Forums

The bit in bold is the important part here. The Trial is marketed as the ultimate test of driving ability, against unbeatable drivatars. To be able to win all three events, I’d consider it reasonable that you’d expect someone to be in or around the top 10%. It isn’t meant to be easy. My impression is that people expect to be able to turn up in any old car, with no knowledge of the course, and expect to immediately be able to win each event. If that’s the standard it’s meant to be at, then it needs rebranding.

What would be good would be if there was consistency across the board. I’d imagine that there must have been an 80%-90% win rate last week in the C class road event. That’s probably then dipped to circa 20% this week. My view is that they should probably be aiming for about a 40% win rate for the average player and there are very few events which are in that happy medium. The rally event you mention probably was around that sort of level.

Consistency may be what's really lacking. Last week with the Barchetta was incredibly easy as long as you knew what cars you could take and gave one a decent tune. This week on the other hand I believe even the better players will feel that the trial is objectively much harder.

Looking at the Fortune Island Trial this week (Road Super GT) the races are about 50% longer than what the Trials typically throw at you but it's still rather easy, except for maybe the first rainy race where often half the group drops and then you can just casually win every race and the whole thing altogether without breaking much of a sweat. It still takes more time to finish due to the races length. That said, there doesn't seem to be much of a standard for this "ultimate driving ability" that the game is supposedly testing.

While I agree with you that you should not be able to enter the race with whatever shabby untuned car you have and just take the win all the time I still don't think that only the 10% should be able to finish successfully - simply for the reason that FH isn't made to attract that kind of die-hard-playerbase like certain incredibly difficult platformers etc. do.

Trial is objectively hardest racing event in every playlist so PG isn't lying. For the most part it however isn't feature that is mainly aimed at 10% (Trial achievement completion was at 14% last I checked) it just wouldn't make much business sense to make it so. Earlier we got a lot of S1/S2 on wet combinations and feedback was terrible and I guess they might have dropped difficulty closer to Pro from Unbeatable (not quite Pro so they can't be accused from misleading the customers) and they also dropped playlist championship skill requirement to Highly Skilled from Expert publicly.

Concept of Trial is to sell the game, sell rest of the playlist by giving collaborative challenge to players and make most players happy by doing that by rewarding them with sense of accomplishment and whatever else rewards there are. This is the commercial reality what I was talking about. Empirically after first stages of Trial in game, I think successful completion rate is way above 50% on average. For "Team Lotus" event for example, I made 29 runs on and only 4 were lost which equals 81% win ratio. I think it was about there to previous rally event too. Past summer Trial I did only once with stock Ferrari and I think it had really high success rate too.

So there's marketing concept for Trial and then there's actual concept for Trial, I was speaking about the latter and no offence, but I'm bit surprised that you weren't aware about the difference between the two.

No matter, but that's why I'm saying that event types with less restrictions to Drivatars like we got though, by mistake or whatever, doesn't really fit in what PG's actual vision with Trial is and frankly I'm fine with it. Lot's of good memories from Trials and many of them aren't from the most difficult ones.

That's why I'm pushing for new playlist event that would be optional. To create window of opportunity to have bit more challenging events without spoiling the game/playlist for larger audience. Technically it's all implementable, we all raced that event.

Edited by user Wednesday, May 20, 2020 1:55:11 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Yeah. That there are lot of content made mainly for children, many of the Horizon stories, should be a very clear hint about product target groups. I do hope other features with more appeal to us grown ups, still games at size and budget of Horizon just won't happen for audience of one hundred, one thousand or even ten thousand.

IMO, biggest issue with Trial is giving prizes away. Trial is supposed to be a test of skill. Winning it is the reward. But if you have cars as reward for Trial, you end up attracting players who either aren't at the skill level the Trial requires or don't understand the basics of team play, which hurts the mode's quality.

The Easter event wasn't particularly easy, but I could be competitive by picking a better vehicle, with a better tune (courtesy of daddybee). Then you had plenty of people showing up in bone stock buggies. You win the battle but lose the war. It can be frustrating.

