Forza Motorsport 5 |OT| Where dreams are Realised

[shawtyoner]

See, that's what I don't get. He's talking about these things as if racers were asking T10 to work a miracle while they're really asking for some relatively minor additions.

Thats what I mean as well. Instead of Dan getting defensive when someone from the hardcore based side of Forza asks about simple things regarding tire wear and fuel consumption, he could have easily said, yes, we did have those features however we should've implemented them better. Or, say yes, we have looked at that and have made improvements to it for FM5.

By him deflecting, it's kinda like he's saying that it's not important to the franchise, and that T10 didn't drop the ball. I hope that interview got to him a bit, and made him realize that, it should be a simple fix, and that he has T10 working on it before release. 👍

 

[phillgt2002]

I couldn't help but chuckle to myself when reading this post. It's like you have Forza goggles permanently fixed to your face..

gt5 brad gt5

 

[HAL20XX]

By him deflecting, it's kinda like he's saying that it's not important to the franchise, and that T10 didn't drop the ball.

Not even "kinda". He said that they're not important to the series and that they didn't drop the ball. What they've done is right, according to Dan.

It's his justification of complacency that I find annoying. But then I see the laundry list of what else is coming to the series and I'm happy again. Damn you, Forza.

 

[shawtyoner]

It's his justification of complacency that I find annoying. But then I see the laundry list of what else is coming to the series and I'm happy again. Damn you, Forza.

Exactly, so many good things overall, but its just those little things that we know are so basic and simple that annoy the most.

 

[gt5 brad gt5]

gt5 brad gt5

Yeah I joined this forum for the GT series, hence gtplanet.net....👎

Wouldn't have bought every Forza title if I was blind loyal to one franchise...

EDIT: Just because my name has GT5 in it, doesn't mean I can't have an opinion on a Forza forum. Didn't mean to sound like an ass... no offence intended.

 

[HAL20XX]

^^^^ A lot of people do that here, so I think some of us are just touchy about it!

 

[Luminis]

Luminis i dont know what the big deal isa bout all of those things you mentioned.
Really not important imo.

Tss. Seems like you know nothing about racing, nothing at all. Which is okay, mind you, you're part of Forza's target audience. But if you don't know what you're talking about, you shouldn't be claiming what's important for the racing community and what isn't.

At least the tyrewear is better than gt5, where after a few laps the tyres start smocking like they're on fire and ruined. The tyrewear is in FM4 is realistic. New race tyres dont fall apart after 20 laps of racing. (maybe f1 at the moment)

Realistic? Not really. Also, being better than GT5 doesn't mean much, does it? Jsut because something out there is worse doesn't mean something is good. I mean, would you be happy with earning 3 bucks an hour just because some Mexican dude earns half of that? Doubt that.

Who cares about animated pitstops? Not me.

Me neither. But I am an adult and as such, able to relate to other people and think of their needs and desires as well. It's called empathy, typically something that a human being develops as it grows up. You should try that somewhen.

You talk about adjustable pit strategy, proper tyre wear and fuel consumption.
Forza has allmost all of those. Just not in career mode. Big deal.

What?! When was the last time you went from one type of tyre to another? WHen was the last time you had to stop for fuel, by the way? Le Mans prototypes manage about ten laps on La Sarthe, in FM4, I could practically do then times as many laps. How's that realistic?

If you want that go play f1 2012 that game has lots of tyrewear and pitstop strategies.

Yeah, I bet that's what Dan wants. People dropping their game because they're not implementing some rather basic features. Sounds like a supreme marketing strategy.

Fm5 will feature F1 and Indycars, all cars will have an Forzavista equivelant. That alone opens up a whole new type of online racing series with custum liveries and teams. I think a lot of people will be blown away after all this negative publicity. Mark my words.

First off, they don't have the F1 license. Codemasters does. Second, whole new type of racing just because you're racing cars with without fenders? Yeah. No.

