How many people really play Forza 3?

[HBR-Roadhog]

I am wondering how many people actually play this game. I had an old gamer tag that I recovered on my Xbox and started up Forza 3 for the first time on it. The game forces you to run a little 2 lap race right off the bat before you get a chance to do anything in the game.

I ran just this race and went straight to the leaderboards to see that I was in the top 76% overall. This comes out to the fact that my one race was better than 620 thousand + who played at least long enough to run this one race and also shows that at least that many gamertags did not finish any race after this inital run. So that leaves just over 2 Million gamertags who either did better on that 1 race and stopped or ran more than 1 race. Of those several belong to the same person. For example I have ran that race on 4 gamertags and have went pretty far into the game on 2 tags as have my 2 brothers and a few of my friends so I think it is safe to say that less than 2 million have driven more than one race. They claim they have sold over 2 million copies but it seems odd that people would buy the game and not run at least a few races not to mention that fact that some who have ran the races may have bought the game used.

Just wondering what the real numbers are.

 

[drivatar]

Don't forget the people that play offline. Especially the original systems without Wi-Fi are often unconnected.

Similar question: Circuit Hoppers: How many racers are we?

 

[YSSMAN]

If you're good at the game, it isn't too hard to be sitting pretty on most of the racing list. I'm in the top 2,000 on a lot of tracks, and I'd consider myself a pretty casual player with Forza 3. It is one of Microsoft's best-selling titles, but it has been overshadowed by Halo and so on as of late. I believe their holiday bundle will be including Forza 3 and Alan Wake, so I'd expect the player lists to grow significantly in the coming weeks and months.

 

[Wiegert]

All you have to do is set a respectable time on a few tracks in cars from different classes when connected to Xbox Live, which is what i've done. It shouldn't be too hard to get into the top 10% for overall lap times.

 

[HBR-Roadhog]

I know it is not difficult what surprised me is that just one dirty lap on the very first race put me in the top 76% of players who had a posted time. That is just one race and we are talking overall circut race time here. If someone ran even one additional race and did it poorly they would still be 15-20 minutes ahead. Which tells me that a lot of people quit after just that 1 race.

On my primary account I have lots of top 100 times and prior to the big scoreboard wipe I had made it up to the top 25 on overall circut time and prior to the major glitched cars showing up I had #1 overall on Ovals for a couple of days.


Edit: noted on the offline racers. I am sure there are at least a few who would fall into that Category and not show up in the leaderboards.

 

[CAMAROBOY69]

You also have to keep in mind that not everyone races in this game just to get the best times. There are a LOT of races in this game. So its very understandable that you would do well in the first few races for sure. I have quite a bit of time into the game and I am only about 22% finished. Almost none of my game time was trying to beat leaderboard times. So in most of my races I am lucky if I am within the top 20,000. I have completed several races where I was in the top 50, I have also completed several races where I was in the top 100,000.

Just think about it. How many people that just got a brand new game are going to spend their time on the very first race over and over again. Most of us want to make some progress right away so we can get some more cars in our garage. Not waste time on the first race of the game with a bone stock car and no settings. People are not quitting after the first race, they are simply moving onto the next race.

And if you have made it into quite a few 25 on the leaderboard then you should not be surprised at all that you are in the top 75%. Sounds like you are just really good. Much better than I am.

 

[HBR-Roadhog]

It doesn't matter it they race for the best times or not. You see Forza comes up with an overall time that is 30 minutes per track per class. If you run a clean 2 minute lap on a track in a class that you have not yet posted a lap on then you time is reduced by 28 minutes. If that same lap was dirty then your time is reduced by 18 minutes instead. If you then run your initial car on any track in career, multiplayer, free run or leaderboard then your time will be reduced more.

This is what i am talking about that first race I did not even try, auto brake on auto tranny I just wanted to get to the purchase car screen and my overall time [with the 10 minute penalty] was higher than over 600 thousand who played the game while connected to the internet.

If these people had ran just one race in thier starting car and got a dirty lap under 20 minutes they would be ahead of the time I posted and if they ran on 2 tracks they would be way ahead. There are very few people who would take 20 minutes to complete thier best lap on any track. Drifting [poorly] around the ring maybe but that is about it. There are lots of tracks that can be done in under 1 minute even by horrible drivers.

Edit: On another note it is possible even likely that when they did that big leaderboard wipe that thousands of people just never bothered to play again.

 

[CAMAROBOY69]

You are just that good.

 

[Eric.]

I think the answer you're looking for is...Who cares? That's a silly statistic to try to use.

Also, have the leaderboards ever been flushed (due to cheating/glitching)? If so, most people aren't ever going to rerun that first race.

