I’ve been seeing quite a few comments lately around Rivals, so thought I’d start a thread to allow everyone to share their thoughts on the subject be it good, bad or otherwise bc I feel like there is a lot that is not being considered & somewhat incorrectly judged imo. Think I’m wrong? Read on…
I’ll preface all of this by saying I started into the FH series in 4 & only got serious about Rivals in 5.
Just being a casual player at the time, I’ll be the first to admit that historically I wasn’t a fan. Given how easily the runs are flagged by a subtle tap or closely missed CP, the frustration quickly outpaced the fun.
The more involved I got with this Forum, the more interested I got in @Jezza14’s Rivals thread (thanks for that Jezza, you’re missed around here buddy) & the weekly competitions. They were some pretty serious players, putting up times I couldn’t even think of getting close to, so I didn’t consider jumping into that pool at the time.
But as the game went on & I was looking for more things to do, I finally decided to give it a try & join the weekly competitions. The group has always been very welcoming & helpful, particularly to someone like myself who was not close to their level. I remember @ziperrPL actually providing me with a video once for one of the tracks where he was following my ghost to provide tips on how I could improve. It was pretty funny at the time bc he had to keep slowing down to keep me in the shot so thanks again for that Zip, that was appreciated!
I learned pretty quickly everyone was pretty casual & just having fun. I decided to stick with it & despite the frustrations, I started to see the results & realized the imposed disciplines for a clean lap were forcing me to drive the cars a lot more consistently, cleanly & with much more control than I was previously used to (or willing to do for that matter). I developed a personal method of setting a clean lap, then continuing to run against my previous PB to learn from mistakes & improve, which has been pretty effective for me.
So yeah, the LBs are lousy with cheated times, there are players who will continue to use mods to set better times, some take it a little too personally (you know who you are! ) & it can be highly frustrating at times, but for me, no other time invested in the game has helped me improve my driving skills overall than running Rivals.
I’d also like to say I sincerely appreciate the friendships I’ve developed with the Rivals group & the help & support they’ve always shown to me & anyone who decides to join in the fun.
So if you’ve read this far, I’ll say thanks & sorry for the length, but here’s your opportunity to agree, disagree, or just offer your thoughts on this whole Rivals topic & how you feel about it (respectfully of course).
I recently got invited to a group of Content Creators on Instagram that do regular Challenges on custom Blueprints in Fh5 to see who gets the fastest time.
Its a Lot of fun, as we have various Limits for each challenge.
Sometimes its the car choice (S1 Rallyecross in Formula D cars)
Other times its Purely Skill based (S2 asphalt rX7 race but everyone uses the same Tuning setup)
It can be quirky (D-Class cars that youd normally never race on a Tricky Trail) and so on
This is, for now at least, one of the main reasons I’ve never really got involved in rivals. I do tend to avoid the more competitive side of the game and focus on the fun (hang out with friends side) although I do the online playlist every week so I’m not saying I’m not competitive at all.
Maybe (this may be contentious and I don’t mean it to be) the more competitive side I’ve seen is more aggressive, more about coming first at any cost and less fun for someone like me at least.
Having said all that I’m always looking for ways to improve and maybe just need the right group of people
Yep, I understand & it can feel that way sometimes, but the weekly competition is only a small portion of the Rivals events I run. I will select a track & just run against my times in different classes to improve. I’ve even done personal all class challenges on the same courses just for fun.
This actually sounds pretty fun & a nice alternative to the usual courses. I did an A Class mainland Rally event lab that’s a pretty lengthy course if you’re interested in checking it out.
I never bothered with rivals until I started tuning in FH5 and used it mainly as an avenue to test my tunes, not with any intent to set a top time but more to test how well the tunes perform in the handling department.
I’m not a great driver or tuner, if I’m being honest, but I do sometimes make an attempt to beat a rival when I get a notification about someone on my list beating my times.
Usually fail to catch them but sometimes I get lucky:)
Edit: I will say that testing my Trial tunes on the first track has improved my performance in the Trials Immensely.
It used to be I’d be lucky to get even a sniff of a podium finish but now I expect to place first every week.
I use rivals for the same reason as shadow…to test tunes or practice a course. Then I move onto the actual course, and go at the expert and unbeatable AI’s. Then hopefully I am ready for the trial by thursday. Not really into rivals, and haven’t been since FH4. I am all for people doing what they enjoy though, and it seems to bring you and others a great deal of fun in the game. That is all that matters…but I do think it should stay in rivals threads. We discuss it a bit in the playlist, but that is normal because geist and gilles formula is kind of tested and proven. Find a great car…if the tune works good, or if not mold it to your liking. I prefer more of an online head to head environment though. That is just my thoughts…but I see people having fun doing rivals and cool. If that is what floats your boat good luck and keep on enjoying your game. Then sometimes when you put together a five minute tune and hit a course and realize this I post this because it was the turning point for me. While short lived and early…it told me I was starting to do something right. So I have continued to work on my tunes and get better. For that I think rivals might be something I revisit sometime.but as I said gilles (even though we bicker) and geist’s rival ghosts have taught me more than anyone in this game.
I pretty much only did Rivals just to complete a portion of the game that wasn’t guarded off by online. I’d probably invest more time in Rivals if wasn’t a chore to set-up. I literally had to unfriend Giles because the clunky Rivals selection system would not let me select my own rival without sifting through thousands of ghosts to find a Rival on par with myself for the weekly events.
Also, while it has the essentials, Rivals’s missing a few things that could make it shine more. Probably the biggest thing off the top of my head is I wish it had a ghost system similar to the Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune arcade games. You could select up 3 ghosts to have a pseudo race as opposed to racing against one ghost at a time. The single ghost system can stay, but it would be nice to have more options.
