Why is the AI so Terrible?

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Is it then better to play the game offline? Are the drivatars tamer that way? Do they display better racecraft?

Questions questions...
You know what, come to think of it the AI has been driving better since I've been playing offline, but I can't say for certain. Perhaps I'll turn it back online and perform some tests later this week.

For example, I did an endurance race offline without getting hit if you could believe that.
 
Am I to read into the last two posts that if I sign out of XBL the AI uses a script, and not the drivatars?
 
Am I to read into the last two posts that if I sign out of XBL the AI uses a script, and not the drivatars?

I believe so.

So I reinstalled F5, and I've got to say the AI's much better - they actually drive clean and don't try to forcefully take your racing line or put you out of commission like they do in 6.

F6's AI reminds me of FM4 AI.
 
Isn't the degree of the A.I.'s windowlickness proportional to the selected level of difficulty? I mean if I were to set it at unbeatable they should be cleaner than when set at above average level, right?
 
I believe so.

So I reinstalled F5, and I've got to say the AI's much better - they actually drive clean and don't try to forcefully take your racing line or put you out of commission like they do in 6.

F6's AI reminds me of FM4 AI.
After I turned off aggression in the Drivitar menu, the AI went more along the line as it used to in FM5.
 
Isn't the degree of the A.I.'s windowlickness proportional to the selected level of difficulty? I mean if I were to set it at unbeatable they should be cleaner than when set at above average level, right?

Correct.

After I turned off aggression in the Drivitar menu, the AI went more along the line as it used to in FM5.

I've tried that too - does wonders. But I like the fact they fight for their racing line with aggression on. Sometimes, makes them more prone to mistakes... which is not only welcome but entertaining to watch. :)
 
I just saw what appears to be a serious case of rubber banding by the AI in a free play race. It was so bad it was laughable. I saw that there was an achievement for winning a 24 car race in free play with the 66 McLaren. I did not own one so I rented one and set up a 10 lap S class race on Daytona thinking that I would be lucky to finish 5th given how fast some of the other S class cars are and that I had not upgrades or tune on the car I was driving. There was one car in the field that was very fast. I'm not sure what it was as I never got a good look but I would guess it was a Noble.

Anyway I did have a couple of mods equipped to increase the HP and grip a little on the McLaren and I set off. Laps were consistent for me and the car was running somewhere around 197mph. The AI car was clearly much faster than that pulling away on the straights till it was almost out of sight at times then I would start catching up with it. on some laps it slowed a lot in the turns and I was able to overtake and on others I was not gaining on it hardly at all. Finally about 6 or 7 laps in I had managed to get far enough in front that I could no longer see it behind me then on the very next lap it passes me like I am sitting still, must have been doing at least 220mph or more as it went by. It slowed a little in the corner and I closed the gap then it did not pull away on the straight and I caught it in the next corner, 2 laps later I was so far ahead I could not see it again.

All this time my lap times are barely fluctuating maybe 1/10th between them on average maybe less. The AI car laps were so out there really fast one lap and really slow another like something in the game was causing him to slow down and let me get ahead at different points in the race. One thing is for sure I should never have been able to win that race in the car I was driving yet I won by a large margin with ease.
 
I just saw what appears to be a serious case of rubber banding by the AI in a free play race. It was so bad it was laughable. I saw that there was an achievement for winning a 24 car race in free play with the 66 McLaren. I did not own one so I rented one and set up a 10 lap S class race on Daytona thinking that I would be lucky to finish 5th given how fast some of the other S class cars are and that I had not upgrades or tune on the car I was driving. There was one car in the field that was very fast. I'm not sure what it was as I never got a good look but I would guess it was a Noble.

Anyway I did have a couple of mods equipped to increase the HP and grip a little on the McLaren and I set off. Laps were consistent for me and the car was running somewhere around 197mph. The AI car was clearly much faster than that pulling away on the straights till it was almost out of sight at times then I would start catching up with it. on some laps it slowed a lot in the turns and I was able to overtake and on others I was not gaining on it hardly at all. Finally about 6 or 7 laps in I had managed to get far enough in front that I could no longer see it behind me then on the very next lap it passes me like I am sitting still, must have been doing at least 220mph or more as it went by. It slowed a little in the corner and I closed the gap then it did not pull away on the straight and I caught it in the next corner, 2 laps later I was so far ahead I could not see it again.

All this time my lap times are barely fluctuating maybe 1/10th between them on average maybe less. The AI car laps were so out there really fast one lap and really slow another like something in the game was causing him to slow down and let me get ahead at different points in the race. One thing is for sure I should never have been able to win that race in the car I was driving yet I won by a large margin with ease.
One thing I've noticed about the AI since FM5, is that if you are a really good/fast driver they tend to try to follow your pace, and they end up making more errors causing them to fly off road or take corners horribly. It is possible that your pace may have been causing him errors.

Still it's hard to say, as the situation does seem weird.
 
One thing I've noticed about the AI since FM5, is that if you are a really good/fast driver they tend to try to follow your pace, and they end up making more errors causing them to fly off road or take corners horribly. It is possible that your pace may have been causing him errors.

