2018 Forza Racing Championship

[PJTierney]

@ManteoMax has done the usual compiling of info over on the official forums:

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ESPN has announced the Forza Racing Championship 2018:

ForzaRC World Championship features $100,000 prize pool
Imad Khan
February 13, 2018



http://www.espn.com/esports/story/_...world-championship-features-100000-prize-pool

The Forza Racing Championship will return in 2018, where competitors will compete for more than $250,000 in Forza Motorsport 7.

"Our vision for Forza is to bring together racing communities and real world automotive communities and gamers and actually create this massive community of gamers that love cars and love games," Dan Greenawalt, franchise creative director for Forza, said in an interview with ESPN.

It all starts with the ForzaRC 2018 Preseason Invitational on March 24th in Seattle. After that, the regular season will begin. It will be split into two series, each with seven weeks of ranked events, and ending with a live playoff event with a top prize of $75,000.

After the completion of both series, the top 24 drivers will be invited to compete in the ForzaRC World Championship, with a $100,000 prize pool.

(read the full article for more details)




"Drivers start your engines! We're taking racing esports to the next level with the Forza Racing Championship 2018. Starting today, drivers can register to compete for more than $250,000 in prizes. For more details and to register head to http://ForzaRC.com . #ForzaRC"

FORZARC.COM
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www.ForzaRC.com has all the info:

• Registration link
• Video promo for ForzaRC 2018
• Overview of prizes
• Overview of the Pre-Season Invitational and Regular Season
• Calendar from March to October
• Tune In dates for livestreams on Mixer
• ForzaRC Youtube

More info will follow in March


REGISTRATION
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Drivers can register now for the events beginning in April. Drivers need to be 16 years old. There is no fee required. Steps:

1) From www.ForzaRC.com click "Register Now"
2) Be sure to read the Terms & Conditions, and the FAQ linked at the bottom of the registration page.
3) Sign Up to create a Gfinity account. You'll need an email address, and then you'll need to respond to an Activation email message.
4) Log In If you know your Gfinity account email but have forgotten the password you can recover it with the link to send an email.
5) Link your Xbox Live Gamertag to your Gfinity account. If you have previously linked your XBL account to your Gfinity account, you can select "Refresh Gamertag" and should see the success message on screen. If your account is new, go to the upper right corner drop down menu and select Edit Profile - at the bottom of your profile page you'll see an "XBOXLIVE" field to type in your gamertag.

Follow ForzaRC.com for news and updates as we get nearer to events.

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Tagging @GTPNewsWire, @SlipZtrEm

 

[PJTierney]

Some Dan Greenawalt quotes from the ESPN article:

"Our vision for Forza is to bring together racing communities and real world automotive communities and gamers and actually create this massive community of gamers that love cars and love games,"

"Motorsports are a very expensive thing to get into,"

[...]

"That's not really the case with today's esports. The ultimate goal of being an esports competitor is to be an esports competitor. It's to be a top champion,"

"I think it's a mistake for us to mirror real-world racing. Because at the end of the day, real-world racing has somebody's life on the line,"

"The most fertile ground is not to be looking at what's impossible, but what's impractical,"

"When you start getting into track design, you start getting into a really interesting place. Where it's plausible, real physics, it could happen on earth. If you had trillions of dollars and the will, you could go build it. But you never would because it's impractical. That's the space where I think we get into something really interesting,"

From the sounds of it, ForzaRC will focus more on the esports aspect of competition, rather than the GT Academy approach of trying to replicate and produce real racing drivers. In other words, play to the advantages of Forza as a racing game, and not as a copy of real-life motorsport.

This makes sense as esports in general is primarily a marketing activity (until a game reaches League of Legends level where the "sport" is as important as the game itself), and one of its goals is to make the game appealing to newcomers and active players alike.


Game-wise there's this, probably a similar feature update to Forza Motorsport 6:

There will also be a new update for Forza Motorsport 7, giving viewers new spectate and grid features.

...and to get into speculation territory, the March Invitational is sponsored by IMSA.

