AI difficulty seems like the worst its ever been in Forza...

[jestifizzle]

I know the previous games have had dodgy AI balancing like some races actually being unbeatable in horizon 4 while on unbeatable difficulty, but so far with my experience with horizon 5 it seems most races are impossible to win even on pro or expert difficulty. I use used to grind top 100 times on leaderboards and got a top 50 once so I know I'm not bad at the game or driving games in general. Even on pro difficulty, it seems the AI has acceleration that isn't possible for the class you race in. It would be acceptable if there was a trade off for the top speed but there isn't. They keep their top speed high but have added acceleration making it impossible to compete on tracks with long stretches of road. I get it that its supposed to be difficult on higher difficulties, but it needs to be within reason. Like I do high difficulties to test my skills, but the AI balancing mechanic takes all skill out of it. You're bound to not win either way no matter your tune. To prove my point, the Porsche Taycan is one of the only cars you can get consistent wins against AI with because it is an EV with insane base acceleration (provided there isn't an AI Taycan). So it seems the AI balancing mechanic boosts the AI base acceleration no matter what the class of vehicle is or if you are at the upper limit of a class.

[TheHuskyGT]

My comment from 2021 didn't age well. A.I is as terrible as it's ever been.

[CascadeHush]

Първоначално публикувано от FunnyCunny:

I'm not the best driver and play expert with everything turned off and don't have any issues.

If you can win on expert without ABS you'd probably win on Pro with ABS on. But obviously play whatever is fun for you.

Първоначално публикувано от TheHuskyGT:

I mean, we were all complaining how Unbeatable in FH4 was too easy in like 70% of races, so now we got what we wanted. I haven't explored the A.I that much, but it seems to be slightly better than in FH4.

Slightly better would be right. I only recently started playing FH4 (FH5 was my introduction to the series, only since the recent free to play weekend) and I was surprised I was winning races immediately in FH4 on tracks I didn't know, with cars I hadn't really bothered to tune properly. I went to Expert almost immediately.

Първоначално публикувано от Brynjarson:

ai is strange. i win apex races on expert with 2 secs ahead. offroad with 2 levels of difficulty down they win ahead with 7 secs. also when starting a race i drive a 4x4 1000 hp baja truck with start stats 10. and the ai shoots past me like rockets......

I'm not sure how relevant the start stat actually is. You usually want first gear fairly tall so you burn off most of your wheelspin in first gear and start to gain traction in second. I play with launch control on but that really only seems to matter in free roam if you stop somewhere and need to get rolling again, it doesn't seem to matter for races.

But yeah, I think the offroad (Baha) difficulty is spiked and I'd play it a level or 2 lower if I want a chance. But I haven't played that mode as much or spent anywhere near as much time tuning cars for it. Dirt and Rally seem pretty well balanced to me compared to the on-road races.

Първоначално публикувано от Deep-fried Clorox:

One of the problems I've noticed is that the AI car in front is almost always the only real competitor you have, on top of AI in general ignoring stats and physics. There's "difficult", then there's just "unfair. Cheap buIIshit like this is an example of the latter...

Yes, 80% of the time there is on clear leader, sometimes 2 very close together. Maybe they should fix this, but I assume they are allocating CPU in such a way that that the lead car is getting most of the processing and since you'll be duking it out with the lead car that makes sense on some level, though I agree it makes for some wonky races.

Difficulty is there so you can set the challenge to whatever is fun for you. It sounds to me like a lot of the replies and OP are reflecting a sense of entitlement that they should be able to beat the game on the hardest level, but that's not what the difficulty levels are for. Are you expecting them to nerf the difficulty levels to match your skill level?

I play the game on Pro, with Simulation Steering and only the ABS and LC turned on. It took a few hundred hours to get good enough at the game to play on that level and I'd say I win more races than I lose, and come second almost always when I don't win. It's a challenge for me to drive on the edge but I do it because that is where the game is fun for me, not because I have some sense that I have to beat the game on all the difficulty levels. And yeah, sometimes one AI just gets out in front and I know I'll probably never catch it but trying so hard to catch up is much more fun than cruising along in first place.

So if you actually want to stop complaining and get good, here are some tips:
1. Pick one road car you like that handles well out of the box, don't try to fix a wonky car. Don't switch cars every 5 minutes. Learn to drive that one car.

2. Turn on whatever assist you like, but ALWAYS have ABS on; You can't out-brake the ABS. You can out-steer the traction and stability control if you like to play that way, but it's not going to make that much difference to your lap times. Don't try to be a hero just because somebody told you that real drivers turn off all the assists. Real drivers use whatever edge they can get.

3. Learn to tune the car. You don't have to get the tune perfect first go, but steadily improve that one car over time.
Sim Racing Setup Series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNtXwBigDt8&list=PLWSWQyqnLDu7tLWE9P35Qog6Z8_xb7l_g
FH5 Specific Setup Series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f1rr8xkr6o&list=PLp7JDOCNZM9BQ8rHfN3gP-sMEGtv2qS2N
I'd recomment watching both in that order, but if you don't want to invest the time just watch the second one.

After messing about with the tune in free roam or on the test track, do a real race. You can't really test a tune properly unless it's under actual race conditions.
Also, I'd recommend 900 as a good level tune for really learning the game; fast enough to be fun but not too fast. Pick a car in the low 800s and tune it up to 900, this will give you a decent amount of scope for tuning but not too much.