I also wish Rivals was limited to circuits only. Since this mode is inherited from Motorsport, you can tell it was never designed to work with sprints to begin with. It’s just so much easier to undo a flagged lap than it is to undo a completely flagged run.
Speaking of the flagging system, I wish it was a little less sensitive. I understand wall-riding, but minor tapping, especially when its the result of a mistake and not deliberate cheating, is a bit to extreme. This could also apply to the penalty system on multiplayer, which I’m sure uses the same if not similar coding.
It is the best way to learn any course without consequences and improve your driving, I did it briefly in FM4 because it was a great way to farm for credits (beating a top 1% time in that game gave you 250k a time) but never bothered outside of that all the way up to FH5, I was initially worried about jumping into Jezza’s Rivals Challenge as I thought I would embarrass myself with rubbish times.
Found out I was actually better than I thought and I had another great auto player to push me in the first few months which also improved me, now as a result of Rivals I enjoy the game as a whole far more, taking a random car and seeing what it’s capable of in ‘x’ class road/dirt/CC/street whereas in previous games I’d have stuck on the same bunch of cars that I know.
It’s not for everyone but if you’re interested in improving it’s the place to go, make and learn from your mistakes there when there’s nobody else to be affected by it, don’t do it as much as I have but if you do it enough many of the courses just become memory.
Not meta spamming though that’s just dull and sweaty at this point, and I think I am allowed to say that considering that’s exactly what I did a bit ago with the 700R on Cathedral/Chihuahua/Bola, I wanted a top time and I got the WR on Cathedral with my own tune which was still standing when I last checked, I won’t pretend I was doing anything but being sweaty and hell bent on being high up a board when I did that, but if you’re setting a completely meh time in a 700R or Bone Shaker that isn’t interesting in the slightest and sometimes actually looks worse than being lower down a leaderboard with a left field or oddball car.
The boards were cleaned up but not fully, geist, Shadowsbane and myself have all been on S1 Chihuahua today and the legitimate WR on there is all the way down at #146.
This will be why I just ran the 2024 Mustang on Copper Canyon cross-country. I may not be a fan of rivals but I definitely like trying something different
I actually never race against an actual ghost silhouette, as it’s just too distracting to me, especially driving exclusively in cockpit mode. I just check in with the ghost blip on the mini-map ever so often, but can’t tell you how many times I’ve ruined a good run taking my eyes off the road for just that split second. Can’t even imagine having 3 separate ghosts navigating you at the same time.
I don’t know exactly how it works either, but from my experience, if you are pretty parallel to the surface you contact, it generally won’t count. It’s bizarre bc I’ve literally hit something in this fashion with a decent impact & it didn’t count (*great example in the video below around the 1:22 point), but the majority of the time, the slightest impact flags the hit. Can definitely be frustrating.
Which dirt course is it at the mountain top where wall smacking is pretty much the way to get a good time? I have personally seen howzer and others straight up smash into walls at a certain angle and not get flagged…me on the other hand I look at the wall with my car…flag lol. It’s a true art to know when and where to bump the wall without getting flagged.
I genuinely don’t care about being the best in any rivals competition, the process is what I enjoy. in my opinion, we all contribute to the winning time every week on the rivals thread, and a lot of the lap times you see from me and @TheGillesMuller in general are the product of hours of conversation and testing and investigating. the competition is friendly and collaborative between most of the players I know.
I think rivals notifications are important for letting people know what I’m up to, what cars, what races, etc. it’s part of why I like to inch my way up certain leaderboards in different cars, leaving room to show off new exclusives. basically like everyone else said, it’s more about testing than “me vs you”
You can get away with scraping the wall on the first corner of Caldera scramble. It actually helps you maintain more speed through that corner if you get it right.
Target fixation is definitely an issue when running Rivals (But it was a great time Gilles, so nice work!)
I know a lot of times that’s all it is for some people, but that’s definitely not how I would classify you. As @CuriousGirl2591 mentioned, for some players it seems like they have to win at all cost if their times are beaten. I’ve actually had to unfriend some players in the past bc of the auto notifications going out when I’ve been running against my own times & then constantly having my notifications box blown up bc some felt they had to respond, to my point of some taking it a little too personal, which ultimately takes some of the fun out of it imo.
Even that’s broken at the moment, I removed 2 people (non forum members) a few weeks back who were doing nothing but meta spamming, often on tracks after I’d been messing about on them, I did S1 Riviera with an 882PI ID Zerouno for example and came on the next day to a notification from one of them who had seemingly gotten the notification and decided the XJR-15 the meta S1 powerbuild was an appropriate response
I removed them both after that but I am still getting notifications from them now and so is geist with a player he removed ages ago.
I have a lot of followers, the only downside being people feel the constant, incessant need to beat my times. I could be testing some stupid truck on a road circuit, and I’ll get somebody keeps beating my time with a meta car every ten minutes. very annoying.
I have to admit I’ve been soured by a club member who used to run rivals over and over until he was top of the club leader board but then forgot when doing seasonals that there were 5 other teammates and 6 drivatars who may well be on ‘his’ line sigh
I usually delete any rivals notifications I get, except maybe paying attention to some of you guys testing now, and only use rivals to test how tunes are doing
I have also started watching more closely the lines other players take which helps me improve
so thanks again for that Zip, that was appreciated!
I post this because it was the turning point for me. While short lived and early…it told me I was starting to do something right. So I have continued to work on my tunes and get better. For that I think rivals might be something I revisit sometime.but as I said gilles (even though we bicker) and geist’s rival ghosts have taught me more than anyone in this game.
