I don't think it's unreasonable to want fulfilling offline races and longer stints in 2024, but Forza right now probably isn't the place to get them. Happy New Year, and please consider subscribing if you enjoy content like this 🧡
As a Forza Veteran who's been playing since the OG Motorsport, I recently bought a PS5. I immediately downloaded GT7 and haven't touched FM 2023 since. It's a shame, I prefer the overall feel of FM 2023, but that's it. In almost every other category, GT7 has been a vastly greatest experience. I'll hop on FM 2023 when they add Nordschleife, but even that won't be enough to keep me playing long in the games' current state. God, how I wish for the days of FM4 again.
@@dthendrick1 Its a sad story because like you say they've actually done a good job with how Forza feels to play, but almost everything around it is rushed and half-baked. Nordschleife would still be welcome though, hopefully see you on track when it happens!
My friend has been kinda upset with a few of us because he really wanted us to engage in this game. Coming from steady bouts of Assetto OG and Competizione on PC, this really ain't it. I can say I always preferred GT over Forza, but really wanted to see how a Motorsport felt on a wheel. Wasn't that satisfied, but offline racing in a game/sim is important to me. I did not enjoy the poor AI behavior. Also the system for upgrading cars changed and it makes for a bit of front end work to aquire decent things to challenge your friends...who may have more time or are Forza junkies and have so much already. Lastly, I still have gripes for simcades trying to identify as simulators or racing when basic things other racers have, they don't(ex. No spotter while racing). Gran Turismo been out for so long and Kaz is an actual racer...but somehow the game doesn't know what a proper rolling start is.
@@RukaGoldheartAlthough the physics might not be up to your standards, PC2 has reasonably good AI, nothing special, but definitely better then this, and AC.
my experience with racing AI peaked recently with Prostreet, a game from friggin 2007. especially on high difficulty, the AI tends to behave very believably like amateur track day racers. they can PASS on corners, actually fight you for your position, occasionally outright diving into corners, and, rarely, overcooking and wrecking out. In later, faster events, the drivers can maintain a properly competitive pace with the player, without just bulldozing everything that isn't on the racing line, although their cars start to get super stupid fast rather quickly. it is honestly to me the perfect mix of capability and seemingly intentional imperfection, and it saddens me to see modern racing games continue to fail so terribly at any of this.
@@hotcircuit Pro Street is extremely divisive, something that is either going to be your absolute favorite or your absolute least favorite NFS game. It appeals to a very particular gameplay style and car culture, and while it's definitely not for everyone, it nails a lot of things that very few other titles did. I would much rather racing games tried to fulfill more specific niches like this again, I'm tired of everything trying to appeal to the homogenous mass of "general audiences" to the point that it absolutely sucks all personality and fun out of the experience. Forza nowadays is so devoid of personality that it's kind of sad to look at.
@@hotcircuitProbably the best nfs game when it comes to the driving part. They nailed the track driving physics perfectly. My all time favorite videogame
#1 problem with prostreet are the bugs Without multiple patches it's still unplayable on PC to this day Still remember back in the day being stuck in the tutorial event because the continue button is broken lmao
@@SCHMOBEX Yea, the continue glitch is completely random, so not totally unplayable, but it gets really annoying. Luckily i managed to get the patch to work which adds dlc cars, and a no cd patch
The AI seem to brake at any sign of the slightest risk, so they brake on straights even if the risk is coming from behind them. On the other hand, once they're committed to making a mistake, they're going to run off the track no matter what. No amount of rewinds will stop them (even if they take a different line each time) and they don't care if they take you out with them. It's like they're hard coded to screw up or something, it's nuts.
@@ThatCyberpunkGuy that's not true either. They don't attempt to correct their error and will floor it until they hit a barrier... Or cross paths with the track again and Tbone another car. Footage of this kind of mistake was requested by a mod on a post about the issue on the forza forums. I figured I'd attempt capture footage for them myself and the very first lap of the very first race I tried had second place run straight into the side of 1st for this exact reason. It happens comically frequently
I got so frustrated with the AI that I had to stop playing... It shouldn't be like this. They constantly overslow, brake in weird places, take weird lines, and don't respect the player's space at all. It's almost impossible for me to get a clean race with AI.
It's tough, a couple of people have given me advice in the comments about some custom race settings that might improve things. They're workarounds and way more effort than you should have to make but I'll report back if I see success that'd help others.
This seems to be a pretty general issue among basically all the racing sims. AI don't know how to overtake, and if you do multi-class races it's even more prominent. Though most other sims don't necessarily have AI brake check you in the middle of a straight. But it's really cool that their new advanced Drivatards still do that.
Now there's a name I couldn't get away with 🫢 In my experience you're mostly right but AMS2 and iRacing (would you believe that?) have recently made some AI opponents capable of running side-by-side through multiple corners and reacting well to your attempts to attack or defend. On the other side Assetto Corsa, especially with third-party modded cars, can sometimes be hilariously bad.
@@hotcircuit And unfortunately I'm not paying $450 for iRacing and AMS2's content is too scattered and random for me to try. So that leaves Rfactor, AC, R3E, Project Cars, and I feel like I'm missing some others that all have equally bad AI.
GT7 base AI is fairly good, and the new Sophy system with the advanced learning really seems to know when to shoot the gap or pick an aggressive line. In fact, I've gone back and forth with an aggressive AI over a whole lap and it even managed to fake me out twice in the process (with the Sophy races). Assetto modded also features much better AI than the normal game and you can fine tune many of its parameters. Forza is easily one of the worst I've experienced in a long long time.
@@JZStudiosonlineAMS2's content is very similar to Project Cars. Built on the same engine, and there are even mods that port some tracks and cars from PC/PC2 to AMS2.
I've not really read many comments, but has anyone else noticed how, that when you catch and pass one of the quicker front runners, they just seem to give up and lose the pace they had before you over took them? The AI spoils the single player, but i do still enjoy multiplayer. Great video, subscribed 👍🏻
The AI is heavily rubberbanded in weird ways. Sometimes they're only faster than you because they're cheating and give up when you pass. Some players or some updates have also seen cars that are easily passed and magically pick up the pace. It's all garbage.
Thank-you for the sub and taking the time out to watch & comment! It's been hard to track a pattern but yeah I do notice cars will suddenly be fluctuate in pace. Multiplayer is carrying this at the moment, and I am enjoying it, but the game is too expensive to gloss over the basics that really should be better.
I’ve noticed that in Horizon 5. Even on the highest difficulty, as long as they are ahead they drive like gods and are really fast, as soon as you pass them they get incredibly slow and I regularly finish 10-20 seconds ahead of them. It’s especially noticeable in higher vehicle classes. I’ve turned off all assists to have at least some kind of challenge.
I ran out of fuel on the straight uphill on the last lap of a race on Road America and the AI pushed me over the finish line when I carefully steered in front of it... worth a shot and it worked! Finished P9 even! However, it sadly demonstrates the state of the AI too. I never finished a race against the AI without using the rewind function because I was bumped off the track... If I want to smash and crash, I'll play Wreckfest thank you very much! Automobilista 2 seems to have a good AI since the last update, so I bought it last week.
AMS2 has always had a charm about it, but the inconsistent handling stopped me short of going all-in. Well, now with the recent quality of life improvements for tyre model and AI it's extremely good for offline racing. I have a video featuring AMS2 dropping any day now, I appreciate you taking the time to watch & comment 👍
I wish Wreckfest had Forza's AI. Then maybe they'd be able to finish a 10 lap race. As-is now a 10 lap race you win by default, provided they don't murder you because they WILL murder themselves every time.
Most of these issues are ones present on Horizon 4 and 5 as well. I don't believe for a second that it was "built from the ground up" like the marketing department claimed. It's really annoying too, because it feels like the AI is doing all it can to prevent you from passing while putting no effort into passing you. Just a really boring way to race, it's like driving in traffic.
It's what makes the career unfulfilling sadly. They don't have to be perfect but some sort of consistent pace to beat with ability to attack/defend would be better.
It says a lot that I can start at the back of the grid in one of the faster divisions and be lapping the field by lap 3. I have my difficulty settings maxed. Forza AI was never good, but at least in earlier games the "Pro" or "Unbeatable" AI posed some sort of challenge. This is just next level.
It does say a lot. Part of the challenge is running at a good pace, but not having them trip over each other and lose over 30s in a handful of laps would be a great start 😅
AI is worse in Racing games then it was 15 -20 years ago. I remember playing a Predecessor of rFactor, i think it was called Race something. that was early 2000s. I never encountered Problems like this. The behavior of the AI drivers and their mistakes was quite realistic. Instead of breaking way to early or spin out to "Simulate" mistakes, they would brake a bit late, overshooting the Corner, but come back. Get a bit unstable at corner entry, have a wiggle, loose momentum. Such stuff.The AI was good racing against each other. If that was possible 15-20 years ago by a tiny studio which even with rfactor and rfactor 2 never made an economic breakthrough, its an absolute incompetence or statement ov "we dont care" that Big gae studios cant do it today.
I'm struggling to remember the title. I know iRacing kinda evolved from Papyrus' games and Kunos worked on something called netKar in the 2000s. Never the less, you're right that evolution of computer controlled opponents should've ended up somewhere better than this by default in 20+ years.
I was so hyped for the game and the singleplayer in particular. I was ready to grind trough the campaign with my T300rs GT, but the AI absolutely ruined this for me. Getting rammed, sometimes even pitmanouvered off of the track, breakchecks, everything you mentioned in your video. 1st place is just gone by the time you fought trough all the bullshit and there is no way of closing in on them, because the races are too short. Funny to see that the AI would have the exact opposite problem if the races were longer. I really hope Turn10 watche your video and takes notes, because I am pretty sure they have never testet this scenario (or their AI in general) like you do, if they even testet it in general. Great video, as always!
Great comment, thanks so much for taking the time. In a way I dread the thought of them watching, but you're right that they need to pay attention to their players. I highlight this stuff as I still believe there's a solid handling model and game underneath, so it's worth recovering. Xbox racers in particular need T10's commitment to making this better as they don't have a wide selection of alternatives like the PC players do. I don't see how it's possible for them to test single player for longer than 5 minutes without finding at least 1 of the things I have seen.
@@hotcircuit well, thank you for going trough 40-ish Laps of hell for us to show us why the AI behaves like it does! Why the dread? You are not insulting them, you are constructively criticising them. They should be thankful! Oh, absolutely! I love the Forza handling and the rest of the game concept! That's why it's such a shame they completely f-ed up the AI in the first place. I am a PC player too, but I don't think there are many games hitting the same spot as Forza Motorsport does. An easily accessable, more-sim-tham-arcade-racer to learn the maps with a good, easy multiplayer platform is not that easy to find IMO.
