I remember first starting this game. Pre ordered it, I do believe and racing was much more acceptable. The issue now is the implementations (really bad ones) to make racing more fair? I guess? I’m not sure at this point. Back in the day you might find yourself slamming into the rear of an afk player. Simply assuming everyone is afk and turning to the side to avoid said player(s) is not hard by any means. Nowadays, everyone is ghosted to start and skill has gone right out the window. Acceleration is the name of the game. If you’re the fastest too 100 mph you’re driving right through everyone, and the time it takes to go solid is way too long. People with acceleration cars only need to defend and defending is not hard by any means. Your fine tuned Honda NSX or Shelby Daytona or ATS, or what have you is no longer a viable option because they dont accelerate fast enough. Your best bet of winning is on handling focused tracks, which those are too rare.
Not only has skill gone out the window, so has diversity in the cars people choose. Only a handful of cars, let’s say we’re talking S1 class here, can accelerate to 60 in 1.5 seconds and have at least enough handling to be drivable. I’m not sure who thought this was a good idea to make racing better, but It’s really driven me away from the game. Starting out in first on occasion in a finely tuned S1 class car like the Audi R8, very respectable, used to hold its own very well, but I can only watch in dismay as everyone else following the acceleration trend pass right through me and there’s nothing I can do. Forza titles have the largest choosings of cars and most of them aren’t viable options. Very saddening.
Then there’s slow down applications. The game simply cannot differentiate a mistake around a turn or an intent to wall ride and you get slowed for a stupid amount of time, ruining your run. It’s like the devs didn’t even take matters seriously and decided let’s just do this and they can deal with it. I am a good enough driver to avoid walls, but if someone is dirty and salty enough, they can easily bump me wide around a turn, make me hit the wall, then make me get slowed down. Not fair at all. I’m not sure if the devs have any intent on correcting their mistakes, but all that I can really do is hope they can fix their wrongs and actually implement better solutions.
The collision avoidance one is okay. It depends on the scenario.
As far as ideas to fix these poor excuses for solutions, I have a couple. As for starting races off, instead of everyone being ghosted, implement a tried and true ready button that will last as long as the game normally takes to start the race as the roster is shown. If you dont click ready, you are ghosted, so drivers behind you can pass without bumping into you. As a second defense, if the game does not detect the gas being used, even if you click ready, you will be ghosted, because I already know trolls will click ready, then not drive to make people hit them.
For wall riding/collisions, instead of making an impact at a high enough velocity of speed, it should be a duration. If I were to go around a corner and slip and hit the wall, but then pull off and keep going, I’d be safe. If I were to try and wall ride, rubbing against the wall, if im making contact for long enough (about a second and a quarter should do) the player is rewound, instead of slowed down. Since it’d be better this way to catch wall riders, the punishment can be much more taxing on them, being much more effective in discouraging wall riding. Also, if I am shunted into the wall, by another player, I wont have to worry about being slowed down. But say the turn is a hair pin and im forced to wall ride and get slowed down anyway, the game should be aboe to dectect it was because of another player and they would get slowed as well, to discourage dirty driving.