It may be time I drop this game. With no further updates to the AI likely coming ever again, I can't really find a reason to continue. The AI on level 8 are way too easy for everything but the shortest career races, unless you're just in a bad car.
Not only are they easy, but in free play you run into about half the grid being unable to control their cars at all, swerving around the track like the machine learning algorithm has reset to its first day of training and has only just figured out it's meant to complete a lap at some point.
There was so much hope for the AI to continue improving into something worth racing against, but when I can go from last to 3rd over a single lap of Grand Oak, what's the point?
It's such a shame. I'm left with no casual racing games to enjoy in singleplayer until Sophy is finally done, which is only... how many years away?
I just want to race, but I guess I'm too good for the poor AI these games have now and I have no desire to play Wreckfest in public lobbies in anything that isn't actually called Wreckfest.
Maybe we need cheating AI again. It's better than nothing.
I get where you are at, I pretty much hit that point at FM2... not that it had good AI, but I just haven't enjoyed racing against AI in any game since then aside from (ironically) Wreckfest, where the AI at least seemed to kinda actually have some personality. ACC was probably as close as it got for me to having tolerable AI recently, but I mainly liked running multiclass races with them, and when they patched in the Mustang on console they broke the AI for multiclass racing so that kinda ruined that.
I can't play with Sophy since I don't have a PS so I can't speak for it but I remain cynical, as no other game I've found has had AI that is actually enjoyable to race with to the point I've completely given up on it now. Sure, most of the games out there have AI that at least does one thing okay, but none do enough to overall make for fun races. As you metioned part of it is pace, but even several games where the AI are fast, they are still janky, or erratic, or unaware, or too stupid to work pit strategies or traffic, etc.
That kinda leaves multiplayer as the last option, and while some may see that is an unfortunate thing, fortunately there are a bunch of communities out there with people who have gone through the same thing you are and are also tired of dirty public lobby driving. While some of them just do boring **** like race GT3 cars at Spa and Silverstone all the time, lots of them actually make interesting/creative races to participate in. I know I've plugged it in here before and I'm probably wasting my figurative breath (not specifically to you, but in general I mean as this is a very single player oriented place) but I cannot recommend finding a good organized group to run with enough. It totally changed how much I play/enjoy these games to the point I've basically raced weekly on Forza since FM3... and I'm actually happy to do it and look forward to the races.
The public lobbies aren't quite as bad as they are made out to be, but yeah they aren't great most of the time. If you are fast enough to beat the AI on the highest level you are fast enough to be ahead of most of the constant shenanigans though, but sadly there are some somewhat quick people who are also stupidly aggressive so you can't always escape it. I'd recommend trying out the Ginetta Jr lobby this week, I've had some pretty good races in those with a number of people, and since they are so slow it seems a lot of the morons think they are "slow and boring" and stay crashing into each other in S class or whatever. Even with some of the clumsy/dirty racing, I find grabbing a few friends to venture into the hoppers makes it more fun as you can kinda warn each other who to watch out, laugh at fails, and work together with the draft... or worst case scenario, at least have someone there for commiseration.
I dunno, I wish there was another option or some hope for things to get better, but the future for Forza looks dim and we really haven't seen AI in racing games make much significant improvement over the years, so I find it hard to be optimistic. You would think the rapid advancement of AI might have an impact on it, but I don't think racing games are high priority for its application. Seems people are too busy trying to use it to do important things like medical advancements... or to replace workers they won't have to pay anymore, or to make naked pictures of celebrities, or somehow make search results
less helpful, etc.
goddammit I always type too much, sorry
