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I’m with Gilles here, sorry Pinkie. Having to do the first race of the trial offline and place top 3 to “qualify” (even if only the first time that you do the trial at all) doesn’t seem to me to be unreasonable. At worst, a newbie is going to find it’s a bit too hard and something to come back to after they’ve had experience at the game. It’s no different to encountering a Level 30 opponent at something like Witcher when you are Level 1 - you wouldn’t expect to be able to beat them and acquire the prize they are guarding immediately you start to play the game.

In general, FH4 is poor at developing players skills. You can be fairly terrible at driving and the single player mode will still anoint you as the best driver at the Festival if you play long enough. Even the Princes St speed zone this week isn’t that hard, once you’ve identified a car which works. Essentially, you need to be able to drive one corner competently and can use rewind if it isn’t going well! Compared to some of the licences I recall having to obtain just to progress in the single player game back in the day on Gran Turismo, it’s really not challenging.

There is a difference between witcher and fh4 ;)
You have 1 week to get the car or you have to wait... Yeah u can get it from AH too sometimes but you need money...
The Game was new to Steam wich means lots of new Players so yeah it's harder to find good teams atm... Same after xmas and so on...
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Then it needs some better matchmaking to select same type of players for the teams and/or the challenge based on teamskills. Adding another step ends in "that stupid grind..."
Why "fixing" the main issue with some other stupid stuff
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Jumped in the trial with the mini xraid after completing it with your help i know the bug was best option. But not everyone owns all these cars or is doing xx trials to find the best car.
For me there is nothing wrong if the teams are mixed wich gives everyone the chance to get the car. Game is nearly EOL so yeah maybe last chance to get it
I have to delete cars, enough money, forzathon points so its easier to say who cares about the other players but no we all started somewhere
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Absolute like the fact that there are some players here who are willing to help with weekly posts/tunes/and so on

I've been playing this game just shy of a year now, and it's my first Forza game. I only recently purchased my Xbox again; I haven't used one since the mid 360 days. Gamepass brought me back into the fold, and I thought I'd give FH4 a try and have played it literally almost every day since. Gran Turismo has gone unplayed for months. Having said that, I've felt this way for quite some time but do not generally get involved in forums, Reddit, or whatnot simply because I prefer to stay away from griefing and trolling. So the fact that I'm posting anything at all is pretty significant, from my point of view anyway.

I'm a father of four kids. I've kept them home through the pandemic and am constantly involved in their schoolwork and trying to keep them on task. It's exhausting. I state all of that because it's for this reason that I don't get involved in convoys. The only time I play with others in an organized fashion is when I play with two of my sons. This is but one scenario in so many that serve as a reason to rely upon public matchmaking to complete this event. This event can be such a frustrating waste of time so often that I always dread doing it and never truly enjoy it. That defeats the purpose of playing a GAME.

I've come to love and enjoy this game enough to want to become involved in the community now and hope to provide legitimate feedback to improve the game as it progresses from the current release to future releases. I think we, as players, can provide enough feedback to provide simple solutions to these issues. No one should have to play a game and want to throw their controller, rage quit, or get angry in general because of rampant AI or players.

I agree with Gilles and Jeeza completely on this topic. I was a new player once and had no clue what I was doing when I started these events. You guys are also right in the fact that FH4 doesn't really do a great job in training the players to drive or get prepared for the events. That's one point that I have to give to Gran Turismo, their driving school in the game is pretty damn good, in my opinion anyway. I get very irritated at the players in these races, but it's not truly their fault that they are grouped with more experienced players and those of us who genuinely want to actually drive/race during the events. If it were just me against the max Drivatars during their race, I'd be furious because I'd have to do it over so many times. If it were just me versus others through matchmaking in this event, I'd feel the same way. If it were me with other prestiged players against these Drivatars, this would be a piece of cake. Even if I were the worst driver in the pack in a race like that, at least I'd have a pretty good chance at completing the event.

I'm the sort of player in this game that never enters a race without a car that I've tuned. I never use rentals. In the past, before I had the insane amount of cars that I've accumulated, if I didn't have a car for the race, I did what I needed to do to get one that I could tune. I don't do this because I'm an elitist, I do it because it serves to make me a better driver. I understand that others do not do that, but that is pretty consistent with players who ram, try to push me out of the way just to get ahead of me, or just scream through slamming into curves with little regard for skilled driving.

