The career mode in FM3 is not very motivating

[RouWa]

For those who don't know the career mode in Forza Motorsport 3, here is a short explanation:

FM3 uses a race calendar (Season Play). A season consists out of 3-13 championship races. You can do a championship race every two weeks. Between two championship races you have to play one or two events from the event list. The event list looks like this:

The game randomly picks three of the 210 events from column 1-9 (column 10 = championships):

You have to select one of the three suggested events. An event can have up to six races. The shortest events are the ones in "column 1". You can finish them within 10 or 15 minutes (plus loading times). Longer events with 5 or 6 races take 60-90 minutes to finish. Championships races are even longer. In Season 6 you have to do 13 races and each one takes about 20 minutes. That's 4 hours and 20 minutes just for the highlighted event (first photo).

Right from the beginning the game picks events that are quite long. For example one of my first events was "Fujimi Kaido". 4 mountain stages and you have to do them three times against three opponents. If you have a slow car and the stages are uphill, it takes an eternity to finish the event.

In GT races in the lower classes can be fnished in under five minutes. Races become longer the further you get.

In my opinion 80% of the events in FM3 are (far) too long. By now I have played for 40 hours. That's 386 races or 35% career progress.

I don't think I will go for 100%. There is nothing new or exciting anymore. I have driven all kind of cars and I've seen all tracks (ones like Silverstone far too often). There is no reason to bore myself another 100 hours offline. There is not a single challenging event in FM3 either. You know, like the Missions in GT4. And long races don't make a race more exciting, especially not if you have a rewind option.

Does anyone still have fun with the career after 30 or 40 hours?

My tip for Turn 10 and FM4: Less events and shorter races.

 

[Jay]

Frankly thats how I would prefer it, I would like the career to last me hundreds of hours, over a good period of time of course.

IMO GT4 had even too few events.

 

[Chronos]

I'm liking the season play, hope it lasts ages.

Have you got the AI on hard and turned all the aids off for the A Class races? What car are you using?

 

[Lain]

I understand where you're coming from, but it's still fun to me.

 

[vr6wantsr20det]

i do the season play once in a while, but i find myself going more to the Event list and choosing the ones i feel like doing then, instead of being restricted to the few options they give you. Threre's a neat idea behind the Season gameplay and following that but i prefer to race what i want and when i want. 👍

 

[G.T.Ace]

Frankly thats how I would prefer it, I would like the career to last me hundreds of hours, over a good period of time of course.

IMO GT4 had even too few events.

👍

 

[Spencer]

There's never such a thing as "just right" for everyone.

 

[icelt]

For those who don't know the career mode in Forza Motorsport 3, here is a short explanation:

FM3 uses a race calendar (Season Play). A season consists out of 3-13 championship races. You can do a championship race every two weeks. Between two championship races you have to play one or two events from the event list. The event list looks like this:

The game randomly picks three of the 210 events from column 1-9 (column 10 = championships):

You have to select one of the three suggested events. An event can have up to six races. The shortest events are the ones in "column 1". You can finish them within 10 or 15 minutes (plus loading times). Longer events with 5 or 6 races take 60-90 minutes to finish. Championships races are even longer. In Season 6 you have to do 13 races and each one takes about 20 minutes. That's 4 hours and 20 minutes just for the highlighted event (first photo).

Right from the beginning the game picks events that are quite long. For example one of my first events was "Fujimi Kaido". 4 mountain stages and you have to do them three times against three opponents. If you have a slow car and the stages are uphill, it takes an eternity to finish the event.

In GT races in the lower classes can be fnished in under five minutes. Races become longer the further you get.

In my opinion 80% of the events in FM3 are (far) too long. By now I have played for 40 hours. That's 386 races or 35% career progress.

I don't think I will go for 100%. There is nothing new or exciting anymore. I have driven all kind of cars and I've seen all tracks (ones like Silverstone far too often). There is no reason to bore myself another 100 hours offline. There is not a single challenging event in FM3 either. You know, like the Missions in GT4. And long races don't make a race more exciting, especially not if you have a rewind option.

Does anyone still have fun with the career after 30 or 40 hours?

My tip for Turn 10 and FM4: Less events and shorter races.

IMHO I'm right there with you. It all just kinda feels like we are going through the motions, with no tangible objective involved apart from gaining achievements and attaining level 50 eventually. For me I spice things up by max'ing the class of whatever vehicle I'm using towards the goal of at least having my best laps appear as high up the leaderboard as possible. Meaning a nice lap in a A600 R8 is going to place much better than one in the stock A558 (or whatever it is). But that's just me.

