We’ve all experienced those cross country races where the first couple of AI just get too far ahead at the start (since we players always start at the rear of the grid) and happen to be beyond the ‘draw distance’ for the physics effects of walls, fences and other destructible items.
The result is that at higher difficulties it’s impossible to catch those first few cars, as we lose speed smashing through fences, while they just drive calmly off into the distance.
I understand the technical reason why this happens, and understand that it’s highly unlikely to be improved over the lifespan of Horizon 4, but would love if Playground could try to improve this behaviour for future titles.
For now, I’ll just have to continue to repeat these races at a lower difficulty, once I realise I’m on ‘one of those courses’.
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Every tome someone asks them to fix something, they screw up ten other things in the process. Make the AI more like human players, now they try and smash into you, push you off check points and intentionally break check you.
Not enough AI traffic in the game, now we got cars in every blind turn that intentionally try and smash into you.
Now we can probably expect a 50% increase in effects walls have on us, just to add 10% effect to the AI.
Keep it up, they’ll make the AI impossible for experienced drivers to even compete with.
Hello PurpleAlien420,
Thanks for your constructive addition to the thread where I highlighted an issue that exists in a game that I very much enjoy, and suggested that it is an item that would benefit from some attention in a reasonable timeframe, such as for the next sequel in the series.
No demands, no anger, no unsubstantiated complaints, and no berating Devs who are making games that I enjoy 99.9% of the time.
From my own experiences, I’d like to address some of the complaints you’ve raised, in an attempt to help improve your experience, if possible.
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AI brake checking you - If you mean that they take corners significantly slower than you would like to, leading to you rear-ending them at the apex. I used to have that issue. I find that it occurs less at higher difficulties, as they carry more speed through the corners. Have you tried turning up the difficulty to see if it actually makes it easier for you to race? You may be surprised that they behave more predictably in many situations.
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AI smashing into you and pushing you off checkpoints - I can’t say I’ve experienced this, except when there’s a large group of cars and they’re all jostling for position… in which case, I’m sorry, but accidents just happen. I personally prefer this to having all of the AI cars proceeding around the course in an orderly line
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AI traffic density - I don’t know your history with Horizon games, but in Horizon 2, I remember traffic density being much higher… used to love flying down the freeway racking up massive near miss skill chains. The change to make AI traffic ghosted in drift and speed zones has eliminated the one case I can remember getting frustrated at traffic in Horizon 3… maybe you’re complaining about Free Roam and Street Race traffic? I only hit them when I stop paying attention because there are so few that I forget they exist… I don’t make that mistake twice in an event.
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Devs might accidentally implement 50% momentum physics penalty on players - if this is a dig at how a fix to the issue I’m reporting could go wrong, you’ve misunderstood my original post. AI already suffer a momentum penalty for hitting walls, the same as players. The existing problem is that if an AI car gets far enough out in front, the walls don’t technically exist yet, so they suffer NO impact. While the player, or AI around the player do suffer the impact. It’s already impossible for experienced drivers to even compete in this scenario, hence why I’m highlighting the issue. My idea for a fix would be to modify the game engine to render these physics items further into the distance along the course route, while simultaneously reducing the render distance perpendicular to the course, so that the same ‘volume’ of game world is being rendered, to avoid adding too much extra load that may impact performance on some systems
If all you want to do is complain without offering any actual constructive feedback, please find a different thread to do it on. I’m trying to be helpful here, while you could go anywhere on the Internet and achieve your goal.
Regards,
EnergiserX
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Im curious, why this shouldn’t be possible to make the offroad AI slower?
It’s not about making offroad AI slower directly… more that the game engine would need to be modified to be aware of physics objects (walls, fences, trees, poles) further away from the player vehicle, so that those items then slow down the AI correctly.
If I needed the AI to be slower to beat them fairly, I should just turn down the AI difficulty. The problem is that if I do that now, I beat them too easily… but if I leave it on the correct difficulty the first 3 or 4 cars are sometimes uncatchable due to the destruction physics behaviour, and me always starting from the back of the pack.
My observation of the game shows that it only loads in these objects in a radius around the player’s car, and once you go further away again, they despawn. This is most obvious when you’re following a distant AI and they drive through a wall, but it’s still solid and unbroken when you get there, as the wall’s physics hadn’t loaded yet when the AI got there. Another instance you’d notice is that walls, fences and poles will reappear every lap on races with laps… because at the other end of the track, you’re far enough away that the game engine has unloaded the object (whether smashed or otherwise), and then reloads it again as you get nearer.
Changing how the game engine chooses to load objects in the distance is likely a very low level feature, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not designed to be tuneable at all. As such, it’s more likely to be considered as an inclusion in the a future major game engine update… aka Forza Horizon 5. (if the behaviour is ever improved)
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Walls remain broken at further distance in Freeroam. I’ve intentionally done this manier times. Yet races have different physics rules! -the kinda physics that are meant to annoy u
I absolutely hate this aspect and only do these races when I ‘have to’, like this month buggy challenge. Sometimes I have to use rewind 30+ times on a race. Just have to luck through traffic following them through obstacles and getting into the top 3/4 by the halfway point where the AI rubber bands back to the leader. If you don’t see the leader busting holes in obstacles by 60% completion, it’s pretty much a given the race is over. I will never race these types of events unless it’s a requirement for something, and it would probably be one of my favorite types if this didn’t happen.
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