Another solution that I've considered is to use a modified point system. One of the huge pain points in this race is when you miss a checkpoint, most often due to the players or AI. Instead of requiring us to hit checkpoints, make them count for points towards the final score of the race and take skill points from driving into consideration as well. If the AI were to need to adhere to those rules as well, I think it would prevent some of their aggression as well, since slamming into us would cause them to lose their points multiplier. I think the reliance upon skill points would also force players to actually try to drive and race properly since just going all Mad Max would put you at a very low score. Sure, we'd still get trolls, but I think it would alleviate a lot of the issues this race suffers from currently.

I'm not sure what the true solution is in the end, but my hope is that all of us offering up alternatives can lead to something that actually works.

Absolutely agree! A combination of skill points, clean racing and finish position would go quite a long way in the enjoyment vs frustration aspect of the game.

I dont think you've played FH3 but that game nearly had a flawless system. There were no trial or weekly events from what I can remember but in the competitive lobbies they were less toxic than they are in FH4. The person with the highest skill points during the 5 events would be the winner of the lobby. The odd thing about that, some players who were very good at racking up points never had to finish the race. So in theory that system could work if people were required to finish the race to get their skill points.

So if they can somehow make it a combination of skill points, clean driving and finish position, while making it mandatory to finish the race to receive all your points, the system would be second to none. FH3 was really good but flawed, the current system is massively flawed but it can be fixed if they care enough to listen to the feedback of the players.

Edited by user Wednesday, April 7, 2021 10:52:35 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

That's so funny!! As soon as I posted this, my sons came into the room by chance and I was telling them about the points system idea and added the finish position into the mix as well lol. I was thinking that the finish position shouldn't be heavily weighted though because players would still just try to rush to the end if they thought they could get enough points by doing so. Assuming a player could earn in the realm of 10k or more fairly easily during a race, I'd think 1000 + 100 * Finish position, meaning the max would be about 2200 and the min would be 1100. I think that'd be fair enough to make a difference but not enough to justify blowing through the race just to place 1st. I could be way off base there though, not sure. I honestly never really pay too much attention to my points score during a race, I mainly just focus on the race itself. That formula might need to be 10k instead of 1k or something similar. The same could go for Checkpoints too I suppose. Each Checkpoint is worth 1k or something.

I was also thinking that this would also entice us to want to put more thought into which cars had better skills for the race and give the devs options to limit which cars would be eligible to keep scores in line. Like, may a C class race with only green or blue rarity cars, only purples, or only gold. I could see a lot of potentials there to breathe some more life into the game and give us more of a reason to work on the skill points. Right now the skill points feel a bit arbitrary outside of just providing another avenue for us to gain prestige levels.

And, no, I sadly didn't get to play FH3 and they took it off the store right after I bought FH4 and I kicked myself for not buying it as well when I could. Maybe they'll bring it to Gamepass. But to that point, one of the reasons I love FH so much is the sheer variety available in an open-world style game. I've told many that it feels like Skyrim for cars. I could go on quite a bit, but you get the idea, I suppose haha.

So, at this point, I've lost count of how many times I've attempted to complete this race. During these many, many, attempts, I've figured out part of the problem. Crashes. It's no exaggeration when I say on my Series X, the game crashes no less than 25% of the time when attempting to join a race, and always during the transition screen where my avatar is performing the emote with my car. When this crash occurs, it kills the game and takes me directly to the home screen. My sons have experienced these crashes on their Series S's as well, but with nowhere near the level of frequency I do on my Series X. I've restarted my Xbox many times to see if that would resolve the problem. If that helps, it doesn't help enough to notice. This fact alone is contributing to a lot of the dropouts, I have zero doubt.

As I post this, I'm less than an hour away from the next season, sitting at 78% completion. The simple fact that I've not been with a group to beat the Drivatars is denying me 2% from completing the series goals that I need and getting the MR2, whether I actually want it and the silly costume or not. It's simply infuriating at this point.

My personal experience, this morning alone, has been the following

- At the beginning of the event (first race), every race has ended up with five players at the beginning. Someone leaves or crashes each time.
- At the end of the first race, if it's obvious that the Drivatars are going to win, I see players in their pause screen dropping out so they can try again
- We all know how aggressive the Drivatars can be, but during this race, they just seem so much worse for some reason. I had one dead stop in front of me just to stop me. I had one tag me as I was taking the ramp to jump the bridge in the first race, forcing me to land on the bridge and drive off of it to resume, effectively forcing me out of the race. I've consistently witnessed myself and others getting taken out by the Drivatars near the campground in the second race. Drivatars intentionally attempt to push us into walls to stop us. It's insane and serves to do nothing but frustrate us.