 

[HBR-Roadhog]

LOL

I think you just do not understand where I am coming from.

Let's say that Forza starts you with an overall time of say 567 hours. You run the intro race which is an A class race. You get a lousy lap of say 3 minutes and a penalty on top of that which means your total time is going to be reduced by 17 minutes. In other words the 30 minutes allocated to that track in that class is changed to what you actually ran 3 minutes + 10 minutes for getting a penalty so your total time would then be 566:43

Now lets say you take your little Cobalt or whatever you choose and run the first race in the first event. These are usualy short tracks to get you started so let's say your best lap is a poor one at 2 minutes with a penalty added on. this would reduce your time by an additonal 18 minutes making your total time 566:25

Now I only ran 1 race and did it badly with a penalty but lets say I drove the X1 and did it perfectly and somehow manged to pull a clean 30 second lap my time would be 566:30 which still would not be as good as the person who ran to races with poor times and penalty on both.

See what I mean?

Edit responding to Post #8

 

[LJ]

I think you will find that the majority of laps on any circuit are dirty. So getting a 10 minute clean lap on say lemans on a track will get you into the top 30% or something

 

[Bogie 19th]

In regards to offline people. There are 15 million Xbox 360s that are played offline, so you are missing out on a bunch of potential stats.

 

[HBR-Roadhog]

I saw somewhere that they had sold over 2 million copies of Forza 3 and just over 3 million of Forza 2. When I saw the number of posted times just over 2.6 million I initially though that must be just about everyone and a lot of them must have put it down right away.

Of course now I realize that of those posted times some are actually the same people with more than one gamer tag and some of those pulling up the rear are likely ones who had times deleted and never bothered to play again. This would account for some of the wierdness in the numbers there.

I was just amazed at first that 1 dirty lap put me overall ahead of 24% of all users on all circut tracks.

 

[Starfirebird]

I would say not too many.

Back when i played FM3 i would play career for a while and then hotlap for a while.My overall times for Circuit and P2P hotlap sessions were in the top 500.Just recently i went back to check my times and i am still in the top 500.

My thoughts are that many people who loved FM2 hated FM3's Penalty system and that drove them away from running a Hotlap session.

Another thing is career and car cost.The career was ok,but not good to the point you would want to finish it.I loved some of the earlier races and i even done all the Endurance races,but most of these races felt like a chore to get done.I suspect this being one of the reasons as well for people not playing.

Now the Car cost really kept me from buying some of the most wanted cars in the game.With how much money you receive from some races you would have to do race after race after race just to get a small fortune and i do mean small.That's pretty hard to do when you work a full time job,lead an active lifestyle and maybe have 3 hours out of the day to play games.

Even though there is the storefront in this game,you don't really make any money unless you are a popular tuner or painter.I'm a decent tuner and i made maybe 200,000 credits in a 7 month period of time.

These could be some of the reasons why people don't play anymore.Not sure though,just thought i would throw these out there. 👍

 

[Kreepnslayer]

Still playing this game a minimum of twice a week. I'm involved with 2 race series that are done by the guys over at wheelracers.com
We just wrapped up a long multi-class ALMS type series the other night with an epic 2.4 hours of Le Mans. We ran this on Mondays. It was team based and each team had a specific manufacturer they represented. We used no assists and ran full damage on. Made for some exceptional racing moments, especially having multiple classes of cars on the track at once.

We are getting ready to start a "Corvette Evolution" series on wednesdays where we will race the different years of corvettes for the next 8 weeks or so.

We may so start a small NASCAR series for Saturday nights.

We have quite a lot of Forza players over there so yes, there are at least 20 or so people still playing this game.

 

[HBR-Roadhog]

Yes the penalty system is crazy in FM3. On Lemans if you even so much as touch the rumble strip going into the chicanes it flags your lap.

 

[Kreepnslayer]

Yes the penalty system is crazy in FM3. On Lemans if you even so much as touch the rumble strip going into the chicanes it flags your lap.

This is stretching it a little. While it may be more strict than others would like it doesn't penalize you for touching the rumble strips here. We just ran 2.4 hours straight there and I practiced quite a bit for the event. I got a lap time of 3:25.016 in a stock, non-tuned #7 Porshe Spyder. This was a clean lap, and I can assure you I did more than touch the rumble strips.
I like the penalizing system in Forza 3 to be honest. It's not lenient in any way. You must run a clean lap on the racing line without getting more than 2 tires off track. That's not asking too much of someone. The rumble strips are meant to have the inside tires touch them in a turn, not the outside tires.