Oh and like you said after doing 1 P2P event in season mode, well I'm not doing that again . 3 stages per event at 2+mins per stage, for whatever reason, is just mind numbing to me. That and the payout was pretty puny as well.

 

[MagpieRacer]

I adore the season play, GT4 had plenty of events but it wasnt structured as such, just pick n choose. I know you can do that in FM3 using the event list but, season play gives it a mmuch more structured feel with the all conquering World Championship dominating the season with the smaller events in between. Definately a better structure than GT4. The only thing I think can be improved on it, isnt neessacerily to do with the career mode, just a few more tracks wouldnt go a miss, but even then, its easy to choose events that dont consist of the same tracks.

And perhaps a more raceday feel to the races wouldnt go a miss, that however is an observaiton not a complaint.

 

[bevo]

You must be very, very, very good if you think that Forza 3 is not challenging. Either good, or you don't have the difficulty on hard, and you keep making your cars the highest PI you can for each race. I can't even compete on hard unless I make my car almost as good as I can. I race on normal with the cars stock. I think I've only spent 20 grand so far on upgrades, and I've only bought 1 car so far. Forza 3 is a game that you make either very hard or very easy. It's just like the GT series by giving you the choice to max out your car and race against cars that could never compete with you no matter what difficulty seeting you on. I would much rather a game be challenging and long then easy and short.

I would much rather the races be longer too, 4 laps on a track makes no sense at all to me. I would much rather see at least 10 lap races right from the beginning, especially since they added the rewind feature. 20 and 30 lap races wouldn't be near as brutal with the rewind.
I'm hoping the game lasts at least 150 hrs. With racing games I really want 100% completion to be at least a couple hundred hours.

 

[Moglet]

Surely all racing games are like this though? They don't have a story or anything, it's just racing over and over. That's why they're called racing games.

 

[Lain]

Surely all racing games are like this though? They don't have a story or anything, it's just racing over and over. That's why they're called racing games.

Yeah, but GT certainly has more variety. License tests, driving missions, special condition races, etc.

And there's just something about the way the game is layed out. Either you can pick from three suggested events, or you can bring up a screen with every single event. Something about that isn't appealing as GT's way of breaking it up into different sections. Yeah, GT's way is slower since you have to navigate through more menus, and yeah, on Forza 3's event screen the grid of events is broken visually into different sections... but I don't know. It might just be nostalgia kicking in.

 

[bevo]

Surely all racing games are like this though? They don't have a story or anything, it's just racing over and over. That's why they're called racing games.

I really liked how pro race driver(I think that was the name of it) was set up. The story was kind of cheesy, but it really made me hate Nick landers. I couldn't wait to get the chance to race him after he taunted me for a second time.

 

[LaBounti]

The tracks make it boring to me in some ways, not enough variety, Where are the street courses? Kinda lame. The structure is fine, the lack of track variety for me is not. The game is fun the tracks just are too dull and not really creative.

 

[Lain]

The tracks make it boring to me in some ways, not enough variety, Where are the street courses? Kinda lame. The structure is fine, the lack of track variety for me is not. The game is fun the tracks just are too dull and not really creative.

I like the tracks personally, but yeah, most of them are fairly similar.

 

[Bogie 19th]

I am loving the racing career. I am at 10% right now. Yes, it's very long (VERY long), but that is a good thing. I know 100% is a long way off, and my GOAL is to finish it 100%. I love the challenges, the 2 weeks on, championship, 2 weeks on, etc. I like how you can choose completely different race style weeks every time.

I like how you can obtain the gifted cars, get bigger discounts on brands. It's very satisfying. My favorite career yet.

 

[Devedander]

I really liked how pro race driver(I think that was the name of it) was set up. The story was kind of cheesy, but it really made me hate Nick landers. I couldn't wait to get the chance to race him after he taunted me for a second time.

The story with me and Nick Landers always ends with me putting him into the wall.

 

[H3avyM3tal]

I am loving the racing career. I am at 10% right now. Yes, it's very long (VERY long), but that is a good thing. I know 100% is a long way off, and my GOAL is to finish it 100%. I love the challenges, the 2 weeks on, championship, 2 weeks on, etc. I like how you can choose completely different race style weeks every time.

I like how you can obtain the gifted cars, get bigger discounts on brands. It's very satisfying. My favorite career yet.