I can't tell for sure for Forza Motorsport but in Horizon you could sometimes spot "trains" of cars (as in all cars controlled by AI were merging into conga line of cars), it was more visible on sprint races while playing with friend. That gave me idea, that the further away the AI car is the less resources they leave on it to the point it starts to "drive on rails" (super visible in older GTA games if you are far from road) I get the idea that they want to save up on resources but in game where we look for semi realistic experience while racing other opponents ot doesn't look good. I think F1 by codemasters and GRID series was doing better job with AI If I'm not mistaken GRID had different types of drivers AI (more aggressive, more cautious etc.)
The finish line cam after a race in Horizon 5 always shows the AI cars just lined up like a funeral procession. It's like they put no effort into masking the fact they just follow the predetermined driving line.
The newest GRID is just as bad. AI drives godly until you pass them, then gives up and can’t keep pace. Also their physics are really terrible for some reason
Dirt 4's circuit racing AI had very similiar issues, but so much worse cause you only ever did like 6 laps in that game. EVery first turn would be a massive pileup, unless you got a really good start and jumped everyone you'd probably get wrecked
This was the same problem in FM7 (last one I played). It was possible to force the game to use certain drivatars - all you needed to do is 'follow' a driver on the Xbox app. So I got like 5 of some of the best drivers I could think of and started testing. They'd win every time, but only because they always started first. The game would order the grid by the real driver's pace, but after that every drivatar was basically the same (maybe +- 1s per lap). If I caught up with the leading drivatars and take them out, so they aren't leading anymore - they couldn't overtake. Very rarely they would manage to climb one or two positions by the end of a fairly long race.
Yeah it's tough to like. Like you say the top cars can be insanely fast gaining tens of seconds over a few laps while you fight through the field just to drive on your own for a long time for 2nd or 3rd.
12:07 Yeah, Forza just makes itself look bad on its own. The award it won in the "Best Racing/Sports Game" category at the 2023 game awards is a lie and we all know they dont deserve it.
@@hotcircuit I think I heard somewhere that the only reason it won it because it's the only game that those that chose the award actually knew about because of how long the Forza franchise has been around for.
even Toca 2 from 1998 acknowledges they are being lapped and will move out of the lane to allow quicker overtake. Your pit crewman even tells you that on the fly
Agreed. The F1 series gets a tough reception from the "it's not a sim" crowd but I found F1 23 a lot of fun on wheel, and you're right that the AI gives you a good race most of the time. Credit where's due!
I'm really hoping that development of this game was similar to Mass Effect Andromeda. They wanted to build it from the the ground up but for some reason (time, money, difficulties) scraped the project and had to come up with a game fast. That's the only reasonable explanation as to why this is what we got after 6 years.
I agree with your conclusion there, it seems so barebones even in terms of menus etc. that it seems like a rush job rather than 6 years of passionate effort.
Sony's Sophy A.I. has already proven you can have really good and close racing with A.I. Just wish Turn 10 did something more than just make the Drivatars analog.
I still remember doing a 1.5 hour Nurburgring full layout race on FM7 with max drivatar difficulty in heavy rain, no driving assists and max FFB, still finished like 5 seconds ahead of the fastest AI driver lol
Was not expecting the shoutout when I started watching this, Thank you for that 😊 I’ll take the P4 as well, that’s about right for my finishing position in most races. First of all, quick maths tells me you spent over an hour and a half racing AI for this video, goddamn! Mad respect, I was grinding out levels for a B Class open lobby car and by about lap 6 on Hock I was so bored! Most racing games I find have average to better AI, things Like ACC and similar, and they are prone to randomly over slowing on corner entry and things, but FM seems on a whole other level! The AI is a large part as to why I have only done 2 1/2 series in single player, I prefer the older AI model from FM6/7 because they were consistently slow and less erratic! Awesome video man, patience of a saint making this one haha!
I spent so much time 2020-23 in ACC and iRacing 4/6/12/24 hour team races (and 2.4h solos) that I'm used to circulating over and over for ages. It's nice to get recognition for the time spent, even if I didn't go seeking it so thank-you! Always happy to take the hit for science. My pleasure on the shout-out, I couldn't see your name there on the standings and not say something 😉
I was really frustrated today because I was forced to start last and the lead car was 2 seconds faster than me per lap no matter what I did. Then, I tried with random grid order and got to start first. The second guy was 2 seconds slower than me... There's absolutely no way the AI gets a huge power boost when starting first because their times aren't normal.
When racing real humans, you're normally slower or faster because of your accuracy with braking points, corner speed and getting back on the power. I've seen the same things as you, where I can't catch a leader at all then next time be miles faster so it shows they're artificially paced in a bad way that doesn't encourage the player to improve naturally.
This seems fairly accurate to real life. I'm a UK motorsports marshal and see a lot of Club level racing which this race seems comparable to. Although there's no series I can think of easily that has 36 lap races there are some that have 45/60min races which is probably similar or slightly more laps. With a pit stop, but usually not a stop for fuelling or tyre changes, its a quick break for the driver. Most of the drivers, beyond the first few laps, don't know what position they're in in the race. Yes pit boards exist, but only 30% of the teams have or use them. Radios are uncommon and some championships outright ban them. In the UK, Blue Flag rules do not mean "Get out of the way immediately the leader is behind you!" A static blue means "a competitor's car is behind you" A waved blue means "a competitor's car is close behind you" The message the flag marshal is giving is "you need to check your mirrors" In most cases the slower car will no make massive avoiding action for the car behind. They'll maybe lift on a straight or deliberately take a wide line into a corner so the faster car can get past. Or they may not see the blue flags and the faster car has to spend 5 laps looking for an opening. Crashes and incidents are most commonly caused between the lead group duelling for position. And slower cars acting unpredictably when faster cars are around them. I saw all of that happening in the video. So 8/10 for realism Forza well done.
Hah, amazing comment and you do actually have a great point. I never thought about club racing, although I do plenty of GT multiclass in ACC/iRacing so I'm aware nobody needs to leap out of the way but when they were actively fighting and making things difficult it felt incorrect - but again I wasn't thinking about that sort of racing. I think Forza still needs to improve other awareness as they'll often drive directly into a stricken car in front of them with good visibility, but perhaps they've got this one mostly right without me realising! Thank-you for all your good work as a marshal btw, I have lived near Oulton and Silverstone in my time so attended plenty of days that wouldn't be possible without you 👍
It’s doing that thing from the opening intro race from Forza Horizon where it rigs the finish no matter the drive. This is just rigging the engagement…
Haha, you know I'd probably accept a simcade trying to subtley keep the single player pack together so you have a better wheel-to-wheel experience. Some of the stuff on display here though is just plain bad unfortunately.
I always preferred the pre Drivertar opponents in Forza, they are programmed a lot better, I think with the Drivertas the machine learning tech is not really ready for games like this yet.
I never stopped playing FM4, I don’t think the AI is any better in that game. Almost everything seen here I’ve also observed in 4 too from too much braking to mess-ups to lapped cars blocking faster AI to 2 cars getting way ahead of the rest. You can’t convince me they even changed anything. The game’s marketing was fraudulent, full stop. This might come off strong but T10 really should just remaster FM4 on physical disk and fold. It’s been a decade of mediocrity I’m done.
Ever way we look at it, there is far better AI in other racing games and forza will never fix the issues, they say they are looking into it but nothing will really change because the focus is online play now@@NitrousFox
The funny thing is, in FM7 if a Drivatar was faster than another, they would actually pass the other driver and fairly quickly as well. I've seen a lot of people complain about FM7s AI but what you could do was set them to be a class ahead of you which gives them the handling they need to turn like you, then put on a power handicap around 0.8-0.9 depending on what car you are driving and what you prefer. Just like that the AI can race against you, are competitive, and will actually fight for positions without any of that rubber banding nonsense. It works great, seriously, try it out sometime. You can even just nerf your car instead using the handicap if you want if you are doing say a single make race. Nerf your handling and slightly nerf their engine to remove the rubber banding handicap they have.
@@hotcircuit Oh yea, I forgot to mention that to do this you need to set the race up to be in groups. You'll be in one and they will be in the other for this to work. You'll also need to make sure that the race isn't scored by group as well so everyone is competing against one another.
@@hotcircuit 100% weird and uncalled for, then when you slam into them you get a time penalty lol, I like the driving, I think it feels good but the AI and the whole thing with upgrading the car are negatives in my opinion
04:25 The 1st n 2nd place cars were caught in traffic, you said to keep an eye on the top left, but if you also look at bottom left you can see there’s a bunch of cars ahead on the map. There are many issues with this game, here’s 2 that bug me, do you ever get threat indicators when there’s no one there? I do. Do you get threat indicators for ghosted lapped cars? I do….If it’s a ghost, how is it a threat!? The AI driving style is something we should have more control over, having a setting of 1-8 is absolutely pants. I’d like to be able to adjust the drivers aggression, awareness, skill and pace. It’s unrealistic the current way they drive, online is more unrealistic but I guess I play against kids with anger issues.
I'll have to blur the map if I'm offering real prizes for guessing in future, hah. I get stuck indicators but they reset when I get near a car again but I hadn't paid attention to ghost ones - pretty sure I have them on some of my highlights that I missed at the time 😆 Yeah they have too many granular settings for force feedback but not enough for things like that!
So what ive found is the only was to combat the slow traffic is have a 2 to 3 second start delay, they seem to not get cramped up as much only attempting to battle someone they caught up to or someone who caught up to them. Usually have drivatar on level 9 and i can barley get close to first. Its worth a try to see what results you get. Ive done 40 laps at hockenhimering and its honestly the most fun to level up a car and actually play the game. Great video btw!
Ive noticed this in GT7 as well, except they dont brake on a straight to that degree. Sophia (GT7 new race AI that is still being tested) is better than this it seems, however we are unable to use our modified vehicles with the beta AI as of rn.
The Sophy AI looks pretty decent from the isolated examples I've seen, hopefully it can become their standard option in the not too distant future so you can race it more widely.
I know in Forza Horizon, the drivatars or AI drives the way how you drive. You ram other vehicles, they do the same thing but it looks like Playground Games just set their “mimic aggressiveness” to aggressive on Forza Motorsport. They try to drive like you but they seem to over do everything like braking sooner, swerving and driving too fast at curves.
Quality video, and great production. You made great points and provided sufficient evidence. For a sub 1k channel this an extremely high quality video. Love it. Keep doing what your doing! Big ups!
Wow, blown away by that - thanks for taking the time to say! Always a great boost to read something like this when getting ready to put another video together 😊
Forza drivatar is always in my way, they're more like traffic but with higher speeds, and they rubberband a significant amount on "unbeatable", but I still manage to beat them anyway In gran turismo the ai is slower (I think they reintroduced rubberbanding in gran turismo 7) but hey at least they respect the player, even in gran turismo 1-4 when they only cared about the line
I'll be interested to see after their statement this week if things improve, and how they improve. Trying to be smart (unless the learning model they speak of wasn't true) didn't really succeed in real gameplay.
