I have been playing fm5 and FM6 alternately to catch up, since last week. I am enjoying the game, for the most part, but it seems like drivatar behavior is heavily plagued with ramming, slamming and other extremely aggressive behaviors that are making career play a real mental struggle.
I’m not talking about a little tap on the rear, or some friendly rubbing. I’m talking about from across the track, unprovoked, intentional hits that knock the victim off the track.
I though perhaps it would get better as I increased drivatar difficulty, but it might have gotten worse. I noticed people on my friends list being the culprits quite often, and after several days of their obnoxious drivatar behavior, I purged several people from my friends list.
Now, I am usually the guy that has the backs of the guys who make the game. I know it’s hard to put something like this together and maintain it. Especially in a world where so many people have no problem hacking into your hard work. But this issue appears to be the cumulative effect of poor behavior. Initially, it may have been folks new to the game, who were unaware of rules and racing etiquette. That would then frustrate the next person, and no matter how hard you try, it’s easier to give a quick nudge or blow past (roughly) the shenanigans to continue racing clean. Then THAT act becomes a regular on your drivatar repertoire of moves.
I guess I am interested to know IF this is how it works? If so, is there anything the developers can do to reduce the overly aggressive behavior in drivatars?
Or, is anyone aware of a fix, something I can do to eliminate it from my career races.
I have honestly been trying very hard to keep my drivatar clean. I have restarted many races where I was rammed or pushed off the track, but I would not be honest if I told you I hadn’t broken down and dealt a little retribution a time or two, against my better judgement.
I love the game, the cars and tracks are more than adequate in my opinion. The races and challenges are fun and plentiful, and the prize spin is better than nothing.
I do miss the storefront, auction house and clubs, and I hope the developers can find a way to bring them back soon. But other than the darn overly aggressive drivatars, I’m very happy with the game.
Turn the aggression off in drivatar difficulty settings… problem solved 
Drivatars don’t seem to mimic a particular player exclusively. No matter how much data is collected from a player, they still seem to use some universal behaviors. Oddly, sometimes they seem to pretty consistently do stuff that I don’t imagine many players doing, like heavily braking on approach to Eau Rouge at Spa-Francorchamps.
Unfortunately, they learn from players, and players view themselves as entitled. They’re the actual player so AI drivers should surrender to their advances, and if the player pushes the AI should back away. They’re deserving and destined to win and AI in the way should just get out of the way. These behaviors are learned by the Drivatars, which then act as though the track belongs to them and you should move out of their way. Players try to win in the first turn so unsurprisingly you have a heap of cars eight-wide going into turn one.
In FM6 you can turn off aggression, but in FM5 it felt like the more aggressive I am the more aggressive they get. Turn one on lap one will still be a mess, but once they spread out a bit it seemed that if you give them space they’ll do the same.
Yep, as guy said earlier you can turn off aggresivity in drivatar difficulty settings… but its interesting that you have issues with it.
I am playing on highly skilled difficulty now for some time but I didnt really noticed any aggresive behavior from drivavatars, only that their performance is rather weird sometimes… on few circuits they are pretty fast for example road america but in spa they are really struggling in some corners.
I get the occasional drivatar that will just ram me off track for things like getting a good hole shot or being faster thru a turn or down a straight, unprovoked 99% of the time. Even on unbeatable, it happens, and limit aggression didn’t make much difference, more unpredictable if anything. But I would say it’s equal parts driver “training” and programming. Really bothersome.
Don’t get me wrong, I want them to be competitive. I don’t expect to win every race. What I am personally experiencing isn’t just a little rubbing or a tap on the rear end. I’m talking about drivatars running full speed down straights and then plowing into corners, or, while holding a line on a straight, with no other cars nearby, and allowing more than a car width space as I pass, having a drivatar crank the wheel hard to come all the way over and knock me into the grass.
If the drivatars actually learn from us, would that behavior be attributable to a person driving very aggressively in their career mode? That’s what I was trying to determine. Because if that is the case, then, if we react in an overly aggressive manner, are we not adding to that “aggressive data” and compounding the problem?