 

[PJTierney]

https://www.forzamotorsport.net/en-us/news/forzarc_2018_announce

More info, not only on the RC but Monday's content update:

Esports Features Coming to Forza 7
We’re always looking for new ways to deliver a phenomenal experience to both players and fans alike and we’ve got a number of new, esports-centric features lined up for Forza Motorsport 7. Today, we’re excited to share the first two features: Spectate and Seed the Grid. These exciting features are a cornerstone of the Forza Motorsport 7 esports experience and, since they last appeared in Forza Motorsport 6, have been rethought and redeveloped from the ground up for Forza Motorsport 7 to deliver a dramatically improved on-track experience for both drivers and viewers:



Spectate
Watch live multiplayer races with our brand new Spectate feature. Improved camera transitions and performance means you’ll never miss the action. Positioning data for on-track cars is 100% precise as well, which means that what players see in Spectate is exactly what’s happening in the race.



Seed the Grid
Players will be able to set up multiplayer races just as they like with the new Seed the Grid feature. Lobby hosts can now manually set the grid order during race setup, and a completely overhauled interface offers hosts and viewers alike new details, like real-time player grid position changes.



Both Spectate and Seed the Grid will be added as part of our February content update for Forza Motorsport 7 and represent just the start of our esports feature set.

Looks like the regular season will be using Multiplayer lobbies:

Ranking Up

When the competition begins on April 2, all registered drivers begin their race to the top of the leaderboard. As part of each seven-week series, drivers will compete in ranked events, earning points and climbing the leaderboard as they go. Look for a full breakdown of the tournament structure and scoring in March.

 

[PJTierney]

 

[Populuxe]

I signed up for it, but there's no way I'm even going to be in the top 90%. I'm just in it for the participation prizes.

 

[PJTierney]

Here’s the handbook with rules: https://d3kq2xhl2rew87.cloudfront.net/media/files/forzarc_2018_handbook_and_rules.pdf

The big one that I’ve spotted is that the competition is Xbox only.

 

[Northstar]

The pre-season thing starts tomorrow and if you watch the stream you apparently will receive some in-game prizes, no clue what they are though.

Info here.

 

[DG_Silva]

Taken from the site currently:

Quest 1 - Log into the site (apparently) - '69 Ford Mustang Boss 302 FE with the Year of the Dog livery
Quest 2 - Retweet @forzamotorsport from an overlay or the Twitter Panel - ‘88 Holden VL Commodore Group A SV
Quest 3 - Watch 20 minutes or more of the livestream and answer at least 3 polls - '17 Aston Martin DB11 with the ForzaRC livery
Quest 4 - Watch 60 minutes or more of the livestream - ForzaRC Driver Suit
Quest 5 - Watch the entire show (240 minutes) - ’17 Nissan GTR

There's also raffles during the show you have to click to enter.

 

[PJTierney]

 

[PJTierney]

https://d3kq2xhl2rew87.cloudfront.net/media/files/forzarc_2018_handbook_and_rules_1.3.pdf

The rulebook has been updated with a bunch of things, including future car/track combos.

 

[PJTierney]

This is the bracket I'm in tomorrow, some quick ones in there...

 

[PJTierney]

Leaderboards for week 1 are up on Gfinity.

Europe:

Global:

Not bad for a casual racer

I doubt I'll take part in future Qualifiers since I've got no hope of making the playoffs, but it was nice to see how I stacked up.

 

[Populuxe]

No freebies in today's stream.

 

[PJTierney]

No freebies in today's stream.

 

[Populuxe]

🤬 it. When do these :censored:ing things start? I keep missing out on the time and poll quests because I tune in either too soon or too late.

 

[Populuxe]

Afternoon races are live, so people can pick up the goodies for the next 1hr 55m.

 

[Populuxe]

Races are live. If you miss this one, you can tune in again in five hours for a repeat. Here are the prizes:

 

[Populuxe]

Today was round 1 of the second series. A replay will happen in four hours.

The prizes were 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T with a special (and very groovy) livery, 2017 Maserati #35 M. Calamia Swiss Team MC Trofeo, 1998 Porsche 911 GT1 Straßenversion, 2017 Mercedes-AMG GT R, and the Sambadrome driver gear.

 

[-Fred-]

That livery would have been a lot cooler on the Vandura or Samba Bus.

 

[AlienDeathRay]

Wait, there were prizes? I watched it on mixer, and I didn't see anything about that. I only watched it for the 1st race in the '70 Challenger at Road Atlanta. Or was I on something different? I clicked on it when it came up, but it took me to Mixer I think. Fortunately it looks like I didn't miss out on much, except for the Groovy Challenger. I gotta pay more attention to this. I'm already peeved to have missed out on the 1st Forza RC Driver Gear.