Several questions about Drivatars

Forza Motorsport Legacy Motorsport FM5 Discussion
1

I’ve been playing Forza 5 for several weeks now and I find myself having more questions than answers in regards to Drivatars. It doesn’t help that anything I can find online about Drivatars doesn’t make sense to me, or doesn’t even seem to apply to the current form of Forza 5. I’ve played single-player career mode exclusively so far, and am about halfway through. The Microsoft Research (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/drivatar/forza.aspx) website would seem to be an excellent resource, except it seems to reference many things that don’t exist in the iteration of F5 on my Xbox One.

Drivatar mystery features - The articles in the MS Research reference things like Drivatar lessons, having multiple Drivatars for your user profile, maturing your Drivatar, employing your Drivarar to race for you, observing your Drivatar, free training and more! Yet I can’t find a single one of these features in the game. Is this article outdated? Am I missing something?

Drivatar earnings while you are offline - Each day I play the game, I have a message telling me about my Drivatar earnings. However, every single message states that my Drivatar participated in 3 races and earned roughly 3000-4000 credits. I think only once did I see it do more than 3 races (might have been 4 or 5.) Why is my Drivatar being restricted to the number of races it can participate in?

Drivatar difficulty levels - Here’s an aspect of the Drivatar system that still confounds me. Why can I run a race twice, once with the difficulty set to Amateur and once to Unbeatable, and see the same car sitting next to me on the grid each time? Does the difficulty setting just scale the same pool of drivers (one giant common pool), or does your Drivatar only participate in races set to the difficulty you are proficient at?

Continuing education - Do Drivatars continue to learn and improve, even if you’re already at 100% sync on a specific track? My overall sync is about 46%, but I have already gotten 100% on most of the tracks that are commonly used in career mode. I strive to race clean, even rewinding if I tap another car, because I want my Drivatar to represent me as a clean racer in other people’s games. Of course, as I get better at the game, I want my Drivatar to follow suit.

My perspective of Drivatars is that they are a good concept, but flawed in execution. Not everyone is a good racer, and therefore their Drivatars will not be good racers either. Plus, the system encourages players to purposely train Drivatars to grief other players. I’m sick of trying to complete a clean race and having Drivatars brake check me on straights, punt me from behind, bounce off me in corners, etc. However, the AI isn’t much better. When doing the special events where you have to pass the slower traffic, they have a bad habit of driving two-wide through corners and blocking the road, cutting quickly onto the line as you try to pass them, etc.

2

That Microsoft Research page on Drivatars is outdated - it refers to the first use of the concept years ago. The new Drivatars are different and simply use that name. They do continue to update even after 100% synch.

http://www.totalxbox.com/66249/features/forza-5-turn-10-on-next-gen-physics-and-beating-the-launch-game-curse/

3

It has been discussed before if you tap another car the drivatar learns that behavior and rewinding will not undo it. But as you get better it should learn the better behavior. Setting the difficulty level will not change the cars just the drivatar skill level.

4

Thanks for the prompt responses. Sounds like somebody should take that MS Research article down, or at least notate that it doesn’t apply to Forza 5.

I’m still a little confused how the same Drivatar will show up in my race whether I am set to Novice or Unbeatable. (Normally I run in… Advanced? Whatever gives 20% bonus.) And why is my Drivatar only doing exactly 3 races only when I’m offline?

5

The actual friends used seem to be selected when you start your Forza 5 session, and then remain the same through the whole session. When I was starting out I had a handful of people I’d randomly added as friends who were even back then very good drivers, and no matter what skill level I selected they were in the race, and their in-race abilities were consistent. The non-friend Drivatars did change as I changed the difficulty level, but I remember one race which was chasing two drivatars through traffic - my two friends were unbeatable! I spent a day trying to get gold, and in the end gave up, and the next day I had two different friends, equally unbeatable. I gave up on that race until I had gotten quite a bit better then went back to it and beat them :slight_smile:

As far as your Drivatar racing for you … mine does exactly the same - 1-4 races per day for roughly CR3,000 per day. I think it’s just a little perk designed to try and keep you engaged …

TTFN
Toni

6

There isn’t a limit to how many races your Drivatar can do per day. It just depends on how many players do how many races with your Drivatar. If your Drivatar is chosen to be in a championship I’m doing and I run all ten races, you appear in ten races. However, if I do three and then quit, you do three and then if I resume the next day to do two more then you appear in two more. If I set up a private multiplayer lobby and your Drivatar shows up, and I do thirty races, you appear in thirty races, but if I abort before doing even one race you appear in zero races. I have friends that played FM5, and if one of them has few FM5 friends then I will appear in most of their career races, so if they run twenty today then I may appear in twenty races, but if none of them play today then I might only appear randomly in races of random folks. Some days I am in a few races, sometimes twenty or more.

Also, related to Drivatars but not yet asked here… They do or don’t take damage, depending on game mode. In career they only take cosmetic damage no matter what, in free play they take neither mechanical nor cosmetic damage, but in multiplayer they can take both cosmetic and mechanical damage.