Again, I’m not complaining. It’s more of a question, because I don’t know how it works. I have plenty of time and have, for the most part, restarted several races where this happened, because I didn’t want my drivatar even associated with overly aggressive driving.
There were a few folks on my friends list who I noticed were doing these things in nearly every race, so I dropped them. Now, I am not seeing it nearly as often.
Strangely enough, on career play I don’t have many issues with drivatars, and I play on Unbeatable. Put that same difficulty setting on a private multiplayer race, and it becomes an absolute nightmare - they become just as bad as hopper lobby bad apples.
I think, and I could be completely wrong, that drivatar behavior seems to be largely related to how you drive against them. When I first started with FM6 I basically tried to knock my way through to the front in most career races with AI difficulty in the middle settings somewhere, the drivatars responded by bashing back harder. I started trying to race them as I would a real person, some occasional paint swapping but generally trying to get around cleanly, they for the most part seem to have responded in kind, I have them turned up to either professional or unbeatable in single player and actually get some pretty good races with only the occasional one that will try to bash me off the track. Still there, but not like before when it was a real battle.
I do private lobbies with my brother and a field filled out with drivatars, he tends to play crash and bash with them, and we’ve both noticed that the drivatars that come into our races from his side are quite a lot more aggressive and less skilled than the ones that come in with me. Can make those full damage open wheel 50 lappers pretty interesting when you try to lap a group of them (and his are being lapped while smoking badly quite often).
I’m not entirely sure what you expect the drivatars to be, while it’s nice to be courteous to the computer unless you put the difficulty on little Timmy settings making up 15 places in 3 laps in evenly matched cars requires questionable (read liable to get you banned if you used them on an actual track) maneuvers.
If they did really learn from players then they wouldn’t be so wedded to the brake line…so it would appear all they learn from players is to pile into the car infront in the braking zone…
Having said all that I find pro and unbeatable drivatars to be far more courteous than a lobby player…
I’m not expecting the drivatars to be anything. I was trying to find out how how they “learn” and behave, and whether that could be cumulative and contributing to overly aggressive divatars.
As for them reacting to how we drive, I don’t believe that. As I stated above, I was extremely careful in my approach. I had a vague understanding about how the drivatars “learn” , and I was careful to not drive with traits that would create a bad drivatar. I restarted races if I caused a wreck AND even if I was involved in a wreck caused by someone else. The overly aggressive drivatars were there from the start, my first races, before my drivatar had a chance to learn a thing.
Like I said. This was a question. I was hoping to learn more about how the drivatars actually “learn”.
I’m nearly finished with career mode already, and I survived. I am enjoying the game and will for a long time.
I believe the drivatar’s behavior is fashioned after your play are gleaned from both good and bad driver traits or whichever dominates. If you don’t limit aggression you get full play of what they’ve learned from your bad driving and use it against you taken to a slightly higher degree. Also, if you don’t have the exact racing line through a corner and are off it by just a tad bit, they will take the opportunity no matter how minuscule and take it from you, sometimes pushing you out off the way. But still, I prefer the play against the drivatars that real play in the leagues and online lobbies.
Yeah, I have not played in any multiplayer or online lobbies yet. I wanted to get the feel for the new physics and reintroduce myself to the game. So, I’ve been bouncing back and forth between FM5 and FM6 and enjoying career mode and a few rivals challenges.
It seems like there isn’t a lot of firm information about how the drivatars learn and react. I was just hoping to get a better understanding. I hate that it took dropping people from my friends list to clear out the majority of the nonsense. I hope I was careful enough to have not created a drivatar monster that annoys someone else.
Peace
Edit: I don’t know anything about the leagues yet. I need to look into how that works, and hopefully get up to speed (pun intended) on that too.
I have not had any trouble with the drivatars with exception of 1 or 2 running a lot faster than the rest (I play on unbeatable). Looking at my own, though, it is a bit confusing as to how the top speed is 339mph. It also has more perfect drifts than I do. I tune for slight understeer.