I figured I would share my knowledge from FH4/5 so here goes. You’re welcome…
Difficulty - Use the following setup. Once you get use to it you will have the upper hand:
Breaking: Anti-lock on
Steering: Simulation
Traction Control: Off
Stability Control: Off
Shifting: [driver preference]
Driving Line: Full
Damage & Tire Wear: None
Rewind: Off
Other settings:
Use performance mode. Avoid quality mode
How to win online races?
In order of priority, most important to least:
Choose meta car for class/type - Meta cars will always win when the player skill level is the same
Car tuning - Equally important as [1]. A bad tune vs a good tune makes a world of difference. Popular tunes aren’t necessarily the best tunes. Best advice I can give is message people who dominate and ask them what tune they are using.
Difficulty settings - Outlined above. If you don’t turn off things traction/stability control then you will not be able to speed through corners in comparison to others with it off.
Turn off rewind - 99.99% of the time I have rewind turned off. If you rely on rewind every time you do a corner bad or crash then you’re not learning. Make it hard on yourself and your skill level will increase drastically.
Take the lead as soon as possible. This is conditional on your car/tune but it’s in your best interest to take the lead at the start of the race in order to avoid rammers/noobs etc.
Perfect your lines. This comes with practice. If you want to be the best then you need to know each course like the back of your hand so that you already know how to handle the next corner or corners. Also clip flags where sensible to get the optimal path.
How to win eliminator?
I have over 500 wins in eliminator from FH5 with a win ratio of over 75%. Here are my secrets, again order in priority from most important to least:
Find a good starting area and always use that same spot each time. Never mix it up. When you start in the exact same spot then you know where cards are likely to have spawn. You will know the roads, short cuts etc. The most important thing to winning eliminator is getting a good start and the best way to achieve this is by being consistent.
Try search for a level 5 car or higher at the very start. As soon as you get one stop looking and instead hunt down players to challenge. Even if you see cars spawn don’t waste time unless it’s on the path your driving.
Map awareness - You must always be conscious of who is around you. More importantly, you must be concious of where your car is positioned in the inner circle and the direction it’s facing. To put simply, if a higher level car wants to challenge me and if we were near the edge of the circle then desirably I would want to be facing inwards and headed to the opposite side of the circle and to have speed. If the opponent is facing the opposite way towards the outside of the circle then perfect. This means the opponent needs to slow down, turn around, build back speed and catch up to me to win. By this point I would be gone.
Get level 10 car as soon as possible - This is actually easier then you may think if you follow the steps so far. Get a level 5 car at start, race 5 opponents and boom you’re ready for the final race. Well almost…
Prepare for the final race - It’s easy to predict where you need to go for the final race. Put simply if the final circle is in the bottom left hand corner then it’s highly likely you will need to drive to the opposite side which is in the top right hand corner. If this isn’t the case then you can easily adjust accordingly. The key thing is to be at full speed towards this direction and nearing the outer circle just as the final race starts. This will give you a big head start.
Understand the pros/cons of each car - Higher level cars will typically win against lower level cars… but not always. There are some cars such as the lvl 10 Funco which I absolutely avoid like the plague. If I get a Funco and have time then Ill race someone to change it to a different lvl 10 car. Or if I have an offroad lvl 5 car then I know how it handles and know what to be careful of in order to avoid spinning out etc.
Practice makes perfect.
What tunes to use?
The best tunes will still be unfolding over the next month or so. If this topic becomes popular then I may consider sharing my top tunes.
The things that changed my experience the most was MANUAL shifting, and a very close second would be learning how to tune, at least understand what the numbers represent.
But specifically regarding FH5 I’d say don’t worry about getting super expensive, super fast cars, take your time and the cars will come. Play the parts of the game that appeal to you, there’s a lot to do.
Disagree with traction control, some of the more powerful RWD cars are a real handful without it and as a beginner you’ll struggle to keep them in a straight line. I’d recommend mainly playing with A class, they’re fast enough to have fun but also not so powerful that a small mistake spells disaster.
All the more reason to keep traction control off. If I were to list the two biggest faults I see in the majority of drivers online, #1 would be realizing that brakes exist, and #2 would be throttle control.
Powerful RWD cars are perfectly manageable in this game with proper throttle control. Having gear control can help as well. Learning these things can help immensely with improving drivers abilities. The throttle control learned trying to manage the power of a powerful RWD car can then be applied to corner exits and sweeping turns, improving times.
Maybe you have a controller with low throttle control, mine instantly jumps to a lot of revs if you touch it with a hair off your head. If I lower the revs on it, I lose acceleration in races, and it would be like driving a lorry. RWD is still broken, the people that can drive RWD sacrifice parts of the game to do it.
What controller are you using? Also have you got rid of the deadzones in advanced controls? Your gearing is also a potential source of issues. I assure you it can be done, and I’ve been beating AWD with RWD in open. AWD may still have a slight advantage (it’s still relatively untested) but they are at the very least competitive on tarmac.
1/ Always use AWD cars, else use traction control
2/ Find a car you can drift in the drift zones such as the #88 Mustang
3/ Try to clip the left hand checkpoints with the rear right wing of your car if there is enough room
4/ Learn how to use the handbrake, learn how to tap it.
Looks like he got the achievement for the first win on the 12th, so more like a week. That’s a lot of wins. I have just over a 1 in 10 win ratio from nearly 1,000 rounds of Eliminator in FH4 but that took months.
Some people say they have 999999999 credits in 2 weeks, some people win 500 Eliminators, some people played the game for 50000 hours, some people find Highly Skilled easy, but can’t go round a bend faster than 40mph…
I think assists depends on what you drive with and your configuration…for example, a wheel user would benefit from sim steering more than a controller player. Personally, I more often than not would use TCS for RWD cars but that is because I use automatic gears plus buttons (rather than triggers) for accelerate and brake which makes RWD rather tricky; ABS I can’t feather the brake so struggle without it on (though I can manage every now and again)
As someone who used to drive this way for longer than I care to admit, I totally get it.
I’m a product of the old buttons for gas and brake era of racing games, and I have a very hard time changing my ways. However, eventually a game came along that I really liked that demanded good throttle, gear, and brake control, and through that experience I was transformed from a buttons and automatic driver to a triggers and manual driver, and I am so very thankful. Driving is a much more immersive experience, and I’m that much better at it.
That game was Art of Rally. Joyful little indie game, I think it’s on games pass now if you’re interested. One of the issues with Forza Horizon is that it will never attempt to push you out of your comfort zone, and without that push, I never would have left.