Ok, so I officially rage quit in career mode today, a sure sign that the system is broken…
So, is it just me, or does everybody else work off the assumption that difficulty should be somewhat consistent? I understand the driveatars aren’t perfect (read: broken) but even something as simple as setting a difficulty in career mode is nearly impossible. Some races you can do on Unbeatable and finish seconds clear of the pack even on short race length, other races you set to Expert and have zero chance of even fighting for the lead.
This issue isn’t limited to any particular car class and the variance even within a division is massive. How did Turn 10 mess it up so bad??
It’s bad enough that multiplayer is a ram-fest full of children, I can’t even get some consistent racing against AS (Artificial Stupidity, because let’s not pretend they are intelligent) when I want to race.
Fed up at this point, the difficulty slider needs to be more consistent before I keep playing, easily the most disappointing Forza game I’ve played
I don’t expect fairness, and minor inconsistency is reasonable too. The problem I have is when the difficulty is so inconsistent that I can play with the same skill level yet I need to adjust the difficulty slider between 3-4 different difficulties to get a consistent racing experience. I could forgive needing to move it a notch for a track I’m a little slower on but at the moment it’s way too hard to judge, takes the fun out of it.
I remember GT3 and GT4 on PS2. A.I. always drove the racing line even if I was in the way. They wouldn’t hold their line. I probably put in over 10,000 hoours on those 2 games as 90% of my gaming is racing.
I got a few detentions for playing GT3 all night instead of doing my homework! I remember the old GT games were always criticised for having boring AI - they just follow the line, don’t overtake etc. Now we have much more, uh, ‘dynamic’ AI and the criticism still rolls in. What would, realistically, be good? Thinking of all the racing games I’ve loved, the AI has never been a strong point. Boring in GT, rubber-banding in Burnout, inconsistent in Forza. In any single player race in any game, you’ve only got one reliable opponent - the clock.
Yeah, but the clock doesn’t defy the laws of physics, swipe 17 feet across the track in the blink of an eye and take you on an unplanned landscaping excursion at 140MPH!
I have played all forzas since the beginning. And in my opinion when they went to driver-tards, off line racing turned to crap. Seriously I feel the “driver-tards” are just an excuse for taking required processing power away from actual AI and placing it elsewhere.
That’s not to say the AI before driver-tards was fantastic, but it was consistent and manageable.
Someone needs to find the old cramonds gp team and ask them how to make good consistent AI.
Forza was always drivatars for the AI since day one, learning AI has always being a selling point for the franchise. In FM5 they rebranded it with an increased scope to include drivatar data from anyone who plays Forza. In Forza 1 on the original Xbox, it was possible to train and race your own drivatar, have them race for you in single player; and even load up your friends drivatar data if they brought it over on a memory stick. The AI has always been the same in Forza, its always been bad, and it has always been drivatars.
No they had the drivertar in forza 1, where yes you could do as you said and train it etc. But you never raced against drivertards until forza 5 and that was supposedly your driving uploaded to the cloud etc… Odly forza 5 was the point where the ai/tards went wrong.
And a reason I don’t believe in the system is I see many driver-tards who have never played a forza game. And many who are excellent forza players names driving like numptys.
Once again this is really t10s excuse for skipping on making decent Ai and using development resources elsewhere.
Yep, it’s totally inconsistent. It doesn’t even get progressively harder like most videogames, or even like the announcer says (“You won the championship! Better up your game now, because the drivers in the next one are tough!” Sorry, no, they’re just as unbeatable or useless as they always were.)
The issue is sometimes the track. Sebring and Suzuka I just can’t win. Even on extra long race lengths, when I can usually slowly gain ground on a tough opponent, I just watch the leader get further and further away. I finished an XL Sebring race the other day in Exotic GT cars or something similar. Came 5th, 40 seconds behind the leader. Next race was at Virginia. Took the lead on lap 2 and even lapped a few cars.
Other times it’s not just the track, but the car/track combination. A slow car division on a simple track makes it very difficult to gain any ground. Everyone is just tootling along, barely braking on the sweeping bends. There’s no opportunity to out-brake opponents, or take a different line to out-accelerate them. I usually finish races like these the same distance from the leader as I started. The fact that there’s more of these slow/simple races early on in the career makes the beginning of the game much harder, in my opinion.
Drivatar strength is somewhat based on track because they have a power boost cheat that often goes beyond the homologation you are in, it is a cheap way of trying to make them competitive. But that make them very dependent on the track layout. So on twisty track, like Prague, you should smoke them if you are racing your strength level while on Sebring and Road America you may suffer even 2 level below especially if you do not run a tune.
They behave differently when in front or behind you. In front they will usually race faster while behind they are not a problem until about 10% of the end of a race but if you placed some distance between them they won’t be a challenge. Hence why a lot of people try to get ahead of as many AI as possible in the first few turns.
The AI is also on a schedule, first ~30% of the race they are extra fast and aggressive especially the one in front. After from ~30-80% of the race length they become somewhat normal and rhythmic you can on most track catch them up if you stayed close. Then in last 20% the one in front slow way down and behind try to catch up a bit. Now this last part is designed to make you feel like you are catching up while being challenge from the back to get you excited. In fact, on longer race if you could stay with AI in the mid part you are just going to blow by any remaining, you will notice cars you could not keep up in straight line even with draft that you now can catch up too.