Forza Motorsport '23 basically killed my motivation to continue playing in many ways One of the biggest reasons was cheating AI in 2 events for the seasonal and how dumb they can act too
I was on the last lap of a 50 lap race at daytona and I had to get just a little bit of gas so I could make the final lap. As soon as I come out of the pit, I get rammed and everything on my car is broken. I even tried the race again and the same thing happened, smh.
🤦 That's mad, but I guess doesn't surprise me after this fiasco. Hopefully they'll at least get them performing to a consistent pace and less crash-prone. Level 7 difficulty seems more reliable after another recent video I released 😵💫
I don't have motorsport, but I recently bought and have been playing horizon 5. The behavior of horizon's drivatars is very similar to what was shown in this video, and here is what I've noticed: I've found that every race is like this: 1) start far back in the grid, despite winning many races and being the canonical favorite to win 2) all drivatars move in tandem with no attempt to overtake each other and solely focus on blocking passes, even if that means attempting to ram you off the road and leaving 0 space when side- by- side 3) unless you race to perfection, being increadibly aggressive and not getting slowed down, the leader takes off, and the race is far too short to catch him. It really seems as if the races are as short as possible in order to hide the drivatars' flaws. If you could start at pole and the race was long, you'd just end up miles ahead of everyone else.
Absolutely, this race is maybe 6x longer than many career mode races but coming from an ACC/iRacing kinda background I sometimes like races of endurance. Plus, they kinda encourage that length by making it 3h of driving to level 50 a car. The Drivatars are poor for the reasons you mention over a short distance but they really fall apart over long distance.
The point about starting last on the grid is very true. If we started with pole, the cowardly AI would never be able to pass because they struggle with taking any line that isn't the predetermined racing line. And they almost always over-brake for turns like sweepers where you only need to lift.
An idea for another video and if you want an absolute giggle is to do the same thing at Maple Valley Full. I was using S and/or R class, highest 'difficulty'. Not only are they slow they crash so much. Repeatedly. In the same places too. I lapped some multiple times because they were having such bad accidents and having multiple pit stops
@hotcircuit I did Grand Oak after my comment, AI Valkyrie went off loads. Down from X999 to P966 or somewhere like that. I think they had the maximum ballast added but they acted like they had drag tyres on when they went off on tight corners
great video pointing out a problem but one thing you shouldve done was go over your laptimes(ie mention your laptimes before you pit, and after to see if youve gotten faster or if they got that much slower)
Good spot, for me (not saying I was right) I'd given up on considering my pace was a factor when the times were absolutely tumbling. The outside factor of lapped traffic seemed too big an influence for that to matter but I'll try not to drop that kind of info in future.
@@hotcircuit I agree lapped traffic was the major factor(as you shown with the lappers diving up the inside and almost hitting you off track) but just knowing your pace would be just a little more information which is never a bad thing when doing something like this video.
I hate it when I mess up a corner, land in the middle of the road and all the drivatars just ram into me as if I'm not there. I don't even get the chance to get back on track because I'm being used like a bulldozer. I realize this game is not really a Sim, but it could improve so much by adding the smallest things such as blue/yellow flags.
Yeah it's frustrating. I think the idea that Forza isn't a full simulator shouldn't excuse it in any way because even the most arcade racer in the world would be no fun with opponents like Forza's.
11 months later and this problem persists. The Ai still have lane assist, crash assist and brake for no reason. This is incredibly frustrating when you have Expert Rules applied. I'd rather play RaceRoom Racing Experience where AI are aware of other racers and actively avoid them or pass them.
Even as a newcomer to Forza Mortorsport i knew instantly from doing one of the longer races this was an issue as I said to myself in my head; "These AI have no idea that they've lapped much of the grid, they have no programming in them that lets them know that they have been lapped whatsoever." And it was astonishing to me. That's something you get from an early 2000s racer, not something from 2023, now 2024. I'm genuinely amazed that this was something that was not only never thought of but clearly never discussed with regards to endurance racing. Remember; I say this as a newcomer to FM.
I'm a newcomer too, so I don't have investment to defend the indefensible but I'm also not trying to make the game look bad, I just want to enjoy it. T10 have dropped the ball with so many things that, like you say, should be basic features in 2023/4.
That Drivatar thing was always odd, i remember playing FH3 at the launch period and some Drivatars acting stupid asf, as it was replaying a behavior that doesn't make sense, unless you're racing online, since the start they said it would be like an a.i. copy of the player, turns out it copied everything wrong and even now with shitloads of data they have from us the players, they still didn't figure out how to make work properly.
Yeah it seems like a flawed model, I'm sure there are just human programmers behind many games like ACC, yet they do a much better job at appearing convincing. At lower difficulty levels it can get weird if you sail past cars on the straights. What usually defines pace is braking, corner speed and exit speed rather than just coasting along a straight to shed laptime.
You'd hope only valid laps and in turn clean overtakes (so just avoiding the dreaded ⚠️ by your laptime) would count if they're genuinely trying to learn from good data. I'm not even sure these Drivatars have learnt anything though 😬
Seems about on par with the Horizon games, if you don't use a stupidly OP AWD car to take the lead before the first lap ends, you'll probably never catch up to the leader.
i have no problem with ai making natural mistakes, like running off the road or spinning, as it makes it more entertaining and also makes them more realistic as people make mistakes and if they are trying to emulate natural driving behaviour, mistakes should happen. but the brake checking is very bad, like you mentioned they brake on the straight. fh5 ai seem better than this.
Yeah absolutely, I did a video recently about Forza v iRacing and I did a quick AI race on iRacing to check I was up to speed and not going to destroy an online race for other people. That AI was extremely competitive but one or two did spin and run onto the grass like real drivers might - so yeah that's fine.
I wonder if some of the 'events' you came across are actually compounded in races with fewer laps. Like if the braking and other slowing happens about as many times in a race with only 8 laps or something.
The shorter/regular races are a bit more prone to having 1 or 2 drivers at the front running away but everybody else tripping over themselves a bit and sometimes straight driving off the track in an attempt to get ahead of you. I tested this race as I wanted to level a car up to 50, predicted that'd take 36 more laps of time and just went for it. An attempt to see if AI would be more challenging when I had to be consistent kinda resulted in being more ridiculous than I'd bargained for.
I did all races and especially endurance races multiple times in FM7, mostly on the 2nd highest difficulty and figured out how the drivatar ai works. Now I refuse to purchase any new Forza before at least a year from release since they do not disclose the state of the game as beta, but looking at this video it still seems to work the same. Perhaps this might be useful to you. All lap times and racing stats that you talk about are arbitrary, the car in the lead and behind you are linked to your personal performance per lap. Getting good to perfect ratings on corners will almost always reduce the leaders lap time, increasing exponentially for streaks, almost like combos. Not getting a good rank will reduce the distance with the car behind. There is also a strange RNG anomaly that occur sometimes where the car in front just wins by a mile but this only happens like 1/10 races. This happens with FH4/5 as well and after this happens it seems like the game auto adjusts to tone it back down again, but you have to complete the race.
That's amazing info, you went deeper than me and it's fascinating. I wonder if I can try to replicate that by deliberately aiming for 1/10 or 10/10 corners at different times. I take it that's basically what you've done?
Not exactly. I stumbled upon this by continuously losing during a Sebring endurance race as it is hard to concentrate and have good laps for 2 hours straight. Once I got too far behind I restarted the race which did not allow the race to tone itself down by me losing the race. While trying to learn the track I turned on the track rating settings and eventually won the race by focusing on each corner and clean racing ratings, rather than lap times. By doing this, lap times obviously became very consistent which off course is required for winning in any form of racing, but it's the way the game adapts the drivatar ''skill'' on the fly I found interesting. When I am far behind in races against hard AI, I switch to this ''check box'' strategy with consistent results.
My S2000 let me down. I’ve literally just realised how bad it is on level 7 Drivitar, trying to let an Audi go by so they could carry me to the podium places, I’d left on the straight, they’d brake. It’s maddening.
It really is, I only highlight this sort of thing because I want things to get better for everybody who bought this game, or are at least fans of the series and want to keep enjoying it. I'd love to know how the single player was tested... And how long for!
The AI fumbling over each other was one of the reasons why I turned contact off in career mode. It sucks when you damage your car because the AI brake checked you, but it hurts even more when YOU get penalized for hitting them. The AI being completely unaware of you or other AI existed since Horizon 3, maybe even 2, coincidentally when Drivatars were implemented. Ever since I turned contact off I've had a much better racing experience with not just the leading AI, but ALL of them; and it also makes starting in 24th with the goal of finishing 1st (Without driving dirty) realistically possible.
As a newcomer to Forza it fascinates me to hear people saying they've been like this for a long time. When a series makes it to the 8th version, you'd probably expect some improvement and innovation in that time.
Yeah, you're not wrong. We all thought after so many titles T10 would get it right only to be consistently let down. I personally really like FM8, and my multiplayer experience has actually been really solid, but I also understand that that isn't the majority of people's experiences.@@hotcircuit
Some people suggested we shouldn't expect them to be good "because it's not a serious racing sim" but it's a track racing game with car & career mode progression. It needs to be compelling and challenge the player in order to work imo 🤷
I've heard people say that after a very possible development hell, this game ended up being that they took Forza Motorsport 7 and tried to make some sort of a sequel out of it. I don't have this game, but I have 7, and the AI literally acts the EXACT SAME as you showed in this video. They cannot race with each other whatsoever, they overshoot certain turns on certain tracks (especially when they're driving very fast cars), they engage their hyperdrive on straights and rubberband away like crazy when they're alone, and when you pass them, they completely forget how to race. In addition, they create a train of cars behind you when they're not going off road on the same turns every lap
I was concerned to hear a few people say this, but with 8 games in this side of the franchise I can't believe they've not iteratively gotten better over time. Something has certainly happened behind the scenes during the last 6 years.
When it comes to just racing a car around the track i love it, I’ll rip laps in rivals mode all day. Multiplayer has even been pretty good but oh my do i hate racing the ai especially on the short career races.
I agree with you, the gameplay experience is dangerously close to what we'd consider "proper simulators", which makes the multiplayer pretty decent. In fact I only shout about things like this because they've snatched defeat from the jaws of victory on this one. It'd be nice to have any reason to play the Builder's Cup though.
@@hotcircuit even the weekly featured tours feel like a chore because i don’t wanna deal with the ai where they should be fun weekly events. I would also like it to better simulate the motorsports themselves with a race weekend structure and whatnot but that’s just me
In turn 10's defence, i iracing I've at times just lost heapsnof time to people behind me when im in a high pressure position like 1st or something. Its a mental thing and i dont get that energy to push till im like almost getting passed or if im behind again. But hey thats just me lol
I play horizon and ever since 4 (I'm a newcomer) the AI have been horrendous. They deliberately smash into you and hit you, they will brake check you for zero reason, and they seem actively hostile towards you. Then, if you don't pass the leader, they become INSANELY fast for no reason, making it nearly impossible to catch them-- but if you succeed, they slow down and you never see the ai again. Nothing about this makes any sense.
