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Yes, you heard that right. HACKS going around in Forza Horizon 4. Or, at least, a seriously game-breaking glitch. EITHER WAY, this is a big floppin' problem, and I believe some light needs to be shed on it. Let me give you the details of what went down.

So, I was puttering around in an S1 Asphalt Custom Adventure, testing out some tunes for the new LFA. Because, honestly, who else wouldn't want to drown their ears in that godlike engine sound? Anyways, the third race rolls around, at Derwent Lakeside Sprint, and in comes an individual by the

[Mod Edit - Don't name/shame on the forums. If you spot something suspicious, report it via support.forzamotorsport.net - MM]

The dude's a No-Star Level 48, running a Rank 896 BAC Mono. (They'd actually joined the race prior, but the recording I had of that race went missing for some reason.) They start sixth on the grid, I start fourth, and what happens? Before the "GO!" even fully appears on screen, I'm rammed up the back by this guy despite the fact that my foot was hard on the gas, and everyone was ghosted. I mean, they went from zero to sixty in well under two seconds, possibly even one second. I actually catch some of their momentum, but they go FLYING off into the distance, and at the FIRST CHECKPOINT, they hold a lead of over 2.5 Seconds. At this point, my jaw is through the floor, and I continue the race because I can't believe what I'm seeing. At NO POINT throughout the ENTIRE RACE do any of us gain ground on this prick, and they clock a finishing time of 1:52.473, which nearly DNF's half the field.

So, post-race, I go to check the S1 Rivals times, and that's nearly FIVE SECONDS FASTER than any legitimate time held by the Shelby Monaco KC. Then, looking up the board, what do I see? Four players, all driving the KTM X-Bow GT4, three of which having extremely similar names, [Mod Edit] all with times under 1:50. HECK, the world record holder, with an absurd time of 1:29.229, goes by the name [Mod Edit]. I'm at a loss for words, and the only thing I can do is check all the other boards, and what happens? The SAME FOUR GUYS putting down IMPOSSIBLE TIMES on Lake District Sprint, Broadway Village Circuit, Astmoor Heritage Circuit, Ambleside Village Circuit, ALL OF THEM. Heck,[Mod Edit] has their mitts on OWEN'S MCLAREN. I don't even know how that's possible, but I think my point is made. Get these two topics going around, ESPECIALLY the first, and let's get this thing fixed. Forza may be home to extreme skill imbalances and a questionable playerbase, but it has NO PLACE for cheaters and hackers.

Edited by user Saturday, February 15, 2020 11:50:14 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Just tonight I noticed that very same [Mod Edit]. That, coupled with all the miraculous 00:04.932 lap times sprinkled all over the place, smh. Its bad enough there are losers willing to w the game like that, but worse that PG seems unwilling to simply wipe the exploitive times, maybe even ban the repeat offender, nevermind/to say nothing of actually patching whatever the problem is.

Edited by user Saturday, February 15, 2020 11:50:50 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

First of all I am not a native speaker, so I apologize for poor English. I've also stumled upon a couple of cheaters in online ranked races, and recorded a video about them. You can check it yourself:

[Mod Edit - Don't name/shame users on the forums. Report it via support.forzamotorsport.net - MM]

Are the cheaters. They launch 2 seconds before everyone else in all races. I am sorry if this is the wrong place for filing a complaint, but I dont know where to complain them? I inspected their profiles and they are playing on pc. I hope they get ban.

Edited by user Sunday, February 16, 2020 9:08:42 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Going by the ridiculous times and speeds on pr stunts this speed hack has been around for a long time but i have never come across it until recently in a ranked A-class FFA street race..

As of the past week alot of people who play ranked have been noticing it alot.