2 years for a Forza because:

Turn10 have many employer and money, they make outsourcing in India and Vietnam . Indian ( Dhruva interactive ) had created all the Forza Vista cars and maybe 80% of Forza cars ( they work since the first ... ) , in Vietnam : they modelise car crash damage , cars and some tracks ... Turn10 concentrate only on physics, recording sounds and check the work of outsourcing ... For this reason they can bring a game every 2 years . But when you look closely in details , you understand why there no unity in this " creative and artistic " work in general : strange colors , strange texture ( taken from basic texture data bank ) when PD travel or use helicopter for taking the good shots who will become the texture of the game.
Since Forza 3 until Forza 5 : 4 years and still not having racing ingame features ... ForzaVista is just a question of hardwork from Indian . It not surprise me ... With Forza 5, including new racing features they can up the sells , if not , they can loose ...

And like said Tornado , is all question if Option ON / OFF and % ...

You mentioned PD, but you failed to point out that GT's racing hasn't developed any further, either.

Thats what I mean as well. Instead of Dan getting defensive when someone from the hardcore based side of Forza asks about simple things regarding tire wear and fuel consumption, he could have easily said, yes, we did have those features however we should've implemented them better. Or, say yes, we have looked at that and have made improvements to it for FM5.

By him deflecting, it's kinda like he's saying that it's not important to the franchise, and that T10 didn't drop the ball. I hope that interview got to him a bit, and made him realize that, it should be a simple fix, and that he has T10 working on it before release. 👍

Agreed. Just admitting that they could've done better would've made Dan look a whole lot better in that interview than he did.

 

[gt5 brad gt5]

^^^^ A lot of people do that here, so I think some of us are just touchy about it!

Understandable.👍

 

[Kake Bake]

For the love of god, will somebody at T10 please leak a video showing some sweet, creamy open-wheel gameplay goodness?

 

[Imari]

It feels a lot as though there's not someone at T10 whose job it is to make the racing part better.

I'm sure there's a guy in charge of physics; his job is to keep making the physics better each iteration. I'm sure there's the same for liveries, graphics, sounds, online, and just about everything else. But it doesn't feel like there's someone whose job is to sit down and map out what small improvements could be made to make the racing more involving.

Just a few small changes every two years will get them a long way very quickly. And it's enough for people that are concerned about these things to see that T10 are working on it, even if all the answers don't come at once.

 

[phillgt2002]

Hey guys.

 

[King1982]

@ Luminis

When you play Forza, a *lot* of information about what you are doing is uploaded. Are you circuit racing? Are you drifting? Are you in the "playground" type games? Are you painting, in the SF or AH, etc, etc, etc. This also includes race-lengths from user-created multi-player races.

Turn 10 analyzes all of that data to determine which features are being used the most, the least, and in-between. That information factors into future development decisions.

A few anecdotal comments:

There are a couple of established racing leagues, where they run races of lengths that pit-strategies would actually be beneficial. But how many people are participating in that? A few thousand, maybe (and I think that's being generous)? TORA has just under 1,000 players listed on their assigned-numbers list (no idea how many of those are actively racing). For reference - there are over 4.1 million times posted to the S-Class Alps Festival Leaderboard (the first race you run when you start the game).

When you look at the user-created races list, how often do you see lobbies set up for 45+ minute long races? Ever?

Back with FM3 and FM2, it was not unusual to see posts here complaining about the Endurance races. They were too long and boring. Many people talked about how they used the "hired driver" to knock those out (to get the 100% achievement).

Way back in FM2, you could pull up players' multi-player stats - it would show number of races, total time spent in those races, number of wins, etc. Shortly before FM3 was released, I went through the Leaderboards and started writing down some stats. I picked players at random (from the Top-500 on each LB), and recorded the number of races and total times. I forget the exact criteria I used, but I only looked at players with at least 100 races in their stats. After compiling a couple hundred sets of stats, I then looked at the average race lengths (total time divided by number of races).

The overall *average* race length was --- just over six minutes. Yep, only 6 minutes.

The highest average I found for a single individual was about 8.5 minutes.

Note that in FM2, there were no Hoppers --- the length of *every* multi-player race was set by the players themselves.

Now, if I'm Turn 10 and I'm looking at that data - typical user-created race is between 6 and 7 minutes, at most a couple thousand players active in long races - I'm probably not thinking "Oh, yeah, we should devote resources to developing a pit-strategies feature that will be used by less than 0.1% of our player base..."