Still it's hard to say, as the situation does seem weird.

I doubt it, it was the oval track and the car I was driving wasn't all that fast. The Ai never hit the wall, got sideways nor left the track it was just erratic as to how fast it would drive from one lap to the next . I could easily go much much faster with the stock build on the car the AI was driving.

I had something similar happen when I ran the Ford GT on Indy. I think it was an F1 there or maybe it was an S7 but it was doing the same thing though not as extreme and on a more difficult track. At times it looked like I had no chance and at other times I would be way in front back and forth for 10 laps like that.
 
Is it possible their single-player behavior is more aggressive than their multi-player behavior? I know mine is.

I had one race today, can't remember where it was exactly, but 5th volume, where your drivatar literally made me curse at you!

Had some good fun today in the first three races of Volume 5, Series 1 on Expert difficulty. Challenging, but not frustratingly hard, and no runaway drivers. Then I jinxed it. 4th race (if I remember correctly) was Lime Rock, which I had hardly driven before, so I did put the drivatar difficulty a couple of notches down because I wanted to hit the objective first time around. Well, yeah, half way through the race I started lapping, but not too long after I had a couple of you guys sitting right behind me, and the rest of the race I pretty much spent just trying to stay ahead. So, that was at Above Average difficulty, and it was a lot harder than the three races I'd just done in Expert. How does that even happen? If you ever have a good run, don't change the difficulty half way through the series!
 
I accept that it is possible that sometimes you get an AI level for the 1-2 drivers maybe 1 or 2 levels above what you chose. That's what turn10 admitted. I never race at unbeatable, I mean I'm just not that good.

So I watched a few unbeatable races on youtube driven by some obviously talent guys.

How come then they still get beaten by the 1-2 rabbits? What level is ABOVE unbeatable that is somehow getting into the races?
 
@TonyJZX Alien level? Must be the drivatars of all those BAM guys that always populate the top spots. Just a guess, other than that I have no idea... Except for aliens.
 
If the drivatars really are driving at unfeasible speeds I guess we know now why Turn 10 removed the ability to change the car viewpoint in replays so we can't catch them in the act.
 
I'm having some hard core racing in B600 SpoCom. I just leave it set to Unbeatable and enjoy proper racing. The AI see me gaining, setting up for a pass under brakes. Then, they move right over to cover the inside line. Frustrating but, I love it.
 
It makes me miss the on-rails AI in GT. Seriously. I tried everything from tinkering with the difficulty, staying offline (don't know how this would help, but someone suggested it), turning aggressiveness off, but it's all the same. the only thing that difficulty changes is how fast they take corners. The carnage is always there.

I could just ignore it, but the fact that you cannot turn visual damage off makes it all more frustrating. I like playing this game, because I like looking at my car and admiring it, changing from cockpit to 3rd person throughout the race. I love cars and that's the whole point of this game for me. But getting to the first 3 places without a scratch comes down to a Y button mashing fest that all it does is ruin the immersion.

As for now I'm back to my old GT ways in Forza 6, which is just enjoying my cars, taking pictures and hot lapping. there is really no point on playing against opponents since it's either too easy or too difficult. No middle point, and there is always crashing and erratic driving.

If I can name one thing I absolutely HATE about Forza 6 is its AI. It really threatens ruining what should otherwise be a relaxing experience.
 
Depends which cars you're using. True, it shouldn't matter but, it's the reason why I choose not to race higher than A class and mainly stay in D & E class(slower cars are more my speed :) )

I did try a Free Play race mimicking the WEC 6hour Silverstone, using the Porsche 919. I was a moving roadblock. I had one scrape because I'm too slow for the AI. Other than that, I finished 21st without being spun around or smashed into at the first turn.
 
Overall the AI is kinda bad.

Although from my expirience its very diferent from track to track and also what car I am using. Some combinations I can win rather easly on unbeatable others I am getting kinda smoked.

What anoyes me the most is that most races are so short, so in order to win them the only viable strategy is to brute force my way through the field.

The system in project cars where the player can chose the lengt of carrer races are much better.

Also I think most people underestimate how dificult it is to program AI. We are talking about artificial intelligence. Its not just something that is easy to do.

I think one solution was lengthier races with fewer cars on track. I would much rather a grid of like 6-8 cars with some very fast AI that was more aware of its suroundings.

Unfortunetly Turn 10 has gone a route where they try to pack as many cars on the track as posibel, and make it dificult to beat them just by making them brake check, side swipe into you and stuff like that at every oportunity they get.
 
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Overall the AI is kinda bad.

Although from my expirience its very diferent from track to track and also what car I am using. Some combinations I can win rather easly on unbeatable others I am getting kinda smoked.

What anoyes me the most is that most races are so short, so in order to win them the only viable strategy is to brute force my way through the field.

The system in project cars where the player can chose the lengt of carrer races are much better.

Also I think most people underestimate how dificult it is to program AI. We are kinda artificial intelligence. Its not just something that is easy to do.

I think one solution was lengthier races with fewer cars on track. I would much rather a grid of like 6-8 cars with some very fast AI that was more aware of its suroundings.