I am not the only player who has lost alot of points in ranked due to these cheaters. I wouldve thought that this type of behaviour online would be dealt with promptly (especially as its online)

Video footage of speedhackers:

https://streamable.com/bbekq
https://streamable.com/rfexd
https://twitter.com/lilc...1226621106083291136?s=21
https://youtu.be/v9lKowuVh2A
https://www.bilibili.com...foc&ts=1581644415084
https://discordapp.com/c...58572/676997656379392031
https://streamable.com/g47po
https://streamable.com/oeecw
https://streamable.com/a6kim
https://clips.twitch.tv/...usFilthyCheesecakeKlappa
https://streamable.com/4aaia

Copied from isad

IIRC PC players start slightly earlier than console players, that isn't a cheat. Whether there is cheating in those videos I don't know, but I do know that on PC I launch before others and can get a huge lead quickly, especially if I'm in an OP car. What balances this out is that when I 'win' on my screen, if another car is anywhere near me, they will be awarded the win instead, even if on my screen they are clearly well behind me.

That's a separate issue from the legitimate issue the thread creator has raised though.

Edited by user Sunday, February 16, 2020 9:03:54 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I've done a couple of ranked adventures on PC, and didn't see that, and I also haven't seen it in The Trial, so there must be some other reason why you're starting early in your races. Does one of the players host the race, so might the person with the most open firewall settings be more likely to be the host and start earliest?

I'm not starting exaggeratedly early, but I do notice that I seem to typically leave the field standing. I didn't know about the PC players getting a headstart thing until I read about it here recently. I had just assumed I was in a faster car / maybe using M+C when others weren't, etc. If I was one of the other players and saw me rapidly shooting through all of their ghosts from the back to the front, I might think hang on a minute, that's suspicious.

My point, there is definitely cheating in the game. But, sometimes what people think is cheating does have a legitimate explanation.

Here's a video I made of a danger sign a while back. There were comments (which I ended up deleting) of people accusing me of cheating, saying I was accelerating impossibly fast and thus was using a hack. See for yourself if you think this is me cheating:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft9CKlpX88g

I tried to explain to them that it was legit, but they were resistant to it because they'd already made their minds up that I was cheating.

its a hack

type on google "forza horizon 4 speed hack" and you can downlaod this ****

kids have fun when they won

rammers, cheaters and free roam rush only in FH4 xD

Worrying stuff. Hopefully, they can identify the cheats and also fix the obvious dodgy times on the leaderboards but certainly hasn’t looked a priority to sort out in the past.

i see speed cheaters everyday

low level, terrible car control in turns and amazing acceleration like space rocket with every car xD

sometimes they loose because of wallriding penalty but in speed tracks you don't have any chance to win xD

That's hilarious that people thought you were cheating when you're so far off what can be done legitimately. I went about 200 feet farther here, should I be offended that nobody thinks I cheated?! ;-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU7xAt1FGjE

In this video, he looks to start about 2 seconds early, is that how much earlier you're starting? I certainly didn't see that when I played a ranked adventure on PC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9lKowuVh2A

No, not that early. Out of curiosity I just videoed a few online races to see how much earlier I'm starting and how much lead I get. I'll upload a video in a bit. It was unranked custom A class, with some fast players, and even so I was 1.2 seconds ahead of the field at the 1st checkpoint and 1.5 at the 2nd. Using an OP car, but also to maybe show people that what appears to be cheating isn't necessarily. I know you yourself know all this already but not everyone does.

Exactly, my distance is not special at all, I wasn't going for any record, but merely to do the seasonal distance. But a few people were adamant I was cheating (and using rude words to describe me, charming) which is why the video has all the downvotes. Because some people assumed my accusers must be right, just because they were all too ignorant to see that the car and tune I was using was legitimately that quick.

Edited by user Sunday, February 16, 2020 8:29:34 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Find it laughable that the mods have edited out the GT's in the posts, they should be shared so as much of the community as possible can watch out for and capture these cheats.

Perhaps if your company gave a toss then players wouldn't be on here letting everyone know about clear and obvious cheaters because you'd have caught and banned them before they got the chance to experience it first hand, how about that?

