Why do stock tuning setups handle so poorly?

Forza Motorsport Forza Motorsport 2023 FM 2023 Discussion
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…I can’t help but feel like you’re being disingenuous with your last couple of posts.

You, of all people, should know that the reason people were in such an uproar about the upgrade system last year was because the system was (and still is, in my opinion, even with the “fix”) far too slowly paced and far too grindy. Because nearly all of the stock cars in this game handle terribly, players wanted to rectify that situation as fast as possible…and 300 Car Points at the beginning doesn’t do much of anything to help that. You can get sway bars, a brake kit, or a roll cage - all of which have minimal impact on a car in desperate need of tires or a racing suspension. And in the beginning of this game’s lifecycle, it was even worse, because you couldn’t afford to do even those minimal things…but you could add more power, like the mindless James Pumphrey consumers Turn 10 seems to think their fans are lately.

It occurs to me that the Car Point system would be, at the very least, slightly more tolerated if Turn 10 had shown some care and consideration into how all of the cars in their game handled off the rip…as they largely have in the past. It would still be a poor system and the person responsible for it should still never again be allowed to make an important decision for the rest of their days, but the uproar would have been slightly better. “It’s a video game” is a poor excuse for the irresponsible decisions made in creating video games, and with Turn 10, it’s no excuse at all because they not only knew better, but they have done better.

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Just a general comparative comment between my experience in FM and ACC/GT7/FM7:

I typically only dig into tuning when I’m having a problem. I tune to “fix” that problem (or try).

In ACC/GT7/FM7 only rarely do I feel a car needs a problem fixed.
In FM… it feels like almost always, a car is understeering and I have to tune.

This difference makes FM feel (for me) like many cars require near constant down time. Time off the track. Time in the menus.

Given the choice, I actually prefer a game having good setups, to not. From a driver’s perspective, I’m hiring mechanics to install parts, parts potentially costing more than the car. It’s not unreasonable I’d also hire those mechanics to dial the car to a reasonable level. I’m not talking like auto-min/max or auto-meta tune.

But they just get the car handling in-line with the parts I’m installing. I’m not likely installing a full race suspension system on my Nissan, and wanting that new suspension tuned to factory parts specs.

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Cars and tracks. Thats their corebusiness, where they need to excel by competence.

Now you say, they lack the competence to ensure their cars somewhat resemble the original and to avoid them driving like epic failures by the manufacturer? After 10+ years of cars- and tracks focused gamedevelopment?

If thats true, you delivered the most convincing reason to shut down the company because of unsolvable incompetence.
Was that your intention?

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So his claim it would be the same in GT7 is incorrect?
Have no own experience with it but suspected so anyway. The number of cars is no reasonable excuse then. Would have been a lame one anyway.

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Well, GT7 may not tend to understeer as much (of course IMO)… but I cannot say whether that is accurate to the real cars.

It may well be that GT7 offers more performance oriented handling feel by design, but is not really “accurate” at the same time.

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I can only speak to a few cases, but I’ve found that in both authenticity and realism, GT7 currently has the clear edge over Motorsport 2023. About the only thing Gran Turismo clearly lacks is a proper damage model…but then again, so does Motorsport 2023.

I’ve given Motorsport 2023 two fairly extensive chances now, and I’m confident enough to say now that I think something is quite wrong with the physics of this game. Whether it’s in implementation or interpretation, there are things that just do not seem to gel with reality, authenticity, or even expectation. Maybe this is being a little facetious, but those “eight points of contact” some of the trailers talked about in regards to tires? I don’t think the game engine even knows what to do with the data coming from all of that, assuming the data is actually correct.

There’s another poster here who’s been doing a stellar job of documenting all of this (@CRSSQU4R3D, I think). Seek some of their posts out, because they’ve been getting very deep into the weeds of it.

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The convo had to do with stock set ups. What i am saying is no game that i know of uses a 100% match to real life for stock tuning settings. For instance most road cars use a positive caster angle of 3-5 degrees, forza is set to 5 across the board, but you can go up to 7, acc and iracing allows past 7. Gt7 doesnt give an option for caster nor does assetto corsa.

The more sim like the game the more options it has, but that doesnt mean that the car itself is set up to real life numbers. Then theres also the bounds in the physics engine, gt7 has a much smaller range when tuning certain things than forza does and conversely iracing has wider boundries. The wider the boundries the higher the chance cars could be set up like their real world counterpart, but it doesnt necessarily mean it will perform the same as these boundries might not correlate 100% to real life.

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All i was saying with car points is that this game is designed around upgrading cars and racing them. Their focus is not on recreating the exact tuning setups for stock cars, i personally dont think the numbers in the tuning menu correlate to real life, so even if it did match a stock tune, it most likely wouldnt behave like its real world counterpart anyway.

I have many issues with this game, this franchise, but i dont think the physics are an issue. You prefer gt7s and thats fine, but i think forza has it beat for the most part. They both have their tendencies, i feel as though gt7 has too much grip, forza usually didnt have enough. They definitely went heavy with the understeer with stock cars, but as far as im concerned, stock road cars do lean that way most times due to safety.