Basically the worst. Servers are ridiculously buggy, always. Its not racing but dodging AI's

our team lost due to server buggy. ai drove off the map and ended up in first place and last game in the race ai spawn at a turn point for every in the race.
if this is how their going to do fh5.... its a solid no buy for me.

@ Nortsable/CS - there is a difference between being able to successfully complete the trial and being able to win all three races individually. I am not saying only the top 10% should be able to complete the trial, just that it seems reasonable to me that the standard should be high enough that only the top 10% or so should be able to comfortably finish first in every race. As indicated, it seems to me that the ideal would be an average player successfully completing the trial 40%-50% of the time.

@ Nightdriver - I don’t really disagree with your post but I do think having some prize remains reasonable (just not new exclusives). The balance appears about right currently - the car this week could easily be acquired elsewhere and I doubt many people were doing the trial to obtain it.

The problem is with any "off -road" trial is AI "cheating". Tthe AI's do not have the same physics in jumps and crashes compared to human players

Take this week's events:

• AI hits bales of hay, barely slows down, human hits the same hay car almost comes to a stop (or better yet AI hits the hay into your path and stops you dead)
  
• When human cars hit the creek at fast speed the car loses control and spins out, AI cars hit the creek at the same speed, NOTHING, it just keeps going as if it's on a dirt road.
  

Off road trials are more like lucks of the draw on whether you hit the "physics jackpot" rather than any real "skill".

The developers usually do this kind of AI behavior this because its wayyy to hard to write AI code for these kind of variables, so they put "god mode" on AI's coding to make it "consistent" and doesn't "bug out".

It's not longer about "racing" or "driving", at that point you're fighting the programming of the game. That's on TOP of dealing with bugs and AI "Stutters". It's just not worth it.

Rally (dirt roads) and Tarmac/Road events don't have these kinds of problem.

To be fair, I have yet to see any game developer that tackles real off road racing on uncontrolled surfaces (ie: not tarmac or dirt tracks) that have AI's affected by physics the same way that players did, almost all of them put "god mode" on the AI's. Its simply too hard to code for too many variables.

Edited by user Thursday, May 21, 2020 5:25:37 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

First attempt at today's trial... we won the first two then I got disconnected halfway through the Gauntlet. Sigh.

As the reward car is ordinary I don't think I'll do this one again, it's not much fun driving slow cars against the braindead AI with its ridiculous forcefields.

Edited by user Thursday, May 21, 2020 7:55:17 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Try the 22B, it's worth it just for the fun of how easily you'll slaughter everyone.

I'm just glad they've seemingly removed the new exclusive cars as prizes for the trial events. Found grinding through these events in the past for a cool new car so so frustrating thanks to the invincible AI cars which never lose speed through water or obstacles and can also miss checkpoints without any problem. Not to mention the "team" mates you often get lumbered with who don't know what brakes are for or even that we are on the same "team". Don't even get me started on the complete spoons who give up after the first race if we've lost it... *sigh*

Those 'spoons' can be the difference though, in the trial it's better for them to quit if they're no good and are just dragging the team down.

Some though are just leeches endlessly doing that until they get lucky enough to get in a team that can carry them and give them a prize they did basically nothing for.

Tried yours, nice tune Bree. I made one similar to yours, they both may be slow at the start but, by george, they flog it in at the end.

Found the second race to be a challenge for the tunes (more mine than yours) but 1st and 3rd races are a breeze.

Your a gun driver FN, i'm sure you have already done it by now.

I haven't actually, since I got to 999m credits recently there's no reason to play anything I don't enjoy. I mean I used to do stuff to get extra cars to sell but that's no longer beneficial.

Even the new Starion which I wanted to try, I just got it through the auction house.

