GTPNewsWire
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This is the discussion thread for a recent post on GTPlanet:
This article was published by Kyle Patrick (@SlipZtrEm) on October 20th, 2018 in the Esports category.
Live Stream: ForzaRC 2018 World Championship
- Thread starter GTPNewsWire
- 12 comments
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- 27,385
- Toronto
- NewAesthetic
- SlipZtrEm
Yeah, the cameras are the weakest part of the game for the purposes of viewership. It's too bad, but I get the feeling the only way that'll change is when the franchise moves to the next gen of consoles.
I appreciate the pad use too. I mean, I get the reason the GTS events use the T-GT, but you're right: most people will play these games with controllers, so it makes it seem slightly more approachable this way. Though lulling people into the false sense that they can compete with the aliens just because they all use pads is probably dangerous.
The big budgets are sort of needed for the people that are actually on-site. I had a lot more fun at the February Canadian GT Sport event because it was actually in a theatre instead of just a stream. But I very much do believe ForzaRC is on the right path by offering prize money. Some of the budget needs to go in that direction for racing esports to actually take off.
- 598
- Rocky Mountains, Colorado
- AlienDeathRay15
I watched for a while. some really good racing. I turned it off to watch some football. Who won? I'm guessing it was G2 Laige, as he was looking tough to beat.
zzz_pt
Premium
- 8,188
- Porto living in Hamburg
- zzz_pt
I have to admit, after watching GTSport's live events, this Forza World Final was quite a disappointment. The venue looked great and commentators did their best but there were so many things that felt weird and unprofessional. Was this their first event?
in no specific order:
- Out of focus and weird camera angles (not only during races but actually wile interviewing people... "cutting heads" really?... oh when they first cut to the panel with the commentators, where they are both seating down in chairs in front of a table and the girl is just on the side, standing up and almost out of the frame, talking with them).
- Distances between players in FT, really? Why not time only, something that everyone, everywhere understands?
- Super GT looks completely uncomfortable and the guy seating beside him with his arm almost around him is quite cringe worthy.
- Cable management on those setups at the beginning is worse than my first PC setup.
- Cameramen and cablemen showing up quite a bit.
- Bored looking people in the background when they're in the pre-show with FH4. Looks like everyone had to be inside the same small room.
- During last race the camera and commentators didn't care about the leader until the last lap or so. I understand they didn't care about who would win that race, but if you make an inverted grid, at least put the spotlight on other drivers for a second. I got the impression the inverted grid was just a "puzzle" for Laige and Box to surpass, and not exactly a race between everyone.
- Dirty driving and corner cutting without any repercussion for the most part.
- Outright stupid jokes ("You suck", a mouth fart and later on calling a "spanner" to one of the drivers. Classy).
- In game cameras are laughable... if they were thinking about making an eSports out of F7, I wonder what were they thinking to disregard the most important aspect of showing off the races themselves. Chase cam... /facepalm
- Controller only looks bad and I imagine that the most serious competitors will ignore these competitions because wheels are not allowed. I can understand having it open only for controllers is good for numbers of people participating but you get worse races (have you seen the amount of wiggling?) to watch and more incidents (from my experience in GT).
On the positive side:
- I liked how they integrated the livery creators in the show. The first women had a great talent, the second one, was a bit hilarious... really bad livery imo. But the idea is great!
- T10 employees at the beginning really showed they were trying their best to make everything look cool, even with the odd moment. Props to them, as they're not paid to be in front of a camera usually.
Most of these things are not excusable with T10 having a lower budget than PD. Better camera work, more professionalism, higher attention to detail and better organization of the space where people will be talking or not talking, doesn't cost that much more, if anything more at all. Well, maybe they should replace at least 1 of their commentators / presentors (the bald guy was awful). At several points during the stream I thought "man, this is bad...I could do better than this".
hmmm... that's weird. Excluding the type of "controller" that gives more credibility to the whole thing. It makes it look like a second class eSports competition IMO. It's not very exciting for me, as a grown man, watch teens racing with controllers tbh. Maybe I'm not the target demographic for Forza, but it seems odd to me. I really don't think Forza will attract attentions as GT will if they block steering wheels and keep chase cams.
ps: I wrote this at 5am so excuse the poor grammar and stuff
in no specific order:
- Out of focus and weird camera angles (not only during races but actually wile interviewing people... "cutting heads" really?... oh when they first cut to the panel with the commentators, where they are both seating down in chairs in front of a table and the girl is just on the side, standing up and almost out of the frame, talking with them).
- Distances between players in FT, really? Why not time only, something that everyone, everywhere understands?
- Super GT looks completely uncomfortable and the guy seating beside him with his arm almost around him is quite cringe worthy.
- Cable management on those setups at the beginning is worse than my first PC setup.
- Cameramen and cablemen showing up quite a bit.
- Bored looking people in the background when they're in the pre-show with FH4. Looks like everyone had to be inside the same small room.
