Forza Motorsport General Discussion Thread

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Just out of curiosity: GT7 races are scheduled rather than on demand, yes?

I'm wondering if FM8 needs to do the same thing, like iRacing also does, in order to fill lobbies. But that runs counter to the Forza ethos of "pick up and play when you want".
Yes.

Forza Motorsport races are also scheduled, but matchmaking happens before practice/qualifying instead of after.
 
Just out of curiosity: GT7 races are scheduled rather than on demand, yes?

I'm wondering if FM8 needs to do the same thing, like iRacing also does, in order to fill lobbies. But that runs counter to the Forza ethos of "pick up and play when you want".
I haven't played multiplayer in GT7, but I think it works the same as GTS, which is as follows:

Daily races have 3 types - A, B and C, e.g. the current 3 types of race are described here:


For one week, each of the daily race formats remains the same, with the same track, type of car, and ruleset. They run to a schedule, and you set a qualifying time outside of that schedule. Your qualifying time has no impact on the lobby you are put in, that is determined solely by your skill and safety ratings. Within that lobby, grid positions are determined by qualifying time, so very good players often choose to start from the back in top split (the name for the lobby that contains the players with the highest skill ratings in that time slot).

FM also has a schedule like this, but the track is not fixed, and you qualify separately each race. There's also a lot more than 3 options, so that's naturally going to dilute the number of players in each race (I'm not saying this is better or worse compared to fewer, but more populated, options).

FIA races are called something else now, I think, but as far as I'm aware, the format is the same as the GTS FIA races. These are much "bigger" races, and my screenshot was from one of those. They run to a schedule, but my recollection is that there were only 3 time slots for each race. They work like FM's races in that you are first matched into a ratings-based lobby, then you do a qualifying session before the race. These races formed part of a season-long contest, where you got points from each race towards your season's points score and placing. A huge appeal of these races used to be that you could obtain "star player" status from these seasons, but I believe that is now gone and only attendees at LAN events have star player status. Because of the small number of time slots for each race, these races were always fully populated at my rating, and the spread of skill was tight. My recollection is that it was common to have approx 2k rating difference between the highest and lowest rated players in a lobby, on a scale of 0-75k, so I think there were tens of concurrent lobbies taking place for each FIA race. When I played, people took these races really seriously, public practice lobbies with the same settings as the next FIA race would run and be well populated for days before the race. People would spend a lot of time trying out different car and strategy options beforehand. The top players would limit access to their practice lobbies to only the highest driver rating, and when I was high enough rated to get into their lobbies, it was fun to see how long I could hold onto their slipstream for. I don't know if they're as popular now that most people have no chance of getting star player status from them.

So FM's races are mostly like GT's daily races in terms of a continuous frequent schedule that changes once a week, but the track rotates rather than being fixed, and there are more options. They have qualifying each race like GT's FIA (or whatever they're called now) races rather than GT's daily races. Another difference is that rating doesn't feel very special in FM, it's pretty easy for me to be close to the max rating, whereas in GTS it felt like a huge achievement when I first got A+ driver rating, and in GT everyone can see your driver rating whereas FM doesn't let you see other people's rating. On the other hand, keeping rating hidden may be intended to avoid discouraging participation through rank anxiety, and I think this is a valid choice.

I don't think FM's multiplayer format is particularly bad now. It's hard to argue that fewer options would be better, or that a fixed track is better than a rotating track. Qualifying each race is also fine IMO. I've also found the penalty system to work reasonably well in its current form, and the driving in my races has been reasonably clean. My feeling is that none of these differences are the reason why there are so few players in many FM lobbies, and the most likely explanation is that players were driven away by the state of the game in the past, and haven't returned. It's possible the game can start to grow from here, as there's no doubt the recently communicated plans for improvement will make the game better from most people's point of view.

Thanks, playing all those boring races didn't fit in my schedule this month.
If you do just the 10 mid-engine multiplayer races, each race counts as both mid-engine and open, so you will get both FOMO cars from those 10 races. I didn't know this before I did 10 open races before starting the mid-engine races, but a friend has confirmed to me that it works like this. I don't know if it's intentional or not. So you could just do one multiplayer mid-engine race every few days and unlock both cars.
 