I agree, they fundamentally need to drive better around the player and each other. Once there, the 1-8 difficulty levels need to provide a consistent challenge rather than slow down once you get out front or disappear into the distance.
In FM7 I mostly do multiclass endurance, and my god the AI having no idea how to overtake lapped cars is the worst. especially when and LMP1 gets stuck behind a GT3 for half a lap at Le Mans
🤣 Oh god, that would definitely point out the issue more obviously. It was only really because I saw this behaviour by mistake that I have similar performing cars here. That leaves the argument open that the leader might not be much faster than the car it's lapping - but LMP struggling with a GT3... Yikes.
Lapped cars fighting the leader at least is realistic, most drivers in real life do not want to go a lap down. Though they should be much better at overtaking. The AI at longer stints seems to be better than FM7 at least.
Yeah I mean not every driver should jump out of the way like F1's blue flag rule but likewise they shouldn't race the leader when they're beaten either. That behaviour is what's causing the indecisive driving by the front runners causing them to get held up. I won't yield if they're being awkward but the AI will try anything (including lose 10s per lap) to avoid collisions with each other.
I really enjoy your style of commentary! Very laid back and pretty relaxed. I wish I could get into this game more but I don't like how the cars sound compared to its competitors (or even previous entries tbh), and the AI is awful.
Thanks for the amazing feedback, thank-you. It's hard for me to care about the career with things in this state but I'm practically addicted to the multiplayer... Maybe that's just a me thing 😆
My favorite thing in the world is when I go a little too fast into the corner and any AI in my proximity does the EXACT same thing but 10X more overcooked lmao. Ran a 2.4 Hours of LeMans vs the AI and the Hypercars weren't on the same lap as me and I ended up winning in a GT car by a lap over everyone in the field at least save for 3 LMP2's that somehow managed to not kill themselves in the race at some point. I am by no means a perfect driver but against the top level AI its not even a challenge if you keep your nose clean in endurance racing. All you need to do is survive, something the AI seem to not do lmao.
Ah-ha! I mentioned this in a reply earlier, they almost seem tracked to your input as I went around the outside of a car, stabbed the throttle a little to try edging ahead and they just catapulted off into the gravel ahead of me 🤣
Ahhh the brake checking and road raging AI. I was playing on level 5 and has one AI keeping pace constantly trying to run me off the track for 1 whole lap 😂
I think that's what the P3 car that kept with me til the pitstop was on a mission to do. They turned into a pussy cat as soon as they met some lapped traffic though 😄
I am really enjoying Forza, but it has a lot of glaring flaws that Turn 10 needs to address. In single player, there are all the issues you show. I can't start mid pack on many tracks because the pile ups and ramming on the first and second turn usually put me out of any contention. And the AI strength thing still seems to be in effect from previous games where the only good drivers are the top 3 and the rest are just traffic. In open multiplayer the penalty system is so bad that it will often give the penalty to the person that got rammed but not the person doing a blatant ram. It seems to encourage ramming, and the safety rating is so easy to get to S that even if they do get penalties, they will be back in lobbies with clean safety rated players next race anyway. On some tracks a millisecond off track can result in more than a second of time added (looking at you Hakone) while other tracks allow you to drive off the track entirely and don't even call it a dirty lap. I think this will be a brilliant simcade racer in a year or two when they get this all corrected. Right now it is just frustrating seeing what it COULD be.
Yeah you're spot on. I'm enjoying it too, I've been posting lots of positive multiplayer experiences, and I like the challenge of a new car rotation every week. Some of the other sims/games can get a bit samey (cough, GT3s) so that is the good side of Forza. Unfortunately, the the bad things are really turning people away in noticeable numbers, so I hope they get around to fixing them.
Still not as bad as the Gran Turismo 4 "AI" GT4 has no AI the cars just drive a preset path at a preset speed, this means that in FWD cars the AI will ALWAYS crash on certain turns because they will not account for understeer. It also means they will CONSTANTLY slam into you because they are literally unable to react to your presence at all. It's basically like racing your car against a bunch of slot cars.
I remember when FM5 came out and they were making a big song and dance about this intelligent new AI system and how it would reflect real world players and their driving styles, and since then all its been is the same hopeless COM drivers with no idea of their surroundings beyond 'complete a lap' and 'dive out the way when a player goes deep'
I'd recommend at this point getting 1 month of Game Pass so you can see if it works for you. It's no secret that there are significant problems so wouldn't want to push a full purchase on anybody who wasn't sure. Plus then you can play some other games at the same time. I have a Simagic Alpha Mini direct drive, which rarely appears on any game compatibility lists but it works just fine and feels pretty good.
The Problem with Forza is actually simple the devs have no idea how racing works. They just put things and say we did this big thing and are happy and in reality, it is just some trash that doesn't even work as intended. The AI in Forza has sucked all the way from Motorsport 5 & horizon 3 but it used to be somewhat OK in these games it has sucked massively and has no sense of rules and clean racing is just a broken mess that goes through everything without stopping typical Left Dev logic..
@@hotcircuit Oh it is a lot worse. I have been told by a friend in TT Studios that working there is basically agreeing with the Team lead or you basically get axed with the you don't fit well in this team we haven't seen any progress BS. Main topics of negativity towards projects are considered illegal there, If they are working on something it is the perfect most beautiful game ever if you complain about something you might get questioned if you actually care about modern Cough " Left" political values. If you say no well you are about to be on the market.
@@KTBLGaming To say that sounds like a dysfunctional abusive relationship is an understatement. I'd love to see if anybody wanted to anonymously talk about it.
I can't even explain it as I've been racing some form of AI (or CPU controlled opponents) since Grand Prix 2. I'm not saying that was perfect, but it was released 28 years ago so I'd expect some progress since 😅
@@hotcircuit one of my formative games was Grand Prix 4 so I’m with you there! That game was amazing on this front too. Better than most games now. That said, fairly sure the bots in fucking wanadoo Sno Cross are ahead of what’s currently in GT7 and Forza Motorsport 2023 lmao
@@hotcircuit maybe one day we’ll get a half decent offline driving game again. But then again, if people keep defending FM and GT7 we might never get it lol. Keep fighting the good fight with it.
They brake way to much, and still manage to drive off the track, Forza needs to stop copying and pasting 75% of their game, and improve their game almost 100%.
I seem to remember them saying that the drivatars 'learn' from players driving, so they pick up brake checking from the chuds online, can't remember where I heard that though.
Some people are saying that way of doing things was abandoned, but honestly I don't know if it's a flawed learning model (and the people teaching them online, like you say) or just really bad AI programming at this point.
I don't think it's unreasonable to want fulfilling offline races and longer stints in 2024, but Forza right now probably isn't the place to get them.
Happy New Year, and please consider subscribing if you enjoy content like this 🧡
automobilista 2 is still the only place where you can get a truly fulfilling and non finicky solo race experience. On PC at least.
As a Forza Veteran who's been playing since the OG Motorsport, I recently bought a PS5. I immediately downloaded GT7 and haven't touched FM 2023 since. It's a shame, I prefer the overall feel of FM 2023, but that's it. In almost every other category, GT7 has been a vastly greatest experience. I'll hop on FM 2023 when they add Nordschleife, but even that won't be enough to keep me playing long in the games' current state. God, how I wish for the days of FM4 again.
@@dthendrick1 Its a sad story because like you say they've actually done a good job with how Forza feels to play, but almost everything around it is rushed and half-baked. Nordschleife would still be welcome though, hopefully see you on track when it happens!
My friend has been kinda upset with a few of us because he really wanted us to engage in this game. Coming from steady bouts of Assetto OG and Competizione on PC, this really ain't it. I can say I always preferred GT over Forza, but really wanted to see how a Motorsport felt on a wheel. Wasn't that satisfied, but offline racing in a game/sim is important to me. I did not enjoy the poor AI behavior. Also the system for upgrading cars changed and it makes for a bit of front end work to aquire decent things to challenge your friends...who may have more time or are Forza junkies and have so much already.
Lastly, I still have gripes for simcades trying to identify as simulators or racing when basic things other racers have, they don't(ex. No spotter while racing). Gran Turismo been out for so long and Kaz is an actual racer...but somehow the game doesn't know what a proper rolling start is.
@@RukaGoldheartAlthough the physics might not be up to your standards, PC2 has reasonably good AI, nothing special, but definitely better then this, and AC.
I still hold that M.Rossi has more 'personality' than any Drivatar in any forza game since the system's introduction.
As a filthy newcomer to the series, I had to look up that reference but now I feel all the better for knowing. Thanks for watching! 🫡
M. Rossi honestly added some nice tension to those old FM2/3 titles lol
M.Rossi was the GOAT of forza
There was always 2, I need to play Motorsport 3 again to see who was always there with M.Rossi at the head of the pack.
it's absolutely true. drivatars stealing players names had the opposite effect they intended. it just makes drivatars even more of a faceless npc
my experience with racing AI peaked recently with Prostreet, a game from friggin 2007. especially on high difficulty, the AI tends to behave very believably like amateur track day racers. they can PASS on corners, actually fight you for your position, occasionally outright diving into corners, and, rarely, overcooking and wrecking out. In later, faster events, the drivers can maintain a properly competitive pace with the player, without just bulldozing everything that isn't on the racing line, although their cars start to get super stupid fast rather quickly. it is honestly to me the perfect mix of capability and seemingly intentional imperfection, and it saddens me to see modern racing games continue to fail so terribly at any of this.
It saddens me too, it'd be cool to go back over some older games for perspective. I remember Pro Street coming out but never played it at the time.
@@hotcircuit Pro Street is extremely divisive, something that is either going to be your absolute favorite or your absolute least favorite NFS game. It appeals to a very particular gameplay style and car culture, and while it's definitely not for everyone, it nails a lot of things that very few other titles did.
I would much rather racing games tried to fulfill more specific niches like this again, I'm tired of everything trying to appeal to the homogenous mass of "general audiences" to the point that it absolutely sucks all personality and fun out of the experience. Forza nowadays is so devoid of personality that it's kind of sad to look at.
@@hotcircuitProbably the best nfs game when it comes to the driving part. They nailed the track driving physics perfectly. My all time favorite videogame
#1 problem with prostreet are the bugs
Without multiple patches it's still unplayable on PC to this day
Still remember back in the day being stuck in the tutorial event because the continue button is broken lmao
@@SCHMOBEX Yea, the continue glitch is completely random, so not totally unplayable, but it gets really annoying. Luckily i managed to get the patch to work which adds dlc cars, and a no cd patch
The AI seem to brake at any sign of the slightest risk, so they brake on straights even if the risk is coming from behind them.
