We’re now 6 months into FM2023’s life cycle, and having played the game through the good and the bad (let’s be honest, mostly bad) I feel like the team running the show still need to expand their awareness of issues within the game, as there is so much that could be done to help players that are more than just the casual young teen/pre-teen players that access this game on GamePass.
I’d like to raise some suggestions that, in my opinion, would go a very long way into general player attitudes, opinions, and enthusiasm regarding this title.
- FRR not working effectively at all
In update 6, I noticed that some of the patch notes mentioned “Improved sideswipe” and something or other regarding how the system attributes fault to one driver or another.
-This is not working as I believe the devs intended. Now, if someone divebombs a sharp turn, and you’re just about to hit the apex and they skid into the front corner of your car, or just outright banish you to the shadow realm, the person doing the divebomb is not attributed fault in most cases, resulting in targeted player being hit with a very harsh penalty, as well as losing upto 10 seconds of time on their race.
It is still not capable of correctly attributing fault when there is a large cluster of players in close proximity, ie turn 1 of every single race. This I admit would be a very hard one to get right, however it is currently so wrong, it is not deserving of the “intelligent” part of Artificial Intelligence. Most times, when one person is punted and it cascades into them being shot into those infront of them etc, it’s the players in the middle (first ones to get punted that then fly into others) and those that they hit that get smacked with the penalty, as well as ending up off track.
When leaving track limits due to traction loss, after already losing time, FRR will put a steep penalty on said player, sometimes double or even quadruple the time lost due to worn tyres or out-braking themselves on a sharp corner.
-All in all, while I appreciate that getting fault attributed to the right person or people in many thousands of scenarios is going to be difficult, FRR should not really be in such a bad state, considering other games such as Gran Turismo and other PC racing games/simulators have already gotten it right to a point where complaints are minimal in comparison.
Once the devs get this most of the way to being in good order, I am fully in favour of the harsh penalties currently in the game, and even harsher ones for Turn-1 dive bombers and other aggressive behavious like punt-to-pass, turning into you on a straight to push you off, or not leaving room on the inside or outside when they should of. I’m even in favour of instant disqualification in som cases.
- Reporting system is archaic and really does need an overhaul for a title in 2023
Reporting players in this game is a nightmare. You would need to save the replay, then either go to the relevant parts of the replay, film it on your phone or download it to your PC to then edit and cut, then upload to the forums, and then… Personally, I think most serious incidents genuinely go unreported because many people really can’t be bothered with the hassle. There is an instant report tool for things like offensive liveries, why can’t this be expanded upon to include bad/toxic players?
Why can’t we have our replay gallery expanded slightly, that automatically saves 5 replays, then overwrites the oldest and moves up like that, then an ingame reporting tool for bad players like the tool for reporting liveries. When you select report, have multiple reasons for the report, and then select the relevant replay from the rotating gallery, which is then saved elsewhere (be it allocated space on users PC/Console, or directly uploaded to T10 servers somewhere?).
Fixing the outdated and out-of-touch reporting system and making it easier and more accessible to report people would go a very long way towards helping the community and team at T10 remove toxic people and bad players from the game, making it more enjoyable for everyone. There’s no excuse for joining a race, ruining it for as many people as possible within the first few sectors, and then leaving. Or just being overly aggressive and ruining multiple peoples races over the course of the race.
- Proximity indicators
While for a very long time, these were sufficient and good enough, in more modern titles that are on PC where some players will play in firts person, there really needs to be a better system for spatial awareness. These are not good enough by any stretch of the imagination when multiple other titles have radars and other such systems. It ruins the game for people that like playing in first person or hood cam and is just a nuisance. Not only for the player in first person, but for those around them because said player is not really aware of their actual distance and/or position and this most always results in unintended contact and penalties being dished out for no good reason, or just being banished to the shadow realm.
- Player Ghosting
The ghosting system needs to be improved when players crash. So many times I’ve been on a high speed straight, or coming round a medium or high speed corner, and with 99% of forzas playerbase not knowing how to rejoin track after an incident, they just plop themselves on the racing line or apex. Then they unghost right infront of a player, causing a huge crash, which usually also results in further incidents because they do exactly the same thing again and rejoin badly, then the game unghosts them right infront of someone else.
These incidents are unavoidable due to players being unaware and uneducated about this kind of thing within racing, and it’s ALWAYS the player that’s unfortunate enough to be about a micron (1/1000th of a mm) behind them as the game decides they are now safe to come out of ghosting and continue the race.
The game needs to have some sort of proximity window where, while ghosted and going considerably slower than other cars, they STAY GHOSTED until up to a safe speed or are in a safe position, AWAY from the racing line or corner apex.
- Tyre wear
I understand T10 wanted to introduce strategy to multiplayer races with tyre compounds wearing at different rates, but in pretty much all races, the strategy is the same Med to Med, Hard no stop, or Hard to Soft. This strategy NEVER changes, so it’s effectively made itself moot because everyone knows the tyre wear is just so aggressively and idiotically wrong.
In some races where you have Le Mans circuit for more than 2 laps (Qualifying?), you’re screwed either way because not even a set of hard tyres will last 3 laps around Le Mans. Even if T10 did introduce Nordschleife to MP, that would also be a bad race, as soft and medium tyres would be out of the question, and I have a rough time believing that even a set of hard tyres would last a lap of the constant turns and positive G sections of the track causing massive tyre wear.
Is it just me, or does the tyre wear mechanic need looking at to make other strategies available? Why can’t I run a pair of soft tyres for 5 laps of Lime Rock? It’s ridiculous, even tyres made out of jelly in your mothers kitchen would last longer than the soft tyres in this title and it’s frustrating to know that whatever race I go into, I’m running medium or hard tyres because soft tyres just don’t last.
Regarding tyre wear, on some circtuits, you only really get one lap of qualifying (Le Mans especially), while on a fair few others, you only get 2 because the tyre wear means you have to pit, or run a lap with moderate and/or severe tyre wear. Don’t tell me this is just a choice people have to make, ANY set of tyres should be able to last one full qualifying session (I understand Softs on Le Mans would be a bit of a stretch, but still)
This mechanic is somewhat of a joke with how high the tyre wear multiplier is. While the devs’ intention was to open more choices for how people run their race, I would argue it’s actually limited the choices people have because there’s only really one or possibly two strategies that are actually competitive, limiting realistic options to only TWO.
I’d love to see these issues looked at, addressed and possibly even changed. It would do so much for so many players just having more QoL improvements and strategy options made available would change the racing dynamic completely.
How about something like an unskippable video when someone selects featured multiplayer, explaining things like this, why it’s bad and how to do things properly. Explaining that bad behaviour WILL have meaningful consequences, and then having them select to agree they understand and are at least more aware of racing etiquette and that they also agree that if they behave in a toxic or unacceptable manner that, again, there will be meaningful consequences.
I don’t want to appear like I’m whining or talking down to people that are much more qualified to implement these things than I am, but I love this franchise, and seeing it be the laughing stock of every other title is upsetting. Knowing that if I want to have a good race, I have to play a different title, rather than one I have loved for so many years since playing the first title on the original Xbox. Having the reputation that Forzas playerbase is mostly kids and teens that don’t know how to play a racing game is something the team at T10 should genuinely be as ashamed of as myself, and im sure many other players that love this franchise, and were genuinely hoping for better things with this titles release.
It actually hurts to see things in such a bad way.
