Missed that. You must be playing a different version of the game, or maybe spend your time in high grip cars. There are plenty of curves in the game with varying levels of grip across the track. The nett effect is usually an exaggerated, strangely unrecoverable understeer. There is no visible debris on the road, and often as not, no evident rubbering of the line. I can only assume it is meant to be ‘the marbles’. I seem to recall some puff talk about it from T10, maybe in FM5.
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Mick, i think you are mistaken too. To me the tracks have uniform grip no matter where on the track you are, and all tracks also seem to have the same amount of grip also regardless of differences in tarmac. Heck even the cobblestones on prague seem to have the same grip, they are just bumpier so you are in slightly less contact. I think what you are noticing may be differences in corner camber. Some corners you can just dive right through the corner if you clip the apex due to minor banking in the corner but if you are offline and are mid track the banking is different so the car seems to understeer comparatively but not that off the racing line has less grip.
Or maybe if you are on that section of track you have already understeered wide ie the understeer comes before running off the race line.
I think it boils down to target market. They (the developers) have to juggle keeping the game simple enough for more of their mainstream audience against making the game simply too difficult to learn and play. If they made Forza a hardcore sim they’d lose more than half their audience.
Look at Race Pro, or even Project Cars. Players have to make a huge commitment in time, energy and concentration when competeing in those games that are more geared towards realism. The casual gamer doesnt want to, or often can’t devote too much time towards games like that. Forza has to offer their audience a quick fix, or the quick adrenaline rush for both hardcore car lovers and the casual fan. A lot of Forza’s players aren’t even fans of real racing. To them it’s just another video game to waste a few minutes or hours on.
I have to admit that even though I’m drawn to Project Cars by its high demand for concentration and skill it can be quite daunting to start a career or even a race weekend in the game. It’s not geared for the quick fix. Those same aspect makes it very rewarding when you reach even minor goals. Forza, on the other hand, is kind of geared towards the “Everyone gets a Trophy” mindset. Turn 10 knows that if players don’t feel a sense of progression and a steady stream orf successes their target audience loses interest.
Forza is far from perfect (Forza 4 was damned near perfect because of the wide variety of activities players could involve themselves in) but it can be downright fun, which should be the goal of any video game.
I understand target marketing as I’m sure most do, however Dan made the comment a really really hardcore sim. Judging by the posts in response his view is thus far unshared.
In Dans own words Forza is community driven. I would say their is enough drive to increase the sim/ realism level and then make the claims of how hardcore it is.
My score BTW is whilst tuning 7, but any sort of racing it drops to a 1 or 2 because of the lack of Motorsport rules - regulations that are applied.
Falcon you are right. Dan is so far away from his target audience it is unbelievable… unless those who want more sim aspects are not his target audience. Maybe he has perfectly hit his mark with his target audience and he is using key words like sim to make his target audience feel like it is more realistic than it is. I wish i could add a poll to this discussion to see how many people here, especially those saying it is not a sim have played other sims, pcars, asetto corsa, iracing, r3e, automobilista, etc. I am guessing the more sim experience someone has the less likely they are to rate forza as a sim. But i dont think forza wants to really go after the sim market. Look at sim title sales, they do not sell well, arcade racers tend to destroy sims. Iracing for example has i think 60000 members, raceroom has over the past 4 years has peaked at 750 players on at one time. I am unsure how many total downloads they have had, but being a free to play (pay as you go) sort of game it would be very hard to tell. I’d almost be willing to bet that forza has sold more copies than all of the current racing sims combined.
Uberwan, another thing we both forgot off our lists is the fact that no matter what happens when racing (even with sim damage) if you can get back to the pits you will be repaired in no time and be able to get right back on the track. Iracing has a similar feature, but it is only allowed in rookie class in their official series and is optional in the private hosted series.
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I think the issue here is we all think we are the target audience. But remember the tweet along the lines of if our vision does not line up with theirs then there are other games out there for us.
I think they have a target audience which is more casual than it used to be and they hope to put in just enough stuff to encourage enough simheads to keep playing too.
I think the issue is more with the comment mentioned in the OP. Remove that comment and the rest of the evidence points to them trying to make a game accessible by the masses.
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I would rate it at 4 at the most. It’s not even close to a hardcore sim, It’s more of an arcade racer like Project Gotham Racing except with more intricate car customization.
I wish they would actually make it into more of a sim instead of watering it down so much. Slightly Mad Studios had the right ideas.
I’d rate it to around 4.5-6.5 Depending how I look at it
There is few cars that drive very similarly than their real life counterparts. (Stock, unadjusted) but there is also cars that are way off from realistic.
Upgrading and tuning is at times far from realistic. which results as 60’s car that outperforms relatively new Ferrari’s Aston Matrins, and such. Or WWII era military vehicle which out handles modern hot hatches. when they are tuned to be “equal” Althuogh balancing such amount of cars will always be difficult.
The game how ever is far from games like Need For Speed, The Crew, etc. Drive Club ETC…
How ever it’s far from Assetto Corsa, R factor, Project CARS and so on.
Therefore it places in the sweet spot in between More realistic than arcade mashup but not as realistic as proper sim. And this is why I call it “Simcade”
Id rate it at a 7. I think forza is a simcade, but leaning more towards sim. Regardless if they have it right or not, many things are simulated through the physics engine. Games like need for speed and the crew aren’t simulating tire friction and suspension movements. Id say most if not all cars in arcade games feel or drive the same, forzas do not.
