So the skill base match making system is non existent, and needs to be inforced more. I should never be 3 whole seconds faster than someone in my skillbase… Still having crashing issues. Along with the weird tire glitch on day of track rotations. Also would like to add that the car level system is just not it. People dont have the time nor the patience to drive a stock car for 2 hours. Car should be maxed out at lvl25 since car points are clearly staying , it would make it way less time consuming doing so. Also not having spectate in the game is a huge bummer , and not being able join a session in progress of practice should be mandatory. Its not ideal to have to leave the practice youre in to pickup another friend that wants to race… When they should be able to join the game as long as the actual race isnt in progress.
Skill rating is too easy to influence positively or negatively. Penalty system is very poor and punished innocent mistakes way too harshly. 1 tyre off the track going wide on then exit isn’t 1+s of time gained.
Match making is putting me with people 10+ seconds off the pace at times and running away with a race being 30 seconds in the lead isn’t fun for me or the people behind.
Match making should prioritise people that are the same ability, even if that means smaller lobbies. Races should be done by splits, fast, medium & slow.
Practice sessions should be permanenty ghosted or at least have the option to be ghosted, lapping 5-10 seconds faster than some other drivers…you have to get lucky to get clean air to actually put some laps in.
The ratings system in this game is a joke.
For safety:
Your pens are inconsistent. You can cut a bit of the track and get no pen, but when you dip a pixel of your tires off track, you suddenly get a +1-2s or even worse. Also, there are no consequences for rammers in this game. They don’t get suspended, they only see the magic letters change in their rating. You need to probably have to have solid consequences, probably a tier-based sanction, like: 10 min time out, 30 mins, 1 hr or even a day suspension depending on how severe the ramming is.
For skill:
The matchmaking could work if you didn’t inflate the ratings after the qualifier series. I’m a consistent 4998-4999 driver. Either I get 1 or 2 drivers on my level or better in TCR for 1-2 races or consistently get people who’s 3s per lap behind pace as p2 for 5-6 races straight. Now, it could probably be because of your player retention issues, which you caused, but that’s a whole 'nother story.
Make people start from B safety, and 2500 skill rating so it feels like there is something to work for in featured MP. You are dumbing down the game when FM is supposed to be the more competitive focused title for this franchise compared to FH.
Gonna sound strange or very difficult to do, but maybe if there’s a way to more granularly rate the players it might have better results in matchmaking. Something like a separate skill and safety rating per track/per car/per class/per spec series, something like that. Stuff like weather might be a factor as well.
I’m not sure about the finer details about the current system so maybe these are already under consideration. But i see players using meta cars in the spec series that might have their ratings a bit inflated as a result as one example of the consequences to matchmaking. I see them struggle against better drivers with inferior cars and they drive more aggressively/dangerously as a result when they’re mixed together.
People complain about grinding for ranks but i think you may be right, the grind might be necessary in order to really weed out who’s working for their ratings maybe. It might at least be part of the solution
I’d like to see separate lobbies for wheel and controller users. Most accidents I see usually involve a controller user. Wheel users are far more accurate and precise whereas controller users tend to wobble about and make accidental contact. Wheel users spend a lot of money to be able to play the way they like and it would be nice to play with people who take racing more seriously. I have had some good clean races with controller users and this is not about their abilities.
I am of the belief that Safety Rating should be a more transparent thing, I would really like if the game shows everyone’s safety rating in the lobby pre-race and post-race, show everyone’s safety rating changes.
Maybe even be ambitious and detail how safely rating is ranked and maybe help drivers to understand how to improve safety rating if they’re making mistakes or trying to spear drivers in T1.
To be honest, matchmaking system is not working at all in less popular class hoppers, I had S 4999 from beginning of game, and every lobby looks the same.
1 to 5 Fast players in meta cars, 1/2 no aero sport tyre enjoyers (like me) in between meta abusers, then we got some decent players but not many, and more than half of lobby are just drivers that can’t even get close tho others, and once u unfortunately lose positions (due to meta rammers) and lose 10 or more positions, u have to deal with drivers that don’t know how to drive or even worse ram u for no reason.
I’d rather have smaller but completive lobby, than to deal with rammers and beginners.
In my experience the group rating is ‘lowest player’s safety rating’ plus ‘highest player’s skill rating’ and not an averages of those (which was also what i expected).
The idea of it. It should bring closer battles being matched with people of similar skill to you.
The execution of it. It just doesn’t seem to work, both skill rated matchmaking and safety rated matchmaking don’t look like they actually do something to the lobbies.
I’d rather see less populated lobbies (target 10-12?) with closer matchmaking than a full lobby that’s all over the place.
Currently there’s too much of a difference between P1 and P20, I cannot imagine that the racers at the back have much fun seeing the leaders be multiple seconds a lap faster. The same can be said to the racers at the front.
