We are taking a moment at the start of this year to thank you for your support and feedback since launch, reflect on some of the things we have learned, and share what you can expect from us in the coming months.
In addition to our streams, our update blogs, and the Suggestions and Troubleshooting Hubs, we will commit to publishing quarterly updates like this one to let you know where we stand on items the community is passionate about.
While we have been heads down adding cars, tracks, patches, and other improvements, we want to acknowledge the top three areas of feedback we haven’t addressed directly first – so here’s what we’ve heard from you.
We know that the progression system in Forza Motorsport is a divisive topic among our players. We’ve been gathering feedback from a variety of sources, including the Suggestions Hub, socials, forums, long-time players, and surveys to players who may not be as active on our traditional community gathering places.
It is clear from looking at feedback that while many of our players are enjoying the system as is, for many others it isn’t delivering the upgrade experience that they expect from Forza Motorsport. To address this, we are exploring changes to the system. Our goal with these changes is to retain what is working for those that enjoy it, while resolving the issues many of our most dedicated players have with the system.
Addressing this feedback is a top priority for the team going into 2024, however it will take some time to properly evaluate options, make the necessary code changes, and thoroughly test those code changes.
We are aware that Forza Race Regulations are not working as intended in some situations. We have heard about inconsistent or unfair penalties in instances of intentional ramming, being pushed off the track, and spinning cars pushing drivers off the track. We have also heard that high speed collisions sometimes have no penalties while low speed collisions have mild penalties. It’s important that we capture all the data that we can about a race when FRR rulings happen in error, so over the next few months, we will be working with some long-time competitive Motorsport players to gather direct telemetry from them while they’re playing. They will be capturing these instances and feeding data to our team so that we can issue tweaks to make FRR more accurate and reliable. We appreciate your patience as we work on improving the system.
We have seen feedback about our AI’s driving behavior: abruptly braking and slowing down; not accelerating out of exits, braking too hard on mild corners, and following racing lines too strictly. We understand how important it is to have fair and competitive AI in Motorsport and are our top priorities in early 2024 are addressing overly aggressive AI, while also getting a cleaner race start into turn 1 where many of the issues above most severely manifest and impact players.
The 3 areas mentioned above are just a few examples of what we have seen most often and know you care passionately about. We care about these issues too. These and other issues are constantly being worked on, iterated, and given careful consideration. How and what we implement and when is driven by the desire to improve the experience regularly and consistently in a way that does not sacrifice stability and minimizes any downtime.
Thanks,
Andy Beaudoin, Forza Motorsport Game Director
Chris Esaki, Forza Motorsport Creative Director
Trevor Laupmanis, Forza Motorsport Executive Producer