Just a question. Did you say before that you didn't play any GT game before GT5P?

 

[Terronium-12]

Just a question. Did you say before that you didn't play any GT game before GT5P?

I'm curious. How would that hold any relevance?

 

[Bogie 19th]

Just a question. Did you say before that you didn't play any GT game before GT5P?

That is correct.

 

[H3avyM3tal]

I'm curious. How would that hold any relevance?

I'm curious. Why would you mistake my "just a question" question as an attempt to troll. And don't tell me you didn't feel even slightly agitated at my question.

It was just as intended - a question.

 

[Terronium-12]

I'm curious. Why would you mistake my "just a question" question as an attempt to troll. And don't tell me you didn't feel even slightly agitated at my question.

It was just as intended - a question.

Wow. Way to assume the worse there. 👎

I only asked as there wasn't much to go from based on the quote you, well, quoted.

 

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

I prefer the layout of the career in FM2.

 

[Tenacious D]

I'm not too sure about FW3's career mode, as in it's actually something cooler than just choosing events. I liked how I made my way through GT3 and 4. The gift cars came hot n heavy, but at the same time they mostly gave you a smooth progression up the horsepower and career path. Forza 3 gives you fewer cars, so the jumps will by necessity be rather large, but it still seems like you go from Mustangs to race cars pretty quickly.

I think mostly I want Season mode to feel like a real racing season, and it's still weird painting up a livery and being surrounded by street cars.

Hey, and while we're on that subject, when you paint up a race car, is the stock livery erased, or still there?

 

[Terronium-12]

I'm not too sure about FW3's career mode, as in it's actually something cooler than just choosing events. I liked how I made my way through GT3 and 4. The gift cars came hot n heavy, but at the same time they mostly gave you a smooth progression up the horsepower and career path. Forza 3 gives you fewer cars, so the jumps will by necessity be rather large, but it still seems like you go from Mustangs to race cars pretty quickly.

I think mostly I want Season mode to feel like a real racing season, and it's still weird painting up a livery and being surrounded by street cars.

Hey, and while we're on that subject, when you paint up a race car, is the stock livery erased, or still there?

Still there. Default liveries can't be erased, if you want to revert hit up "Erase Paint/Decals".

 

[Tenacious D]

AWESOME!!1 I mean... very good, sir.

Still enjoying the freedom of Event mode, not sure when I'll try a season.

 

[MowTin]

The only thing I don't like is the 3 heats per race at Fujiko.

They were fun until I tried the S-class cars there. Those cars are just too fast for those long winding roads. On the brake all the time.

Without rewind it would take ages to finish a season.

I'm sure with no assists with hard AI this game must be extremely challenging and would take a VERY long time to finish.

 

[Bogie 19th]

AWESOME!!1 I mean... very good, sir.

Still enjoying the freedom of Event mode, not sure when I'll try a season.

Event mode and season are the same to be honest. It's just season mode recommends one of your events (gives you 3 to choose from) instead of you choosing. There isn't any difference, as every race is the same race you can choose from your event list.

However, I don't know if you can obtain achievements for finishing seasons by doing the event list.

 

[Rue]

The only thing I don't like is the 3 heats per race at Fujiko.

Yes, there was a huge groan from me when I saw that there were 5 of these in a row. Mind-numbingly boring imo.

I personally don't find the racing season particularly interesting or motivating to play. It doesn't seem T10 were very creative here. If it was up to me I would have some variety in there.

For example a Time Attack day where you get say 5-10 laps to set a fastest lap at a circuit. The first one could be C class this goes up by one level each time. While you're driving there could be other (modified but not R*) cars on track all of different PI to make it feel like a real track day, with you having to set the fastest time in your level.

I would also have thought they would have made use of the large carpark track (with the warehouses) holding a gymkhana type event, handbrake turns etc. around cones and tyres. Is there drag racing in the season? If not that should have been put in and drifting should probably be in there too (even if it might not be everyone's cup of tea).

I also agree with someone's comment before about having an upgrade shop and livery editor but racing against completely standard cars, this is daft.

They could have even made use of the photomode in-game by having a Photo-Journo event where you can watch a race and take photos for a motorsports magazine or take photos of one of the cars in your garage for a magazine shoot or cover car. Doesn't have much to do with driving but it might be fun and would mix up the career - I would certainly love to do that!

Maybe for FM4...?

 

[Lain]

Yeah, there's drag races in the season.