Hope it hasn’t been addressed, I did search but the search engine doesn’t work ATM, anyway:
I’ve set the difficulty to (don’t remember what it’s called, the easiest) “n00b” and there’s a brutal fight for first place, I even - as a test as brutal rubberbanding seemed to happen - crashed my main rival for first place into a wall (which took a lot of attempts as they defy physics) and about two corners later he was right at my rear again.
It seemed easier to race against “Highly skilled” as you’re more prepared for a fight and they tend to not go supersonic past you just to get in front and then slam on the brakes, has anyone else noticed this?
Is it somehow tied to me having really good racers in my team (from my friends list) that somehow makes them ignore the difficulty setting -as the rest of the pack crosses the finishing line at about the same time I start a new race…?
What I have observed is that friends on your friends list always put up a bigger fight than the rest of the random drivatars, even if said friends don’t have any forza game.
Ok, so it’s just not me then, it does make me wonder what point the difficulty setting has, why not just make it as in for instance Flatout, with no difficulty setting at all, where it’s up to you to buff the cars and race well to win?
In Horizon /2 and all the Motorsport’s I’ve played (didn’t play 6, but all the others) it has worked just fine.
The reason I want to play easy is due to me not caring about SP, I just use it to get the cars, learn the tracks, the physics and to generally mock about. (to be able to do decently at/in rivals and online
Hmm that’s weird… I play on unbeatable and I actually have the opposite affect. I haven’t lost a race yet even though some have been very close but here’s what I’ve noticed.
On unbeatable, the AI or Drivatars are much better on-road then off-road. I haven’t noticed any rubber banding but I have noticed that the AI do not respect the laws of physics some of the time… An AI in a Ford Focus RS that was upgraded to S2 was taking corners better than me in a maxed out 2017 Ford GT which is pretty much impossible.
See this is strange. I’ve found they do much better on road than off it. Off road, they’re sliding into walls frequently, they spin out a bunch, they crash into each other, they don’t know ow to handle water and I simply walk walk drive away from the competition. this is on expert, pro, and unbeatable.
On the roads the drivatars are not nearly as bad as cross country. What I have noticed is that the drivatars of my friends are much tougher than the drivatars of other players not on my friends list. This is particularly frustrating since Forza seems intent on making my wife’s drivatar the hardest one out there even though she never plays the game. Grrr.
In addition to the on road, off road discrepancy I’ve noticed some major rubber banding at times. I was in a custom night race the other day (Yara Valley, PPiDrive hosts the Police Car Sprint) and due to a little incident I was about 95% of the race done with 2.5 seconds behind first place (difficulty: pro) and kind of frustrated that I might get my first SP loss. Suddenly out of nowhere, I see brake lights, the lead car (Nissan GTR) loses traction on a dry, mostly straight road, and i pass for the win. The GT-R still came in second but with a 1.5 second deficit. Now, really?! I should have straight up lost that race.
I liked your post because of you on-road/offroad observation. Yes, cross-country races are often much tougher than circuit or sprint-type races, or even street races. This is true even if you use rewind to undo serious mistakes like missing a checkpoint or careening end-over-end in a buggy. The difficulty ratchets up; no question about it.
If you guys are having trouble beating the AI competition in SP races in average mode, you need to work on your cars more, maybe? Some cars are better than others too, and in particular classes. For example, the Ferrari Dino is untouchable at my C600 build, and I didn’t really put a whole lot of work into that. The most tweaking I did was to gear ratios, and that’s easy to do (unlike, say, springs, which I must admit I don’t understand at all). I was using the Cholla buggy at B700 for a while, and would always get left in the dust by one or two of those smaller Razor (?) buggies off the line. I’d catch them and pass them eventually through turns, but I always felt I was in the inferior vehicle. I switched to the Razor, first in C class, then to the to of B class, and, yeah, it just screams. Much better choice for buggy races in both C and B.
well for me I know it probably is the cars. I drive bone stock, non upgraded cars, and do not enjoy upgrading them. I think because of this I tend to do worse off road than on.
It aint the cars its the driver! Of course the car has to be decent but these Horizon games are all about the driver and their skill and knowledge. Course knowledge is probably the most important aspect to beating higher AI and other humans. This comes from practice and repetition. The absolute best car isn’t even close to necessary as long as you have a car you can drive clean on the optimal driving line. It just takes time and practice. If I know the course well I can easily beat unbeatable with sub optimal cars.
Read my initial post, it’s not that I can’t beat them, it is that I don’t want the challenge, also explained better in the post above, X1 Two apparently has encountered it as well:
I’ve had exactly the same, New racer setting and #2 is right behind me all the way to the finish, even able to pass me in some corners - where I screw up a little, not badly, just not a good corner - just to get in front of me and slam on the brakes for the next corner way too early making me smash into them…
Looking at this thread it seems like it doesn’t happen to all, so that begs the question if it’s something that happen to some of us and why.
