Vidjama Gmaes Work

The penalty system can eat my whole ass.

We are officially two weeks into the NASCAR month on Forza Motorsport and I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that this whole mode can eat my ass. And I say that because for two reasons that completely annoyed the crap out of me over the last two weeks having to do with game stability that the devs have so far done very little to fix, and the game’s penalty system that I’ve been shouting about for the last year.

This month is NASCAR month in Forza, meaning a focus on longer races. If you are playing on difficulty modes that include tire wear, every race in the new tour is long enough to require you to pitstop at least once during the race. Not optional, mandatory because you will get to the last few laps and be screwed if you haven’t pitted. I’m fine with this, it has made me realize there is actually a strategy to when you pitstop and I’ve been working that into my routine.

I did however want to throw my controller through the TV screen when I crossed the finish line in a Modern NASCAR tour map in first, after a long ass race, and the game immediately crashed to dashboard while transitioning to the end-race cutscene. I lost the last 40 minutes of my life because they won’t fix the game crashes, and crashing while transitioning has been a problem since the game launched.

Forza Motorsport is in a state of constantly tweaking its penalty assignments because they are complete shitass. See latest patch notes:

With Update 14, we’ve pushed a new Forza Race Regulations model with a slight reduction to false positive penalty assignments, and an improvement to severity assignment.

How bad is the penalty system? I came out of a pit stop and got clipped by one of the other drivers before I even got control of my car back. And what did Forza believe this was worth? Nothing to the other driver, but I got a 2.50 second penalty added to my time. For stuff that happened before I even got out of the pit stop fully, and while the game itself was in control of my car.

And while I’m ranting, let’s look at their comment about Drivatars (AI cars):

Improved Drivatar AI trailing ability especially in braking zones, making Drivatars less prone to rear ending other cars. (Update 13)

Also false. The Drivatar AI is so bad in trailing that you’ll watch them repeatedly rear end each other in the opening scene before the race begins where everyone is driving like 1mph. They also happily ram into my ass and will make no effort to pump the brakes, just dragging me along. Drivatars still drive like complete assholes and it makes me think Forza is pulling driving data from the online matches to train the AI drivers, because people online also drive like stupid assholes. Very realistic given on many days I will see 3-4 rear end collisions on the highway to and from work.

On the other hand I have officially broken 200 hours in Forza Motorsport and my driver level is no 431. So I don’t think I’m convincing anyone when I say this game annoys me.

Current level 50 count: 16