A couple of quick Forza 3 questions

sesselpupser

sesselpupser

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neema_t
Hello all,

I must say, I never expected to get as addicted as I have to Forza 3. My brother bought a 360 Core back in 2006, it got the no video error shortly after and sat around unused until last month. I did the RROD X Clamp fix and bought Forza 3, just to have a fresh racing game until GT5 comes out, but I haven't been able to put this down!

Anyway, I finally got round to plugging the 360 into our router today as I didn't want to spend much money on this system as I only use it for Forza, set up a Live account and downloaded the free DLC and did a bit of shopping and bidding. However, where the 360 normally lives there's no wired connection and I doubt I'm going to buy the wireless adaptor unless I can get one dirt cheap.

My main question is, after this one month free Xbox Live trial expires, what functionality can I expect from the online portions of the game? I'm not bothered about racing, all (two) of my friends have PS3's so I have no one to race with, but I quite like the Storefront and Auction sections, will I still be able to access them?

Also, if I do all the races outside of Season play by using the grid view, will I still be able to complete the 6 (or is it 5?) seasons by doing races again? I'm assuming I can, otherwise I'd be doing Season mode all the time, but I like that it offers the flexibility to either do all the races of a given tournament in a row or pick and choose what you want to do.

All in all, as a definite GT fan, I can honestly say I didn't expect to get so hooked on Forza 3, the stuff you can do with your cars is just incredible. Also the limited number of cars compared to GT games is mitigated by the fact that they don't have loads of useless cars, though they are missing some I would have liked to tune to the eyeballs, the AW11 MR2 being one. At the end of the day, though, I don't think I'll stick with it when GT5 comes out, though I'm sure that's to be expected as it'll be the new thing to play, just as how people migrate to the latest Call of Duty every year.

This is definitely a great game, though, and GT5 would do well to learn from it; the in-race telemetry is particularly nice. Just wish it wouldn't shove the fact that there are DLC packs I don't have in my face...
 
neema_t
My main question is, after this one month free Xbox Live trial expires, what functionality can I expect from the online portions of the game? I'm not bothered about racing, all (two) of my friends have PS3's so I have no one to race with, but I quite like the Storefront and Auction sections, will I still be able to access them?
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No, both the Auction House and Storefront are exclusive to Gold members for whatever ridiculous reason.
Also, if I do all the races outside of Season play by using the grid view, will I still be able to complete the 6 (or is it 5?) seasons by doing races again? I'm assuming I can, otherwise I'd be doing Season mode all the time, but I like that it offers the flexibility to either do all the races of a given tournament in a row or pick and choose what you want to do.
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Again, no. Only way to complete career seasons is by going through the calendar system. Otherwise, you'd just be completing races at your own leisure. Doesn't really matter which route you choose, unless you want the achievements.
 
Wow, really? That's a shame, I guess I won't be using those features, then, unless I can find a very cheap wifi adaptor and spend the next month solely on the Auctions and Storefront. If this was my main console then maybe, but the £40 I'd spend on XBL is better spent elsewhere.

Terronium-12
Again, no. Only way to complete career seasons is by going through the calendar system. Otherwise, you'd just be completing races at your own leisure. Doesn't really matter which route you choose, unless you want the achievements.
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I'm not sure I was very clear originally, I mean if I complete all the events outside of the Career mode, can I then go back to Career mode and complete it (presumably by doing a lot of races again)?

Thanks for the reply though, really quite surprised about the community features being Gold only...
 
neema_t
I'm not sure I was very clear originally, I mean if I complete all the events outside of the Career mode, can I then go back to Career mode and complete it (presumably by doing a lot of races again)?

Thanks for the reply though, really quite surprised about the community features being Gold only...
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Oh! I may have misread something. :P

You can complete the same races as many times as you want, whether it be in career mode (although you have to go through 5 or 6 seasons before anything starts to repeat itself) or just doing them yourself.
 
Ah good, I had assumed that was the case but got a bit worried that none of the races I'd completed were showing up in Career mode, I guess it wants me to do ones I haven't done yet. I've just thought of another question; what does the exclamation mark next to my lap time mean? I've noticed it comes up with I collide with another car or go off the track, but it also comes on at the start of pretty much every race, so I have no idea what that means. I guess it means my lap time is invalid, but why would it invalidate my first lap? Because it's from a standing start, maybe?
 
neema_t
Ah good, I had assumed that was the case but got a bit worried that none of the races I'd completed were showing up in Career mode, I guess it wants me to do ones I haven't done yet. I've just thought of another question; what does the exclamation mark next to my lap time mean? I've noticed it comes up with I collide with another car or go off the track, but it also comes on at the start of pretty much every race, so I have no idea what that means. I guess it means my lap time is invalid, but why would it invalidate my first lap? Because it's from a standing start, maybe?
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It does indeed mean your lap has been invalidated, and it's invalidated from the start due to drafting. Any unfair advantage, collision, or use of the rewind function invalidates the current lap.
 