 

[HAL20XX]

The problem with the above logic is that it only caters to the existing fanbase and does little to convince others to try out Forza.

Edit: Codemasters analyzed their users and found that only 5% used cockpit view in the original Grid. They removed that view from Grid 2. Now I'll never consider that game. This logic works both ways.

 

[Luminis]

Now, if I'm Turn 10 and I'm looking at that data - typical user-created race is between 6 and 7 minutes, at most a couple thousand players active in long races - I'm probably not thinking "Oh, yeah, we should devote resources to developing a pit-strategies feature that will be used by less than 0.1% of our player base..."

Yeah, and I bet that the fact that there's nothing in the game that makes endurance racing attractive doesn't have anything to do with that. For someone who wants some semi-serious racing, Forza doesn't offer much any more. Is it surprising that there are few players actually racing in a game where racing is (apparently) on the last spot of the priority list?

I've been around the official Forza forums a lot when FM3 was a thing. Back then, there were quite a lot of racing leagues that took the racing more seriously. If you used to spend some time there, you'll surely remember - but the leagues died out over time. From what I gathered from some of the members I knew better, mostly because they left for games that supported their preferred style of playing much better.

Most of the more "hardcore" racers are abandoning Forza - and that's precisely what these numbers reflect. They're not being catered to, so they leave. Not a sound strategy for T10 to pursue, in my opinion. Also, given just how easy some features could be implemented to improve the actual racing (since T10 already has the infra structure in place), it would be absolutely justifiable to allocate some resources to these things. I can't stress it enough: The racers aren't asking for much, they just want T10 to throw them a darn bone, from what I've seen and heard.

Also, going by that logic... I'd assume that most players are using driving aids and avoid simulation steering (I'm actually the only one I know IRL that cranks FM4 up to the max, including a removed HUD and such). The players I've got to know in person (read: Who aren't members on here or another website) adjusted the game to be easier to drive and, in turn, less realistic. So, let's just dumb the physics down and not allocate resources to that. The majority would likely neither notice nor care.

The problem with the above logic is that it only caters to the existing fanbase and does little to convince others to try out Forza.

Edit: Codemasters analyzed their users and found that only 5% used cockpit view in the original Grid. They removed that view from Grid 2. Now I'll never consider that game. This logic works both ways.

Another problem is that it doesn't value a player's dedication. 95% of players might not use cockpit cam, but if those remaining 5% made up most of the community that stuck with the game for more than a few weeks, you're still shooting yourself in the foot. Furthermore, just because a decision makes sense from a business point of view, I can still think it sucks.

 

[Northstar]

Now, if I'm Turn 10 and I'm looking at that data - typical user-created race is between 6 and 7 minutes, at most a couple thousand players active in long races - I'm probably not thinking "Oh, yeah, we should devote resources to developing a pit-strategies feature that will be used by less than 0.1% of our player base..."

A couple thousand is a lot though(I would say the number of sim fans playing Forza is larger), especially when it comes to those DLC packs months after launch when the "OMG NEW GAME!!!" crowd is on to new shiny games.

It's like operating a grocery store, a relatively small amount of people may shop the organic section, yet you would be stupid to get rid of it as those people will likely spend money in other parts of the store and if you were to get rid of it they would likely shop elsewhere.

 

[Kake Bake]

VG24/7 interview with Dan concerning career snippets, start cars, etc. No glaringly new info, but some welcome tidbits nonetheless.

 

[Tornado]

It's interesting that they are backing off from the gifting system that FM4 used to a more... based on how he explained it almost sounds like an Enthusia-like progression system (albeit money based instead instead of experience based?).

 

[Kake Bake]

I think it's a very welcome change. With everybody on this board up in arms about the arcade downfall they perceive Forza 5 to be on, this is a step toward something more serious.

Racing games that reward cars for finishes emphasize always finishing first or at least on pole. In GT, this encourages rabbit chases; in Forza, demo derbies to the front of a 2-lap sprint. With credits being the only reward this go round, it seems like the focus will be on improvement of skill rather than perfect finishes from beginning to end.