Theres a magazine called car and driver and they have something called the lightning lap. Theyve done hot laps in over 300 cars on Vir west grand course. Theyre all stock cars with whatever performance options they may have had from the factory.

After this discussion i decided to see how forza matches up as that track is in the game as well as numerous cars. In my experience the game times match up very well with the real life times. Im always faster, but thats expected since im not going to die if i crash sitting on my couch. I didnt use any gaming techniques like manual w/clutch, or abusing curbs that in real life would never be attempted.

Heres the list of cars and times if youre interested to see how close things actually are using stock set ups. All the laps were flying laps so the tires are up to temp. I think regardless of what the tuning numbers say, the cars performance do represent themselves pretty well to real life. Ill try and do a deeper dive into this by finding a full lap video with data and compare to myself in game and see where there are differences. Forza often used to give an acceleration/speed advantage to make up for the lack of grip it had in corners compared to other sims/simcades when compared to real life times on track.

Sorry for the picture but thats what i could copy. Heres the website
![https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a23319884/lightning-lap-times-historical-data/

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As far as the car points system as a whole, it was a horrible idea. It truly showed a lack of creativity as instead of actually coming up with some sort of real progression, they simply took something thats been in every forza and added a game mechanic to it.

There is no excuse for it, im not denying that. But when it comes to racing games, i look at them as just that games. When i was younger i always loved cars, i always played racing games and you better believe when i played gran turismo the real driving simulator for the first time i thought it was the most realistic thing ever, it had the best graphics, i felt like i was a race car driver and how could it get better.

But it did get better, much better in every aspect. But i also got older and started driving real cars and having some track days, and this is where the immersion waned. These are video games, theyre not accurate and thats alright. I play any and all of them, i play them how theyre seemingly supposed to be played.

So if i play need for speed i dont care about hitting the perfect braking points, but if im playing Acc i certainly do. Forza and Gran turismo are in between as they can be played either way. You can play them like a simulator as much as theyre capable of, or you can just go nuts and make an 800hp station wagon and drift around.

But i dont look at gran turismo and forzas as an authentic driving or racing experience. I do believe having as many cars as they do prevents that from happening, so i dont knock them for it. I dont expect every car to look, sound and perform exactly like real life, because its not real life, half the time im using a controller and i also havent driven 99% of the cars in the game to even know what they are like in real life.

I just want to a fun experience, so if a car doesnt perform well stock, ill either make it better or choose something else. Each game has its own quirks and i try to play within their bounds. If i cant get on with what a developer made than i dont play it. Like i just cant play the new wrc game, but i loved dirt and dirt 2.0. Sometimes things dont click and it sounds like thats where your at with forza.

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The complain is not about missing 100% accuracy. No one aks for that in FM.
Its about horrible driving performance with 0% correlation to real performance of the respective car.
For your recall: Why do stock tuning setups handle so poorly?

Not to have the latter is reasonably a basic expectation to a game like FM.

Edit: That remark intended to redirect the topic to the coreissue and stop further derailing by pagelong elaborating levels of pedantric accuracy.
Your contribution was useful for me , me replying to your cite maybe misleading. It was someone else I wanted to stop the derail, but I was probably2fast4it. :rofl:

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https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a23319884/lightning-lap-times-historical-data/

Pick a car and do some laps, theyre pretty much all within reason. Which means the performance of the stock setups align with real life. Having a time sheet like this that can be compared to in game times is much more reliable than anecdotal evidence and umbrella statements.

It is your opinion that “every” cars stock setup handles poorly, that forza shows 0% correlation to real life, you’re entitled to your opinion, but that doesnt make it true. My opinion is i dont believe they all handle poorly. I think its a pretty similiar ratio to past entries. Some of you are speaking as though this game handles like the first tdu or tokyo extreme racer, this is plain untrue.

Sorry i derailed your one opinion matters thread. Where you say accuracy isnt expected in a game like forza while being critical of the accuracy in forza. Yet no one provides any tangible evidence for inaccuracy besides bringing up tuning numbers in a video game that have never correlated to real life in pretty much any and every game.

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If my problems with Forza Motorsport 2023 all stemmed from my inability to click with it…I would actually prefer that. I was prepared for just that when pre-release buzz indicated that things were taking more of a track towards sim racing. I was ready to take the same track with this that I had with Gran Turismo 4, because I didn’t click with that either despite multiple attempts. It wasn’t a bad video game. It just wasn’t my cup of tea to such a degree that I ended up moving to the Forza franchise.

Forza Motorsport 2023 is a bad video game. It’s bad in ways that can’t be ignored and shouldn’t be diminished by statements like “you’re just not clicking with it”. The fact that the cars all handle like the NTSB is about to order the mother of all mandatory recalls is just one thing in what feels like an infinity pool of frustration and regret.