Unfortunetly Turn 10 has gone a route where they try to pack as many cars on the track as posibel, and make it dificult to beat them just by making them brake check, side swipe into you and stuff like that at every oportunity they get.
Flawed Drivatar may have a big case on this.
 
I just want to clear something up about the AI and Forza, it has never been scripted, ever. Since FM1 the AI in Forza have run on the Drivatar system. In FM1 it was possible for a friend to bring you their drivartar data (or send it to you online to be put onto a memory stick) and loaded into the game, this allowed you to race against their drivatar. The Drivatar system as always been learning AI, but it has been expanded on since FM5, and now uses cloud data to do automatically what could be done manually in the very first game.

This is an old Microsoft research page in regards to Forza and the drivatar system, it is back from 2004/2005:
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/drivatar/forza.aspx

So even if you go fully offline by disconnecting your Xbox one from the internet, the AI that the game then uses is still using the Drivatar system.

Also, the Drivatars are only bad because of the short number of laps. If you go and set up a custom race on your own, and set the lap number to something reasonable; say like 20 laps of Silverstone GP so you don't have to rush. Then you will see another side to them once the pack spreads apart, even with 24 cars on the grid. I do this all the time, and even though they are slow as sin, it does make for some interesting, but usually much clean(er) racing.

As I just said, it is because of the short number of laps in the career mode. It makes us all have to rush through the pack as fast as possible to get into a podium finish, and this will constitute either a few rewinds, or turning off sim damage. As you will have to force your way through the pack to a point. This is also some of the issue with racing online in the public hoppers also, as that behavior then gets carried on over to there. More laps would solve that issue, but then the casuals would turn away from the game. That would be bad for everyone. So really T10 are in a catch 22, but that catch 22 could be reduced by bringing back searchable player hostable public rooms; such as what we had in FM4. And giving us all the ability to set race length in SP career races would help also, as then the 'rush' to get into the top 3 as fast as possible would be gone.

Since the drivatar system also learns from peoples driving in the rivals and online modes, just having public player rooms again would slowly improve the crash fest in SP a little. But until they give us the ability to decide how long we want to race in the SP career events for, the issue will always remain.
 
I like drivatars, for me 40% of their difficulty (expert?!) is mostly enough in career. They're more alive and more human-being than bots in other racing games. But I feel that they are just bots, and it's OK for me.
I think that major part of drivatars's AI is scripted. I think that user-data is used to default bots. As I see in game menu "My Drivatar", user-data for drivatars is just some numbers for some parametres which are gathered independently from track to track. If I'll play only one track, my drivatar will be 100% synchronized (pre-learned) just for this track and 0% for others. But my drivatar can race on all tracks...being with default AI or being default AI plus my additional user-data.

Thanks for URL for Microsoft research page
 
I like drivatars, for me 40% of their difficulty (expert?!) is mostly enough in career. They're more alive and more human-being than bots in other racing games. But I feel that they are just bots, and it's OK for me.
I think that major part of drivatars's AI is scripted. I think that user-data is used to default bots. As I see in game menu "My Drivatar", user-data for drivatars is just some numbers for some parametres which are gathered independently from track to track. If I'll play only one track, my drivatar will be 100% synchronized (pre-learned) just for this track and 0% for others. But my drivatar can race on all tracks...being with default AI or being default AI plus my additional user-data.

Thanks for URL for Microsoft research page

Drivatars much better opponents than people in public lobbies. ;)
 
I just did a 50 lap race at Spa with AI on unbeatable and I watched for 30 or more of those laps a Bentley GT3 stuck on the final bus stop chicane. How are they some bad?
 
I just did a 50 lap race at Spa with AI on unbeatable and I watched for 30 or more of those laps a Bentley GT3 stuck on the final bus stop chicane. How are they some bad?

Some have reported the AI has taken a turn for the worst after the latest CU. Check official forums for details.
 
Some have reported the AI has taken a turn for the worst after the latest CU. Check official forums for details.

That isnt my experience since the last CU, in fact they are driving much better than ever before. Both cleaner and faster.
 
That isnt my experience since the last CU, in fact they are driving much better than ever before. Both cleaner and faster.
We've all seen the video evidence you provided of your superlative driving skills so my suspicion is that the better you drive, the less bashy the drivatars are that the game picks to race against you.
 
We've all seen the video evidence you provided of your superlative driving skills so my suspicion is that the better you drive, the less bashy the drivatars are that the game picks to race against you.
I agree. It's an observation that I've noticed over the years. The better you drive, the better they drive. That's taking into consideration the fluidity of your movements, the proper lines you should/are taking, as well as how much you're pushing it, I feel.
 
We've all seen the video evidence you provided of your superlative driving skills so my suspicion is that the better you drive, the less bashy the drivatars are that the game picks to race against you.

That's sort of to be expected, no? If you're not very good, the drivatars that the game picks to put against you probably aren't very good either. Real slow drivers aren't just pushing the accelerator less, they're taking poor lines, braking in weird places, and generally have poor car control.

I guess it's an unfortunate side effect, but the drivatars are doing more or less what they were designed to do; give a reasonable approximation of racing against people of roughly your skill level.
 
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