Honestly, meta cars are not that big of a number here.
Probably not more than 10 in every class - often the same car in several classes actually.
I’ve tested nearly every car up to S-Class on the Nordschleife and while it’s only one track the top spots are more or less a copy of the general meta cars.
Below them the pace groups become pretty vast pretty quickly.
Adjustments to get rid of the insane pace differences at the top could certainly be done.
For example the top B-class car on sports is 12 seconds faster than the average sports tires build.
The next one is 9 seconds faster, after that the group already expands to 5 cars being ~ 6 seconds faster and then it’s not possible to draw groups anymore.
The problem is that the PI is calculated by an AI driver driving a representive equivalent of a track with those upgrades applied (done at a massive scale and saved to the game via a lookup table, it’s not “driven” on your console in real time).
As for why this is a problem, the AI driver is not very good. It doesn’t drive as fast as a human, it isn’t as comfortable with traction loss as a skilled human would be, it doesn’t rev beyond the limiter like a human would in specific engines (like Hondas and supercharged machines). This is why certain upgrade parts give or take away far more PI than their true performance should.
Until Turn 10 overhaul the AI that “drives” the cars and builds for PI calculations, they’ll always be “broken” and open to performance imbalances between cars. Same for every Motorsport/Horizon game.
Ideally said AI should be as fast and consistent as the top GT Sophy pace, which is known to be a worthy challenge for even the best human players in Gran Turismo 7.
The problem is that beyond some relatively minor imbalances stemming from the PI cost of certain parts, it is balanced to take these differences into account. Track selection plays a significant role in car balancing. If a lobby consists solely of high speed ovals, the most efficient use of upgrades is different than what you get when a lobby consists solely of short/club circuits. Without the very strict build requirements that come with homologation, there’s really no way to stop someone from building a poorly optimized car for the lobby they’re entering then wondering why they can’t compete.
What do you find appealing about street tires on low class cars?
IMO, street tires should be reserved for an open track day style lobby. Even showroom stock classes were shaving the treads off their tires as far back as the late 80s.
Previous Motorsports didn’t have fuel weight which is a big factor in the dominance of race cars.
In FM7 several cars like open wheelers were banned from MP.
Sure, there were meta cars in FM7 as well but not to the extent as here. Some meta cars are faster than cars a whole class above.
This has been brought up many times across multiple installments for the exact reason you mentioned: it has not changed/improved despite years of requests and undeniable evidence.
For much/most of this brand’s entire series of games, the PI has made most of its cars irrelevant for competitive open-class racing (except perhaps for the very upper echelon of highly skilled players who can be competitive in any car when they’re racing against the majority of not-as-highly-skilled players).
Skill rating can make the problem worse if more players avoid ever driving non-meta cars online because they don’t want their rating to drop when they inevitably lose to meta cars.
As you alluded to, open-class multiplayer racing is where a lot of the action has always been in this series, but it becomes less appealing when players are heavily disadvantaging themselves if they ever want to race in anything other than the few meta cars.
Of course, a “meta” of some kind is unavoidable, but the bigger the gap/imbalance between meta & non-meta, the bigger problem the is.
This installment was said to have been “built from the ground up” to be a “racing platform for the future,” so it’d be nice to see it improve beyond its same old shortcomings.
Have you ever noticed when, on the starting grid, before starting an online race, the game gives you an estimated lap time based on your tyre, and for me, that lap time is always faster than what I achieved. That estimation has to come from AI don’t you think? So T10 has fast AI. Is it too taxing on the system to unleash? After all, GT Sophy is limited in number and tracks.
Previous FM didn’t have good multiplayer (except meetup lobbies). There was no fair racing whatsoever.
Tire compounds, fuel, pits, distance to your opponent measured in time, PENALTIES, proximity radar, lots of lobbies themed around (more balanced) divisions - it’s day and night compared to FM7.
Because current Open Class experience doesn’t make any sense. I only played FM7. It was even worse.
The “target” lap times very much depend on the car and track. From memory, Mid Ohio has target times that are often quicker than WR pace. Other tracks are miles off pace. Similarly, certain cars seem to be generate times that are miles off.
I personally would rather run a car at its best. If anything lower the tire wear to 3x or 2x or even better. Get rid of it for open class racing and keep it for the type of racing that requires mandatory pit stop. And open class racing is as it states. Open class. Build and run anything you want. The freedom of Forza. This why I tend to stay out of R class. The Meta cars are just so much faster than production/normal cars. This entire thread is pointless to be completely honest. You guys are worried about the wrong things in this game.
All that needs to be done is not allow tunes not created by the player. If the tune is locked force em back to stock. Tired of racing against downloaded meta tunes
Struggling to control an overpowered Ford GT40 and divebombing/relying on other cars as means of slowing down is not being faster. Drifting with no control out of each corner, slowing everyone behind you or pushing them off track is not being faster. It’s just you making everyone else slower. Just an example.
I understand your sentiment but please be specific in which classes you are talking about. I only ask because I don’t race anything under P class so I couldn’t give a well documented account on how racing is for those classes. For P class your suggestions would shake things up a bit giving the group C cars relevance again. However in X class there is only one viable car and that’s the AMR PRO no matter if it’s a full tank or low on fuel. A full tank just makes it sluggish and takes away the fun of the car when it’s on edge.
Once again I understand where you’re coming from but that solution can’t be a blanket response to all of open class it would take the devs actually fine tuning those parameters which only takes us away from open class and closer to spec races
But now the tuning community suffers because you and others don’t want to download a proven good tune. At the end of the day the tune is only as good as the driver especially since the tune is based on the creators driving style. If they aren’t cheating the system with hacks then they are just faster and that’s what racing is about.
Often on these forums people get upset losing to the meta but it’s the meta for a reason. It’s the most optimal setup that gives you the opportunity for a win. You made the decision to not use the meta so now you deal with the consequences of not winning. And should you beat the meta I’m sure you feel good about that. All I’m saying is don’t complain if you don’t win against the known meta
How is the tuning community suffering?
Any unskilled oof can download a tune anyway.
Regardless are yall getting paid for this!!! Running a full lobby of metas isnt fun…whats the point of a game having 400 cars if people are only using 4 of em?