Of course, on the last point, because of their speed boost in straight and the track layout you may find on short race that leave you only about 1/2 lap for the final push and if this happen to be straight with one last fast curve, like Sebring, then you still won’t be able to catch up. While on longer race, the final ~20% would be several laps and help you. Of course that depends on how close you could stay to them and on some track, again, that is hard due to their ‘cheating’.
People are confusing Artificial Intelligence with Automatic Idiots so once you figure that out it is not so bad. I have just completed a couple of races both identical 20 laps Watkins Glen Full, Unbeatable, Hot Hatch with the cap 300HP and my car 300HP just using the standard settings. My most practiced and used track I managed a 1st and then a 2nd(Via dubious but effective means sending 2nd off the road for a little safari) but it is pretty obvious that your cars 300HP is not as powerful as the AI cars 300HP and very noticeable on a short straight rise as the car in front is pulling away at a rate you could only dream of as you are making 50-150 ft gain on them a lap. 60-110ft gain on 600 to 800ft is a little sus. Same goes for the car behind can make ground, in the same manner, I was going to try the next two races the same and cap the HP at 301HP in advanced setting to see if that changes anything since it made a huge difference for me. Another thing I noticed is using the default setting as in the example above it will cap it automatically at 300HP and my car passes however if I start a free race with ANY division checked(usually upgraded cars) and put >= 300HP with my car 300HP I get asked to choose another car and have to set it on >=301HP to be able to use my car. I smell a rat!! They do cheat
Although out of all this I wouldn’t want to win every race or more important get in the lead too soon as the most enjoyment in each race is stalking the car in front of me, hunting it down trying to set off the Perfect/Good Turn/Drafting/Passing etc. Long races hitting 1st in my Ford GT within 1/2 lap leaves the rest of the race like watching paint dry/ I use Random Grid so can start at 1 or 24 it is a lottery but a lot less trouble with the AI over that crazy middle grid default.
I agree, the consistency is puzzling depending on track. But nowhere near as bad as Project Cars 2, where the AI itself is inconsistent on pretty much every car / track / weather combination. At least here it’s mostly depending on the track, and only because there are far too many cars for the tracks which makes overtaking more difficult. To be fair it really depends on the number of laps. I know I could beat the AI given more laps but the difference between standard length and long is too much.
It is horribly inconsistent. I find myself having to adjust it way more than I should based on track, division, car choice, all sorts of different factors. I can generally go up to Expert, but I had to go down to Above Average on the Early Prototype series last night with the GT40 and Lola on most of the tracks. It seems the McLaren M2B ran away with the lead on any other difficulty. That series in particular for me was incredibly frustrating.
Zak nailed it. That was the most comprehensive description of the Artificial Ignorance™ (AI) of this game. But once you learn the pattern and don’t crash the 1st corner party (pun intended) you don’t have to mind that some of the AI cars shoot past you from the grid and vanish in the distance. You can usually pass all, or almost all the cars once they go to their middle of the race mode. If you don’t catch the leader before the last lap, the leader will always - except maybe at Sebring - slow down and wait for you to pass at the end. This is just a game, and after all, all games have rules of their own. You’ll just have to figure out how to exploit the rules to your benefit.
Funny thing, though, I have noticed some very strange AI behavior in a couple of races lately. Almost as if Free Play was multiplayer with real online jokers. For instance, one race at Daytona Tri-Oval AI was brake testing me in the middle of the straight at full speed and clear track ahead. Some of them went sideways for no obvious reasons and one of them deliberately slowed down and waited for getting lapped. Then this AI swerved from left to right trying to crash as many lapping cars as possible. It kinda feels also that AI is nowadays even more aggressive and it feels like every time they try to a pass they deliberately collide. I have “Limit AI Aggression” set to “Off”. Maybe it’s been reversed in a recent update, maybe not. Impossible to make a difference.
Yeah, if Daytona wasn’t a Forzathon “Speed is Key” challenge race for the Mercedes, I’d think I’ve had an online race or a bad dream and got mixed up. But because I /really/ wanted the Mercedes, I paid close attention.
Somebody else mentioned this in the last 24 hours regarding has there been a sneaky update to the AI and it has been a little weird but wondered if it was because I read it that maybe it was playing tricks on my mind. A lot of ppl have been complaining about the AI since release so it wouldn’t surprise me if they were to do a tweak or two to try to improve it.
Ever since FM5, these kinds of threads have been popping up. I know there is some funny business going on behind the scenes when it comes to the Drivatars, namely on - as mentioned already - Sebring and Suzuka. But in other races, they’re absolutely terrible. I have my Drivatars set to either Expert or Pro (don’t remember), and there are some races where I absolutely struggle to gain the lead, and there are those I have it by turn 3 on the first lap. Not to mention the brake checks, lack of courtesy, and rather poor lines at times.
Sometimes I wonder - is the Drivatar system fatally flawed, or is it actually incredibly good, and most people we race against are truly terrible?