4. Pick a track and practice it. Not so much you get bored, but enough that you know the sequence of corners. Learn which corners you can cut. I play with braking line on and I'd recommend that, but that line is only a guide. Generally I prefer to brake late, but in FH5 that is not always the best plan, so learn which corners require early braking, which you can brake late, and which just require a coast. I know this is probably really basic stuff, but back in the day we only had so many tracks and you had to learn them. Nowadays you have so many tracks you never get to really learn them all, so pick one or two to get really good at.

5. Set the difficulty to whatever is a genuine challenge but not too hard. You should be chasing the leader not winning all the time. Ignore the game when it suggests changing difficulty (please give us the ability to turn this 'feature' off!).

6. Most important tip, turn off rewinds for races. Rewinds are the death of progression. Race, crash, finish the race anyway, learn not to crash at that spot. If you are just rewinding after crashes you aren't really learning why you crashed and what lead up to you crashing at that spot. Forget about winning the race and just practice the course and try to do better next time you get to that corner. Chances are the reason you crashed was way further back in the course than the 5 seconds before the corner. You aren't learning how that corner is connected to the rest of the track if you are rewinding over your mistakes.

I have a series of events called "Six Laps at Sunset" that have rewinds turned off (because I do like to have them on for free roam). Also, they are longer races so you get more practice time and sometimes you can beat the leader in 6 laps that you would never catch up to in 3 and frankly I'd rather a 5 minute race than a 3 minute race.

7. Race, tweak tuning (even swap parts), race again, pick another track, repeat, practice a track long enough that you learn something but not so long you get bored, cycle through a few tracks and come back. Try to figure out what to spend your performance points on; treat it like a budget to work to and get the best value from. No point investing in the best tires if your engine isn't fast enough to push the grip, or vice versa, don't invest in the most powerful engine when the drive train can't put that power on the road. Being able to tune the front downforce is probably not necessary if you can balance the car with the rear wing. Some upgrades are 'free' or even decrease your power rating but give you tuning options. Learning how to balance a car to your driving style will gain you at least one difficulty level.

You'll get better. As you get better increase the difficulty level. You might be surprised how quickly you improve with some focused attention. Not to overpromote my own events, but rather than look around the map I go to my event history and cycle through my Six Laps series. You don't have to pay fast travel costs or wait for the game to load in twice (once for the fast travel and once for the actual race).

Then you can repeat the process with an 800 or a 998 car and build up a series of cars for each performance level that you know well and can drive on almost any track. Squeezing good performance out of a 800 or even 700 tune can be just as fun and rewarding as building the fastest thing you can. One of my favourite cars is a Lotus Elise 190 tuned to 800. It's not easy to drive it fast with the traction control off but it is fun to try. My favourite car is a 900 KTM XBow with a rally engine and 4wd (sorry purists). Took me at least 20 hours (over a few weeks) to get the tuning dialled in (including many parts swaps); it was the first car I really spent a decent amount of time in. It will blitz the AI on Pro on any circuit track I know well and is heaps of fun to drive around free roam.

Well, cue the hate comments and people telling me I know nothing and everything I said was wrong. But any plan is better than no plan. Also I do have top 1% rival times with that XBow on most road tracks in the game, so that's got to count for something.

[TheHuskyGT]

It's really not about beating the A.I. I rarely (if at all) tune my cars. I keep difficulty at Unbeatable. Most of the times I win, depending on the track.

What bothers me is how inconsistent and rubber-bandy the A.I is. When the A.I decides to win, it will. And often, it's just whatever car is up front. It ignores physics and gives itself blatantly obvious power boosts. I also see cars behind me putting lap times 6-7 seconds faster than me, or even the A.I in 1st, when their car and performance class should make it impossible.

Other times it will straight up sandbag you. And that irks me the most. A.I needs to be in the same playing field as the player.

[el tejón roja]

Първоначално публикувано от TheHuskyGT:

It's really not about beating the A.I. I rarely (if at all) tune my cars. I keep difficulty at Unbeatable. Most of the times I win, depending on the track.

What bothers me is how inconsistent and rubber-bandy the A.I is. When the A.I decides to win, it will. And often, it's just whatever car is up front. It ignores physics and gives itself blatantly obvious power boosts. I also see cars behind me putting lap times 6-7 seconds faster than me, or even the A.I in 1st, when their car and performance class should make it impossible.

Other times it will straight up sandbag you. And that irks me the most. A.I needs to be in the same playing field as the player.

Play open then, just human players.

[CascadeHush]

Първоначално публикувано от TheHuskyGT:

I keep difficulty at Unbeatable... What bothers me is how inconsistent and rubber-bandy the A.I is.

I just assumed Unbeatable literally mean just that and that the AI would be cheating at that point as it used to be in old-school sim and strategy games games.

So yeah, I feel for you if Pro is really the hardest proper level and it isn't providing you with enough challenge, that kinda sucks they couldn't make the hardest difficulty work properly.

I think Pro is probably going to be the limit for me. And I don't think Pro is cheating because I'm sure there are at least 10,000 players out there with lap times shorter than mine that might find Pro not enough of a challenge.

OTOH it's not intended to be a hard core racing game.

[kireta]

Core of the problem isn't AI being hard at high difficulty, problem is AI being trash at any difficulty.
They can't race, they just drive along racelines, and their entire "competetiveness" comes from boost they get to their performance from difficulty, then watered down even more via rubberbanding.
Every race in SP goes down pretty much same, because every car behaves the same in hands of AI, all fine details go down the gutter when AI has near infinite grip, no limits on power, and is programmed to rubberband around player.

And the worst part of it, it isn't case of devs not fixing AI from previous games, but breaking it for no reason with extensive rubberbanding. AI in previous games was primitive as well, but what they drive mattered to how they drive, making races far more entertaining.