Racing - yeah, more on Forza

The game is not perfect, but it is damn fun. I just wish there was an easy button.

No videos this time, but this week I continued my quest to competency in the new Forza Motorsport. The current state of my abilities is that I have an S rating and my level is about 3600 (out of 5000). This means that I pay attention to my driving (the S class is the highest sportsmanship¹). These are used to pair you with competitive “Lobbies” for you. That is matching both your sportsmanship rating and your skill rating. Sounds good.

But I suspect that the algorithms for matching are not that good.

As an example, one would expect that I would be paired with people about as fast as me, and who have striven to maintain an S sportsmanship rating. But my empirical evidence is that every lobby² I have raced in there are 4 or so MUCH better racers, a cloud of us in the middle, and 2 or 3 shitty players.

This means that the best players qualify at the front of the grid, I am usually in position 9 - 14 (out of 24), and there seem to always be a handful of players who don’t attempt to qualify and are thus grouped at the end of the grid.

The races are predictable. The lead pack breaks away immediately, often getting to 10-12 seconds ahead of the scrum before the end of the first lap. They leave the pack for dead.

The scrum has a lot of bad behavior. There is a lot of ramming, pit maneuvers, off track excursions, and shitty behavior.

And herein lies my conundrum. I can charge in and just ram, cram, push, bomb, and other antisocial behaviors to stay in the mix, or I can actively try to maintain my sportsmanship S class.

Alas, the number of times I have been rammed, pushed off track, and spun around, to then become a backmarker. And then I get to race in clear air, but my results are disappointing.

I think I am OK with that. I am still having fun. There is only one winner, and three spots on the podium.

If I want to “win” I could either get a LOT better, or I could go back to career mode.

Getting Better

What am I doing to get better? I was using the career mode, and free-racing to get practice on different tracks/layouts³.

But then I heard a piece of advice. In the race menu, there is a “Rivals” mode. That lets you pick a class, a track, and it pairs you with a recorded racer.

It starts with the ridiculous. My first attempt I picked Maple Valley class D (so I could race my 1984 VW GTI) configuration for the track, and it paired me with a racer. I had to do a double take as this track usually takes me about a minute and a half, and the avatar I was racing against was a 6+ minute time.

But that is normal. After you get that first avatar dispatched, it uses your last lap time to get your next rival, and it will be a time to challenge you.

By the fourth or fifth racer you face, you start (at least I do) having to get cleaner, take better lines, and look for ways to shave tenths and hundredths of seconds off to finally get past the avatar.

But, you can also view the leaderboard, and you can see how far you are from the top time in that class/track. And you can play that replay. This is very helpful, you can see what a worldclass driver doing it about as perfect as can be done.

And they are impressive.

The leaderboard also give you clues to their configuration(s) so you can see are they using ABS and Stability Management aids, as well as if they are using a manual transmission, or manual with clutch, or automatic. The manual with clutch is fastest. It seems to be a handful of seconds faster per lap, but I am fumble fingered and have never gotten comfortable with that. But it might be time to grind at it.

Last thoughts

As I mentioned in the prior post on competency, there are no shortcuts to proficiency, and a lot of repetitive, consistent practice is needed.

I am getting better. But it is not a rapid process.

1. S is top, then it goes A thru F, not smashing people intentionally, divebombing and being a shitty human being.

2. You might be wondering about the term “Lobby”. Since races are fixed length, and not indeterminate, continuous activity, players are grouped into a “lobby” and they can join at any time during the pre-race practice. Also, it allows for players to “qualify” that is to achieve a best lap time to determine the starting grid position.

3. There are a lot of tracks, but each track has 2 or more layouts. Always a “full”, but usually a “Club” shorter loop, and then reverse as well as forward directions. And you need to get comfortable with them all to be a great racer.