Drivatars don’t mimic performance, only behavior.
Performance is dictated by difficulty and AI-specific boosts.
The Horizon festival is exactly that–a festival. I don’t know how familiar you are with the previous games in the franchise, but the Horizon festival has always been about the party that’s happening around the racing. You complain that the music around the festival points breaks immersion, but I’d argue it’s the exact opposite. It would be super weird if all these festival-goers were hanging out without any music anywhere. When I want the music to stop in my car, I turn off the radio, but I don’t have any control over the music people choose to play at the festival. That is immersion.
I won’t argue about the AI–it’s terrible and seems to have actually gotten worse as time goes on, to the point that Unbeatable drivatars routinely attempt to sideswipe or straight-up slam into me even to the detriment of their own position in the race. If the AI is actually learning this nonsense from players, it’s time to overhaul the entire Drivatar system.
FH3’s festival music changed as you changed the radio station. Fairly certain that isn’t the case here, but I could be wrong. What I’m complaining most about is the menus 'n post-race music. No way to turn that off without enabling streamer mode. This isn’t really the audio problem I’m complaining about that much tho. The audio mix is severely off. I have to turn everything down to 1 and the car to 10 in order for it to be remotely accurate. That’s a serious immersion breaking issue imho. That & the obnoxious AI are literally my biggest beef with it.
There has been a few years and NfS games since 2015 I believe. I want to say the last three I’ve played, at the very least, have all had AI that was either terribly rubberband-y, terribly aggressive, or both.
NFS invented rubberbanding, if I’m not mistaken. (The first title I remember positively confirming rubberbanding was NFS 2 or High Stakes back in the 90’s) They had aggressive AI as well, and I was never a big fan of any of it.
But they didn’t just swerve deliberately into you just because you were beside them.
I don’t think I’ve ever played a racing game where that was a thing. Maybe occasionaly, more because of a hiccup or something, but in FH4 it’s common. It’s a tactic the AI employs on a regular basis from what I’ve experienced.
Maybe it’s just unbeatable drivatars that do this, I don’t know, but if I lower the difficulty it’s not even a race, so I don’t have other options besides deliberately nerfing my car or picking out cars that don’t perform well at a PI. Both of which feel more like intentionally going slow (that’s the opposite of racing) than a challenge.
Lol @ you calling Hospital Records’s music undesirable.
Who are you to say what kind of music people like? Horizon introduced me to D&B and it quickly became my favorite music genre, so you can speak for yourself when complaining about music selection.
Well, I was once a fairly active member of the DnB community ( 1/3 of A r s e n i c - we write the darker stuff ) and there’s a hell of a lot more to the genre than what is offered here by Hospital. While I do appreciate that the genre gets some limelight here, I do not agree with the style choice, and I definitely don’t agree with it all coming from one label. It doesn’t fit racing imho. Unfortunately the more accessible sub-genres of DnB are also the most cheese ball. I would have preferred they used more Pendulum, Qemists, or Noisia than this stuff. I have vinyl releases and have toured with the likes of Evol Intent, Ewun, Gein, Dylan, Tech Itch and SPL. That’s who I am.
I’ve never really had the AI in this game randomly swerve into me on a straight, even when I bother with Unbeatable. But I have the driving line on, so I know where the AI kinda wants to be.
MSR/PGR is the first series I recall Rubberband AI in, and it’s the series that made me despise it.
I don’t have a problem with the AI in this game, I’ve completed every seasonal event anyway. I much prefer the more “active” AI than a mindless peloton following the racing line.
The AI is flawed, but it doesn’t ruin the game. I mostly play expert/pro with stock cars as it’s immediate rather than having specific builds for race types. I did the FI hatch seasonal last night in the 03 Golf, didn’t even need winter tyres as no deep snow.
The AI does a bit of rubbing rather than ramming, if you block the line it wants to take then it doesn’t wave the white flag and get out of the way, it will rub a little bit like a human driver. They don’t ram hard enough to spin you out. I do think they are a bit too much on rails if you’re fighting for the corner in the tight city street races, they are unmoveable. It also annoying that the slightest touch causes them to brake and turn into you killing your speed. I don’t see any real racer braking in this situation so best to go around them.
The drivertar bit is just some randomised behaviours, the pace is fixed by the level and the car position. It changes things like when the drivertar brakes, do they cut the corner or run wide, do they follow the racing line closely, do the crash often etc. This makes it a bit more realistic than a simple on rails procession.
The AI doesn’t have super fast drivertars, the first two are usually faster than the rest of the pack but they are the pace you need to beat at that level. Most race series that don’t have handicapping have faster cars upfront and slower cars at the back. Take Formula 1 as an example, >4s in a 90s lap. The game seems to have a nice big gap at third so it’s easy to get on the podium and as soon as you win a few times it pushes you to up the difficulty.
The time it really cheats is when you get too far ahead, then it uses boosts to stay close. The rest of the time, it’s more that the pace can be a bit uneven in the lap vs what you can achieve in your build so some bits the AI is faster, some bits it’s slower but the overall pace is beatable. Just need to defend where the AI is fastest. The cars are all scaled to your PI so it’s not uncommon to see an AI car outperform its real world capability but that’s not cheating, just that the PI model you racing has a focus skin.
I don’t understand peoples frustration when hearing music near the festival. It is a racing AND music festival mixed together. It’s the core basis of the game. No wonder you hear music at the festival. The key is in the name “festival”.
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I imagine it could pose an issue for youtubers and streamers.
Perhaps but I haven’t heard of it doing so.
Again that’s not what I’m talking about really. My beef is with it being forced on us in the pre and post-race menus. If I’m streaming something else in the background via spotify or whatever it’ll collide with whatever’s in the menus. Kinda annoying. I know I can turn on streamer mode to stop that, but that causes every festival to play something I’d rather not hear whereas FH3’s music changed depending on what station you chose and you could still turn off the radio in the car. Also my biggest issue with the audio is how it’s mixed and how weak the engine sounds are.
First off : your post is an unreadable mess. Think I’m even dumber than I was before after reading it - do you even know what a paragraph is mate ? No ? Alright then.
The AI is bad, that is correct (as bad as FH3) - think they should drop the drivatar system altogether.
You don’t like Hospital Records ? Bore off then, no need to bash that music genre, if ye don’t like it just ignore it aye ?
A festival without background music would be a wee bit unrealistic don’t you think ?
And what about the tyres ? You want what, semi-slicks, slicks, every bloody tyres category that ever existed, or are you talking about rims ?
You can bite me with your oh so typical holier than thou euro attitude first off. I didn’t feel like formatting it. Sue me. I didn’t bash a genre, I bashed a label. Get your facts straight. I’m actually a big fan of the genre. So big a fan that I write the stuff. Far as tire options go I would like to put 30 series tires on 15 inch rims for example. Stretched tires for another example. Can only get low profile tires on larger rims? What’s that about?