Is the drivatar AI weird or am I just bad?

[Aeronark]

Hey, so, before i say anything, i would like to clarify that these are just my observations, and i would like to know if any of you have had similar experiences, and maybe get some feedback on how to improve or something. Not trying to make this sound rant-y or anything. I'm loving the game, but this is something i find pretty strange.

So a few days back i was going thru the street and dirt races, and i was doing just fine. Started off on Above Average, and the game kept telling me that i'm winning easily, and i kept accepting higher difficulty. This went all the way to unbeatable, so i did a few races with those, won quite easily and called it a day.

The next day i went to do the seasonal 10-point championship, and we could just not win. Seriously went thru total about 20 different tunes on like 5 cars, and still, the first race the AI ended up miles ahead. But we did get a decent bit of points, so we continued. Second race the same thing, 2 AI cars won by a mile, but we almost tied them on points. Last race, the AI straight up went brain-dead, all of us overtook them in the start and we got 3050 points, they got 0, people on our team with B class cars beat AI X class cars.

Overall i didn't have a great time with those races, so i tuned my difficulty down to Highly Skilled. Started doing races and noticed a few things:
- sometimes the AI was extremely skilled and i could not win
- other times i overtook all of them in the first lap/30% and won by a long shot
- sometimes when i was 3rd/2nd the cars in front would straight up slow down before the finish, which felt like they were letting me win. This felt similar to the aforementioned seasonal championship, when the AI just gave up in the 3rd race and straight up let us win.
(note that all of these happened while racing the same car in different races, drivatars with the same names, and mostly the same cars)

Then at 1 point i took my Sesto FE, and went into a race. All the drivatars said they were X999 class, but they were driving these old city cars that you can buy for like 30k at the store. Overtook them all within the first initial burnout and they were about 50% done with the race when i was finishing. Just, what?

Now i don't really care what difficulty drivers i race against, i'm in it for fun, and the bonus credits you get from difficulty are negligible compared to how much i get from wheelspins and such. I just wanna know if others are having a similar experience.

Sorry for so much text, thought it might help to explain the circumstances.

Thanks in advance for any responses!

[Birdi]

The AI is adaptive, for sure. Perhaps they adjust based on the average player level, but in general:

If you're in last place, at least half the pack will intentionally slow down for you.
If you're in first place, no matter what class difference there is (your X vs AI's D class), be sure that somehow a pack of two or more AI will be within 10s of your gap, unless the course is extremely turn-heavy.

The AI follows the guidelines as much as possible, so if the brake-lines are red, expect them to slow down, and peel out hard on full straights.
They definitely go abnormally fast no matter the difficulty setting (except Tourist), but especially so on Unbeatable. On such they use tunes you literally can't get and take corners absolutely perfectly just because they feel like it.

So yes, your AI can be weird. It's manipulative to a degree, but not if you just want to win. If you're playing Solo and don't mind using it, Rewind is basically a free win on every race. It's useful if you plan on practicing with higher-speed cars or more difficult courses with odd tunes. Obviously don't use Rewind if you don't want to.

In Multiplayer rewind will get you into last place pretty quickly, as it's a heavy penalty... but that's not to say you can't recover from that to get a middling placement, or rarely back into first Online, with one or two rewinds.

The championships are hit or miss, as it's a mixed bag of "does my team have a car tuned yet?" where you may be at an automatic disadvantage because the AI will always be tuned properly in those Co-op races. If you're really struggling to win seasonal events, try grouping up with friends or people you can plan to play with. Even the worst drivers can help as long as they're not dead last.

[Aeronark]

引用自 Birdi：

The AI is adaptive, for sure. Perhaps they adjust based on the average player level, but in general:

If you're in last place, at least half the pack will intentionally slow down for you.
If you're in first place, no matter what class difference there is (your X vs AI's D class), be sure that somehow a pack of two or more AI will be within 10s of your gap, unless the course is extremely turn-heavy.

.....

ah, i thought the AI was basically just the driving line except they had some knowledge of what to do around other cars. Made sense cause they would always slow down in places the driving line was telling me to slow down, even though there was no real reason for that.

Yeah i've been using rewind, but then the races just don't feel as fun. I guess the need for rewinding slowly goes away the more i play and the more i'm used to the car i'm driving.

And yeah, i agree with the AI having some wack tunes. I was running an S2 998 Aston Martin Vulcan specced for extreme grip in the corners, but this severely affected its top speed and acceleration. During races the AI would follow right behind me even in the tight turns where i clearly had an advantage, and then in the straights accelerated like 2x as fast as me, and were long gone. Sometimes they would overtake me in full speed as i was breaking into a sharp turn, then they would go from 350 to 50 in like 10 metres, and take the turn.

The championships are really a hit or miss, sometimes you get people who join in X class cars ( which makes the AI take X class cars ), then they spin out in the first turn, leave, and then you're left with X class AI and nobody to fight them.

well, thanks a lot for the info! I think will probably just stay on Highly Skilled, as i'm mostly looking for a chill experience, rather than being annoyed by AI sometimes straight up cheating lul.