Leaderboards and Ghosts

I know I’m late to the party, however I really hope alot of these issues get worked out soon!! I just want to do some hotlapping and rivals. I can’t even share any paints or tunes over the last few days. Frustrated for sure.

I hear ya Zep. I like the innovation in FM7, but not at the expense of the tried and true aspects that have kept some of us racing Forza for a decade +.

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I realized my mistake and removed my comment, but too late, however, even with the ghosts, I truly don’t think the data will be hard to store. I’d be stunned if it was more than 20 TB which in today’s world is trivial for Microsoft and for them the software is free. They only have to pay for hardware to add into existing data centres they control. The cost would be very low compared to the revenue of the game. I think it’s just being cheap or a poor decision without doing the math. You’d be stunned how many companies don’t do effective calculations on operating costs in the gaming industry.

Thank you for your input it is genuinely appreciated. When I started this thread I was trying to understand why Turn 10 made such a poor decision to remove the bulk of Rivals.

How difficult would it be to reinstate them in the Rivals section?

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It depends on how well they’ve written the code. I redid my math again just to be ultra-conservative.

Here is my values used:
Tracks plus layouts. I counted 122 but rounded up to 150 for new tracks
Spec or special events on one track and layout. I rounded up to 50
9 Classes (which is a multiplier for each track and layout)

So (150 * 9) + 50 = 1,400 leaderboards

Then I used 250,000 average players per leaderboard. That’s a guess, but likely high.
When multiplying the average players per leaderboard to leaderboards, there are about 350,000,000 player lap data sets to be stored. If we assume 1k per dataset it’s 331 GB of data. Obviously, without storing ghosts, each player lap entry will be far smaller than 1k. Likely just the player ID, car ID, car settings and time which would be at most 100 bytes.

The trick is determining what they would need to store for player telemetry to replicate a lap for a ghost. That comes down to sample size. In an MMO to detect cheaters that use exploits to shoot better or move faster, you have to capture, the position in space, orientation (pitch, yaw, roll) and a vector for time, speed and acceleration (with a negative value as deceleration) At most, that would be 128 bytes but could be far smaller if they used less accurate number values. Measuring the car’s position in space to even the inch/centimetre would be overkill.

For my math, I’ll use 128 bytes per telemetry point including the previous attributes I described. So now we have to determine how often to store telemetry points in a lap. I used an average track/layout length of 3 miles. That is likely high. Now, in an ideal situation I’d store more telemetry points on a curve, then less on a straightaway, however, to keep the math simple, I guessed storing the car’s telemetry every 16 feet or about a car length. The powerful GPU’s on a console would have resources to interpolate in a lap with just a ghost and a driver. It wouldn’t be as CPU heavy as when there are a bunch of AI drivers.

When I multiply it all, that is 124kb per lap for a ghost. When I multiply that times the 350 million player laps, then convert to terabytes, it’s 40 TB. In today’s age, that’s not big data compared to an MMO. Remember, that is all very conservative numbers to bump up the estimate. With well written code and a optimized database, I’m sure I could make it 1/2 that.

Simply put, I think it’s lame, lame, lame that they can’t store ghost laps.

Your estimate is a little low. There are currently 209 environment / track /scenario combinations times by 66 Car Divisions for a total 13,794 separate leaderboards per player. Plugs this number into your equation wherever you used 1,400. That would be you estimated storage requirement per person. Now add current and future Rival events. As a gauge for potential players per LB, there are about 477,000 entries on the intro Dubai intro race LB (Dubai Full / Exotic GT / Top Scores). I am fully aware that most players come nowhere near entering every possible race, just a gauge for potential participation.

Don’t get me wrong, I want the old style ghost / LBs also, just highlighting that the potential LB storage requirement for FM7 is 98% higher than FM6.

I have to disagree with your numbers. I actually used the menu in free play in FM7 to count each track and the number of layouts to get a total of 122. You can’t use an event specific to a car on a specific track layout as a multiplier. How did you get 209?

In regard to divisions, where can I see leaderboards based on divisions in rivals in FM6? They only used special events and classes. I did not see leaderboards per division. I think the group here just wants to see leaderboards with ghosts for classes in Rivals mode, not divisions, although to be honest, it would be nice to see it per division and class. So your number for leaderboards per player seems high.

There are 209 Track and Scenario combinations including drag races and there are LBs for each (they can be found in Free Play, by hitting X on the Race Environment , then hit Y for the LB).
Try changing the Track Scenario option and you get a separate LB for Night or Rain as applicable.
Each of these 209 track options have a LB for 66 different Car Divisions to include OPEN Division which allows you to run the car modified to any spec you want…
209 times 66 = 13794. This doesn’t include the additional specific event LBs in the Rivals selections.

FM6 did not use Car Divisions, it used Classes only and had no drag LB (much to the chagrin of many Forza Faithful).