Edited by user Monday, May 25, 2020 4:14:44 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I enjoyed this weeks trial. Quite a departure from last week. The fact that I won it on the 1st try and I took first place in all three races may have had something to do with it but I do enjoy dirt racing. There was one "teammate" who didn't believe in brakes but he also didn't believe in checkpoints so I didn't see much of him or anyone else. A good team overall though since they backed me up with 2nd and 3rd in all races.

Playground games was interesting this week. Got that one on the first try too but it was strange. The other team won the 1st event but 2 of them quit. We won the 2nd event and 3 more of them quit so there was only one player left. He messaged our whole team to tell us his team was trash and then bowed out gracefully.

I've really enjoyed the Winter Trial, so much so that I've run it 5 or 6 times now.
I've noticed that Winter tyres make a big difference, even a base engine tune car can win, and it seems to be e necessity if you want to complete the Gauntlet within the time if you're not in first place.
A scubie with sport tyres and a decent engine tune is a close second, but I couldn't manage to complete the Gauntlet. Either way the biggest issue was getting past team mates sliding around at every corner, without running into them.

Get rid of the Community Championship.
It's ridiculous having to rely on other people to win it for you. Especially when they're too lazy to upgrade cars and can't race to save their life. Either get rid of it or drop the difficulty. Unbeatable is bad enough by yourself, let alone with a group of idiots.

Edited by user Wednesday, June 3, 2020 1:11:40 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I assume you mean the Trial, the Community Championships were probably the best + definitely the most unique events and should never have been stopped.

Reviving this topic I have to state the some players didn´t get wiser at all over time. While helping a friend with the trial and testing a modified tune for the TZ2, our team nearly lost because three participants came with stock cars and therefore ended up last, sometimes DNF.

While the races were quite fun, some of the racers were not up to the task.

Is it so hard to choose a proper tune for the trial ?

Every race seems to have the odd one or two Tipo61 with a PI of 746 I think.
Why do they choose that car, was it a prize so everybody has one ?
Are there no decent 800 tunings available ?

At least we got the LM250 easily.... some fine racing included... two thumbs up

If you're just there to leech the prize off the back of much better drivers it is.

I thought changing what's given as the prize would have some effect but it hasn't, like I did it yesterday and still won the first race easily despite my controller cutting out halfway through my 2nd lap.

Once again this is a thing where my argument for good old fashioned lobbies would work, you'd be able to see who you're potentially going in with and what they're driving, someone using the stock 61 this week is a good indicator they aren't there to make an effort, in a standard lobby you'd see that then be able to simply leave or vote to kick them.

But no no instead let's waste sometimes 3+ minutes mindlessly driving about in the world then go in blind hoping for the best with who you end up with and potentially have your time wasted for nothing through no fault of your own.

It will be the hire car (if you don’t have a car in the appropriate class the game allows you to hire one untuned one).

Given classic racers are generally expensive and most aren’t tuned to A class as standard, I guess some people do the event without having an appropriate car. I don’t have one on my Alt account for example - difference being that I checked first and went and bought a Lotus Eleven - one of the few cheap options.

Almost every Trial I have done has at the minimum one untuned car. I ran the Trial twice so far (testing the Ferrari 500 Mondial and the Porsche 550A), the first time has two untuned Tipo 61s and a Welcome Pack 718 that I think was untuned because it did pretty poorly. The second time has an untuned 250LM (the prize car, oddly) and something else I forget what. Fortunately, the Trial was not that difficult and we won 3:0 both times. So even with deadweight at the back, semidecent drivers can get enough points to move on. The first race, I blanked most of the AI...and a few of my own.

So I understand when they go with the untuned option on certain races like Vintage Racers or other such where you need to drop $1mil or more just to get the entry car. But the Lotus Cortina is on this list (as is the Lotus Eleven which I bought for I think $8000) so it is quite possible to get a less expensive car then add some upgrades, or download a tune. One of the untuned Tipo 61s was driven but a 1 star halfway to 2 stars. The other guy was just level 60 or so, so ok, understandable.