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I'm not saying this with any sense of joy, I'd love to see the game doing better, and I think that in its current state, the game deserves to be doing better, but these multiplayer lobbies are so empty. These are both the mid-engine races that people are being incentivised to do at the moment.

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Okay, I'm decent at the game, but I'm a fair bit off alien pace, and I'm winning races by nearly a minute. As far as I'm aware, multiplayer is cross platform and these numbers aren't due to me being on Steam with its low FM player count.

For comparison, here is a screenshot of the result of an FIA race in GT Sport from 5 years ago. I was genuinely better than my rating at this point, as it takes time to increase your rating, so I was in B, but eventually got to A+, so it's to be expected that I'll win some races by a decent margin. But even so, there are 11 people within 30 seconds of my race time over a similar race duration to the above races in FM:

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Yeah it certainly is a bit of a shame, Turn10 faces a few problems with the multiplayer event structure, hopefully they can start to mitigate them to bring lobby sizes back up again now that the game is in a better state.

They just have far too many lobbies, this month is better, but still has too many, I looked at the list last night and I don't see the need for 3 different series in the Featured tab, this should really be shrunk down to 1, the MR event. If they wanted to brand it in such a way that it has some character to it, maybe present a spotlight car as part of this series each week, so the series is MR cars, but you can go buy this specific car to use in it with a discount.
I don't know about everyone else, but I usually never touch these events, so I can't imagine they are particularly popular, which is a shame because I've finished 5/10 of the MR events and actually had a whole lot of fun, I'm not driving competitive cars, but still had a lot of fun competing with the mid-pack (even though the pack is only about 6-12 cars).

Then the decision to overlap events, they must feel like they can't revert this change anymore, given that there are plenty of people who are in favour of it, but it's effectively split the player-base in half in matchmaking terms, which really sucks. I would much prefer to have fuller lobbies than shorter practice length. I never really saw the practice times as much of a problem before, maybe it's harder to manage now that race lengths are much more variable, but even with limited time to play I just felt like I could join up, get some laps in, then maybe go and boil the jug and have a cup of tea while I wait for the race to start.

So yeah, less lobbies, and somehow get these races overlapping less so folks can jump from race-to-race without missing half the matchmaking base.
 
I dont think anyone would be happy if they release dlc rn
Couldn't agree more. They really need to sort out the game to a respectable level quality wise before even thinking of asking people to pay for DLC. I'm vastly disappointed in the last update. The Artura is okay but the Lamborghini Spyder is more of a Horizon car then a Motorsport car. If you were going to introduce a Lamborghini why not a Murcielago R-GT? I would think that would be quite popular with the fanbase. I'm glad that Sunset is returning. Its a surprise albeit a welcome one. Apart from Maple Valley its my favourite Forza made track to race on. Bathurst coming is another plus. Given the lack luster drip feed of cars those two tracks are what stopping me from deleting the game (again).
 
Couldn't agree more. They really need to sort out the game to a respectable level quality wise before even thinking of asking people to pay for DLC. I'm vastly disappointed in the last update. The Artura is okay but the Lamborghini Spyder is more of a Horizon car then a Motorsport car. If you were going to introduce a Lamborghini why not a Murcielago R-GT? I would think that would be quite popular with the fanbase. I'm glad that Sunset is returning. Its a surprise albeit a welcome one. Apart from Maple Valley its my favourite Forza made track to race on. Bathurst coming is another plus. Given the lack luster drip feed of cars those two tracks are what stopping me from deleting the game (again).
I can understand why some people wouldn't want DLC right now since T10 is in the midst of fixing this game update after update. I would be for it only because we are barely getting 2 new to FM cars each month which is garbage compared to what could be done on that front. It would be great if they doubled and then some the amount of cars each update with at least 6 new to FM which would at least eat away at things like the car voting list, motorsport worthy cars, FH5-FM cars, and previous FM cars that would fit these divisions greatly. I don't see them changing their car content strategy anytime soon though sadly. One year in and minus the car pass and the two add-on car packs for VIP and day one, we have about 20ish new to FM cars...👎
 