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It is a bad game, but i dont believe its bad in the ways you seem to think it is. This past year i havent heard many people say it felt bad, in fact many find it to feel better than past entries. The complaints were the bugs, missing content and features, the upgrade mechanic, graphics, sounds etc.

My comments are not about diminishing your opinions, but the simple fact is those are your opinions not everyones. I dont think many feel this is the worst racing game ever made and everything about it is terrible, because that simply would be untrue.

I used the word click instead of hate, because while i think you hate the game youve never said that before. Ive been very critical of this game, before, during and post launch. Its not a good game nevermind a good forza motorsport, but its not an unplayable mess.

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Recent case in point: the stock HSV Maloo for the current spotlight rivals at Road Atlanta Short is another flaming hot potato that scorches you for touching any inputs:
• Exhale too forcefully in the direction of the throttle & it gets squirrely.
• The brakes are full of broken dreams about stopping.
• Steering is just wishing upon a star to maybe go in the general direction you’re hoping for.

The default/stock setups on many cars in this game remind me of how other games intentionally mess up your controls during scenes when your character is poisoned/drugged/drunk/stunned.

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Okay. Topic is: [Why do stock tuning setups handle so poorly?]
So far we had this responses:

  • It has so many cars, its impossible to have 100% accuracy: Off topic
  • They are as horrible in GT7: Proved false
  • Clutch, you just fail in the game: Very kind
  • Clutch, you’re just a hater: Going even more ad hominem
  • Problem doesn’t exist, until you prove all stock cars handle poorly: Next contradiction of stuff no one claimed
    And filling up multiple pages continiously burying the discussion under textwalls distorting people from discussing what they perceive.

You’re obviously to much on mission to stop it: I’m out

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Your a funny guy. There hasnt been much of a discussion and it has nothing to do with my comments. Some of you feel a certain way about stock setups, no one has had any input as to why that is, just that all the stock set ups are bad.

I gave my opinion why they arent that good, you believe its off topic. I said gt7 doesnt have accurate stock tunes either, you said this was proved false which it wasnt.

I dont have a problem with Clutch, i never said he had a skill issue, i think hes someone who was looking foward to playing this game and like many people was disappointed when it released. Ive agreed with him over many things this past year, but i dont agree with him on this.

It sounds to me like you dont care to try to dicuss why theyre bad, whats bad about them, what could be changed to make them better. So whats the discussion about then besides a few people just saying things are bad.

If you were to bring up specific things like f1 cars being able to drift or top speeds being wildly inaccurate etc, then a discussion could actually be had. But making blanket statements and when someone doesnt agree with them, its a problem.

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Who among us can authoritatively say why anything/everything is of such low quality in this game?
It’s likely the usual suspect: cost-cutting.
That’s no justification for customers to accept or defend low quality.

I feel that most (not all) of the default setups are terrible in at least one major aspect (often in multiple aspects), like:
• major understeer
• brakes with very poor stopping power
• major instability on-throttle
• major instability under braking
• major instability in steering transitions
…etc.

Without tuning, I often feel like I’m balancing a bucket full of water on the top of my head while driving and it’s game-over if even a drop spills.

I haven’t personally driven every car in the game yet.
Only a precious few of the many I’ve driven so far pleasantly surprised me unmodified, like the MX-5 Cup car.

There are hobbyist tuners in this game/series who can crank out a dozen or more decent tunes in a day.
At a similar rate, it shouldn’t take much to substantially improve the default setups on every car in the game.

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What car were you driving? (I haven’t read the whole topic yet).

Usually stock cars have softer suspension and not so grippy tyres. In FM23 better tyres are much better than the one before, especially race tyres (and specifically soft race tyres).

Also, are you racing with normal or simulation steering?

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My opinion is that the default setups are no worse than past games, some are good some are bad. I dont believe this games focus is on default setups, its on upgrading and tuning the cars.

I believe they have shifted most cars towards understeer, as most road cars exhibit that tendency, thats not to say it feels perfect or realistic in every case. I think this was done to accentuate the effects of new parts as well as the effects of adjusting tunes.

I posted a link above that contains over 300 real world times, on a track thats in the game, with numerous cars that are in game. Ive compared around 20-25 cars and many fall into what i consider an acceptable range of performance based on lap time.

One car in particular stood out to me which was the new corvette zo6, it did not feel the way i expected it to, it was quite sketchy at high speeds. Its something that the car is not known to be like in real life, but none the less the lap time was very close.

So in my opinion, while the car is not exactly how it should be, in the long run the performance was comparable to real life in this test. What it might give up in high speed stability, it gained somewhere else. Since i dont expect every car to be perfect, these results are acceptable to me.

The results are realistic, not real. I think thats what most people that like these kind of games look for. If theyre looking for more theres a few that are more realistic, but make no mistake none are real. They all have positives and negatives, they all have tuning quirks and tricks. I think this game feels like a forza motorsport, whether stock or tuned, its in line with the others for me.

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Are you opposed to improvements for default setups?
You’ve repeatedly argued at length against people who are asking for improvements to default tuning setups here, so it seems like you don’t want default setups improved.

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