casual”/“quick play”/“PVE quest” anyway.

And this system not going to give me a fair race anyway.

If I drive FXXK EVO most of the time → I win alot → I most likely got put into a room full of meta → If I want to play jesko now I am in the room full of track meta car because my rating dont change at that moment.
Or
If I drive funny things in mid-rank-room. I gonna see others playing meta for “climbing” back to the high rank. → It is not fair race anyway.

There are people making the point like “Meta+slow player” matching with “Non-meta+fast player” in to the same room to create “close racing”
It is not going to same racing/gameplay “quality” like other games or real life. Because it is not only about matching the total lap times

If I play a jesko/hypercars when I catching track meta+slow player it most likely that guy missed a checkpoint/crashed/run off track.
Then sometime later that meta catchup > ghosting pass me again > walk away > Then he crashed again > I catch him again.

If you have a balanced car list (regulation) in some track game and real live TV you see sometime there are good door to door figthing in the middle group.
Horizon is missing that because PI and regulation system are not correctly fixed.
You dont even need a overly complex system if you have a better regulation.

*If the game know “this car is weak so rate down player who choose that immediately”
so how the hell not use this rating to do car balance patch instead? Lots of PVP shooter done this. Overwatch etc

The cause of this problem is.
In many racing game they put cars base on regulation first.
Maybe they have a list of GT3, LMP, GT500
in NFS:HP it is sport class/super class/hyper class.
They all trying to spec within regulation. they are designed to be competitive to each other at the begining.

Horizon is not doing that
it bascially randomly add cars and put incorrect/outdated PI on it.
So no matter you race with same PI or limited car type you gonna find unbalance problem in it. Not only PVP but PVE/the trial too.

The FXX for example should be list into track cars regulation to fight with other track thing.
Jesko should put with other top speed thing like bugatti road car and other Koenigsegg etc.
They both missing regulation race type like “Online track cars PI998” or “Top speed hypercars PI998”

27

I would suggest put a single player license test.
So people matching together at least have a license on that class/car type.

It is single player only so it dont cause people fighting each other for rating.
(TBH I think it need a clean racing lession license too)

Correct me if I am wrong I think forza motorsport actually have regulation on top of PI? (some hopper?)
I think horizon is missing that.

28

i know what you mean, i hated online at 1st… even the ‘team’ thing was your own team knocking you out before flags… typical mindless pvp junk that ive tried to avoid in many types of games tbh… and ye, some earlier cars i made were fine in pve high skilled but useless in the online…

ive had some great races tho, some people do respect others about them & it always makes that race enjoyable… but sadly its not as common as me swearing at someone ‘on my team’
The ghosting could be improved to stop the impacts of same team like it does with fast wall impacts…
or just simple info somewhere like stay in the race ffs, we only need to win 2 from 3 so dont quit…
and its TEAM thing… so just try to overtake your team if you catch them, dont take them out !!
it could lose you the race… duh !!
is that not just common sense ? idk anymore
Not sure ranked would work tho, if its horizon open then the flags could be wider to stop some idiotic stuff that keeps most players away on a regular basis… the cars are hard to drive at 1st so not all accidents are on purpose :stuck_out_tongue: but most seem to be…
Players hould get the option of free cars , like the honda in H.tour… its very quick, can win races but is limited top speed so, prob just 2nd-last somewhere… but better than most cars in garage early in the game…

AWD is king on dirt or cross-cntry above A class, some builds turn out very fast & stats are impressive, i make my own after some bad downloads early on… its a pain and takes time so understand why people use such tunes from forums & social sites etc… but yes, some feel a different class… maybe the PI system is a bit slack after engine & drivetrain swaps, and tunes over 70k cost should not be put in races with a 150hp fiesta.

Tbh tho, we get too many cars too quick to sort things out properly…

29

FM7 had homologation for the categories (Hypercar, Track Toys and so on) and offered these hoppers after launch.
Responding to the player feedback they added normal class hoppers later and they were much more popular.
But without the homologation meta cars took over instantly which lead to a similar thing as here - major pace differences.
Since cars always got ported between Forza titles the meta cars are often the same.
Elise GT1, McLaren F1 GT, '97 Civic, the Integra and the old NSXs to name a few.

My hope is the new FM will shake this up with the build-up from the ground because I grew tired of the predictability of a car’s performance due to its traits.
PI-inefficient engine (modern Bi-Turbo for example) , high weight, race brakes and no shift time penalties? Garbage. Yet to see an exception from this pattern in Horizon 5.

30

If you are skill matched the best players will be matched against the cheats. That’s just not fair.

31

9cec2e8c7b9ecabbb1135399a4d3497c

Everyone faster than me is a cheat.

2 Likes
32

He is correct