- During last race the camera and commentators didn't care about the leader until the last lap or so. I understand they didn't care about who would win that race, but if you make an inverted grid, at least put the spotlight on other drivers for a second. I got the impression the inverted grid was just a "puzzle" for Laige and Box to surpass, and not exactly a race between everyone.
- Dirty driving and corner cutting without any repercussion for the most part.
- Outright stupid jokes ("You suck", a mouth fart and later on calling a "spanner" to one of the drivers. Classy).
- In game cameras are laughable... if they were thinking about making an eSports out of F7, I wonder what were they thinking to disregard the most important aspect of showing off the races themselves. Chase cam... /facepalm
- Controller only looks bad and I imagine that the most serious competitors will ignore these competitions because wheels are not allowed. I can understand having it open only for controllers is good for numbers of people participating but you get worse races (have you seen the amount of wiggling?) to watch and more incidents (from my experience in GT).
On the positive side:
- I liked how they integrated the livery creators in the show. The first women had a great talent, the second one, was a bit hilarious... really bad livery imo. But the idea is great!
- T10 employees at the beginning really showed they were trying their best to make everything look cool, even with the odd moment. Props to them, as they're not paid to be in front of a camera usually.
Most of these things are not excusable with T10 having a lower budget than PD. Better camera work, more professionalism, higher attention to detail and better organization of the space where people will be talking or not talking, doesn't cost that much more, if anything more at all. Well, maybe they should replace at least 1 of their commentators / presentors (the bald guy was awful). At several points during the stream I thought "man, this is bad...I could do better than this".
hmmm... that's weird. Excluding the type of "controller" that gives more credibility to the whole thing. It makes it look like a second class eSports competition IMO. It's not very exciting for me, as a grown man, watch teens racing with controllers tbh. Maybe I'm not the target demographic for Forza, but it seems odd to me. I really don't think Forza will attract attentions as GT will if they block steering wheels and keep chase cams.
ps: I wrote this at 5am so excuse the poor grammar and stuff
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- 383
- England
Yeah.... The GT Sport one was way more professional, forget the lack of polish on the production, the game just doesn't seem suitable for this kind of event. One of the biggest issues is the replay camera, GT, AC, F1 '18, etc, you recognise the real TV camera positions. In those games they use one angle for a corner and Forza would have used 3-4 for the same corner. And there is no long panning shots on straights, just a weird close up, or 456 camera cuts. T10 manage to use the real camera angles for Top Gear, so I believe its a design choice rather than hardware limitations. Certainly made the races jarring to watch, never mind the awful full throttle while using the clutch rev banging exploit on every shift.
The Lack of wheels was odd, I personally thought it would be easier for a pad user to adapt to the wheel instead of the other way around. Also more likely to have contact in wheels to wheel racing as you can't be as precise. Even being smooth still results in twitchy car behaviour and is really noticeable in the replay cams, which isn't a good look.
The however long it was (felt like 15-20 minutes) to declare a race was odd. With the GTS FIA thingy, the race you see is the race you get. With Forza RC it is a case of the race you just watched may not mean anything. Driving standards issues should be looked at in race not after.
They do have to stop using distance as gap measurement, I know the Forza Forums with tell you its better, but it really doesn't mean anything. Imagine using that system for qualifying, "For Bob to get pole he has to beat Jeff's distance of 2.546 miles, and he goes 5th on a 2.546 mile lap".
Great to have Hindy onboard though. Also there didn't seem to be much pushing Forza and Xbox down our throats which was a good thing, although I didn't see the whole thing.
The Lack of wheels was odd, I personally thought it would be easier for a pad user to adapt to the wheel instead of the other way around. Also more likely to have contact in wheels to wheel racing as you can't be as precise. Even being smooth still results in twitchy car behaviour and is really noticeable in the replay cams, which isn't a good look.
The however long it was (felt like 15-20 minutes) to declare a race was odd. With the GTS FIA thingy, the race you see is the race you get. With Forza RC it is a case of the race you just watched may not mean anything. Driving standards issues should be looked at in race not after.
They do have to stop using distance as gap measurement, I know the Forza Forums with tell you its better, but it really doesn't mean anything. Imagine using that system for qualifying, "For Bob to get pole he has to beat Jeff's distance of 2.546 miles, and he goes 5th on a 2.546 mile lap".
Great to have Hindy onboard though. Also there didn't seem to be much pushing Forza and Xbox down our throats which was a good thing, although I didn't see the whole thing.
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- 2,546
- Brazil
Is that a thing with the Forza franchise in General or only FM7?
There needs to be a middleground,maybe one championship with controllers only and another one with Wheels,Pad users can be as fast as wheel users(there are top players in GTS who use the DS4) and in the Asia event PD let pad users race while others used the wheel.
It's nice to appeal to what most people use at home but i don't think they should stop at that,use the full potential of your game,if Forza allows wheel users they should have wheels at the events.
