I’ve been playing for a couple of months now. I started out playing Career Mode with a controller using all assists, drivars set to “New Racer” (or whatever the easiest level is called). I’ve since ungraded to a wheel and now race with only with normal steering and STM on (due to issues with the wheel), all other assists turned off. My drivatars are set at “Above Average” now. As I get better I increase the drivatar skill level to keep things competitive. I’m still going through Career Mode but decided to try racing online for the first time last weekend. I joined a few lobbies - mostly C & B - and got my butt soundly kicked. I finished last, or almost last, every time. I didn’t expect to finish first, but middle of the pack would’ve been nice! Part of it was I was being a little too cautious because I didn’t want to crash into anyone and be considered a wrecker. But I realize now that, even though I’m doing quite well against the AI, I’m not nearly as good as I thought. I race clean, try to stay on the racing line and hit my braking points, and so did most of the other online drivers. They just did it that much better.
So how would the skill level of your average online racer compare to a drivatar level? Professional? Unbeatable? I want to keep learning and progressing by increasing the drivatar level so I’ll eventually be competitive online. I’ll keep racing online too, but when you’re at the back of the pack you are essentially hot lapping alone, not racing against anyone. At least against the AI I’m in the pack fighting it out in the corners.
So, consider me humbled but anxious to get better!
Also whenever you’re in a lobby, pay very close attention to the best laps in the results. Once you found the fastest, congratulations, you just found your new target time for that track. And once you improve and you find someone that’s even faster, same rule applies.
From the little experience I have had in career mode it seems the game is skewed towards the drivatar making the unbeatable drivatar littrally unbeatable. Not because there fast but because the car your aloud and the grid potion your given make it impossible.
If you want to get faster you need to race the leaderboards. It’s the only way to see how you compare to your friends and to the faster ravers.
Unbeatable is no fun… i usually run pro thru the campaign just so i dont have to redo the event. Expert it seems they still hit their brakes way to early and way to hard.
Get back online sinnman. I’m a veteran of racing games I put in hundreds of hours on the gran turismo games on ps1 and ps2. Then I moved onto fm3 with my xbox 360 thinking I was a real hot shot. I jumped into lobbys and got blown away.
You’ve got to play against real people or at least rivals, but that’s just not as much fun. Keep at it and you’ll find things starting to go your way. I’m a back marker in most races and can count my podium finishes on one hand. But you’ll find a last lap battle for 15th is just as exciting as a last lap battle for 4th.
Look me up and add me if you like. I havent got a mic atm but when you see me in the lobbys you can jump in, at least then you just might stand a chance of not being last. We can have a battle for 23rd.
Also join a club, you not only get to meet a bunch of people you can learn from you’ll also have clean racers to race against and the best part of having close bumper to bumper racing with people you trust, and as everyone is trying to beat each other it’s a good way of learning and improving with people. From there you may want to venture to online races as part of a group or solo (and then always coming back to your existing club too). In our bunch we have some really good people and they also take part in tournaments and aim for prizes etc. And then at the same time we have our own races as a group,
@Munster26 - thanks for the encouragement. I’ll keep at it then and will look for you.
@richard1973 - How do you go about finding a club? Look in the Racers Lounge?
Also, I bought a XBox One headset so I could chat while online. I’ve read that chat isn’t that good in Forza - is that the case?
Another oddity: while sitting in the lobby waiting for the race to start I could hear all kinds of conversations going on. Is this because someone has their mike turned on while waiting? It was kind of surreal with all of these voices in english, french and italian coming through the speakers!
Yup just reply to one of the people posting in there to a series that sounds good to you (a lot of groups will create a real series, for example our group is doing an IMSA series, after that we’re going to be doing a Blancpain GT3 series, previously we did a V8 Supercars series) so yeah just look to see what suits you best and respond to which you’d like to take part in.
Public chat isn’t working and hasn’t worked since the release
Clubs used to be part of the game a huge community was built around clubs and the storefront. The club’s still exist most have there own forum. It’s not perfect but it helps till the community features are brought back to the game.
Speak to
BoBr doobz or ACR 1E97 these clubs would happily take you and there very friendly
I’ve noticed you’ve not mentioned about using your own or other peoples tunes. There are some fantastic tuners out there, if you don’t know then on the rivals LB if you select a driver and press A it gives you the option to download the tune they set their time with.
If you already know this then please disregard the above.
I remember when I tried online racing for the 1st time on FM2, I got a real hammering! Took me ages to work out how I was so slow, turned out it was because I didn’t really understand the tuning side of it and therefore had no tunes on the cars I was using. So my cars sucked! After many hours searching for tips and tricks online and buying cars from the auction house (sorry no longer available in current forzas) with tunes already on them did I finally start to find my feet in the world of online racing, now almost 10 years later I can post top 100 times and regularly race with some of the best racers in forza, in the leagues, and I can compete with most of them quite well. Some though are stupid fast and they’re the ones who I always want to race because I learnt fairly early on that to improve I needed to race the faster guys in order to basically watch what they do, like what cars they use, what lines they take into corners and when they brake. All this over the years have made me into the online racer I am today and I love it.
Always remember to keep it fast and keep it clean and you’ll get there in the end!
fast and clean racing. check this out too. Great Facebook group of fellow forzarians who are always willing to help out.
My tuning experience is limited to automatically upgrading my car to be competitive in the current career mode level I’m at. I’ll have to look into this further; I didn’t realize that tuning could make such a difference.
I can’t stress enough how much faster you’ll get with a well built and well tuned car compared to automatically upgrading your car. Research it mate there are tons of tuning guides out there to be discovered. Failing that find some tuners you like and use theirs, that’s what I do most of the time.
I’m gonna plug my mate who I race with most nights, EMW IVORBIGUN search for tunes he’s done, I can’t fault them and mainly only use his tunes in the leagues. There are many more great tuners out there though it’s just a case of finding something to suit your driving style.
I wish he would share his z4 tune from the other day i was racing with you guys lol. I was using some random persons and i was down by at least 2 seconds a lap compared to him sometimes more.
Sinman - you’ve got some great advice from above. I’ve seen Rich J 81 racing in the leagues in Pinnacle on a mates Twitch channel and confirm he is both Fast with good racecraft so his knowledge comes from experience
On the tuning side of things try to get a few favourites’ and use different ones that they’ve shared, that way you’ll develop tour own racing style. Remember as well that some of the shared tunes at the top of the leaderboard might be a bit hard to handle as they’ve been tuned for maximum power. look at the ones people are using ‘Near Me’ and above to start with and get used to the minimum number you need for handling in the class you’re racing.
Another piece of good advice given was to get back online. Try C Class - good variety of cars and FWD do well, they are great for learning in. Don’t be afraid of using the best cars - people only mind that if someone is really fast and use them to whip the rest of the lobby
Regarding practising offline i’d recommend setting up your own races in freeplay as opposed to using career. the options aren’t great but there is away to find the right level of competition by looking at lap times. make it so that the drivatars are about a second a lap slower than you and start towards the back of the grid using the mod cards e.g. moderate setback of starting 18 versus 17 drivatars. Some will have lower PI and so be easy to pass and it will get harder as you move through.
I can tell you though that to be really competitive online in the classes I race B-D you need to be beating the Unbeatable AI over 4-6 laps starting from 18th. I can usually do that and I’m not one of the really fast guys. I set my own race series up where the Drivatars are eg C489 - C500 and my two cars are C430 and C450 (self tuned) but it’s took a long time to get to this. But the more you race the better you’ll finish and you’ll soon be winning the odd race if it’s an average lobby
Friend up do some public/private lobby racing and Keep Racing