Wait, wait, wait... I've done the Challenge Hub thingie that required to do 10 multiplayer races with B-Classs MR cars to unlock the Artura instead of the tedious single player championship, but it's not yet in my garage and the game says it will unlock in 15 days nevertheless? What the actual **** T10? @ManteoMax surely that's not serious? Why give us the option to unlock things earlier/easier if they're not going to be unlocked earlier? Good grief everything is one step forward/two steps back here...
 
Then the decision to overlap events, they must feel like they can't revert this change anymore, given that there are plenty of people who are in favour of it, but it's effectively split the player-base in half in matchmaking terms, which really sucks. I would much prefer to have fuller lobbies than shorter practice length. I never really saw the practice times as much of a problem before, maybe it's harder to manage now that race lengths are much more variable, but even with limited time to play I just felt like I could join up, get some laps in, then maybe go and boil the jug and have a cup of tea while I wait for the race to start.

So yeah, less lobbies, and somehow get these races overlapping less so folks can jump from race-to-race without missing half the matchmaking base.
Agreed, I actually was quite happy with the lobby cadence from launch and it was one of the things I didn't think needed any changing, so obviously it was one of the things they changed first.

The fanbase is just so split from all the years of trying to draw as broad of a racing game audience as possible. Ever since they went away from public hosted lobbies to the hoppers, the online side had kinda become the ADHD-friendly smorgasbord for online racing, and now that they are trying to fix that there is a portion of the playerbase pulling the other direction.

I constantly hear/see people saying they need to just make a hopper for every class available all the time, and complaining how long it takes to actually race, and about the quality of racing and lobby population... obviously not thinking things through at all and not realizing that they can't really have everything. Changing tracks (and often cars too) every 7 minutes will always lead to clumsy racing, taking away practice won't help, and diluting the playerbase across all those hoppers will just make them more empty.

One thing that could help the practice lobbies feel a little more interesting would be if you could spectate from the pitlane, like in AC. It would allow players to learn from each other which would be positive, and would also help people who got their practice/qualifying in have something to do watch if they want to sit and wait for the race.
The Artura is okay but the Lamborghini Spyder is more of a Horizon car then a Motorsport car. If you were going to introduce a Lamborghini why not a Murcielago R-GT? I would think that would be quite popular with the fanbase.
My guess is the Huracan Spyder was ready to go from FH5 or something, or at least I assume that it's in FH5 but I haven't looked because I could not give less of a **** about convertible variants of coupes in a racing game. If we had to get a Lambo, then the Jalpa from FM7 would have been more interesting, or even the Gallardo Super Trofeo, as it would have been interesting to have an AWD GT class car... although knowing T10 they would probably dump it in one of the GT2/GT3 classes and unbalance it.

I get that sometimes during a crunch they may need something that's basically done to throw in, but a convertible version of an existing car that already has like 3 other variants in the game is a bit of a slap in the face, and I'm kinda disappointed the community hasn't thrown up more of a stink about it. I really hope it isn't the start of a trend.

They stopped doing those feedback polls over at the official forums where you could rate the content available in the update and whether you thought the FOMO car was worth the effort put in. Trying to be optimistic, they probably got the message from the first few polls but we just won't see the changes implemented for a bit yet as it takes some time, but the realist in me thinks it just means they won't be changing and they don't want to hear about it so don't need to bother with the polls anymore. Shame, as I would have liked to see what the results were for the Lambo this time around, although I'm sure there wouldn't be a negative enough option on the poll for it to properly reflect what I think about it.
I can understand why some people wouldn't want DLC right now since T10 is in the midst of fixing this game update after update. I would be for it only because we are barely getting 2 new to FM cars each month which is garbage compared to what could be done on that front. It would be great if they doubled and then some the amount of cars each update with at least 6 new to FM which would at least eat away at things like the car voting list, motorsport worthy cars, FH5-FM cars, and previous FM cars that would fit these divisions greatly. I don't see them changing their car content strategy anytime soon though sadly. One year in and minus the car pass and the two add-on car packs for VIP and day one, we have about 20ish new to FM cars...👎
I'm kinda mixed on it... League racing has been going great despite still having to work around some nonsense with lacking QoL features and stability issues and stuff, so I wouldn't feel too bad spending some money on new cars (assuming they are good)... But at the same time giving them money for new cars because their content flow has taken the term "dripfeed" a little too literally kinda seems like a "get got" situation.