On the other hand, once they're committed to making a mistake, they're going to run off the track no matter what. No amount of rewinds will stop them (even if they take a different line each time) and they don't care if they take you out with them. It's like they're hard coded to screw up or something, it's nuts.
Tbh the going off track part is probably for the better, sure it slows them down but at least they don't hit other drivers while re-entering the track
@@ThatCyberpunkGuy that's not true either. They don't attempt to correct their error and will floor it until they hit a barrier... Or cross paths with the track again and Tbone another car.
Footage of this kind of mistake was requested by a mod on a post about the issue on the forza forums. I figured I'd attempt capture footage for them myself and the very first lap of the very first race I tried had second place run straight into the side of 1st for this exact reason. It happens comically frequently
I got so frustrated with the AI that I had to stop playing... It shouldn't be like this. They constantly overslow, brake in weird places, take weird lines, and don't respect the player's space at all. It's almost impossible for me to get a clean race with AI.
It's tough, a couple of people have given me advice in the comments about some custom race settings that might improve things. They're workarounds and way more effort than you should have to make but I'll report back if I see success that'd help others.
This seems to be a pretty general issue among basically all the racing sims. AI don't know how to overtake, and if you do multi-class races it's even more prominent. Though most other sims don't necessarily have AI brake check you in the middle of a straight. But it's really cool that their new advanced Drivatards still do that.
Now there's a name I couldn't get away with 🫢 In my experience you're mostly right but AMS2 and iRacing (would you believe that?) have recently made some AI opponents capable of running side-by-side through multiple corners and reacting well to your attempts to attack or defend.
On the other side Assetto Corsa, especially with third-party modded cars, can sometimes be hilariously bad.
@@hotcircuit And unfortunately I'm not paying $450 for iRacing and AMS2's content is too scattered and random for me to try. So that leaves Rfactor, AC, R3E, Project Cars, and I feel like I'm missing some others that all have equally bad AI.
GT7 base AI is fairly good, and the new Sophy system with the advanced learning really seems to know when to shoot the gap or pick an aggressive line.
In fact, I've gone back and forth with an aggressive AI over a whole lap and it even managed to fake me out twice in the process (with the Sophy races).
Assetto modded also features much better AI than the normal game and you can fine tune many of its parameters. Forza is easily one of the worst I've experienced in a long long time.
@@JZStudiosonlineAMS2's content is very similar to Project Cars. Built on the same engine, and there are even mods that port some tracks and cars from PC/PC2 to AMS2.
@@Starmast3rmusic No it isn't. But maybe I'd be interested if someone ported everything from PC1 and 2 over.
6 years for this built from the ground up $60+ experience from a multi-billion dollar company
One day we might find out what went on during 2017-2023...
Still more effective than Minneapolis police department
I've not really read many comments, but has anyone else noticed how, that when you catch and pass one of the quicker front runners, they just seem to give up and lose the pace they had before you over took them? The AI spoils the single player, but i do still enjoy multiplayer. Great video, subscribed 👍🏻
The AI is heavily rubberbanded in weird ways. Sometimes they're only faster than you because they're cheating and give up when you pass. Some players or some updates have also seen cars that are easily passed and magically pick up the pace. It's all garbage.
Thank-you for the sub and taking the time out to watch & comment! It's been hard to track a pattern but yeah I do notice cars will suddenly be fluctuate in pace. Multiplayer is carrying this at the moment, and I am enjoying it, but the game is too expensive to gloss over the basics that really should be better.
Same bullshit that's in FH5. Except FH5 makes the leader artificially faster than everyone else until you pass them.
I’ve noticed that in Horizon 5. Even on the highest difficulty, as long as they are ahead they drive like gods and are really fast, as soon as you pass them they get incredibly slow and I regularly finish 10-20 seconds ahead of them. It’s especially noticeable in higher vehicle classes. I’ve turned off all assists to have at least some kind of challenge.
I ran out of fuel on the straight uphill on the last lap of a race on Road America and the AI pushed me over the finish line when I carefully steered in front of it... worth a shot and it worked! Finished P9 even!
However, it sadly demonstrates the state of the AI too.
I never finished a race against the AI without using the rewind function because I was bumped off the track... If I want to smash and crash, I'll play Wreckfest thank you very much!
Automobilista 2 seems to have a good AI since the last update, so I bought it last week.
AMS2 has always had a charm about it, but the inconsistent handling stopped me short of going all-in. Well, now with the recent quality of life improvements for tyre model and AI it's extremely good for offline racing.
I have a video featuring AMS2 dropping any day now, I appreciate you taking the time to watch & comment 👍
I wish Wreckfest had Forza's AI. Then maybe they'd be able to finish a 10 lap race. As-is now a 10 lap race you win by default, provided they don't murder you because they WILL murder themselves every time.
Yup I was shocked by Amb2 AI in good side of course 😊
I am a lousy driver, but damn, you are spot on about the AI driving garbage
Hah, players deserve better no matter what level we think we're at. Thank-you for watching & commenting I really appreciate it 👍
Get a PlayStation already holy shit. Gran Turismo 7 is 100x better
@@cptjohnbhewler1529 Well, if GT 7 worked on my PC I would take your advice.
@@cptjohnbhewler1529gt7 ai is also garbage, the only good ai is the sophy ai and that’s only in one mode
@@xnotasweatx yeah sure. That's why you play on easy
Most of these issues are ones present on Horizon 4 and 5 as well. I don't believe for a second that it was "built from the ground up" like the marketing department claimed. It's really annoying too, because it feels like the AI is doing all it can to prevent you from passing while putting no effort into passing you. Just a really boring way to race, it's like driving in traffic.
It's what makes the career unfulfilling sadly. They don't have to be perfect but some sort of consistent pace to beat with ability to attack/defend would be better.
"The most advanced racing game ever created"
😄
"Built from the ground up!"
As the ground is made out of pure bullshit then yeah, it is!
The instant they said that the drivatar system was coming back I wrote the game off.
It says a lot that I can start at the back of the grid in one of the faster divisions and be lapping the field by lap 3. I have my difficulty settings maxed. Forza AI was never good, but at least in earlier games the "Pro" or "Unbeatable" AI posed some sort of challenge. This is just next level.
It does say a lot. Part of the challenge is running at a good pace, but not having them trip over each other and lose over 30s in a handful of laps would be a great start 😅
AI is worse in Racing games then it was 15 -20 years ago. I remember playing a Predecessor of rFactor, i think it was called Race something. that was early 2000s.
I never encountered Problems like this. The behavior of the AI drivers and their mistakes was quite realistic.
Instead of breaking way to early or spin out to "Simulate" mistakes, they would brake a bit late, overshooting the Corner, but come back. Get a bit unstable at corner entry, have a wiggle, loose momentum.
Such stuff.The AI was good racing against each other.
If that was possible 15-20 years ago by a tiny studio which even with rfactor and rfactor 2 never made an economic breakthrough, its an absolute incompetence or statement ov "we dont care" that Big gae studios cant do it today.
I'm struggling to remember the title. I know iRacing kinda evolved from Papyrus' games and Kunos worked on something called netKar in the 2000s. Never the less, you're right that evolution of computer controlled opponents should've ended up somewhere better than this by default in 20+ years.
Seems like game design philosophy has fallen quite far. We can only hope that indie devs take over again.
I was so hyped for the game and the singleplayer in particular. I was ready to grind trough the campaign with my T300rs GT, but the AI absolutely ruined this for me. Getting rammed, sometimes even pitmanouvered off of the track, breakchecks, everything you mentioned in your video. 1st place is just gone by the time you fought trough all the bullshit and there is no way of closing in on them, because the races are too short. Funny to see that the AI would have the exact opposite problem if the races were longer.
I really hope Turn10 watche your video and takes notes, because I am pretty sure they have never testet this scenario (or their AI in general) like you do, if they even testet it in general.
Great video, as always!
Great comment, thanks so much for taking the time. In a way I dread the thought of them watching, but you're right that they need to pay attention to their players. I highlight this stuff as I still believe there's a solid handling model and game underneath, so it's worth recovering. Xbox racers in particular need T10's commitment to making this better as they don't have a wide selection of alternatives like the PC players do.
I don't see how it's possible for them to test single player for longer than 5 minutes without finding at least 1 of the things I have seen.
@@hotcircuit well, thank you for going trough 40-ish Laps of hell for us to show us why the AI behaves like it does!
Why the dread? You are not insulting them, you are constructively criticising them. They should be thankful!
Oh, absolutely! I love the Forza handling and the rest of the game concept! That's why it's such a shame they completely f-ed up the AI in the first place.
I am a PC player too, but I don't think there are many games hitting the same spot as Forza Motorsport does. An easily accessable, more-sim-tham-arcade-racer to learn the maps with a good, easy multiplayer platform is not that easy to find IMO.
I can't tell for sure for Forza Motorsport but in Horizon you could sometimes spot "trains" of cars (as in all cars controlled by AI were merging into conga line of cars), it was more visible on sprint races while playing with friend. That gave me idea, that the further away the AI car is the less resources they leave on it to the point it starts to "drive on rails" (super visible in older GTA games if you are far from road)
I get the idea that they want to save up on resources but in game where we look for semi realistic experience while racing other opponents ot doesn't look good.
I think F1 by codemasters and GRID series was doing better job with AI
If I'm not mistaken GRID had different types of drivers AI (more aggressive, more cautious etc.)
I've not tried GRID but racing single player in F1 is pretty good from my experience, yeah.
The finish line cam after a race in Horizon 5 always shows the AI cars just lined up like a funeral procession. It's like they put no effort into masking the fact they just follow the predetermined driving line.
The newest GRID is just as bad. AI drives godly until you pass them, then gives up and can’t keep pace. Also their physics are really terrible for some reason
@@Roomsaver I wonder how Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown will be in that department 🤔
I've found the top 3 cars fly off at the start down the order drive overly defensive. Then once you overtake they drop back
Dirt 4's circuit racing AI had very similiar issues, but so much worse cause you only ever did like 6 laps in that game. EVery first turn would be a massive pileup, unless you got a really good start and jumped everyone you'd probably get wrecked
This was the same problem in FM7 (last one I played). It was possible to force the game to use certain drivatars - all you needed to do is 'follow' a driver on the Xbox app. So I got like 5 of some of the best drivers I could think of and started testing. They'd win every time, but only because they always started first. The game would order the grid by the real driver's pace, but after that every drivatar was basically the same (maybe +- 1s per lap). If I caught up with the leading drivatars and take them out, so they aren't leading anymore - they couldn't overtake. Very rarely they would manage to climb one or two positions by the end of a fairly long race.
Yeah it's tough to like. Like you say the top cars can be insanely fast gaining tens of seconds over a few laps while you fight through the field just to drive on your own for a long time for 2nd or 3rd.
How so many games failed to reach 2008's Grid in terms of AI is sad
12:07
Yeah, Forza just makes itself look bad on its own. The award it won in the "Best Racing/Sports Game" category at the 2023 game awards is a lie and we all know they dont deserve it.