Terronium-12
No, both the Auction House and Storefront are exclusive to Gold members for whatever ridiculous reason.
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I know the auction house not being available to silver members stems from people making fake silver accounts and abusing the auction system by doing some weird auction glitching, etc.
 
Bogie 19th
I know the auction house not being available to silver members stems from people making fake silver accounts and abusing the auction system by doing some weird auction glitching, etc.
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Another reason is the infamous money glitch that can still be done.That alone would create chaos in the auction house.
 
Terronium-12
It does indeed mean your lap has been invalidated, and it's invalidated from the start due to drafting. Any unfair advantage, collision, or use of the rewind function invalidates the current lap.
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It also, loves to invalidate laps for very little reason.
 
A bit OT, but i've learned that you cannot save replays or even watch them with an xbox 4gb. However, I read somewhere that if you use a USB flash drive to save on, it will be enabled. So i've gone out and bought an 8gb card but still no replay option. Did I imagine reading that it would enable replays, or is 8gb not enough?
 
danjama
A bit OT, but i've learned that you cannot save replays or even watch them with an xbox 4gb. However, I read somewhere that if you use a USB flash drive to save on, it will be enabled. So i've gone out and bought an 8gb card but still no replay option. Did I imagine reading that it would enable replays, or is 8gb not enough?
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I highly doubt you're allowed to save a replay to a USB drive, we can't even save photomode images there. Microsoft sees the USB ports as a potential security breach.


As for invalid laps, that will happen from a) not keeping at least two wheels on what is defined as the track, b) drafting, c) being drafted (doesn't really make sense...), and d) colliding with anything. Oh, and using the rewind feature. Also if you invalidate your current lap while on the last section of the lap, your next lap will also be invalid. The logic for that is that you might have a way to cut a corner or otherwise carry extra speed across the start line of your next lap, giving an unfair advantage.

You'll notice on your HUD that your best clean lap takes priority over your best invalid lap.
 
Sometimes lpas are invalidated just by going over a rumble strip even though 2 tires are still on the track side of the strip. It is really a mystery on some tracks where you can and can not place a tire over the strip and not be invalidated.

btw the effect of the ! popping up is that it adds 10 minutes to your lap time. It will not show the 10 minutes when you look at the actual lap time but when you look at overall times it is clear to see.
 
Thatman
^
10 minutes?:odd:
I think somethings off.
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Me too. :odd:

This isn't FM or FM2 where time is added when you go off track, and even then, you can clearly see how much time is going to be added to your overall lap time.
 
I think he means 10 minutes to your global time for all tracks combined for the class, not doing a lap at all adds 30 minutes I think.
I think you can still see all the leaderboards without xbox live gold which is something I suppose
 
HBR-Roadhog
Sometimes lpas are invalidated just by going over a rumble strip even though 2 tires are still on the track side of the strip. It is really a mystery on some tracks where you can and can not place a tire over the strip and not be invalidated.

btw the effect of the ! popping up is that it adds 10 minutes to your lap time. It will not show the 10 minutes when you look at the actual lap time but when you look at overall times it is clear to see.
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That is one of the things that bothered me about FM3.You can clearly see in actual races on TV that they use everybit of the rumblestrips on some parts of a track,but in FM3 you get penalized for it.

I got used to it though and couldn't go as fast as i would want to go,but i mananged to scrape together some good lap times.

Even after me not playing this game for months my overall ranking in Circuit and Point to Point races rank is still under 500.I was curious so i checked the other day.

For me not playing this in so long and my rank barely even moving,do people even hotlap on this game anymore?
 
Thatman
^
10 minutes?:odd:
I think somethings off.
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That idea has actually crossed my mind before. Say someone has a 1'26.468 at Road Atlanta (clean lap, recorded to the leaderboards). Then you come blazing through, get a little too carried away on a rumble strip and invalidate your lap, but still pull off a 1'25.118. Now the easy way to sort these two laps would seem to be having an attribute attached to the time such that all times can be identified by whether they are valid or invalid.

The first sweep through the list of times would sort them by their validity, creating two new lists. Then it would first sort the valid list, put them in a new array in the correct order, then the same for the invalid times. Then a method just needs to put all the valid times in the leaderboard then the invalid ones.



However, that means every time needs sorted every time the leaderboard needs generated. So instead we pretend to add some unrealistic amount of time to the invalid laps so that no real hotlap attempt would ever be that slow...


And I need to stop. :lol:
 
Thatman
^
10 minutes?:odd:
I think somethings off.
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Nope it is 10 minutes for sure.
Example let's say you run Motegi Speedway and turn a 32.5 second lap when you look at your time on the track in that class it will show 32.5! when you back up to the previous screen it will show 10:32.5

This is true on any track where you have a ! it adds 10 minutes to your overall time. Not running a track adds 30 minutes as others have said.

If you want to verify for yourself find a track where you are showing a ! backup the the previous screen and note the total time then run a clean lap and note the total time again. You will see apx 10 minutes removed depending on what your clean time is compared to your dirty time.

btw this is why if you have a dirty lap everyone that has clean laps are ranked above you even if your lap was much faster.
 

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