 

[Tornado]

Could also keep the game from running out of steam after the halfway point like 4 did, when you started running out of easy ways to get credits but started needing to buy new cars to push past the rest of the event list.

 

[12thgear]

I just had a random thought regarding the Kinect. Assuming it could get enough of a view of your hands, wouldn't it be cool if it could try to track some of your movements to make cockpit view more immersive? It would be pretty slick if your virtual driver is making the same movements as you.

 

[Luminis]

I just had a random thought regarding the Kinect. Assuming it could get enough of a view of your hands, wouldn't it be cool if it could try to track some of your movements to make cockpit view more immersive? It would be pretty slick if your virtual driver is making the same movements as you.

It would, but that'd require some rather tricky modelling and animating, I assume.

 

[ReverenceSatans]

I'd be happy with better head tracking.

 

[Minty]

It would, but that'd require some rather tricky modelling and animating, I assume.

Yeah, I could kinda see how it would be done with a wheel, regarding hand placement, but I don't really see how it would work beyond that.


And another random thought, I have to hope they've made a better call on how replays are handled. The replay compression was far too obvious in any of the previous Forza games, and it just made it more difficult to enjoy watching when even the R1 cars seemed to float over bumps in the replays. So with the addition of open wheel it's something that would stick out way too much. I've actually started watching the AI take a few laps after a race because it just looks better.

 

[Kake Bake]

And another random thought, I have to hope they've made a better call on how replays are handled. The replay compression was far too obvious in any of the previous Forza games, and it just made it more difficult to enjoy watching when even the R1 cars seemed to float over bumps in the replays. So with the addition of open wheel it's something that would stick out way too much. I've actually started watching the AI take a few laps after a race because it just looks better.

Oh man, that replay compression. I always want to use the "game cameras" in replay so I can look around the cockpit (which is a view I don't/can't normally use in Forza), but when I do, the hands look like they're on a Sunday drive while the rest of the car twitches around without any visible input from them.

Also, continuing with the open-wheel assumptions, I hope that its inclusion helps spell the death of the impenetrable black shadow diapers on cars with neat exposed butt stuff. For instance, the Ferrari F333 SP and Suzuki Monster SX4 both have cool bits hanging out the back for the player to ogle, but Forza's shadow diapers cover it all up even in direct sunlight. The only solution is to use photomode to increase the exposure, but that just makes it look terrible.

So, here's hoping, right?

 

[HKS racer]

The problem with the above logic is that it only caters to the existing fanbase and does little to convince others to try out Forza.

Edit: Codemasters analyzed their users and found that only 5% used cockpit view in the original Grid. They removed that view from Grid 2. Now I'll never consider that game. This logic works both ways.

Agreed. All this guru marketing analysis is what make big companies taking wrong decisions. These numbers don't count all potential customers, if you rely on them too much you'll trick yourself.

For instance: Removing interior views because you think only 5% of your user base actaully use that view is borderline stupid because Forza and GT proves people actually like to buy a racing game with high quality interior views.

 

[Luminis]

Agreed. All this guru marketing analysis is what make big companies taking wrong decisions. These numbers don't count all potential customers, if you rely on them too much you'll trick yourself.

For instance: Removing interior views because you think only 5% of your user base actaully use that view is borderline stupid because Forza and GT proves people actually like to buy a racing game with high quality interior views.

I think it was Jim Sterling who pointed out that people often claim to want something when in reality they want something different altogether. A focus group says they want a rich,dark coffee. But they're actually buying something sweet, weak and milky...

 

[Kake Bake]

And so the cashening begins.

Forza 5 Day One DLC: Four cars tuned to the top of their class.

 

[Tornado]

Exclusive DLC that is tied to which version of the Xbone that you buy, but which doesn't come with the game itself? That's... odd.

 

[Kake Bake]

Forza Motorsport official went down for a while today. Came back up with a new favicon sporting the FM5 logo.

Maybe T10 are also gearing up for some sort of July 4 information release? Maybe.

 

[HAL20XX]

Forza Motorsport official went down for a while today. Came back up with a new favicon sporting the FM5 logo.

Maybe T10 are also gearing up for some sort of July 4 information release? Maybe.

That would be highly welcomed. It's been pretty boring without any new information lately