 

[HBR-Roadhog]

It is not the case on all the strips but on some of them it does indeed I have saw it too many times. In fact I drove it today to try out the new wheel and heading into the first chicane on the long straight I just clipped the rumble strip on the right side as I entered the chicane and there was the penalty marker. Same if you clip the rumble strip on entrance of the second chicane. Not even half the tire was on the strip and the lap was flagged. It does this every time in these locations on this track. Meanwhile the last chicane [the one right before the finish line] allows you to totally straddle it and no penalty.

The game is quirky like this no apparent reason for it to delcare a penalty in one case and not in the other but it most certianly does.


based on your time I assume you were driving the Old Lemans track which does not have these 2 chicanes where the problem is at?

Edit: If you doubt this try it for yourself. Run the full Lemans and as you come down the straight into the first chicane let your right tire touch the rumble strip and see what happens or the left tire on entrance to the the second one. You might get away with an inch of rubber on it [maybe] but not much more. These are the only spots I know of where it is this bad but in these cases all four tires are still in contact with the actual track and only a small part of the tire is on the strip. Should be totally legit but it is not.

 

[Eric.]

The other place that always catches me with an invalid lap is New York. The double-apex turn 1 and 2 (there's a big Genesis sign on the outside of the turn). If you follow that inside wall, what would be the second apex actually has the corner of the wall angled. Take a tight line around this and you'll get a penalty.

 

[HBR-Roadhog]

Yep. I forgot about New York but you are right a tight line will get you every time even though there is no indication that you should not be able to drive there.

 

[Kreepnslayer]

based on your time I assume you were driving the Old Lemans track which does not have these 2 chicanes where the problem is at?

No, this was not on the old Le Lemans track. It was on the new one with the chicanes on the long straight.
Also, you say you were testing out a new wheel. If your looking for a strictly "wheels only" group check out Wheelracers.com.
Great bunch if people and very active. We play more than just Forza and are looking forward to GT5 coming out as well.

 

[oldmodelt]

I am wondering how many people actually play this game. I ran just this race and went straight to the leaderboards to see that I was in the top 76% overall.

Maple Valley in the Ford Focus last night. Top 40%. If I drop another second I move up about 700 places.

Drivatar: Similar question: Circuit Hoppers: How many racers are we?

Give me some time. Best times are 12-2am (CDT) -6 GMT for me.

I think you will find that the majority of laps on any circuit are dirty. So getting a 10 minute clean lap on say lemans on a track will get you into the top 30% or something

Not my experience. Did a 4'20 using my son's gamertag about 1 1/2 mos ago and it got me/him a top 65% ranking.

Yes the penalty system is crazy in FM3. On Lemans if you even so much as touch the rumble strip going into the chicanes it flags your lap.

Ahh, technology. We could go back to GT4 honor system. I welcome it because I've always run pretty clean. (I'm not saying that you don't.) But I suspect that there was fudging done by plenty of other racers. A second here or there. That's why when I have a really good run (for me) I try to post it. See GTPLMS #5 AH and the recent GTPCTC ones at GVS and OP.

Now I don't have to worry about some stranger in (insert place) excessively cheating.

 

[HBR-Roadhog]

Top 40% on Maple Valley full, maple valley circuts or overall Circut races? Big differences here. I have been referring to overall stats rather than track/class stats which shows all who have ran circut races in any car where as track/class stats show only the track and class many people have not driven them all but it is odd how many do not have times on hardly any at all.

The problem with the penalty system is that it is bugged some tracks flag you in some spots when you are clean. Full Lemans and New York mentioned above are good examples.

The penalty system only effects the leaderboard rankings so if you are in a race there is nothing to prevent people from as you say excessively cheating and winning the race they just don;t get credit for a clean lap time on the leaderboard. They still get the money and the ranking for the win.

GT5Ps penalty system is much better.


Edit: I was running the full Lemans again today and I noticed that it is not just the entrance to the 2 chicanes on the straights that is a problem but all 3 spots you would normally want to aim for in each of them. In other words the entrance, center and exit portions. You can get away with some tire on the strip but not a lot of it. In the other areas of the track you can cross over the strip so long as 2 tires remain on the pavement you are fine. I even had one case where I kicked out the rear into the grass on entry into a corner while keeping the front tires on the pavement and that was fine but the fast line through the chicanes on the long straight will get you everytime.

 

[Granturismofan2]

Im a gran turismo fan 8)

 

[Khaddar]

I am wondering how many people actually play this game. I had an old gamer tag that I recovered on my Xbox and started up Forza 3 for the first time on it. The game forces you to run a little 2 lap race right off the bat before you get a chance to do anything in the game.

