- 599
- United States
TORA have had a team of some of the best drivers on Forza working on their builds for their races at one designated track, yet even with only 5 or 6 car choices there is always one that is better than the rest, and one that is really hard to drive or something that makes it unpopular. Even if T10 give him more precise ballast/restrictor tools, Raceboy isn't going to going to be able to make truly balanced builds for a hodgepodge of 10 (or more) cars in even just the 2 featured divisions of Forza GT and Forza Touring Cars.
This isn't a specific Forza problem (or a shot at TORA or Raceboy) as much as a general racing problem, as even real-world series with tight regulations that only allow one class of cars in often have multiple BoP tables for different types of tracks and even then still end up with races where the BoP looks wrong... It's just that Forza's tendency to blend a bunch of vehicles that don't belong together exacerbates the problem.
Using the touring car example, personally, I'd rather have a TCR class with 4 TCR cars that are more closely balanced and provide good racing, than a "Forza Touring Car" class with 12 cars but one type that dominates speed tracks while another dominates handling tracks and essentially forces you to keep switching to the "meta" car/car type for each track in the rotation.
I get that there are other issues with splitting them all up though, although I'd argue that has more to do with the playerbase than any real issue as it's something other titles make work just fine... or just fine outside of that boring group that just drives GT3 at Spa all the time anyways.
Part of it was continuing using existing architecture and updating the cars instead of buying all new ones.
The other thing to consider with NGTC is that it isn't reliant on manufacturers to build cars, as NGTC chassis use some control components and can be re-shelled, and there is a spec motor option available. Striking up a deal to shell a team's existing chassis and use a spec motor makes for a much cheaper barrier for entry for manufacturers than TCR, and means that regional branches of manufacturers can get involved without demanding the "home base" to build them a whole car for it.
It allows the teams to build the cars, where as TCR cars are all off-the-shelf from the manufacturer things. Several of the BTCC teams over the years have been (or were associated with) with engineering groups and built their own stuff and those typically don't like buying customer parts when they employ people to build/design those things.
Edit: Oh yeah, and NGTC allows RWD cars which is something that TCR doesn't.
A little bit on a tangent here and sort of a personal gripe, but it also helps stem the tide of customer racing homogenizing motorsport and stealing its soul. Look how boring GT3 has become, all of the smaller manufacturers and engineering groups have been chased off and none of the cars feel special anymore because every grid in every country has 3 of them. Same thing is happening in TCR, as the smaller efforts like STARD and the Kia, Onyx/FRD's Focus, and Top Run's Subaru never really got off the ground, and Romeo Ferraris and their Alfa and faded into obscurity and I think now Vukovic's Megane is basically dead too. All that is left is big manufacturers or a few national homologations for local manufacturers/models like Fiat in South America, MG in Asia, and Lada in Russia.
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