It would be great if you could challenge a friend to your best rival/free-play lap. Send the code in an in-game message, xbox message, or share the code to your favorite social media.
The code would contain your best lap in a specific car on a specific track in specific conditions. Who ever enters the code would then challenge your ghost to the same event. It would work the same way as it does now where the first rival is the shared code ghost and then you work your way up to the current best ghost of the share code. You would get notifications when a peer bested you on your own best lap. And then you try to best them and it goes back and forth updating the best ghost ad nauseum…
Would be super cool if it also kept a running list of the time improvements since shared.
Maybe a dedicated tab so you have one place to keep track of all the shares you have given and received. With the status shown for easy reference to which you need to beat again.
Somehow maybe the times could also be added to the world lists?
But I am more looking for something specific that tracks you and your shares’ time only. (Besides the friends filter on leaderboard list, which is different).
I think the main key here that differentiates it is that:
- It is an “exclusive” rival event to your shares (with possibility to also separately update the world standings if there are already any for exact match?)
- free advertising for FM rivals on social media (or even used by FM to promote special events, like current Triple Crown event)
- it notifies you when you lost your top place
- has specific results, leaderboards, info, and options for the share code creator and users.
Creator options: clean laps only, Standing start only, force auto/manual/TCM/drive line/etc. Create private lobby which user has to request access to prevent spam-shares vs a fully public lobby.
User options: send public/private message (in game) to creator or entire share users, optionally wager in-game currency might be fun(?), share clip of replay, include selection of unlockable pre-defined messages as part of notification to previous ghost. - Ability to track shared rivals without adding everyone to your friends list.
- The share code would link to a current best replay (with previous ghost) for anybody to watch, including people who don’t own the game. Maybe via forza.net viewer?
- This is great for people who have friends in different time zones, playtime availability, or setting up a weekly “tournament” with your forza club or even just co-workers. (maybe set an expiration date for “tournament” entries so you have the option to re-rival it fresh later?)
I think there is a lot of potential here. And it would add personal investment and emotions when competing with only people you know. I think people are going to come back more often when they see that their best/worst friends just took the top spot. Plus it also takes the edge off the bummer of seeing that you are only in the top XX% after racing your little heart out and still a whopping XX seconds behind an unknowable professional eRacer.