I feel like there should be an Always Sunny "get got" gif but I can't find one. 😐
Wait, wait, wait... I've done the Challenge Hub thingie that required to do 10 multiplayer races with B-Classs MR cars to unlock the Artura instead of the tedious single player championship, but it's not yet in my garage and the game says it will unlock in 15 days nevertheless? What the actual **** T10? @ManteoMax surely that's not serious? Why give us the option to unlock things earlier/easier if they're not going to be unlocked earlier? Good grief everything is one step forward/two steps back here...
My guess is that it's so the single player guys don't get left out and get it late, even though it would have zero impact on them as it's not like they would see anyone using it or be getting beat by other people driving it or something. If anything, it would just mean by the time they get it there would already be tunes and liveries made and shared for it.
 
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I think I'm done with FM for a while. I used to enjoy it, but this iteration is just a grind and I find myself only doing two or three races and then stopping. If I didn't feel forced to run those races in a specific amount of time, I would probably enjoy it more, but it has just become tedious for me.

I really hope they fix things and do what was promised and add the featured races to the career mode permanently. I know they are adding certain ones, but they need to do all of them. FOMO isn't working for FM, it's fine for Horizon because there is more than just racing to do to earn the prizes and it doesn't feel like a grind.
 
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I think I'm done with FM for a while. I used to enjoy it, but this iteration is just a grind and I find myself only doing two or three races and then stopping. If I didn't feel forced to run those races in a specific amount of time, I would probably enjoy it more, but it has just become tedious for me.
As someone who is away from home for long periods of time and can't play often the FOMO stuff is pretty frustrating and takes away from the enjoyment of the game. I've managed to keep up but it's definitely tedious trying to complete as many races as I can so I won't miss the deadlines. I would just love to play this game at my own pace.
 
I found this on Youtube today and I think it's a pretty good summary of the first year of Forza Motorsport.


Interesting video. Very surprised, shocked, and confused by the FFB is "good" take. Maybe Gran Turismo is considered too fantastic for any others to even come close? 🤷‍♀️ Also how is that announcements that something will come, that then fall significantly short of the claim, considered anything but unacceptable? Do I value my time and money, so much that my expectation to enjoy my time and not throw my money away, just not part of the mainstream zeitgeist anymore? :confused:
I'll check back sometime in mid 2025 to see if they finally were able to add back in the features that they removed from previous releases. :crazy:
 
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Interesting video. Very surprised, shocked, and confused by the FFB is "good" take. Maybe Gran Turismo is considered too fantastic for any others to even come close? 🤷‍♀️
Well, I think the force feedback is good and I compare to Assetto Corsa and ACC. It's not as detailed as those titles, but it's not bad at all in my opinion. I haven't played GT7, so I can't compare to that title. I play on a Thrustmaster TS-XW belt driven wheel.

The problem is, just like he mentioned in the video, that it's very hard to dial in the settings, with all the sliders. That means many players are driving with settings that doesn't give them the best FFB experience.

Also how is that announcements that something will come, that then fall significantly short of the claim, considered anything but unacceptable? Do I value my time and money, so much that my expectation to enjoy my time and not throw my money away, just not part of the mainstream zeitgeist anymore? :confused:
I'm not quite sure what you mean by this, but you're very welcome to explain if you want to 😊

FM '23 gets better each update and the game is in a much better state now compared to launch. It's just sometimes frustrating how slow the improvement process is. Also, the cadence with which they've been adding new and returning cars the last few months is far from ideal.
 
