Custom Public Lobbies and You. A Primer.

I said it in another post, but I’ll say it here too. I’m pretty sure the reason behind the neglect for public custom lobbies has to do with server allocation. Turn 10 does not view such lobbies as worthy of getting dedicated servers for, as they will not have as much traffic as the main hoppers in the long-run. They won’t publicly say that because, obviously, we’d all say “that’s not true!” when it really is. After Forza 4 had been out for a year, I had a really hard time finding a public custom lobby with more than 2-3 people in it, and if I made one I would be lucky if more than one person joined it.

That still doesn’t mean it’s a good reason, though. A decent amount of the online hoppers in Forza 6 get just as little traffic.

Another aspect of it is that Turn 10 knows that at least 50-70% of the playerbase at launch will be gone after a few months. They probably don’t see the value in making the game fun for the dedicated players, as it would cost more than it would make.

Dan said to use the “looking for group” thing on xbox live, apparently he feels thats a better option than having an in game option.

Wasnt it discovered a while back that they couldn’t do it because of the dedicated servers used by the xbox one? I remember reading it but can’t remember if was backed up or pure speculation

Pcars has private lobbies and assetto corsa is in the (long)process of adding them. No one knows why they arent adding them, odds are its not worth the added cost. Its a weird omission though because it doesnt seem like too much of a big deal. People are allowed to make private rooms, we just cant search for them.

Not dedicated, the term is persistent - in short, the game runs continually on many servers. This does offer many advantages to players. The one disadvantage of course is that a persistent server doesn’t lend itself to players setting up their own sessions.

As the game is hosted on XBL I doubt T10 call all the shots anyway. Most current games on XBL operate the same way. The other problem is player volume, you just can’t provide an infrastructure that would allow anywhere between 2 and 4 million players the ability to take up server capacity hosting a lobby with a couple of people in it. And that’s only one game!

Don’t underestimate the scale and complexity of XBL. There’ll be many reasons why things are done the way they are and these will never be published here.

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Most infra services now (AWS/Azure etc) have the ability to automatically spin up (or down) servers as needed so I highly doubt your reasoning.
Unless its changed (I doubt), races are still P2P with only matchmaking/AI/reward services hosted.

Don’t worry guys and gals we have custom driver outfits now!! Turn 10 continues to drop the ball year after year adding features that no one cares about. Not listening to your base is the best way to kill a game. I’m ready for a new title that has less b.s. and more fun. Who is ready to post on forums looking for groups for custom games while you stare at turn 10s joke of a new key feature in beautiful 4k. This is a sad excuse for a “game”.

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Let’s put to bed some myths here

Groups do not work on a game like forza. Even if you get a group of 16 players it only invites them to a party not a game. Once you have the 16 players in a lobby 1 by 1 they go to bed or play other games and your lobby dies meaning you have to start again.

T10’s lack of response is appalling, I understand they may not be able to name and Shame the ppl behind this but a simple “technical difficulties” would be enough to shut everyone up

CPL’s would not have 3 or 4 ppl in them. I’m confident that the lobbies would follow the same trend as battlefield and reputable ppl would have full lobbys. Unfortunately the public hoppers would be a ghost town. Perhaps that’s the reason we do not have cpls, maybe t10 want to make sure all the casual players actually have ppl to wreck in the publics.

If servers are an issue then make the hosts pay like battlefield does. But realistically 4 million ppl on forza at any one time is a bit extreme, id guess at less than a million unique users at anyone time and that’s on release.

Personally other than Microsoft restraints there are no reasons why cpls are not a feature. They solve so many problems and please so many diffrent ppl. I think it’s down right stupid to leave them out considering the vast amount of ppl that want/need this feature for fm to be of any use to them.

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This such a blatant misconception I’ve heard several times.

I’ve played FM4 since around the time it first came out and I’ve never had trouble finding races in Public Hoppers even with CPLs at their peak. Any Class was always full of players and even with some of the less popular game modes I’ve joined in Public Hoppers(There’s so many, and it been a while so I can’t be bothered to list them out), I’ve found games. CPLs were a good way to get around having to deal with some of the b.s. that so often occurs in the Public Hoppers, you just boot whoever was ruining the lobby for everyone else. Even then, Forza 4 had the only real effective vote to kick system in Public Hoppers where it was a decisive Yes/No vote and everyone was fully aware of a griefer needing to be removed, unlike in FM6. I’ve had some great races in Public Hoppers often as a result of this. The only time I’ve never found either a Public Hopper or CPL to play in Forza 4 is now, because the servers are pretty much a ghost town with the new releases for Xbox One.

If “We don’t want to spread the player base too thin.” ends up being the best excuse T10 can come up with, I know they are full of it.

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CPL’s in 4 were never the same as they were in 2. Not even close.

