I think this is worth its own topic as posts are appearing across the boards on the line of ‘why don’t we have division leaderboards in rivals.’
The root cause of this problem is that the design of the user interface to the different game modes (Free Play, Rivals, etc) differs in that some modes focus on classes and others focus on divisions which, when you take a step back and look at it, is confusing. Note how Rivals and Multiplayer have the same look and feel, but Free Play is very different. when you consider that in all modes the user must pick a mode, track, and car, it seems illogical that the user interface / selection screens for doing that differ among the modes.
So now we have cool new functionality (training ghosts, selection of rivals from leaderboards) for one mode - but not the others - which is a design problem that results from the fence sitting on classes vs divisions.
Turn 10 needs to make a decision - does this game categorize cars by divisions or classes - then design the user interface same way for all modes. If they decided the answer was ‘divisions’ then Rivals and Multiplayer would work just like Free Play. If the opposite, Free Play would look like the others. Having a bit of each isn’t ideal.
Classes vs Divisions aren’t mutually exclusive, and the lack of Homologated leaderboards in Rivals isn’t UI so much as it is just a missing feature. The confusion in UI is between Division and Homolgation. Division is missing as a filter in race setups, and the Homologation preset is mislabeled as Division.
I’m not going to disagree but its also fair to say that classes simply dont work for all cars, because some (like the C7R) cant be built down or built up to maximum PI for those classes. Therefore not all cars are competitive in all classes.
As a new player to Forza perhaps I need a history lesson here; I suspect that Turn 10 introduced divisions to solve some of the problems with classes. Is that correct?
Outside of the PI limit, Classes are unregulated in terms of how you build your car. Naturally, some combinations will be stronger than others, and when a large number of players compete on the Leaderboards a metagame evolves before eventually converging towards a few “optimal” cars for each Class/Track.
With only 9 Classes available the number of “optimal” cars will be low, potentially under 50. In a game with 800+ cars that means the vast majority may not see play as the notion of a “best car” existing influences what cars players use. Homologation and Divisions help alleviate this by bringing in events with additional limits while also segmenting cars into different groups, so that more of the roster sees play.
I’ll bet the largest group that is constantly bashing the homologation system that was put in place are probably the same people that were doing their best to exploit every car they could to drive the “LB cars” and try to be the fastest…they certainly never seem to try to be tops on the leaderboards by actually being the absolute best drivers…
I think a lot of them don’t care much about the leaderboards, but rather just preferred the ease of upgrading their favourite cars to the top of a class they’re comfortable with. For my part, I think homologation is a great option, but they forefronted it too much and other options kinda got the redheaded stepchild treatment. Class and Class+Division should’ve had equal billing. And the Free Play mode is just kludgy.
It has to be that way for Time Attack. The conditions have to be the same from start to finish for the times to mean anything otherwise you have will the situation in Freeplay where the setting is Rain but the top times were set while it was still dry.
But the tracks should have been more organized the way they are in Freeplay. It’s entirely possible thats the best the could do when adding in such a large feature they had no intention of when they first made the game.