The Force Feedback is good. A lot better than GT7 by far on my DD2.
Both my DD2 ( with the kludgy connections ) and DD+ on GT7 are magnitudes more realistic and with higher response rate and fidelity. I don't even think they bothered with the weight change effects on the front axle in forza. How are you measuring "better"?
 

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Perhaps if there was more GT4 cars this wouldn't be such a problem 🤔
 
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Perhaps if there was more GT4 cars this wouldn't be such a problem 🤔
That's exactly it. Why the hell do they think this hopper will be fun and successful with just two measly GT4 cars ( I'm not counting that Audi because it's not a real GT4 car). The series has at least 20 more cars they can choose from dating back about 10 years...ADD MORE T10!
 
Both my DD2 ( with the kludgy connections ) and DD+ on GT7 are magnitudes more realistic and with higher response rate and fidelity. I don't even think they bothered with the weight change effects on the front axle in forza. How are you measuring "better"?
I'm most definitely getting weight distribution and suspension compression through the wheel. What the heck is a kludgy connection? I put the usb in and it's go time. lol
GT7 is nothing but a rubberband spring of turning left and right equaling more resistance on the wheel. It wildly clips (in game, not wheel settings) when turning in high downforce cars. I believe they fixed a bit of this with the last update but I tried it when it came out and was done. GT7 lacks a one to one ratio of suspension compression on visible bumps. For example, in FM (or any PC sim) if I see my car hit a bump, signaled by my screen moving up and down or however the bump reacts, I feel that through my wheel. In GT7 I have the screen moving as I hit a bump and the wheel is just dead, nothing in a lot of places. Elevation change is well represented in FM and is more representative of what you'd feel in AMS2 or AC or rF2 whereas in GT7 it's a bit lifeless. Here and there you can feel some but again, never seems like a 1:1 ratio of what I should feel to what I am feeling.

And one of the most important factors of why FM FFB is better than GT7's is the tire model. This could have answered the question alone. I didn't even need that whole paragraph up there. In GT7 the curb effect is canned. GT7 has a one point of contact tire model. When that tire goes over a curb, it activates the canned effect and you hear the curb sound. Which by the way is the same sound no matter what curb type, what tire type or whatever car you're using. Same sound. This is where FM has pulled above. FM has tire pressures in which higher pressures mean sharper FFB when hitting bumps or curbs. Lower pressures feel spongy and less articulated. The tire feeling isn't as detailed as AMS2, AC or ACC but it's getting into that territory of "I can now feel what's going on with the tire."
This is pretty nonexistent in GT7. In fact, overturning the car leads to yet another canned FFB effect of that awful steering wheel vibration. Again, I think they toned it down the last I turned it on, good for them, but it's still there. Conversely I really don't care for FM's steering wheel getting light when the front loses grip of the pavement. That's kinda weak. They should look at AC on PC whereas you don't so much lose wheel weight but you do get an added scrub effect that lets you know you are at the limit of what the fronts can do.
That's enough of a wall of text for now. :yuck: But I will add, one has a whole screen full of FFB settings and the other just 2. I know which I prefer.
 
The Force Feedback is good.
I can't comment on GT7 as I don't have a Playstation, but the FFB on my humble G920 is easily the best part of the new Forza for me. It's miles better than any previous iteration and feels natural. The problem is it doesn't come out of the box like that, and requires quite a bit of fiddling with the advanced settings to get it to that point - and that means a lot of players are likely having a rough time of it because of the default settings. Why the developers can't come up with pre-defined, per-wheel setting profiles is beyond me, and it shouldn't be up to the player to figure out what feels correct amongst a myriad of options.

I guess we can just throw that on the pile of things they didn't have time/forgot to implement.