I feel like I'm living in a parallel universe as ALL the review media overwhelmingly hailed it as perfection too.
@@hotcircuit I think I heard somewhere that the only reason it won it because it's the only game that those that chose the award actually knew about because of how long the Forza franchise has been around for.
@@epicdude3659 What an advert for how much people in the industry care about racing games!
@@hotcircuit I know right.
even Toca 2 from 1998 acknowledges they are being lapped and will move out of the lane to allow quicker overtake. Your pit crewman even tells you that on the fly
It's the lack of progress (in many racing titles) over the last 20+ years that troubles me the most I think.
I bought the F1 23 game on sale New Year’s Day and the AI is just miles ahead of Forza which is sad, I really hope they improve them asap.
Agreed. The F1 series gets a tough reception from the "it's not a sim" crowd but I found F1 23 a lot of fun on wheel, and you're right that the AI gives you a good race most of the time. Credit where's due!
Assetto Corsa is miles better then f1 23
@@csabazombori9862 I don’t doubt it, but I’ve been playing racing games for about 3 months, I’m not gonna jump in to ACC just yet.
Sadly, it's now EA owned so.its never getting better.
Codemasters were a decent outfit. So was Papyrus.
No it really isn't
I'm really hoping that development of this game was similar to Mass Effect Andromeda. They wanted to build it from the the ground up but for some reason (time, money, difficulties) scraped the project and had to come up with a game fast. That's the only reasonable explanation as to why this is what we got after 6 years.
I agree with your conclusion there, it seems so barebones even in terms of menus etc. that it seems like a rush job rather than 6 years of passionate effort.
@@hotcircuit Forgot to say, thumbnail is pure genious.
The AI somehow drives worse than nikita mazespin
Maybe he was the subject they trained the learning model on 😆
Sony's Sophy A.I. has already proven you can have really good and close racing with A.I. Just wish Turn 10 did something more than just make the Drivatars analog.
Absolutely, Sophy looked very fair and competitive from the videos I've seen from Super GT.
I still remember doing a 1.5 hour Nurburgring full layout race on FM7 with max drivatar difficulty in heavy rain, no driving assists and max FFB, still finished like 5 seconds ahead of the fastest AI driver lol
Was not expecting the shoutout when I started watching this, Thank you for that 😊 I’ll take the P4 as well, that’s about right for my finishing position in most races.
First of all, quick maths tells me you spent over an hour and a half racing AI for this video, goddamn! Mad respect, I was grinding out levels for a B Class open lobby car and by about lap 6 on Hock I was so bored!
Most racing games I find have average to better AI, things Like ACC and similar, and they are prone to randomly over slowing on corner entry and things, but FM seems on a whole other level! The AI is a large part as to why I have only done 2 1/2 series in single player, I prefer the older AI model from FM6/7 because they were consistently slow and less erratic!
Awesome video man, patience of a saint making this one haha!
I spent so much time 2020-23 in ACC and iRacing 4/6/12/24 hour team races (and 2.4h solos) that I'm used to circulating over and over for ages. It's nice to get recognition for the time spent, even if I didn't go seeking it so thank-you! Always happy to take the hit for science.
My pleasure on the shout-out, I couldn't see your name there on the standings and not say something 😉
@@hotcircuit damn impressive, most i have sat through was a 3 hour enduro at spa in single player on ACC, that was tough!
I was really frustrated today because I was forced to start last and the lead car was 2 seconds faster than me per lap no matter what I did. Then, I tried with random grid order and got to start first. The second guy was 2 seconds slower than me...
There's absolutely no way the AI gets a huge power boost when starting first because their times aren't normal.
When racing real humans, you're normally slower or faster because of your accuracy with braking points, corner speed and getting back on the power. I've seen the same things as you, where I can't catch a leader at all then next time be miles faster so it shows they're artificially paced in a bad way that doesn't encourage the player to improve naturally.
This seems fairly accurate to real life. I'm a UK motorsports marshal and see a lot of Club level racing which this race seems comparable to.
Although there's no series I can think of easily that has 36 lap races there are some that have 45/60min races which is probably similar or slightly more laps. With a pit stop, but usually not a stop for fuelling or tyre changes, its a quick break for the driver.
Most of the drivers, beyond the first few laps, don't know what position they're in in the race. Yes pit boards exist, but only 30% of the teams have or use them. Radios are uncommon and some championships outright ban them.
In the UK, Blue Flag rules do not mean "Get out of the way immediately the leader is behind you!"
A static blue means "a competitor's car is behind you"
A waved blue means "a competitor's car is close behind you"
The message the flag marshal is giving is "you need to check your mirrors"
In most cases the slower car will no make massive avoiding action for the car behind. They'll maybe lift on a straight or deliberately take a wide line into a corner so the faster car can get past.
Or they may not see the blue flags and the faster car has to spend 5 laps looking for an opening.
Crashes and incidents are most commonly caused between the lead group duelling for position. And slower cars acting unpredictably when faster cars are around them.
I saw all of that happening in the video. So 8/10 for realism Forza well done.
Hah, amazing comment and you do actually have a great point. I never thought about club racing, although I do plenty of GT multiclass in ACC/iRacing so I'm aware nobody needs to leap out of the way but when they were actively fighting and making things difficult it felt incorrect - but again I wasn't thinking about that sort of racing. I think Forza still needs to improve other awareness as they'll often drive directly into a stricken car in front of them with good visibility, but perhaps they've got this one mostly right without me realising!
Thank-you for all your good work as a marshal btw, I have lived near Oulton and Silverstone in my time so attended plenty of days that wouldn't be possible without you 👍
It’s doing that thing from the opening intro race from Forza Horizon where it rigs the finish no matter the drive. This is just rigging the engagement…
Haha, you know I'd probably accept a simcade trying to subtley keep the single player pack together so you have a better wheel-to-wheel experience. Some of the stuff on display here though is just plain bad unfortunately.
I always preferred the pre Drivertar opponents in Forza, they are programmed a lot better, I think with the Drivertas the machine learning tech is not really ready for games like this yet.
Sophy AI does pretty nice job in racing in GT7. Forza its just messed up right now and they have a long way to go before they fix it.
I never stopped playing FM4, I don’t think the AI is any better in that game. Almost everything seen here I’ve also observed in 4 too from too much braking to mess-ups to lapped cars blocking faster AI to 2 cars getting way ahead of the rest.
You can’t convince me they even changed anything. The game’s marketing was fraudulent, full stop.
This might come off strong but T10 really should just remaster FM4 on physical disk and fold. It’s been a decade of mediocrity I’m done.
I never found any of them issues in FM4, but see it all the time in 7 and the new Motorsports and even in the Horizon titles @@NitrousFox
@@symmetricbulldog2022 I play on Hard rather than Professional difficulty so it could be that, but the behavior is identical
Ever way we look at it, there is far better AI in other racing games and forza will never fix the issues, they say they are looking into it but nothing will really change because the focus is online play now@@NitrousFox
The funny thing is, in FM7 if a Drivatar was faster than another, they would actually pass the other driver and fairly quickly as well. I've seen a lot of people complain about FM7s AI but what you could do was set them to be a class ahead of you which gives them the handling they need to turn like you, then put on a power handicap around 0.8-0.9 depending on what car you are driving and what you prefer. Just like that the AI can race against you, are competitive, and will actually fight for positions without any of that rubber banding nonsense. It works great, seriously, try it out sometime. You can even just nerf your car instead using the handicap if you want if you are doing say a single make race. Nerf your handling and slightly nerf their engine to remove the rubber banding handicap they have.
That's an amazing tip to at least try out, thanks for that. In fact, I'm noting it down right now 📝
@@hotcircuit
Oh yea, I forgot to mention that to do this you need to set the race up to be in groups. You'll be in one and they will be in the other for this to work. You'll also need to make sure that the race isn't scored by group as well so everyone is competing against one another.
The brake checking is something I noticed early on and it happens all the time, literally for no reason
Practically stopping in a group on corners has become an expectation at this point, but catches you out horribly when they do it on straights too ☹️
@@hotcircuit 100% weird and uncalled for, then when you slam into them you get a time penalty lol, I like the driving, I think it feels good but the AI and the whole thing with upgrading the car are negatives in my opinion
04:25 The 1st n 2nd place cars were caught in traffic, you said to keep an eye on the top left, but if you also look at bottom left you can see there’s a bunch of cars ahead on the map.
There are many issues with this game, here’s 2 that bug me, do you ever get threat indicators when there’s no one there? I do.
Do you get threat indicators for ghosted lapped cars? I do….If it’s a ghost, how is it a threat!?
The AI driving style is something we should have more control over, having a setting of 1-8 is absolutely pants. I’d like to be able to adjust the drivers aggression, awareness, skill and pace. It’s unrealistic the current way they drive, online is more unrealistic but I guess I play against kids with anger issues.
I'll have to blur the map if I'm offering real prizes for guessing in future, hah. I get stuck indicators but they reset when I get near a car again but I hadn't paid attention to ghost ones - pretty sure I have them on some of my highlights that I missed at the time 😆
Yeah they have too many granular settings for force feedback but not enough for things like that!
So what ive found is the only was to combat the slow traffic is have a 2 to 3 second start delay, they seem to not get cramped up as much only attempting to battle someone they caught up to or someone who caught up to them. Usually have drivatar on level 9 and i can barley get close to first. Its worth a try to see what results you get. Ive done 40 laps at hockenhimering and its honestly the most fun to level up a car and actually play the game.
Great video btw!
Ah, a great tip and definitely worth a try too! Thanks for taking the time to watch & leave a comment 👍
Remember, they had 6 years.
Longer if we consider they could improve a little each time from Forza 1-7. But we won't mention that 😁
The A.I. just prepares you for online expectations
I've been overwhelmingly lucky with my online races, but then I get the odd one that reminds me 😬
Ive noticed this in GT7 as well, except they dont brake on a straight to that degree. Sophia (GT7 new race AI that is still being tested) is better than this it seems, however we are unable to use our modified vehicles with the beta AI as of rn.
The Sophy AI looks pretty decent from the isolated examples I've seen, hopefully it can become their standard option in the not too distant future so you can race it more widely.
„Build from the ground up“😂
I know in Forza Horizon, the drivatars or AI drives the way how you drive. You ram other vehicles, they do the same thing but it looks like Playground Games just set their “mimic aggressiveness” to aggressive on Forza Motorsport. They try to drive like you but they seem to over do everything like braking sooner, swerving and driving too fast at curves.
Damn how that wheels look at the start. It's the same as in forza 2
It's strange how this game can look stunning one minute, then dated the next but it totally can.
Quality video, and great production. You made great points and provided sufficient evidence. For a sub 1k channel this an extremely high quality video. Love it. Keep doing what your doing! Big ups!
