Reading these forums, every third post is about the bad racing online.
I understand the frustration, the desire to allocate blame, and the rule of nature that dictates one expend as little energy as possible to get from point A to point B.
This is not an anti-T10 post. What I talk about here applies to just about every game I’ve played for a while. But it does help explain the “idiots”.
Does anybody remember the days when games came with manuals? Like, there was this booklet kind of thing that had information about the game in it. It taught you how to play the game… how to configure the game… little niceties that made it easy to get started.
Forza 5 has something similar to those booklets, but it consists of that not-entirely-helpful help you can access from a buried menu (the location of which I’ve forgotten because it’s, you know, buried). It’s thin on info. The absolute bare amount of information required. That’s it. Nothing notable about driving style. Nothing about how one should remain on the track during a race. It’s nothing. And it’s a nothing that people won’t even find.
This isn’t just a T10 thing, but an industry thing. Manuals don’t exist anymore. Instead, we get contextual help (which might not help), we get half-written FAQs, and, ultimately, the closest thing to a manual anyone can find is what’s created by the community, such as this forum and the information provided by very generous people. But a forum still isn’t a manual, and there are many people who have no idea the forum even exists. Furthermore, that doesn’t take into account the difficulty of navigating a forum if you aren’t used the medium.
So, how are people supposed to learn racing etiquette? Most of them don’t even know they can turn assists on and off. I’m talking about important - critical - options that completely change the game. When I played F5 for the first time, I don’t remember a tutorial telling me in any detail how to do these things. I remember being put in a P1 and told not to worry about winning. Then I cruised around Prague in a car with so many assists on that I’m not even sure I had anything to do with driving it.
And what about career mode? Anybody remember their first couple races after being given a free car? The first race is a nice trip through the Alps. But the second race…
I apologize for the caps, but I don’t think I can emphasize this point enough. In the second race, your job is to drive around the Top Gear track while SLAMMING INTO TRASH BINS, ROAD BLOCKS, LUGGAGE, ROAD SIGNS, and CARDBOARD BUSES.
That’s the second race! Your introduction to Forza 5 includes a destruction derby. Not just with the aforementioned objects (I even left out a few), but with cars on the road. Sure, you’re not told to run into the cars, but what do you think is going to happen when you can’t see what’s ahead of you because a cardboard double-decker is in the way?
Before or after the race, is there anything saying, “Please don’t do this online, as it might bother other players.” No. Nothing. You get a medal, and if you did well, the medal triggers your brain to release a shot of dopamine into a pleasure center, and now you’ve learned that slamming into things makes you feel goooooood (I’m going overboard with the dopamine - kind of). After that, you get curious about playing online, so you head to a lobby. What do you find? The slogan “Rubbing is racing” (if you’ve played in the beginner C lobby, you know what I’m talking about). I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been flipped by someone who apologizes by saying, “Get over it, dude… rubbing is racing.”
Um. Argh? ARGH!
Where’s the tutorial that explains racing lines? Or assists? Or how to pass properly? Or what an apex is? These are simple things. They may not be exciting, but there isn’t even the tiniest effort made to teach the uninitiated what racing is, as opposed to just driving.
Where’s the tutorial that explains the advanced settings? How many people accidentally slam into things because they don’t know they can adjust controller deadzones, thereby customizing the sensitivity to best suit their style? I did much better when I switched to 0-100 for steering.
I realize it’s a lot of information to cover, but it’s important.
There should at least be a section of the game, accessible from the main menu (the screen where you select career mode, multiplayer, etc.), that takes you to detailed tutorial videos. Done correctly, you could explain in a couple minutes how to properly take a corner. You won’t turn the player into the greatest racer in the universe, but you might improve things just enough. Little tutorials like that.
And yes, yes, yes: I know people have made similar tutorials and posted them online. That’s great. But it should all be included with the game, done professionally, and be easy to find. You must give people the path of least resistance to information.
It’s hard for me to believe that the geniuses (I use that word in all seriousness) at T10 can make something as epic as F5, but can’t get it together enough to create some real help. Real tutorials.
So, are the people online “idiots”? Or are they uninformed? Obviously they can be either of these things, both of these things, and any combination of other qualities (uninformed Nobel Prize winners, for example).
It’s not right to call them idiots or to attribute maliciousness to their bad racing when nothing has been done by T10 to start them off on the right foot.