Forza Motorsport creative director Chris Esaki has revealed players have much to look forward to when it comes to multiplayer in the next entry in the franchise, Forza Motorsport.
This past May, Esaki discussed the brand new tire model featured in the upcoming title. In the older Motorsport games, the tire/track interface were treated as a single point of contact for each tire, with the physics calculated 60 times per second. Now, the tire contact patch features eight points of contact and updates 360 times per second — a bigger change in the physics engine than everything from FM4 to FM7, combined.
With the team’s second playtest having occurred last month, Esaki turns the attention toward multiplayer. He acknowledges that the previous games were all about quick races: going from one race to the next, much like the current Hopper system, but players have always wanted more. With the amount of feedback throughout the game’s history of players wanting a richer multiplayer experience, it seems Turn 10 are ready to tackle the request head-on.
The team wants the core experience of the revamped multiplayer to encourage players to improve their skills alongside one another. The focus of the last playtest brought this to light through the live event structure with open practice, qualifying, and the feature race. As the game is now, there’s a calendar of open and upcoming events that players can join, each of which features the previously mentioned open practice and qualifying sessions before moving players to the main event — a typical race weekend in the world of motorsports.
Where open practice comes into play is helping players to better understand the track, where they’re fast, and where they can improve. As such, a new corner mastery system will aide players in better understanding where they’re faster or slower on a per corner basis. Esaki gives the example that he does well on decreasing radius corners, but not as well on those with double apexes. The new system will identify the corner(s) players need to improve on to make the most out of their lap times.
Continuing, Chris acknowledges the feature will continue to grow with the amount of community feedback given and that the testing is in no way final. Finally, he touches on endurance racing. With all the changes made to tire compounds and tire wear, the focus on fuel consumption, now would be the time to “double down” on endurance racing.
The latest test featured an endurance series alongside the other rotating events with an open practice and qualifying session that was available for hours, allowing players to jump in when able, leave, and come back for the main race anytime it was available. That flexibility, as Chris mentions, can allow the team to create qualifiers during the week and feature the main race during the weekend. Alternatively, there’s the option for qualifying during the day with the main race taking place at night.
While the details of what the next playtest will entail have yet to be nailed down, we should hear more about its availability over the coming months, including how to sign up for it. Stay tuned!
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