Turn 10 to substantially update Forza Motorsport after game spends three months getting arse kicked on Steam

We didn’t review Turn 10 and Microsoft’s latest Forza Motorsport and well, thank goodness, because I’ve just taken a look at the Steam page and it’s a regular six-mile pile-up in there. The game’s user reviews are Mostly Negative, three months after release, with complaints covering a wide gamut: the online being full of cheaters, the single player being boring, and the game being poorly optimised for PC.

Turn 10 have been keeping their mouths shut about much of this, going by Resetera reaction, like pro drivers staunchly refusing to notice that the backseat of the car is full of angry snakes and cougars. But they’ve now written a post that lays out 2024 plans for “the top three areas of feedback” – the driver AI being a bully, the car regulations being imposed in an arbitrary or punitive way, and the progression system dissatisfying some players in ways not quite described.

I’m writing this up partly because I’m so accustomed to Forza Motorsport being the evergreen 7 out of 10 reliable in Microsoft’s first-party line-up, steadily looping the course where even almighty Halo occasionally loses momentum. I find it bizarre to see people dunking on it this comprehensively. Anyway, here’s the detail of what Turn 10 plan to fix.

First up, car progression. It’s “a divisive topic among our players”, apparently. “We’ve been gathering feedback from a variety of sources, including the Suggestions Hub, socials, forums, long-time players, and surveys to players who may not be as active on our traditional community gathering places,” reads the post. “It is clear from looking at feedback that while many of our players are enjoying the system as is, for many others it isn’t delivering the upgrade experience that they expect from Forza Motorsport.”

They’re hoping to keep both groups happy with the forthcoming updates, without going into specifics. It’s “a top priority for the team going into 2024, however it will take some time to properly evaluate options, make the necessary code changes, and thoroughly test those code changes.”

Secondly, race regulations, which “are not working as intended in some situations”, to put it mildly. “We have heard about inconsistent or unfair penalties in instances of intentional ramming, being pushed off the track, and spinning cars pushing drivers off the track,” the post continues. “We have also heard that high speed collisions sometimes have no penalties while low speed collisions have mild penalties.

“It’s important that we capture all the data that we can about a race when FRR rulings happen in error, so over the next few months, we will be working with some long-time competitive Motorsport players to gather direct telemetry from them while they’re playing. They will be capturing these instances and feeding data to our team so that we can issue tweaks to make FRR more accurate and reliable. We appreciate your patience as we work on improving the system.”

Last but not least, those troublesome AI drivers, who have been “abruptly braking and slowing down, not accelerating out of exits, braking too hard on mild corners, and following racing lines too strictly”, amongst other instances of bad behaviour. Turn 10 hope to fix the game’s “overly aggressive AI” in early 2024, and in particular, to ensure that you can get “a cleaner race start into turn 1 where many of the issues above most severely manifest and impact players”.

While I’m very much not a simulation racer, I have fond memories of Forza Motorsport from my OXM days, and also remain interested by the Drivatar system introduced by older games, which encumbered every player with a cloud-based bot who copied their moves, allowing other people to play against “you” while you’re offline. It’s strange to revisit such things in these days of ChatGPTification. I think my Drivatar from Forza 5 is still out there somewhere. It’s probably responsible for many of the race infractions above. Have you been playing the new one, and if so, what do you make of Turn 10’s plans?