We could maybe have an online get together of forum members in a convoy some time, xbox and pc players, and everyone records it from their pov to see if all the pc players start moving roughly the same amount of time before all the xbox players.

Did you see my post about how the behaviour on a PC is different depending on frame rate? Some tunes of the 599 XX Evo are about 15mph slower if you run at 120fps compared to 30, 40 or 60fps.

back to the hack subject, anyone logged a ticket for that because that's great to discuss it here but no one from T10/PG reads here.

Sadly even if reported those guys are going to destroy rivals in hours as it is possible to detect 4s lap is cheat but when it's just above others how do you distinguish it .... nd PG/T10 reaction time is like 2 months at the very ultimate best.

sync issue, ranked points calculation and now this ... time to worry about something else than just eliminator and screwing some existing features.

Edited by user Sunday, February 16, 2020 9:03:07 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

That could be interesting. I didn't see your post about the framerate issue, looks like there are a few weird things going on then. One would hope the devs are paying close attention and looking into it, but... who knows.

Here is a quick video of me starting, once at normal speed, then slowed down to 10%. It looks like I'm getting about a second's head start. Naturally I assume this would look very dodgy to the other players from their point of view!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-o9ldQDdkg

Sometimes I will do the rivals on PC. Sometimes I do a little better on PC than the XBox. It could be that my laptop is literally right in front of me and I can see better but there may be something more to it. It's hard to say. I have also significantly lowered the graphics quality since it is an old laptop. I also use a different controller for PC since I always seem to have trouble synching the same controller between PC and XBox. The one I use for PC has left stick slippage sometimes.
I believe they would have to reset the leaderboards to get rid of hacked or whatever times. Learderboard wipes are a big deal and they don't like to do it. Most likely those people who cheated on the boards have already had action taken against them. You see the same thing on some Forza 7 boards as well.

Edited by user Sunday, February 16, 2020 9:17:48 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Based on FH3 boards, they simply do nothing.

I wanted to report the issue topic but looks that authentication is not working for me on the support page

https://support.forzamot...et/hc/en-us/requests/new

If someone is kind enough to report the hack subject so that it may possibly reach someone some day ?

They need to at least give the leaderboards a rolling 1 year window, or annual reset. Even Blizzard do that with Diabli III.

No thanks. I wouldn't bother putting times on there if they did that.

FWIW the cheats became available very soon after the game was released. I remember one of Grandma Driving's videos ages ago where someone was using the speed boost cheat. He slowed right down at the end of races in an attempt to keep his finish times plausible, but it was obvious what was going on. I don't know if any action ever gets taken against anyone for this. What I have read is that anyone who uses the cheats to give themselves loads of credits gets a 30 year ban.

This kind of thing, and other forms of cheating in other games, and other sports, is why I just can't be bothered with it any more. Our friendly little rivals competition on the forum is more my thing these days. And I enjoy the Trial, where I've never noticed anyone using speed boost cheats. And I enjoy trying different cars and seeing if I can better my own times. Basically, what I'm saying is they aren't going to fix it, because it has been around for so long already, so if it ruins the game for you, try to find something to do in the game that they aren't ruining.

Oh right, Because being on the leaderboard longer than most console games remain relevant at all isn’t good enough. Quite frankly even Formula 1 drivers are expected to set a new time 12 months.

At any rate, a leaderboard of past champions by year is always more interesting than an eternal now with the top ~100. Especially for categories like Danger signs where the top 100 positions at least are dominated by cheats or glitched results.
New ( and existing) players are faced with myriad danger signs with 1500m records, tracks with impossible times, but lets do nothing about it and be held hostage because players like @FullNietzsche wouldn’t bother setting any further times.

Thanks for your very unhelpful and downright selfish input.

--
Correction made regarding the mostly legitimate nature of times on non danger sign records. No slight intended.

Edited by user Sunday, February 16, 2020 12:05:18 PM(UTC)  | Reason: correction