If my memory serves I do believe the answer given back around FM3 for their removal was that people didnt want to spend time, nor learn the rules of the various lobbies that were hosted by well known hosts. They didnt want to spend time jumping between (or being kicked) to find one for them.

Further to this many CPL’s were HP limited for balance reasons. This made the general public even less inclined to play as they would join a lobby and have zero cars to use. B class used to be limited to 200 - 300HP, A class was 300 - 400HP, not the PI Boundaries.

So for them CPL’s were a exercise in futility and frustration when all they wanted to do was jump in and race in their car. Hoppers were born.

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I never played FM2 so I would have no idea. Was multiplayer in that game really completely comprised of CPLs? If that’s the case, I can see how that can be problematic.

Only games I’ve played that implement multiplayer like that are Warhawk and Battlefield to an extent although BF has some dev run servers so that solves a lot of problems right of the bat. Oh and Gran Turismo; pretty sure both GT5 and GT6 multiplayer comprised completely of CPLs. It’s very annoying when you’re strictly limited to CPLs and have to abide by some potentially bogus rules made by the host or risk getting booted when you just want to play the game as it was intended.

That’s why I feel the combination of Public Hoppers and CPLs in FM4 works. You have Hoppers for those who want to just get in and race without having to abide by some host’s rule set and CPLs for those who want to fine tune the race settings to their own preferences and let others join in freely.

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FM2 was completely CPL’s.
The rules used we’rent bogus in the slightest. The HP limitations placed made A LOT more cars competitive and balanced then they would have been otherwise if it was just PI boundaries.
While upgrades exist, balance will never exist between cars even in the same class as once you upgrade its no longer that manu, but a “generic forza car”.
Both can coexist perfectly fine IF they made them public searchable ie: server browser.

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Sometimes things just get more complicated, not better. On the 360 it was so easy to see which of your friends were playing Forza (or any other game) and with one button press you could join them as long as the lobby wasn’t full. This was nothing to do with CPLs, just a real easy way to get into a public lobby with people you knew. All this party and group stuff has got in the way. KISS!

Interesting nugget on this topic:

I read this on the AR12 website a while back:

"In older Forza Motorsport titles, players were able to create custom online lobbies that random players from around the world could join. This is not the case anymore. Instead there are only private lobbies and public hopper lobbies. In the latter, you lose lots of the customisation options, meaning you are not necessarily racing in the conditions which you originally set out to. One of the biggest requests amongst the community is the ability to create public online lobbies, where the host creates the settings in just the way they like, before allowing the rest of the Forza player base to search for the lobby and join. "

[Mod edit - WSD - Please dont link to sites which are known for posting exploits, encouraging other people to use them and getting people banned from the service]

I dont want a return of the CPLs they used to have I would rather see

1 - the ability to rent and host servers for a weekly/monthly/yearly charge (make the renter sign an agreement to police and control their own servers appropriately taking work away from T10 and adding another revenue stream) (Battlefield EA system)

Or

2 - utilize crossplay and allow people to host their own servers on a second device ie older xbox or windows 10 PC. (again make people sign agreements to properly police their own servers taking work away from T10 and again adding another revenue stream while also creating a reason for people to purchase a second Xbox or xbox1x ) (Ark Wildcard system)

or just make the current private lobbies searchable

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I’d be happy to buy a years worth of server space but only if public hoppers were completely ditched ensuring a captive player base. But that’s never going to happen I think fm needs both publics hoppers and searchable private lobbies.

Someone mentioned fm4 publics always being full. I think this was down to any class being the first option, u could button bash from the home screen all the way to a hopper. Very easy and it was x class by the time u worked out that’s all anyone used. The set up on fm4 wasnt perfect for finding lobbies. All that needs to be done for cpls to work on fm6 is for there to be and icon where all the others are that takes u to the search page. This would work much better than the fm4 cpls where u had to click into about 5 screens just to see the lobbies. It’s all about how easy it is to find and join. Make it as easy as joining any public and it will work

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Forcing players into searching for custom lobbies isn’t the answer either. If hoppers were division based and not Class PI based it would be half the battle. Jumping into something like “A” class is so random because the cars can theoretically be all over the map or upgraded into A from other classes. This is where a lot of the imbalance comes from.

Renting servers doesn’t sound like a solution. It would give the message to the playing population that yes you can have custom lobbies but only if you pay for them.

-k

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Did you even play this game when it had user created lobbies? it was awesome.

My only gripe was that game would freeze after 5 or 6 races EVERY time.

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Yup. I had FM1 WAY back in the day. After that I got FM3 first, then after a couple months of playing got FM4 immediately followed in order by FM2, FH1, FH2, FM6, FH3, and soon to be FM7.

-k

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