Id say a game like need for speed is a 1, the crew is a 3, id put driveclub and horizon at a 5 and forza motorsport and gran turismo at a 7. I think anything above 7 are basically all more hardcore sims but more so because of the sim options available. Assetto Corsa has better physics than Pcars, but Pcars has more sim options but id still put them both at an 8. Rfactor would be a 9 and Iracing would get a 10.
I think with some more sim options and features forza would definitely move up a notch. They’ve certainly maxed out the more arcade options so i think a little love could be thrown to the more “hardcore” racers. I think Gt sport is doing exactly that, im sure the physics are the same as usual itll just be more focused towards “hardcore” racing which i think is fine.
I will say though that forza is in a better position than gt because theyve already made the game as accessible to novices as possible where gt really hasnt. Even by just adding qualifying and some options in the pits like being able to tune, choose how much fuel and (wishful thinking but) choose the type of tire hardness soft,medium, and hard would go a long way.
I think with their recent foray into esports and gt sport definitely gunning for that same spot, forza 7 will step it up. With forza on pc now i think theyve positioned themselves pretty well to be able to dominate the market if they chose to add some things and fix other existing issues. There are no games like this on pc, but the car list alone isnt going to make people switch from the other sims on pc, but fixing the ffb and adding in the most basic sim options might be enough to sway them.
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That was a really well written post with lots of insight into Forza. My interest lies in the creative director describing a game as a hardcore sim when it’s in reality anything but. Where is the franchise going? Perhaps the new direction from T10 will be a sim, it’s partially there but not yet.
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You know it was just pr speak. I heard him do another interview where he actually left that part out but the rest of the speech was basically the same. He also said something about there was 11 million next gen forza players and 3 million players a month, i dont believe those figures and i think that topic would also raise quite a few eyebrows.
As i said in my other post, they do “simulate” certain things in the game. Whether that simulation is correct is whats debateable, but it is technically simulating real world data to give us what we have. So in saying its a harcore simulation, if he means by taking real world figures and translating them to the game he is correct.
I think the thing is, forzas real world data is used in a general fashion, its not car specific like othed hardcore sims seem to do. So there lies the question, would you rather a game that has 50 cars that are 100% authentic, or have a game that has upwards of 600 cars that is not 100%. The answer to this question is the answer to the game that better suits you.
Its a hard thing to really answer because in one way he is correct with forza being able to simulate data to make 600 cars feel realistic, but on the other hand each car is not authentically simulated. There will always be trade offs, no developer has an unlimited supply of time and money so they focus on what they can.
As far as direction goes, i cant see them changing the formula too much. They could certainly make a more focused 100% authentic sim racer, but in reality that wont make money. We honestly wont know till it comes out and until another developer makes a game that forces turn 10s hand i wouldnt expect much to be different.
Only Iracing, rfactor and arsetto corsa are serious sims in my eyes.
Perhaps if the racing/ Motorsport aspect matched the feel of the cars that would be the bees knees. I guess it frustrating having moderately accurate cars( although not collision) but the racing is a big pile I don’t know what.
And to think by just adding some simple options would make a world of difference to those who want a more realistic racing experience. I honestly think theyll add some of these options. I think they’ll see if assetto corsa is successful which i think it will be for wheel users maybe then turn 10 will do something about that as well, then they’ll see if gt sports more race orientated experience works out in the esports realm. Gt sport also has its own version of trueskill if you will, which sounds like a much better system tbh so maybe they’ll take some of that into consideration as well.
Its definitely frustrating to be a forza fan sometimes because although it is a solid game there’s always something that seems to hold it back from really being a great racing game rather than a great driving game. Ive been playing games for 30 years now and i have to say the past few years have been great for racing. There are many solid games out there and i do enjoy playing them all and even though forza isnt perfect i always seem to come back to it.
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After buying FM 1 through 5. I skipped FM6. This game franchise has been going away from being a sim. Starting with FM3. I would give FM5 a 6 on the tire model. I give them a 3 on implementation with FFB wheels. I only put in 185 hrs time spent driving on FM5. I’m well over 800 hrs time spent driving on Project CARS.
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shame you missed out on FM6, in my opinion it’s by far the best Forza game to date.
As for people saying there is no qual in FM6, there is. One of the recent updates let you arrange lobby by ‘Best Lap’. So all you have to do is run say a 5 lap race for qual (turn off collisions so you don’t dirty each others lap) then when back in the lobby after the 5 laps, Forza will remember the finishing order of your cars, so then you can set your race parameters how you wish and the race will start in the order of the previous 5 lap race. And of course turn collisions back on. It also remembers this info if you are using buckets for multi class races.
Also the person who made that list has listed points that are options, you’ll never see me use racing and braking line. You can also turn off ‘rewind’.
Is it a total Sim? No of course not, but its far from an arcade racer.
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I had the first forza, for the first xbox. Back then, a kind of simulator. 2, 3, and 4 was better looking -thats all. I did not spernd mony on just another with the forza 5. I got forza 6, from a friend, glad I didn’t wast mony… Yes forza 6 look nice, even the rain effect, and the night graphic. That’s all. Turnsigns that is on every real track, are removed, or hidden very well. Wet races, -do all cars drive on slicks in wet races in forza 6? How can you make water ponds in up- and downhills? Forza 6, is now just a nice looking arcade. that’s sad. Whwn will Turn10 make a real racingsimulator, with real rules like stop and go disqualifying, and -qualify before race in singelplayer and multiplayer? look at project cars 
Main thing that Project Cars has is dynamic weather and MP options with day/night cycles, the rest … meh, poor handling (far too light) and gfx way out dated.
Just curious richard, what are you playing the games with? Pad or wheel?