FM6 had 166 Track and Scenario combinations and 9 different classes. 166 times 9 = 1494. This is about 10.8% of the LBs in FM7.

I wasn’t trying to sound critical of your estimate, just don’t think everyone realizes how may LBs there are in FM7.
EDIT – I reread the your previous post. I incorrectly type 98% more then FM6 in my earlier post an recanted in a couple of posts above this. It should read 96.5 more than FM5 and 89% more the FM6.

Yes, but to add the FM6 leaderboards to 7, it’s only an additional 10% load - and that’s based on the (IMHO flawed) belief that additional leaderboards translates directly into additional space requirements. So, I don’t see any reason, under any math, that the addition of the FM6 leaderboards to FM7 is a burden that can’t be added into FM7. This is especially true when you consider that many players consider such leaderboards to be a fundamental aspect of what makes Forza different from other racing games (like I do).

No argument here…I agree with you. The LB with ghosts option kept me playing FM4 for years.

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This kind of argument is, frankly, kind of silly.

First off, I can’t even tell what you actually mean by 98% greater, and if you can’t properly compute basic percentages it devalues your argument considerably. I guess, based on your explanation for that percentage that you’re trying to say that the potential DB usage for FM7 is about 50 or more times that of FM6. Not only is this wrong (we’ll get to that later) but that’s not what “98% greater” means. Not even close. 98% greater means about twice as much. Which, if the DB usage for FM7, potential, was about twice as much as FM6, that would be a no brainer to include everything. Storage costs have dropped enough in two years to make a twice as much requirement cost less than the FM6 requirement at launch.

Now, as to why the 50-60 times more is also not true, let’s step back a bit. Almost all databases have the potential to grow to an infinite size. This is true for both FM6 and FM7. Now that we understand that, we need to evaluate how fast will the DB grow. The growth speed is primarily dependent on how much the users race in different cars and on different tracks. This has far more to do with individual player psychology than it does categories. Now, having said that, yes, for the single player campaign, there will be more laps recorded than in FM6. On the other hand, once people are done with that, and hotlapping as in FM6 (assuming we actually had that feature), most players wouldn’t be hotlapping in a great deal more cars or tracks than before. So, yes, the requirement for storage in FM7 should be greater than FM6, but not by 50 or 60 times. Not even close. Only Turn10 really knows how much, because to evaluate this, they need to watch the growth rate. What we do know is this growth rate is probably not much greater than that from FM6 because there are probably less players (at the same point in time relative to FM6’s launch), even with the extra potential burden.

Now, just for argument’s sake, let’s assume (incorrectly) that FM7’s requirements really are 50 to 60 times that of FM6. Now answer this. If that’s the case, what would be the burden of adding in the class/ribbon rivals into such a scenario? By definition, the burden would only be about 1/50th or 1/60th the total burden already incurred by FM7. So the addition of the FM6 rivals to FM7, in this scenario, would only represent around a 2% increase in DB usage. That’s beyond trivial.

In short, there is no storage based reason to imagine that the FM6 type rivals/leaderboards were removed. There’s no sound argument for it.

Turn10 removed these because they want Homologation to be the only game in town. They think you shouldn’t be allowed to play Forza7 in the same way we played all previous FM titles.

Shame on them.

Edit - tl;dr summary:

If the burden for FM7 Leaderboards is twice that of FM6 (per the 98% greater remark). There’s no excuse for not adding FM6 leaderboards due to the cost for that storage being less today than when FM6 came out.
If the burden for FM7 leaderboards is 50 to 60 times that of FM6 (per what I think the poster meant) the burden of adding FM6’s leaderboards to FM7 is only an additional 1/50th to 1/60th the cost already incurred.

So, in neither circumstance is there an economic or storage based reason to not include the FM6 leaderboards in FM7. Thus Turn10’s motivation must be something else.

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[/quote]

[/quote]

This kind of argument is, frankly, kind of silly.

First off, I can’t even tell what you actually mean by 98% greater, and if you can’t properly compute basic percentages it devalues your argument considerably. I guess, based on your explanation for that percentage that you’re trying to say that the potential DB usage for FM7 is about 50 or more times that of FM6. Not only is this wrong (we’ll get to that later) but that’s not what “98% greater” means. Not even close. 98% greater means about twice as much. Which, if the DB usage for FM7, potential, was about twice as much as FM6, that would be a no brainer to include everything. Storage costs have dropped enough in two years to make a twice as much requirement cost less than the FM6 requirement at launch.

Now, as to why the 50-60 times more is also not true, let’s step back a bit. Almost all databases have the potential to grow to an infinite size. This is true for both FM6 and FM7. Now that we understand that, we need to evaluate how fast will the DB grow. The growth speed is primarily dependent on how much the users race in different cars and on different tracks. This has far more to do with individual player psychology than it does categories. Now, having said that, yes, for the single player campaign, there will be more laps recorded than in FM6. On the other hand, once people are done with that, and hotlapping as in FM6 (assuming we actually had that feature), most players wouldn’t be hotlapping in a great deal more cars or tracks than before. So, yes, the requirement for storage in FM7 should be greater than FM6, but not by 50 or 60 times. Not even close. Only Turn10 really knows how much, because to evaluate this, they need to watch the growth rate. What we do know is this growth rate is probably not much greater than that from FM6 because there are probably less players (at the same point in time relative to FM6’s launch), even with the extra potential burden.

