The loss of saved ghosts is one of the main points of criticism with FM7. No ghosts means rivals can’t operate like in earlier games.
Meanwhile the number of laderboards has increased massively with 64 homologated car divisions running every track. Could this increase be the reason that Turn 10 no longer save ghosts on their servers?
The ghosts we are presented with are created each time we race and are volatile. They only represent the fastest lap run during each race. In Test Drive mode, the ghost is updated on every faster lap, clean or dirty, whilst in race mode it will not overwrite a clean ghost with a faster dirty lap. In my view these ghosts have limited value.
Is it possible that Turn 10 have insufficient server capacity to save 6 times the number of ghosts compared to earlier games?
Clean laps are NEVER replaced by a dirty lap on leader boards no matter how much faster they are
A dirty lap is Always classed as slower and always has been
You clearly have never used Test Drive and observed. Fastest lap becomes your new ghost whether it is DIRTY or not. If you don’t believe me, give it a try. I included the fact to enlighten those like yourself who I thought may be interested to know. Lap times set in Test Drive don’t appear on leaderboards but they do result in ghosts being created which is why I mentioned it.
Ok fair enough…i understand you now
I guess they use them so you can just try and beat them…just to test against
So in test drive they create pointless ghosts to try and beat that then disappear once you exit I’m guessing and never to be seen again
If you are Tier 11 and don’t know what I’m talking about, I give up. The Rivals you mention are an excuse for the rivals mode many people want to see. Either class based leaderboards with a saved ghost for every entry or homologated leaderboards with a saved ghost for every entry.
Yes, I’m talking about a ghost for every entry and there are many more than 256 leaderboards. On previous games that used class based rivals there were more than a thousand. (Tracks x No. of classes) If they attempted that with homologated leaderboards in FM7 that number would increase by a factor of 6. The way around that problem would be to leave the homologated leaderboards as they are but reintroduce the class based leaderboards including saved ghosts.
The number of leaderboards has not increased by anywhere near that number. In FM6 we had leaderboards for every division times every class times every ribbon.
Now, besides that, the actual number of ghosts/replays etc. is entirely determined by the number of people playing and placing laps, and has nothing to do with how Turn10 chops up the database views.
So, unless a great many more people are playing FM7 (lol) than FM6, there’s no extra burden at all.
The division leaderboards on FM6 were simply a subset of the class leaderboard. The ghost was the same ghost. There are 6 times the number of homologated leaderboards than classes in FM6. Therefore 6 times the number of ghosts to store. I also presume they calculate their storage requirements on a growth assumption over previous games. I don’t know the answer but storage could become a problem for them.
You don’t seem to understand. The metadata describing a lap is not much data - excepting the ghost/replay itself. Those are stored very far down in the leaderboard lists (many thousands), which means that the number of ghosts/replays recorded doesn’t have anything to do with the number of leaderboards - that’s just a database view. The actual data stored in the database is proportional to the number of laps - full stop. Thus the data stored in the database is proportional to the number of players - no matter how many leaderboards, or other database views you have. You could , almost literally, have a leaderboard for each player and have virtually no impact on the total data storage.
It’s total laps that matter, not how it’s sliced up.
Turn10 hasn’t cut the leaderboards/rivals out because of lack of database storage (lol), they’ve done it because Turn10 has determined that Homologation is the only game in town, and FM7 was released far, far too early and nothing is complete.
Edit - Let me try to be clear. If you look at the FM6 leaderboards you’ll notice that some track/class combinations have much much fewer stored laps on them than others. What this means is, if you multiply the number of “classes” by 6, by implementing homologation, you, by no means, multiply the amount of data storage by 6. This is because the players have only made so many laps. Most of those laps being recorded and stored, and with many leaderboards potentially able to store many more laps. So expanding how you split up that, say 15 million laps, isn’t going to add a bunch more stored laps despite there being more categories. The players have only made, and thus are stored, so many laps regardless of how you choose to categorize them. Thus the fundamental determinant of your storage needs is based on how many players you have, and how active they are.
Now, is it possible that a 6 fold increase in leaderboards could lead to a 6 fold increase in stored data - yes - but only if every player ran every ribbon in every division, and very few players do that sort of thing. You can check this out yourself by looking at your leaderboard position. You’ll see something like xxx out of yyyyy players. If you add up the yyyyy number of players for each division and ribbon, and compare that to the yyy number of players in FM6 for each class and ribbon, you’re going to notice that FM6 has vastly more laps stored. This is mostly due to FM6 being around for two years, and very little to do with how many actual leaderboards there are. That yyyyy number for FM7 will increase, but it will increase proportional to the number of laps players do, and only a very small contribution to that yyyyy increase will be to the number of leaderboards.
I’m not sure if T10 changed the ghost/Leaderboard (LB) configuration we become use to due to cloud storage space, but I did some testing and here is what I found:
**This includes Drag Strip tracks but not the Event LBs, (VIP, Monthly/Festival, Spec Challenge, Track Days, Autocross, or Drift)
FM5 had a total of 8 Classes with 59 Environment / Track combinations for a total of 472 POTENTIAL LB entries per player.
FM6 had a total of 9 Classes with 166 Environment / Track / Weather combinations for a total of 1,494 POTENTIAL LB entries per player. (68% more than FM5)
FM7 already has a total of 66 Divisions with 209 Environment / Track / Weather combinations for a total of 13,794 POTENTIAL LB entries per player. (89.2% increase over FM6 and 96.5% over FM5)
I use POTENTIAL because I agree with desrtfox071 that not all players use all available LB entries, (not even close) and therefore the storage/memory space dedicated to each LB does not reach capacity.
However as HLRMoss stated, the LB/Ghost potential memory requirement has definitely increased.
For the ghost on test drive, I tested this on the Airfield test track with 3 laps.
1st lap was slow but clean on the first tunnel
2nd lap was faster but dirty on the second tunnel
3rd lap ghost was still the clean lap ghost.
Same result on the track in Free Play 3-lap race with 0 Drivatars.
Seems to be the same as previous titles.
Hope this helps.
Not really, it just clouds the issue. When I ran at Bernese Alps my first lap was very slow and clean and the ghost appeared on my 2nd lap, which was faster but deliberately dirty. On my third lap, the 1st lap ghost had been overwritten by my faster, dirty, 2nd lap. This didn’t happen in normal Free Play where I did the same test ut my slow 1st lap ghost remained.
Understand, perhaps its reacts differently on each track.
I did try to duplicate what you described. On the Airfield I intentionally drove both routes through the hangars. On the 3rd lap, right at the start line, the clean ghost jumped in right beside me.
After this many years of Forza, you and I both know anything can happen
I did some further testing on 2 different tracks. The first was a track that I’d never posted a lap before, and the second was a track where I had.
On the first track, in Test Drive, my clean ghost was overwritten with my dirty ghost.
On the second track, where I already had a clean time on the leaderboard it didn’t, so I guess we are both right LOL.
I’m still surprised that the game overwrites any clean ghost with a dirty one but it does happen, in Test Drive on a track that you have never set a time.
Please try this and confirm that I’m not going mad
Confirmed! You are not going mad:
I tried a 4-lap test drive at Maple Valley Short Reverse with a Hot Hatch Genesis car (AMC Pacer). No previously laps in that division.
1st lap - Slow and clean
2nd lap - Dirty in the first sector
3rd lap - Faster and clean, Ghost was the dirty lap, not the clean!!!
4th lap - Ghost was the 3rd lap clean ghost!
Good find! T10 should contact us about Test Driver/Beta Tester jobs
