Forza Motorsport introduces the Builders Cup Career Mode, a new car building focused single-player experience.
The Forza franchise has always been about falling in love with cars. Today on Forza Monthly we showed you the Builders Cup Career Mode, the new single player campaign in Forza Motorsport where you can fall in love with cars in an entirely new way.
The Builders Cup is a spiritual successor to our community favorite career modes from Forza Motorsport 3 and 4. It takes the magic of what made those games so special, modernizes it and genre-blends it with RPG progression. We like to think of it as a CarPG with three core pillars: competition, car progression, and car building.
Exciting automotive stories are at the heart of each series within the Builders Cup Career Mode. These are curated to be your gateway to discovering new cars you can truly fall in love with. See a car first on the showroom floor, get to know it by racing on the track, and then level it up and earn performance upgrades to build it into the ultimate track competitor.
This career experience has been designed to feel alive and fresh by evolving over time. That means new cars, tracks and series will be introduced into the Builders Cup after its release.
On Forza Monthly, with gameplay captured on Xbox Series X at 4K/60fps, we introduced the ‘Built for Sport’ series, featuring modern, compact sports car masterpieces like the 2020 Toyota GR Supra, the 2018 Porsche 718 Cayman GTS, the 2017 Alpine A110 and the 2023 Nissan Z. In each Builders Cup series, you will take a single car and level, build and race it on your way to the series victory.
Let’s take a closer look at the structure of the Builders Cup Career Mode, which includes Open Practice, a new Challenge the Grid system, a Featured Race, and our new car progression and upgrade systems.
OPEN PRACTICE
Open Practice is you, the car and the track. This is where you learn the character of a car and help it master each turn and apex. Your car will be stock at first – no upgrades and no tuning. Feel the car just as the manufacturer intended, like you drove it straight from the showroom floor onto the racetrack.
Notable HUD features include the target number of laps and lap time, Car Mastery and XP. These are your goals in Open Practice; every corner is its own objective. Your car earns XP and levels up by driving on the track, unlocking new upgrades. This is the heartbeat of Open Practice and a fundamental core gameplay loop of the new Forza Motorsport.
Track Mastery is a new skill-based system in Open Practice inspired by the “10/10ths" concept in performance driving. This represents how close a car is being pushed to its absolute limits – Forza Motorsport calculates the fastest theoretical time through a corner using any car with any tune or upgrade. Players are scored against this and will be shown a 10/10ths score on-screen. The more you push the car in each corner, the more bonus XP you’ll be rewarded. Now corners are like your enemies, giving instant feedback to help you unlock your fastest self.
Forza Motorsport introduces fully dynamic time-of-day with weather on every track, which means mastering the car and track combination is more important than ever before. Grip levels are constantly changing, and as the time progresses, the temperature of the track adjusts and impacts the grip of your tires, as does rain and even just driving the car. We also simulate when tires leave rubber on the track, which increases grip. No two laps will feel the same with these dynamics, which means every Open Practice session is important – especially if you’re looking to secure that podium finish!
BUILT NOT BOUGHT
New performance upgrades are unlocked as the car levels up, and after every Builders Cup event, you can install these parts to your car and continue its journey. Some upgrades will be available upon your first level up, while others will remain locked until you reach a higher level. The required level to unlock each component will be shown on the in-game upgrades menu. Each part includes a preview of what it does with a spider graph that demonstrates how it impacts the overall balance of the car.
Car Points are the resource used to install upgrades and are only earned through in-game progression by driving and levelling up the car. You are not locked into any choice you make with your build as you can easily uninstall a part and regain those Car Points to use elsewhere.
This new approach to car building in Forza Motorsport gives players agency, adds tons of replay value and encourages experimentation. Because you aren’t spending credits on upgrades, you no longer are forced to decide between buying a cool new car or upgrading your existing car.
CHALLENGE THE GRID
Forza has always featured a challenge system with scalable rewards based on difficulty. Challenge the Grid evolves this concept, allowing you to dial in race settings to your preferred sweet spot. Choose your starting position, change AI difficulty and damage settings, and customize the race rules. Challenge the Grid encourages you to play your way and makes every race more exciting and replayable.
FEATURED RACE
Featured Race tests your car build and the skills you’ve learned from Open Practice. Compete with our most advanced AI opponents yet, populated by your friends, their cars and their liveries – constantly updating with their latest creations and customizations.
Forza Motorsport’s new AI opponents fuel thrilling and intense competition in every single-player race with fun, tight and clean racing. They can keep up the fastest Forza drivers in our community and be competitive without any cheats or hacks.
Each race rewards Series Points that lead towards the overall trophy, as well as Driver XP, Credits payout and Car XP. The post-race screen also shows a summary of how you’re performing in the current series.
ALWAYS EVOLVING
This is only a sneak peak of the Builders Cup Career Mode, the new car building campaign in Forza Motorsport. Designed to evolve and expand overtime – we'll be regularly introducing new cars, tracks, championships and events. Also, the car-building mechanic featured in Builders Cup is a primary driver of the in-game economy for all of Forza Motorsport – to help us ensure the security and fairness of the game for everyone, we’ve opted to make progression server-based, which will require an online connection during Builders Cup.
Forza Motorsport starts with over 500 cars and 20 world-famous tracks. Combined with our cutting-edge physics, advanced AI opponents, dynamic time-of-day with weather, and enhanced audio, the Builders Cup Career Mode is your new way to fall in love with cars.
In the coming months, we will show you our new Featured Multiplayer experience, Free Play, Rivals, and more.
PRE-ORDER NOW
All of this and more awaits October 10! Forza Motorsport is coming to Xbox Series X|S consoles, Windows 10 and 11 PCs via the Microsoft Store and Steam, and Xbox Game Pass for console, PC and Cloud Gaming (Beta).