Also, those that say there’s no fault with it, have you tried new driver to make sure it doesn’t happen before coming with reasons about why we can’t beat the drivatars? (which never was stated as the reason for the thread as I can beat them, only first places IIRC, let’s say 95% to make sure I’m not lying)
If it’s something within our settings, feel free to give advice on what to do as I - like X1 Two - am getting annoyed with it, settings are there to let you play your game the way you wish, not to force it’s wishes down your throat…
The difficulty setting works. On the easiest I’m in the lead after a couple of turns. On pro or better it might take a lap or two. But what I said about friends is still true. They do give you a fight regardless of difficulty.
Currently, I’m playing on “Above average” difficulty (I just purchased the game just a couple weeks ago, hence the “Above average” difficulty). But even on the Above average difficulty, the drivatars are beyond unbearable to play with, specifically on the Midnight street races. I decided to try the Rainforest street race, and it ultimately took the usage of an AWD swapped Nismo Motul/Autech GT-R, and about 3 -4 hours of trying over and over again to win this race. Literally every single time, the drivatars would divebomb the first few corners of this race, often knocking me off the road and out of the way of the checkpoint…3% into the race.
Eventually I decided that racing cleanly wouldn’t get me a win, so obviously I had to start ramming the drivatars off the road and into either: trees, traffic cars, or each other. This would only work for seconds at the most, because they would simply catch up to me as if the Drivatars had rocket boosters strapped to the sides of their cars. It seemed like they could just catch up to me in ways that seemed not possible. The other issue with Drivatars is that, they will for no reason at all, crash into traffic cars (or both traffic and other Drivatars) and just sit there and cause a roadblock which causes needless wrecks and checkpoint resets… Something has to be done about this.
The only streetrace I struggled with was the final boss. Every other streetrace was doable on one of the highest difficulties (can’t remember exactly which one).
If there is a problem they just need to make sure difficulty settings do make it harder and easier but they definitely should not reduce the difficulty of the higher difficulties. They just need to make sure we can all find a difficulty that allows us to compete, but we should not all be able to beat the hardest difficulties (hope that makes sense).
I agree, it’s not that I can’t beat at least Highly skilled - as stated earlier and haven’t tried harder than, so not sure about those - it is that I’m not interested in it, I want to fly through the game to then focus partly on online but most of all rivals. (as they’re the things I find fun)
But I do of course need cars good enough to do it with and that means I need the credits which means I have to do a lot of racing…which would be ok if it did let me choose the difficulty.
I don’t mind getting less credits as I can use the race to also put in times on the track as a baseline for my future rival endeavours. (which is hard to do with some AI blocking your way and so on)
I think the AI in this game is all over the place, and not in a good way. For reference: I play on Pro difficulty all the time in other Forza games and win almost everything. Unbeatable I would win maybe 40 % of the races but I found Pro to be the difficulty where one or two AIs keep up with me at all times and offer a rewarding race from start to finish. Well, not so in Horizon 3. I am currently playing on Highly Skilled (two levels below Pro) and getting my behind kicked almost all the time. As in finish fourth in a championship. Sometimes even seventh. It just makes no sense. I’ve had races on New Racer where the second place would be half a second behind me and I’ve had races on Unbeatable where the AI would get stuck in trees or just stay on their roof after missed jumps. There is no consistency whatsoever to difficulty in this game. Might just be an odd thing with my drivatars but it is really starting to annoy me.
And to make matters worse those drivatars behave like absolute pricks. Right turn, I am overtaking on the right side, braking late and he just moves into me. Doesn’t follow the general line (which is free), just manically rams into my side. Drivatars also seem to recover faster from jumps, drive faster through water, be able to skip checkpoints, …
I’ve never been a real fan of the drivatar concept (and I don’t think it actually works as advertised) but it has never been as bad as in Horizon 3. I actually loved it in Forza 6.
My experience with this is A through D classes are manageable and competitive. S1 is a total crapshoot, and completely dependent on the type of car you are running. S2 is impossible. Not even worth the effort, as the AI gleefully defies physics there.
It’s frustrating that the cars you want to drive are also the cars you’ll do the worst in, and through no fault of your own at that.
This is exactly how I feel when racing in S1 (S2 I try to avoid). I did a street race earlier (Pro difficulty) in the rain in a tuned Huracan HE and I was 110% on the limit pushing to catch a Challenger Hellcat that had somehow swapped it’s handling characteristics with an F1 car. It was absolutely glued to the road around every corner flying through every turn haha. I can laugh now but at the time it’s so frustrating.
My go-to example is the Murcielago Highway Battle. You have to turn the difficulty down to win that race, because you aren’t racing a Murcielago. You’re racing a WEC LMP chassis and motor mated to a Murcielago body. Even when you obtain that car and build it back up to the exact same spec as how you raced it, you still can’t corner and accelerate like the AI can.
The AI is immersion-breaking in this game, and it’s a problem that seriously needs to be remedied soon, because if I am flat-out in a finely-tuned McLaren, I shouldn’t be getting run down and slingshotted by a Bowler.
It could be that physics aren’t being respected enough, but there is also the speed factor. An AI doesn’t have to worry about reaction times. Humans do. This is why I prefer the slower classes. I have time to act and react productively. In the S classes, I feel like I’m just barely hanging on to a good path through the course and the AI cars. Races are going to be more difficult for mere mortals in S2 because of this factor alone.