Wow, blown away by that - thanks for taking the time to say! Always a great boost to read something like this when getting ready to put another video together 😊
Forza drivatar is always in my way, they're more like traffic but with higher speeds, and they rubberband a significant amount on "unbeatable", but I still manage to beat them anyway
In gran turismo the ai is slower (I think they reintroduced rubberbanding in gran turismo 7) but hey at least they respect the player, even in gran turismo 1-4 when they only cared about the line
I'll be interested to see after their statement this week if things improve, and how they improve. Trying to be smart (unless the learning model they speak of wasn't true) didn't really succeed in real gameplay.
I went thinking it would be like Dirt Rally 2.0 Rallycross but with more content and options. And I left disappointed in both ends.
The nissan in the rear view getting instant paintjob after reaching 120kph 1:04
Forza Motorsport '23 basically killed my motivation to continue playing in many ways
One of the biggest reasons was cheating AI in 2 events for the seasonal and how dumb they can act too
I was on the last lap of a 50 lap race at daytona and I had to get just a little bit of gas so I could make the final lap. As soon as I come out of the pit, I get rammed and everything on my car is broken. I even tried the race again and the same thing happened, smh.
🤦 That's mad, but I guess doesn't surprise me after this fiasco. Hopefully they'll at least get them performing to a consistent pace and less crash-prone. Level 7 difficulty seems more reliable after another recent video I released 😵💫
I don't have motorsport, but I recently bought and have been playing horizon 5. The behavior of horizon's drivatars is very similar to what was shown in this video, and here is what I've noticed:
I've found that every race is like this:
1) start far back in the grid, despite winning many races and being the canonical favorite to win
2) all drivatars move in tandem with no attempt to overtake each other and solely focus on blocking passes, even if that means attempting to ram you off the road and leaving 0 space when side- by- side
3) unless you race to perfection, being increadibly aggressive and not getting slowed down, the leader takes off, and the race is far too short to catch him.
It really seems as if the races are as short as possible in order to hide the drivatars' flaws. If you could start at pole and the race was long, you'd just end up miles ahead of everyone else.
Absolutely, this race is maybe 6x longer than many career mode races but coming from an ACC/iRacing kinda background I sometimes like races of endurance. Plus, they kinda encourage that length by making it 3h of driving to level 50 a car. The Drivatars are poor for the reasons you mention over a short distance but they really fall apart over long distance.
The point about starting last on the grid is very true. If we started with pole, the cowardly AI would never be able to pass because they struggle with taking any line that isn't the predetermined racing line. And they almost always over-brake for turns like sweepers where you only need to lift.
2:39 Izzys Rx8 from most wanted. Nice.
An idea for another video and if you want an absolute giggle is to do the same thing at Maple Valley Full. I was using S and/or R class, highest 'difficulty'. Not only are they slow they crash so much. Repeatedly. In the same places too. I lapped some multiple times because they were having such bad accidents and having multiple pit stops
I noticed something similar with Yas Marina when it released, they'll drive straight off into the tyre barriers on corner exit so much! 😬
@hotcircuit I did Grand Oak after my comment, AI Valkyrie went off loads. Down from X999 to P966 or somewhere like that. I think they had the maximum ballast added but they acted like they had drag tyres on when they went off on tight corners
great video pointing out a problem but one thing you shouldve done was go over your laptimes(ie mention your laptimes before you pit, and after to see if youve gotten faster or if they got that much slower)
Good spot, for me (not saying I was right) I'd given up on considering my pace was a factor when the times were absolutely tumbling. The outside factor of lapped traffic seemed too big an influence for that to matter but I'll try not to drop that kind of info in future.
@@hotcircuit I agree lapped traffic was the major factor(as you shown with the lappers diving up the inside and almost hitting you off track) but just knowing your pace would be just a little more information which is never a bad thing when doing something like this video.
I hate it when I mess up a corner, land in the middle of the road and all the drivatars just ram into me as if I'm not there. I don't even get the chance to get back on track because I'm being used like a bulldozer. I realize this game is not really a Sim, but it could improve so much by adding the smallest things such as blue/yellow flags.
Yeah it's frustrating. I think the idea that Forza isn't a full simulator shouldn't excuse it in any way because even the most arcade racer in the world would be no fun with opponents like Forza's.
@@hotcircuit Forza posted a community update today, in which they actually acknowledge the penalty and AI issues! Let's hope they manage to fix it🤞
11 months later and this problem persists. The Ai still have lane assist, crash assist and brake for no reason. This is incredibly frustrating when you have Expert Rules applied.
I'd rather play RaceRoom Racing Experience where AI are aware of other racers and actively avoid them or pass them.
Even as a newcomer to Forza Mortorsport i knew instantly from doing one of the longer races this was an issue as I said to myself in my head; "These AI have no idea that they've lapped much of the grid, they have no programming in them that lets them know that they have been lapped whatsoever." And it was astonishing to me. That's something you get from an early 2000s racer, not something from 2023, now 2024. I'm genuinely amazed that this was something that was not only never thought of but clearly never discussed with regards to endurance racing. Remember; I say this as a newcomer to FM.
I'm a newcomer too, so I don't have investment to defend the indefensible but I'm also not trying to make the game look bad, I just want to enjoy it. T10 have dropped the ball with so many things that, like you say, should be basic features in 2023/4.
Solid video m8! I know the struggle of building on TH-cam. Hope you make it one day!
Thank-you for watching & saying something like that. It means a lot 👍
10:30 the rear view mirror crash was a nice touch.
That Drivatar thing was always odd, i remember playing FH3 at the launch period and some Drivatars acting stupid asf, as it was replaying a behavior that doesn't make sense, unless you're racing online, since the start they said it would be like an a.i. copy of the player, turns out it copied everything wrong and even now with shitloads of data they have from us the players, they still didn't figure out how to make work properly.
Yeah it seems like a flawed model, I'm sure there are just human programmers behind many games like ACC, yet they do a much better job at appearing convincing.
At lower difficulty levels it can get weird if you sail past cars on the straights. What usually defines pace is braking, corner speed and exit speed rather than just coasting along a straight to shed laptime.
You'd hope only valid laps and in turn clean overtakes (so just avoiding the dreaded ⚠️ by your laptime) would count if they're genuinely trying to learn from good data. I'm not even sure these Drivatars have learnt anything though 😬
Seems about on par with the Horizon games, if you don't use a stupidly OP AWD car to take the lead before the first lap ends, you'll probably never catch up to the leader.
i have no problem with ai making natural mistakes, like running off the road or spinning, as it makes it more entertaining and also makes them more realistic as people make mistakes and if they are trying to emulate natural driving behaviour, mistakes should happen. but the brake checking is very bad, like you mentioned they brake on the straight. fh5 ai seem better than this.
Yeah absolutely, I did a video recently about Forza v iRacing and I did a quick AI race on iRacing to check I was up to speed and not going to destroy an online race for other people. That AI was extremely competitive but one or two did spin and run onto the grass like real drivers might - so yeah that's fine.
I wonder if some of the 'events' you came across are actually compounded in races with fewer laps. Like if the braking and other slowing happens about as many times in a race with only 8 laps or something.
The shorter/regular races are a bit more prone to having 1 or 2 drivers at the front running away but everybody else tripping over themselves a bit and sometimes straight driving off the track in an attempt to get ahead of you.
I tested this race as I wanted to level a car up to 50, predicted that'd take 36 more laps of time and just went for it. An attempt to see if AI would be more challenging when I had to be consistent kinda resulted in being more ridiculous than I'd bargained for.
I did all races and especially endurance races multiple times in FM7, mostly on the 2nd highest difficulty and figured out how the drivatar ai works. Now I refuse to purchase any new Forza before at least a year from release since they do not disclose the state of the game as beta, but looking at this video it still seems to work the same. Perhaps this might be useful to you.
All lap times and racing stats that you talk about are arbitrary, the car in the lead and behind you are linked to your personal performance per lap. Getting good to perfect ratings on corners will almost always reduce the leaders lap time, increasing exponentially for streaks, almost like combos. Not getting a good rank will reduce the distance with the car behind.
There is also a strange RNG anomaly that occur sometimes where the car in front just wins by a mile but this only happens like 1/10 races. This happens with FH4/5 as well and after this happens it seems like the game auto adjusts to tone it back down again, but you have to complete the race.
That's amazing info, you went deeper than me and it's fascinating. I wonder if I can try to replicate that by deliberately aiming for 1/10 or 10/10 corners at different times. I take it that's basically what you've done?
Not exactly. I stumbled upon this by continuously losing during a Sebring endurance race as it is hard to concentrate and have good laps for 2 hours straight. Once I got too far behind I restarted the race which did not allow the race to tone itself down by me losing the race. While trying to learn the track I turned on the track rating settings and eventually won the race by focusing on each corner and clean racing ratings, rather than lap times. By doing this, lap times obviously became very consistent which off course is required for winning in any form of racing, but it's the way the game adapts the drivatar ''skill'' on the fly I found interesting. When I am far behind in races against hard AI, I switch to this ''check box'' strategy with consistent results.
Can someone please explain to me what 'Drivatars' are?
As far as I know, they're AI disguised with actual usernames.
It’s just you vs the computer, dude
nah, the drivatars randomly brake checking you and shit on straights is straight up like real life public roads. ai been trained too well
Great video! Informative and entertaining!
Gained a sub for sure! Keep up the content!
That's really kind of you to say, thanks for your support 😊
My S2000 let me down. I’ve literally just realised how bad it is on level 7 Drivitar, trying to let an Audi go by so they could carry me to the podium places, I’d left on the straight, they’d brake. It’s maddening.
It really is, I only highlight this sort of thing because I want things to get better for everybody who bought this game, or are at least fans of the series and want to keep enjoying it. I'd love to know how the single player was tested... And how long for!
The AI fumbling over each other was one of the reasons why I turned contact off in career mode. It sucks when you damage your car because the AI brake checked you, but it hurts even more when YOU get penalized for hitting them. The AI being completely unaware of you or other AI existed since Horizon 3, maybe even 2, coincidentally when Drivatars were implemented. Ever since I turned contact off I've had a much better racing experience with not just the leading AI, but ALL of them; and it also makes starting in 24th with the goal of finishing 1st (Without driving dirty) realistically possible.
As a newcomer to Forza it fascinates me to hear people saying they've been like this for a long time. When a series makes it to the 8th version, you'd probably expect some improvement and innovation in that time.