For reference, the settings I am using came from this video:
 
Interesting video. Very surprised, shocked, and confused by the FFB is "good" take. Maybe Gran Turismo is considered too fantastic for any others to even come close? 🤷‍♀️ Also how is that announcements that something will come, that then fall significantly short of the claim, considered anything but unacceptable? Do I value my time and money, so much that my expectation to enjoy my time and not throw my money away, just not part of the mainstream zeitgeist anymore? :confused:
I'll check back sometime in mid 2025 to see if they finally were able to add back in the features that they removed from previous releases. :crazy:
Forza Motorsport has one of the best FFB out there. The True Force update changed the game for me. The level of detail i get on my Logitech G Pro is ACC level( ACC does some things better but so does Forza). This game is genuinely one of the best when it comes to wheel driving. And yes i played GT7, AC, ACC, Dirt 2, Raceroom, Pcars and other racing games.
 
The force feedback is good, it’s the menu options you need to navigate to get that force feedback that are the problem.

While having a lot of customisability is a good thing, there’s very little effort made to educate people on what they’re doing and why they should be doing it.

It’s why most of us wheel users find somebody on YouTube and learn from them instead. An official settings guide/video (with a QR code in the tuning menu) would have been a great addition.
 
The force feedback is good, it’s the menu options you need to navigate to get that force feedback that are the problem.

While having a lot of customisability is a good thing, there’s very little effort made to educate people on what they’re doing and why they should be doing it.

It’s why most of us wheel users find somebody on YouTube and learn from them instead. An official settings guide/video (with a QR code in the tuning menu) would have been a great addition.
We Logitech users are lucky with that thanks to @LOGI_Rich who updates the in game and wheel settings for each game on the official logitech game setting page. Even after updates he does his best to update the list and helps us out here on this forum which makes everything much easier.
 
I can't comment on GT7 as I don't have a Playstation, but the FFB on my humble G920 is easily the best part of the new Forza for me. It's miles better than any previous iteration and feels natural. The problem is it doesn't come out of the box like that, and requires quite a bit of fiddling with the advanced settings to get it to that point - and that means a lot of players are likely having a rough time of it because of the default settings. Why the developers can't come up with pre-defined, per-wheel setting profiles is beyond me, and it shouldn't be up to the player to figure out what feels correct amongst a myriad of options.

I guess we can just throw that on the pile of things they didn't have time/forgot to implement.

For reference, the settings I am using came from this video:

Right, it took me HOURS, not minutes to figure out where I needed my settings. However, anyone in the middle of a test session can move the dozen or so sliders to one side and then the other to see what they like. Getting rid of the dead spot in the wheel while losing grip and turning was the big thing. It's not completely gone but better.
 
That's exactly it. Why the hell do they think this hopper will be fun and successful with just two measly GT4 cars ( I'm not counting that Audi because it's not a real GT4 car). The series has at least 20 more cars they can choose from dating back about 10 years...ADD MORE T10!
For me the worst part is they sped up the GT4 cars to be on pace with the SP3T Audi, taking away a big part of what makes the GT4 cars unique and making the class feel like "GT3 Lite" instead of actual GT4. The Ginetta vs the KTM could be a fun pairing to rotate through the Featured Spec thing occasionally while they build up the class. I won't be surprised if it returns basically exactly like it is plus a few cars.

I do genuinely like the Audi a lot though. It's an excellent car for racing because of the way it splits the difference between something like a TCR car and a GT car. At low speeds it drives like a touring car on steroids a bit, requiring finesse and proper use of FWD corner lines, but at higher speeds all the downforce means no understeer and more normal cornering lines, and mid-speed corners it kinda meets in the middle and can run multiple lines, which is great for racing. The finesse required in low speed stuff and FWD tire wear also means it's an interesting car for tire strategy races. It would be a fantastic car to go into the spec rotation in place of the Formula Mazda.

Since T10 can never get current race cars anyway, I'd still like to see the Camaro and last gen Mustang GT4s added. They would help to fill out the class, and also serve as a fun Ford vs Chevy rivalry thing. Also, with Bathurst coming, I highly doubt we get the Gen3 cars so we could at least use the GT4 models as a stand-in for the Supercars that would be a bit friendlier to all skill levels.
 
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