- 332
- South Africa
- Riptide065
- LMP Riptide
Wheels worked great in FM5 with good feedback etc. Although there's a few claiming they have no problems with the wheel in FM7, the general feeling is that the Controller is the better choice of weapon in FM7, well at least so for the first few pages of the Leader Boards. The fact that the Elite Controller offers a "brake lock" that prevents you from locking brakes makes it even better for the beginner/average player. Personally I could not get any wheel to work properly in FORZA while it's obviously great and much preferred in GTS and AC.
- 5,427
- Codemasters (EA)
- PJTierney
They have held livestreams all year but I believe this is the first with a live studio audience.
Also, since this was held in the Gfinity Arena they were making use of Gfinity's permanent facilities within the studio. If you watch any of Gfinity's other events from London you'll notice the studio is set up in the same way.
The ticker seemed to be set to default for most of the races from what I saw, which meant it rotated between the various tracking methods. I'd prefer consistent time gaps but I don't like how it's a ticker in the first place; much prefer the timing tower you see in F1 broadcasts. It is what it is though, a design decision made and implemented amny months ago.
Super GT was at the event but he wasn't presenting on the main stage. I believe he was backstage during the Forza Horizon 4 segment but I arrived late and missed that part of the show.
They weren't on the main stage as that was using Xbox Devkits and being set up for the main event competitors. I suspect they repurposed the spectate/marshalling Xboxes for the Forza Horizon 4 setup.
The Championship was the main focus at that point and the action from P6-11 was very close. I'd say that was more interesting to watch than a potential stalemate between the top 2 drivers (like we had at Suzuka).
There was plenty of adjudication taking place between every round, as every single incident was being tracked and recorded. Drivers did seem to get penalties for major incidents but without going back through the races myself and pointing out every single corner-cut and bump I can't tell you if there were enough penalites or not.
Forza Motorsport 7's Spectate cameras are not great, I agree. I think they made the best of what they had by having somebody manually moving the right stick around to keep players in-shot. It worked for the most part.
I met a bunch of the painters at the event (and after-party), seemed like a cool project to be a part of. Must have been challenging to design liveries from scratch for that segment and they likely had limitations on what logos to work with as well. I got the feeling that this suited the fantasy painters (like Vixen) better and everybody did the best with what they had.
I know if I was invited I'd have to think long and hard about what to design as I wouldn't be able to rely on my vast database of logos.
All of the Turn 10 people I met were great people to hang out with. I've known some of them through watching livestreams and chatting online but to meet everybody in person was a great experience. Brian Ekberg was saying that the event was a stressful production but "the fun kind of stressful"; you could tell everybody was enjoying the spectacle despite the understandably heavy workloads they were under.
Without access to numbers it's hard to tell what kind of budgets are in play. I wouldn't be surprised if this event/Championships cost quite a fair bit and had a lot of Microsoft backing behind it, since it's one of Xbox's primary esports activities this year.
There were some hiccups on-site too, like projectors not displaying races quickly enough, audio desyncs and the like. I could tell from my vantage point that it was a vastly complicated show to put together, many cameras and production crew working simultaneously.
Mellish was alright, you need that kind of analysis. I did feel that the interactive screen was under-used however, it was unoccupied for most of the evening.
Alie and John were a great commentary duo, got along like best mates off-screen too.
It was said when this series launched that Microsoft weren't trying to replicate real-life motorsport, but wanted to play to the advantages of Forza as a platform. I don't know if that was simply PR fluff but the vibe I get is that this series is trying to match the typical Forza player's experience, which does include controllers, short races and chase cameras.
I'm sure more could be done to develop the platform and make the races more interesting to watch and compete in, but ultimately they're limited by Forza Motorsport 7's game design, which to me feels like it wasn't built for esports. Gran Turismo Sport was, and you can see that in their events.
I have a feeling that given the choise most top players would still opt to use a controller over a wheel. Forza Motorsport 7 was designed with a controller in-mind and ultimately, it's easier to drive fast with one.
Gran Turismo Sport has an in-game penalty system, Forza Motorsport 7 does not. Also, after the marshaling controversies in Mexico I feel that they were being extra-cautious for the finals since there was money on the line. Day 1 was pretty bad in terms of the wait between races, even in the studio it felt like it took too long. The Saturday show ran almost 2 hours behind schedule which meant that some (like myself) had to miss the last race to catch a train home. Sunday felt better in this regard.
As you said, big discussion on the official forums about that all year. Funnily enough, Forza Horizon games use time gaps between checkpoints.
Agreed, very nice man off-camera too. He made time for every fan that wanted to see him and was happy to strike up a conversation.
Yup, other than using Forza Horizon 4 ads to give them a buffer between production breaks there wasn't much self-promotion going on at all. The gameplay itself was the main push to get eople interested I imagine.
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One thing I was disappointed in was the apparent unreliability of the equipment. Multiple drivers retired from races with broken controllers, desyncs and the like and you have to feel bad for them after making it this far. I don't know if those issues were the fault of the competitors' own equipment, supplied controllers or the Xbox devkits they were using, but reliability issues are sad to see when spectating and must have been heartbreaking for the drivers affected.
Overall though, great event, was a pleasure to meet everybody.