I have a S4970 rating and usually race for P3-5, often this involves some great battles (as my qualifying is not as strong as my racing). The field from P3-10 can have an amazing game of magical chairs for positions and I love it! If the matchmaking made it so the lobby was only that group, I’d be having a great time.
Safety rating is achieved too easily, especially S. It shouldn’t be given just by completing the intro of featured multiplayer, it’s something you need to work up to. Think more in the likes of 10+ races without contact penalties (when the system is better at detecting who is at fault), of which the final 5 should be consecutive clean races.
It would also be nice to see the change in skill and safety rating after every race.
EDIT: To clarify after the comment of @Wiltern, I only use my choice of cars and create my own tunes that follow my own preference, not a specific meta.
Fix the constant disconnecting.
Fix penalty system.
I think there are a lot of series at the same time, and very low player base, so you don’t make any matchmaking at all…
The matchmaking should be the 1 priority, if you get paired with people with the same skill, the race is awesome.
You should remové the top at 5000 and reajust how easy IS too gain points, and how dificult IS top loose points.
IMO, you should put the people ranks public, and a leaderboard of rank.
You should put the number of people playing each series each time.
You should do the matchmaking at the end of practice/qualy sesión.
If the player base IS too low, maybe consider make less series at the same time, more separated at time.
I Hope te game revive and you can make the same amount of series with good matchmaking but for now…
I prefer less and better.
LOVE the driving and th multiplayer structure, with a good matchmaking this game Will be strong.
A car radar (like ACC) for safe races Will be awesome
i hope you add online lobbies for drift like in fm7 4wd unlimited rwd unlimited
for this single thing i am not playing
What kind of skill ppl talking here about…driving a car with a decent setup or take a meta car with a downloaded meta setup…that makes the difference in driving skill…there are no skill at this game only stats…
While I disagree with the idea of separate lobbies I somewhat understand why many wheel users would like it. As a controller user I have to agree that it’s not the smoothest experience I’ve had in racing games and accidents happen. With some cars and / or with a good tune controller works pretty well. Some older cars / base tunes / high class race cars just are difficult to drive with controller.
The reason why I don’t prefer separate lobbies is that many times there are wheel and controller users in the same party and separating lobbies would make racing together impossible. I would rather like to see a smoother controller driving experience, I think it would clean up the lobbies quite a bit. Of course it doesn’t prevent dirty drivers but that have nothing to do with the device a person is using for driving.
My first post here.
Been playing FM and Horizon for years, just part of the silent majority I guess.
I have now unfortunately given up due to the ramming and now clearly obvious ramming tactics, there are ways to upset someone else’s race without getting a penalty.
I’m not ranked 4999, in fact float around the 4400, but I am super safe and apart from inadvertently receiving penalties for someone else ramming me off track, have been S ranked for 99% of my time with the game.
I think it is important to surface other players safety rating, I would love to know if the person staring behind me is a safe driver, I really love the excitement of wheel to wheel racing (more than my finishing position) so if knowing the two or three cars around me will at least try to race safely means I can stop letting everyone pass me at the first couple of corners to avoid being rammed into oblivion.
I know you guys are looking into lots of issues with the game, and there are others that frustrate me, but the continual intentional ramming is my priority, so for myself the matchmaking does not appear to work correctly.
I have very similar average skill rating, S safety rating most of the time and also pretty similar experience about multiplayer. I’m wondering though is it because matchmaking doesn’t work or is it because penalty system doesn’t work. From what I’ve seen people use competitors cars as extra grip or braking device with little to no penalty all the time. No penalty - no safety class drop. Matchmaking can’t work without working penalty system.
But try to avoid collision and go to grass - instant 1 to 2 second penalty. Just on latest open B class I tried to avoid collision on oval by going a bit over the line - 2.25 s penalty. If I would have just crashed that car for cutting my driving line I think I would have got zero penalty.
But back to matchmaking, I think it would work better if the safety score / rating would be truly cumulative. Now it looks like it only remembers your last few races and gives rating based on those.
Show the skill and safety rating in the driver list when you join the lobby and make it like iRacing so that you can see how many skill/safety points you won or lost after the race.
Doesn’t feel like either of the two ratings have any effect.
Open Class lobbies are identical to previous titles.
1-3 good drivers in meta cars,
myself and other not so die-hard-serious guys in fun builds (no aero, sports/street tires, quirky cars) behind battling with less experienced drivers in meta cars
and then half of the field in a race of their own battling each other and themselves.
No difference to any Motorsport title before.
It was clear to me that this system is another write-off after it rated me S 497x after just 3 intro races.
No other ELO system I know would instantly rate someone directly at the top.
And now due to the low player count there are players in the lobby that get DNFd. That’s no fun for them and also not for us.
So its not so much the matchmaking thats the issue but the blatent skill gap between players. Some lobbies feel like we are racing with brand new players such is the carnage and poor driving skill thats on display.
I’m in no way the best driver in the world with a “skill” that floats around 4946 but I find it very hard to believe that some of the people in the lobbies i race in are above 4000…
Chris