Yeah, you're not wrong. We all thought after so many titles T10 would get it right only to be consistently let down. I personally really like FM8, and my multiplayer experience has actually been really solid, but I also understand that that isn't the majority of people's experiences.@@hotcircuit
Great content man, keep it up 👍
Thanks for taking the time to say, I'll do my best 😊
I cannot express how much it drives me nuts that either ai have no idea hoe to drive, or have cheats enabled so they win with a 1+ minute gap
Some people suggested we shouldn't expect them to be good "because it's not a serious racing sim" but it's a track racing game with car & career mode progression. It needs to be compelling and challenge the player in order to work imo 🤷
I've heard people say that after a very possible development hell, this game ended up being that they took Forza Motorsport 7 and tried to make some sort of a sequel out of it. I don't have this game, but I have 7, and the AI literally acts the EXACT SAME as you showed in this video. They cannot race with each other whatsoever, they overshoot certain turns on certain tracks (especially when they're driving very fast cars), they engage their hyperdrive on straights and rubberband away like crazy when they're alone, and when you pass them, they completely forget how to race. In addition, they create a train of cars behind you when they're not going off road on the same turns every lap
I was concerned to hear a few people say this, but with 8 games in this side of the franchise I can't believe they've not iteratively gotten better over time. Something has certainly happened behind the scenes during the last 6 years.
The model is based off the times and an average model of performance, it's not the actual movements of the original driver
So all ai are like Nikita Mazepin right now?
They do sometimes even swerve towards the side of your car on straights for the 100% authentic experience.
When it comes to just racing a car around the track i love it, I’ll rip laps in rivals mode all day. Multiplayer has even been pretty good but oh my do i hate racing the ai especially on the short career races.
I agree with you, the gameplay experience is dangerously close to what we'd consider "proper simulators", which makes the multiplayer pretty decent. In fact I only shout about things like this because they've snatched defeat from the jaws of victory on this one. It'd be nice to have any reason to play the Builder's Cup though.
@@hotcircuit even the weekly featured tours feel like a chore because i don’t wanna deal with the ai where they should be fun weekly events. I would also like it to better simulate the motorsports themselves with a race weekend structure and whatnot but that’s just me
Yeah i hate when i wanna pass em and they just push you off.. or breaking in the corners is also the worse
1:05 the car in the rearview mirror casually glitching out the colours...
Haha! Hadn't spotted that but sometimes it does take quite a while for the liveries to load in when that option is selected.
The main problem is that AI is blind and has too many "orders" to rely to to actually make the most important decissions like "overtake"
In turn 10's defence, i iracing I've at times just lost heapsnof time to people behind me when im in a high pressure position like 1st or something. Its a mental thing and i dont get that energy to push till im like almost getting passed or if im behind again. But hey thats just me lol
It's still absolutely "human" to make certain errors or be cautious around lapped traffic, but it's all a bit too frequent and weird for me here.
@@hotcircuit yeah exactly
I play horizon and ever since 4 (I'm a newcomer) the AI have been horrendous. They deliberately smash into you and hit you, they will brake check you for zero reason, and they seem actively hostile towards you. Then, if you don't pass the leader, they become INSANELY fast for no reason, making it nearly impossible to catch them-- but if you succeed, they slow down and you never see the ai again. Nothing about this makes any sense.
I agree, they fundamentally need to drive better around the player and each other. Once there, the 1-8 difficulty levels need to provide a consistent challenge rather than slow down once you get out front or disappear into the distance.
In FM7 I mostly do multiclass endurance, and my god the AI having no idea how to overtake lapped cars is the worst. especially when and LMP1 gets stuck behind a GT3 for half a lap at Le Mans
🤣 Oh god, that would definitely point out the issue more obviously. It was only really because I saw this behaviour by mistake that I have similar performing cars here. That leaves the argument open that the leader might not be much faster than the car it's lapping - but LMP struggling with a GT3... Yikes.
Lapped cars fighting the leader at least is realistic, most drivers in real life do not want to go a lap down. Though they should be much better at overtaking. The AI at longer stints seems to be better than FM7 at least.
Yeah I mean not every driver should jump out of the way like F1's blue flag rule but likewise they shouldn't race the leader when they're beaten either. That behaviour is what's causing the indecisive driving by the front runners causing them to get held up. I won't yield if they're being awkward but the AI will try anything (including lose 10s per lap) to avoid collisions with each other.
The ai on the Nurburgring bothers me with the random braking that is completely unnecessary
Yeah it generally seems to be better than it was, but they've not fixed everything yet.
I really enjoy your style of commentary! Very laid back and pretty relaxed. I wish I could get into this game more but I don't like how the cars sound compared to its competitors (or even previous entries tbh), and the AI is awful.
Thanks for the amazing feedback, thank-you. It's hard for me to care about the career with things in this state but I'm practically addicted to the multiplayer... Maybe that's just a me thing 😆
My favorite thing in the world is when I go a little too fast into the corner and any AI in my proximity does the EXACT same thing but 10X more overcooked lmao. Ran a 2.4 Hours of LeMans vs the AI and the Hypercars weren't on the same lap as me and I ended up winning in a GT car by a lap over everyone in the field at least save for 3 LMP2's that somehow managed to not kill themselves in the race at some point. I am by no means a perfect driver but against the top level AI its not even a challenge if you keep your nose clean in endurance racing. All you need to do is survive, something the AI seem to not do lmao.
Ah-ha! I mentioned this in a reply earlier, they almost seem tracked to your input as I went around the outside of a car, stabbed the throttle a little to try edging ahead and they just catapulted off into the gravel ahead of me 🤣
Ahhh the brake checking and road raging AI. I was playing on level 5 and has one AI keeping pace constantly trying to run me off the track for 1 whole lap 😂
I think that's what the P3 car that kept with me til the pitstop was on a mission to do. They turned into a pussy cat as soon as they met some lapped traffic though 😄
I am really enjoying Forza, but it has a lot of glaring flaws that Turn 10 needs to address. In single player, there are all the issues you show. I can't start mid pack on many tracks because the pile ups and ramming on the first and second turn usually put me out of any contention. And the AI strength thing still seems to be in effect from previous games where the only good drivers are the top 3 and the rest are just traffic. In open multiplayer the penalty system is so bad that it will often give the penalty to the person that got rammed but not the person doing a blatant ram. It seems to encourage ramming, and the safety rating is so easy to get to S that even if they do get penalties, they will be back in lobbies with clean safety rated players next race anyway. On some tracks a millisecond off track can result in more than a second of time added (looking at you Hakone) while other tracks allow you to drive off the track entirely and don't even call it a dirty lap.
I think this will be a brilliant simcade racer in a year or two when they get this all corrected. Right now it is just frustrating seeing what it COULD be.
Yeah you're spot on. I'm enjoying it too, I've been posting lots of positive multiplayer experiences, and I like the challenge of a new car rotation every week. Some of the other sims/games can get a bit samey (cough, GT3s) so that is the good side of Forza. Unfortunately, the the bad things are really turning people away in noticeable numbers, so I hope they get around to fixing them.
Still not as bad as the Gran Turismo 4 "AI"
GT4 has no AI the cars just drive a preset path at a preset speed, this means that in FWD cars the AI will ALWAYS crash on certain turns because they will not account for understeer. It also means they will CONSTANTLY slam into you because they are literally unable to react to your presence at all. It's basically like racing your car against a bunch of slot cars.
They must've been a sight to behold too 😄
I remember when FM5 came out and they were making a big song and dance about this intelligent new AI system and how it would reflect real world players and their driving styles, and since then all its been is the same hopeless COM drivers with no idea of their surroundings beyond 'complete a lap' and 'dive out the way when a player goes deep'
First racing games I played were NFS 2 and Test Drive 4 and both had better A.I. At least it has been able to overtake you off the racing line...
It's weird because like you say, they are capable of overtaking and running at a better pace but just keep stupidly tripping over each other 😄
Some version of Forza Motorsport was Racing GOTY..where do I download that one?
🤣
I really want to try this game, but the price, the wheel support and the AI makes me think twice.
I'd recommend at this point getting 1 month of Game Pass so you can see if it works for you. It's no secret that there are significant problems so wouldn't want to push a full purchase on anybody who wasn't sure. Plus then you can play some other games at the same time.
I have a Simagic Alpha Mini direct drive, which rarely appears on any game compatibility lists but it works just fine and feels pretty good.
I think its because they intentionally add AI that are "exceptional" and ones that are "awful"
The Problem with Forza is actually simple the devs have no idea how racing works. They just put things and say we did this big thing and are happy and in reality, it is just some trash that doesn't even work as intended. The AI in Forza has sucked all the way from Motorsport 5 & horizon 3 but it used to be somewhat OK in these games it has sucked massively and has no sense of rules and clean racing is just a broken mess that goes through everything without stopping typical Left Dev logic..
Game testers there must have a nightmare as I guess they ran into all this stuff and nothing was done 🤷
@@hotcircuit Oh it is a lot worse. I have been told by a friend in TT Studios that working there is basically agreeing with the Team lead or you basically get axed with the you don't fit well in this team we haven't seen any progress BS. Main topics of negativity towards projects are considered illegal there, If they are working on something it is the perfect most beautiful game ever if you complain about something you might get questioned if you actually care about modern Cough " Left" political values.
If you say no well you are about to be on the market.
@@KTBLGaming To say that sounds like a dysfunctional abusive relationship is an understatement. I'd love to see if anybody wanted to anonymously talk about it.
@@hotcircuitYeah it kinda is, would love that but not many people are going to risk the food on their tables to tell the truth on internet.
Forza Motorsport 2023 A.I.
1st place A.I = Max Verstapen
Every other A.I. = Family guy Asian "I turn now" lady.
😂😂😂
Why is it that the only games to have even competent AI in the last 5 years were Onrush and Grid Legends?
I can't even explain it as I've been racing some form of AI (or CPU controlled opponents) since Grand Prix 2. I'm not saying that was perfect, but it was released 28 years ago so I'd expect some progress since 😅
@@hotcircuit one of my formative games was Grand Prix 4 so I’m with you there! That game was amazing on this front too. Better than most games now. That said, fairly sure the bots in fucking wanadoo Sno Cross are ahead of what’s currently in GT7 and Forza Motorsport 2023 lmao
@@tecnoguy1136 Haha! Oh man GP4 and 3 were excellent. I had GPxPatch for the real TV overlays and ran 100% distance championships on keyboard 👍
@@hotcircuit maybe one day we’ll get a half decent offline driving game again. But then again, if people keep defending FM and GT7 we might never get it lol. Keep fighting the good fight with it.
Great video!
Thank you 👍
And this got racing game of the year?????
The industry is kinda broken in so many ways. AAA studios, incomplete releases, review/award media... Yikes.
They brake way to much, and still manage to drive off the track, Forza needs to stop copying and pasting 75% of their game, and improve their game almost 100%.
They need to be overhauled for the sake of the single-player career, hope they're listening to feedback from the community!
they are driving exactly like your average online opponent. Pretty realistic Id say!
😆
I seem to remember them saying that the drivatars 'learn' from players driving, so they pick up brake checking from the chuds online, can't remember where I heard that though.
Some people are saying that way of doing things was abandoned, but honestly I don't know if it's a flawed learning model (and the people teaching them online, like you say) or just really bad AI programming at this point.