I ran just this race and went straight to the leaderboards to see that I was in the top 76% overall. This comes out to the fact that my one race was better than 620 thousand + who played at least long enough to run this one race and also shows that at least that many gamertags did not finish any race after this inital run. So that leaves just over 2 Million gamertags who either did better on that 1 race and stopped or ran more than 1 race. Of those several belong to the same person. For example I have ran that race on 4 gamertags and have went pretty far into the game on 2 tags as have my 2 brothers and a few of my friends so I think it is safe to say that less than 2 million have driven more than one race. They claim they have sold over 2 million copies but it seems odd that people would buy the game and not run at least a few races not to mention that fact that some who have ran the races may have bought the game used.

Just wondering what the real numbers are.

There's something that doesn't stack up here.

Today there are 2698581 gamertags listed on the Circuit leaderboards. Assuming there's relatively little movement since your test, with the leaderboards showing you in the top 76% you're actually in the top 77% (why have T10 never fixed this simple calculation?) or the top 2077907.

I have a friend who I introduced to Forza. His Xbox is mostly disconnected from the internet, but we hooked it up last time I visited and ran some races online. He won't have many times recorded on the leaderboard, but he'll certainly have more than one. He's currently in position 2259xxx with a total time of 596h58.

Actually, checking my Friends leaderboard again I see I have two other friends outside the top 2.2m places, one of whom is in 2219xxx with a total of 589h44.

And something else I've noticed while typing - yeah, I should have planned this out better - is that my alt gamertag, which I think has only run 3 or 4 quick races, is sat in 1974xxx with a total time of 565h41.

I've no idea what causes this, but there are definitely inconsistencies in the total times which seem to account for what you experienced.

 

[mykem]

I know I'm not playing Forza 3. My neighbor's wife used both his FM3 discs as shims to even out their dining room table (after putting the extension) for last week's dinner party. I was talking to one of their guest at the dinner party, after losing another saved game and gift cars, he threw one of the disc out of his living room window (and accidently killed a bird).

And I asked the neighbor if the first disc is still useable so that he can still play the game. Despite instructing his wife to make sure that both discs are facing inward (while being used as shims), she assumed that he wanted to keep the labels not the data intact.

That would definitely make three people that are not playing Forza 3 (plus the other 6.87 billion people in the world).

 

[HBR-Roadhog]

There's something that doesn't stack up here.

Today there are 2698581 gamertags listed on the Circuit leaderboards. Assuming there's relatively little movement since your test, with the leaderboards showing you in the top 76% you're actually in the top 77% (why have T10 never fixed this simple calculation?) or the top 2077907.

I have a friend who I introduced to Forza. His Xbox is mostly disconnected from the internet, but we hooked it up last time I visited and ran some races online. He won't have many times recorded on the leaderboard, but he'll certainly have more than one. He's currently in position 2259xxx with a total time of 596h58.

Actually, checking my Friends leaderboard again I see I have two other friends outside the top 2.2m places, one of whom is in 2219xxx with a total of 589h44.

And something else I've noticed while typing - yeah, I should have planned this out better - is that my alt gamertag, which I think has only run 3 or 4 quick races, is sat in 1974xxx with a total time of 565h41.

I've no idea what causes this, but there are definitely inconsistencies in the total times which seem to account for what you experienced.

The times are pretty legit as far as I can tell. 3 or 4 quick races assuming they are on a different track or a different class will shave 1 1/2 - 2 hours off of your overall time - the actual laptimes and penalty if any.

If your time dropped to 565 then you have a lap time posted on a few tracks in a few classes.

Now there is one way that you can be ranked higher with fewer races and that is if you ran them before the track pack was released and none since. In this case you will have a total time that is 30 minutes per new track per class lower. In other words 11 classes * 2 tracks * 30 minutes = 660 minutes = 11 hours.

So instead of starting at 600 hours you would be starting at 589 hours. This would be equal to running 1 car on apx 23 short tracks.

 

[Khaddar]

If your time dropped to 565 then you have a lap time posted on a few tracks in a few classes.

I know that I don't have the 48 or so times that would be needed to drop from 589 to 565 hours. I may have six times posted on that tag as an absolute maximum, but I doubt it's actually more than three.

Of course, how many times I have posted is irrelevant - the point of my post was that, with only a single time, you could not be in the top 77% on the boards unless your alt tag had the same issue that mine does. I have friends on there only 40k places apart, yet 200k+ places below your alt tag who have a difference of seven hours between their total times.

I'm not questioning your integrity or your numbers; I am pointing out that there's an issue with the total times for new tags which makes your original example incorrect.

 

[Vulcao]

I don't want to be rude, but why exactly did you create this thread? I don't see a point.

 

[Chapman2424]

I'm at 76% complete but I play strictly offline. Still playing it daily whenever I can.