So, by my estimate, the main problem is the Drivatars, followed by the crashes, that lead to the third problem of making players drop out.

This horse is dead, and I'm beating it into a bloody pool of mush at this point I realize, but this season's Trial has just been unnecessarily brutal for many of us. I realize that a lot of others have completed it without issue, and for those that have, I'm genuinely relieved for you.

Players dropping out isn’t a problem though. If everyone but you drops out then you only need to finish 3rd to “win” the race. It’s entirely within your control.

Maybe so, but that doesn't solve the problem. I'm a "decent" drive, not an "elite" driver, which is the point of doing the race with others to beat the Drivatars, hence the group score. One person versus six bloodthirsty Drivatars that obey their own rules of physics and drive flawlessly with a Beyond Thunderdome mindset, does not for a winning match make.

An S2 Hypercars re-hashed trial this week, doesn't look like it will be much better from a teammate quality perspective.

Haven't played it yet but if it's the one I'm thinking then the Zonda Cinque is probably the best overall choice.

Edit: Corner bombed in the 1st 2 corners of the very 1st race, wonderful.

Edited by user Thursday, April 8, 2021 6:56:54 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Literally raced until the very end of the season. Was in the Trial when seasons changed, we destroyed round one and proceeded to get slaughtered by the Drivatars in the next two races. At least I didn't crash this time. I got my son out of bed for the last hour so I could have at least one reliable person in the team and the Drivatars f'd him over all three races. Like, not even "Oh you just need to stop sucking and git gud!" It was locking wheels and flipping him and **** like that. I watched it a couple of times and knew it was going to be bad lol. So, I was 2% away from finishing the season and getting the final Series rewards. I suppose in hindsight I might have been able to meet one of the small goals to finish it but I was so blinded by rage at this race, I wasn't thinking about it. I wanted to complete this race and get the rewards since I didn't have them yet.

Oh well, time to take a break for a day or so. I think I'll start The Trial the first time I race this season, just in case. I thought three days would have been ample time lol. Sorry, I'm done griping & whining now haha.

One amusing fact I forgot to mention! At least a couple of good things came from this Trial. 1) I got really good with the VW Baja buggy haha. It's easily my favorite buggy in B class now. 2) I really learned to flex my tuning muscles to refine said VW Baja buggy lol. I managed to make that thing do stuff I never expected it to until this race. Always took it for granted.

I pick the cars they tell me to drive. I download the tunes they tell me to use. And still I lose every time. I guess I'm not going to get the 80% reward this week either. And that's all I want, too, because it's one of the few cars I don't already have. But all I'm getting out of this is depression and frustration.

If you are talking about the S2 Trial this week, I did it in the Porsche 918 Spyder ( Grandma Driving Tune ), I have to add though that I'm using steering wheel and quite often the tunes that I prefer are not the best when using a controller or other input device.

With the Trial in general I find that it actually helps if some Players turn up in lesser PI cars as they get matched and it makes some of the drivatars easier to beat, I also find that a heterogenous field that gets stretched out more results in considerably less ramming and corner bombing.

I have done 99% of Trials in a stock car ( or marginally upgraded, like driveline flywheel and tire width ). If you concentrate and try to beat at least the Drivatars that are matched to your PI the outcome is usually positive as there are pretty much always fast human drivers who will take the first two spots by beating the drivatars that are matched to them.
It's actually been months that I have had to repeat a Trial, occasionally no one is fast enough to beat the top drivatars, this is however a rarity ( from my experience ).

It's also easier to hone your skills when driving towards the end of the pack and competing with Drivatars matched to your PI.

Quite often now I beat drivatars with considerably higher PI and come 3rd or 4th in most races only beaten by human drivers and very rarely the odd fast drivatar.

If it's just the Rover SDi you're after, I can give you a specific time via PM and list it in the AH.

@BlearActor, that's some good info that I didn't know. It's unfortunate that much of that is out of our individual control aside from taking stock cars ourselves. Up to this point, we were primarily discussing the Trial from the past season, but much of our angst is a general consensus towards the race. In short, many of us feel like this race is a problem point for seasonal completion. In general, players shouldn't have to worry about gaming the system by trying to manipulate the Drivatars skill or hostility. If they wanted to keep this race in, changing to Drivatars to actually race like civilized competitors would go a long way. While we will never have control of problematic players, throwing hostile AI into a mix of crashes and problem players makes things much worse, at least in my opinion.

To be clear, I don't want the race to be "easier". This race is less a competitive event and the only real "Trial" is my patience.