Now, just for argument’s sake, let’s assume (incorrectly) that FM7’s requirements really are 50 to 60 times that of FM6. Now answer this. If that’s the case, what would be the burden of adding in the class/ribbon rivals into such a scenario? By definition, the burden would only be about 1/50th or 1/60th the total burden already incurred by FM7. So the addition of the FM6 rivals to FM7, in this scenario, would only represent around a 2% increase in DB usage. That’s beyond trivial.

In short, there is no storage based reason to imagine that the FM6 type rivals/leaderboards were removed. There’s no sound argument for it.

Turn10 removed these because they want Homologation to be the only game in town. They think you shouldn’t be allowed to play Forza7 in the same way we played all previous FM titles.

Shame on them.

Edit - tl;dr summary:

If the burden for FM7 Leaderboards is twice that of FM6 (per the 98% greater remark). There’s no excuse for not adding FM6 leaderboards due to the cost for that storage being less today than when FM6 came out.
If the burden for FM7 leaderboards is 50 to 60 times that of FM6 (per what I think the poster meant) the burden of adding FM6’s leaderboards to FM7 is only an additional 1/50th to 1/60th the cost already incurred.

So, in neither circumstance is there an economic or storage based reason to not include the FM6 leaderboards in FM7. Thus Turn10’s motivation must be something else.
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My Mistake – I meant 96.5% over FM5’s 492 LBs and 89.2% more than FM6’s 1,494 LBs. No argument here that the game should be able to save ghosts. Just saying that there are a lot more LBs (13,794) in FM7 than previous titles.
But if I remember correctly, T10 used to restrict garage space too. I think I had to delete Indy cars in FM6 to get others cars in the last DLC packs. Either database / cloud storage is an issue or T10 simply didn’t want you own all the cars or have all the ghosts. I am not surprised if it is the later.
Lastly, I agree with you from a previous post. There is no way all the LB storage would ever get used, but apparently they did not want to take that chance.

^^^I hear what you’re saying Moss, but I think desrtfox071 is right on this one. Server space used up by ghosts is simply going to be a function of players x laps. Not everybody is an obsessive completionist like us lol. I mean in this game there are LOTS AND LOTS of division/track combos that I will never touch.

But simply by playing career people will be creating a lot more leader board laps than in FM6.

Reason is it is now quickest in division gets saved not quickest in class.

There will be a lot more laps saved simply.by playing the core game.

I sort of agree, certainly on the obsessive completionist point LOL. However, it’s quite difficult to get your head around what the change to homologation brings.

I’m not even sure this would happen but let’s assume the same number of laps are run in FM7 as FM6, the changes appear to have resulted in everyone driving a wider variety of cars during single player career. Many of those cars share the same class which in FM6 would have produced a single ghost for each track. The same laps run in FM7 with leaderboards for each car group will result in a higher proportion of ghosts per laps run.

Does that make any sense? It’s giving me a headache LOL.

Makes sense to me Moss.

When I run free play with Ghosts on I get a ghost of my out lap. This is only replaced if I beat my previous leaderboard time. (Clean).

On the subject of ‘more ghosts’ there will undoubtedly be more. On FM6 I mainly ran P class. Therefore ghosts on all tracks x pclass, roughly.

If I took the same approach on this game it would be ghosts on all tracks x the 4 pclass divisions plus Pclass unhomologated.

Add that to the single player ghosts which I would not have had if the game worked in rivals and multiplayer properly and you have more ghosts.

I agree with the person who suggested that this should not be a problem from a storage point of view.

I will give them a 4tb drive if it helps sort these problems out!!

There is no excuse to remove ghosts of every track… The ridiculous amount of events of Rivals mode is really sad. FM7 is a beautiful and nice to play game, but without ghosts, I’m sorry, it will be last Forza I will ever buy.

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A lot math here. If we cant get saved ghost for each lap, can we at least give a “best in session ghost”. It would be a millions times better than what we have now.

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If you are talking about your “best in session” ghost while hot lapping in free play, you should have that with drivatars set to zero. I have been able to race my ghost on numerous tracks.
But to take your idea further, why not just save you best time / ghost for each track and scenario on your local storage. As it works now, if you exit out and return later to improve you time, it doesn’t save the previous best. You only have your best in session ghost.

If storage was genuinely an issue then an obvious solution (to me) would be to only save clean laps to the leaderboards. I would guess that nobody who’s interested in the leaderboards cares about dirty laps.

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