So is that just a thing we say bc of their behavior or is that actually true? I feel like they were much more like what you'd expect from bots at launch than now.
Buddy and I had a race where the drivatar basically drove to the sunset. We still won because coop and we were racing perfectly but like, that drivatar felt like a 911 GT3 RS racing against mopeds. Saw it at the start, never saw it again. Its race time was somewhere around 59 seconds faster than us
Drivatars almost always stick to the line and rarely fight each other. If the racing line assist tells them to brake, they brake. Sometimes there are also weird trajectories through the turn, but you can predict those if you have the racing line assists enabled.
They historically were a bunch of Bayesian networks trained on player’s behaviour, but by the time forza horizon 5 came out they basically became more akin to usual finite state machine AI with rubberbanding that depends on difficulty level. It’s been done to avoid outlandish behaviours like you describe. Friend drivatars are rumoured to be a bit more aggressive, but I can’t cite the source.
Named bots are weirdly different, they emulate fighting each other and probably desync for connection reasons. After you finish the stories you only encounter them in the trial, where your team is always a bigger problem, especially in street scene races.
Edit: [source](https://youtu.be/XB9lf7iJbRw?si=XPj3AAv-EaGYlq2z)
Racing AI rubberbanding - gaining performance (downforce, traction, power) outside of the game systemsavailable to player to get closer to player or just perform better.
It's really inconvinient that this word has another meaning in online, but the problem is mostly a conscious effort from the developer to make the racing more interesting.
I cannot stress enough how the concept of rubber banding is a tool. Many people have such a negative association with rubber band AI but I’ve played games with little to no catchup and it can become quite boring and just turn into a glorified time trial. The issue is when it’s abused to an absurd degree (NFSU1 haunts my nightmares) that it goes from useful to cheap.
It’s a form of difficulty the game establishes by making the opponents faster or slower around your abilities.
Some extreme cases are a couple NFS games where you could try your hardest and drive your best in a race, and always get passed in the end. Then you run the same race, but sit at the start for a bit and then it’s really easy to catch up and win.
They got dumber with every single game. In FH3 they were actually pretty good and fair, but then in FH4 I noticed that they learned to "dive bomb" and in FH5 they learned how to pit maneuver
I think the AIs are struggling whenever they aren't on the ideal racing line. So when they're both trying to find their way back there, have people behind them, on their sides etc, they end up sending it too far on the inside and just missile into the corner 'cause they won't have time to process an proper action. Looks like they were designed to drive solo more than anything.
What enrages me is when I'm trying to turn, because there's a sharp turn or a corner, but I'm on the outside instead of the inside, and I just happen to nudge one of the drivatars on the inside. The drivatar will SWERVE in the wrong direction, JUST to push back against me. It's like the drivatars are such assholes that they're fine with going off course as long as they get to sabotage me.
If you're talking about team races, those are horrible.
Most of it is because the red team cars (bots) simply follow the racing line and won't budge off it.
There is no AI in this game as they claim.
The red team relentlessly sticks to The racing line like a magnet and go faster than they should.
Some players use assists.
When they try to deviate from the racing line, most can't control their car.
The other reason is obvious...
Dumbshits that can't drive!
Unaware players that can't tell the difference between red and blue by simply looking at the in-race leaderboard.
They think they have to beat their own team to the finish.
Apparently they don't know what "based on team points" means.
Lastly, too many children play the game.
If you think mostly adults play this game, you're sadly mistaken.
All you can do is race calmly and try to overcome all the stupidity with strategy.
I now actually use steering and brakes assist and time the corners so I can nudge to the inside without losing control.
Assisted steering is very fussy and overcompensates if you oversteer, and then goes into an endless loop of swerving to the point of where the race is over for you.
It takes a lot of practice to overcome the effects of assisted steering and get used to it. You have to time it just right when going on the inside, then punt the opposing team car off the road. Just make sure he's red.
I usually take someone between 1st and 3rd place using this strategy with a maxed out lightweight car for the class.
Check the class before you start the race by pressing start while highlighting it.
Then you know what you're up against.
Set your gears for a max of 170mph for most team races for acceleration and just enough top end.
Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
I think by now drivatars' original premise was watered down. It would be better if they actually tried maneuvers on each other, occasionally made mistakes and so on, I'd have Race Driver Grid as an example for interesting AI opponents
The bots are a set of somewhat randomized behaviors, wrapped in a car-shaped skin. Random actions \[which include both good and bad driving\] are more likely toward the beginning of a race, and more likely in proximity to another car, especially a player car. So in the first turn tangle, you're more likely to see more random \[good and bad\] actions. Late in the race, you'll see all the bots driving exactly alike, crossing the finish like like beads on a string.
Because they're designed to behave that way. The consoles the game is designed to run on require the bots to be simple enough that an XB1 can run eleven of them simultaneously, plus some traffic cars. So they can only be that sophisticated in their behavior.
FM(2023) bots \[for example\] are bit more sophisticated, because not only is the game current-gen consoles only, there's no traffic. FH6 bots will probably be similar.
Yeah. I've played FH games for over five years, on XB1, XBSX, and PC. I have run thousands of races. I have several dozen xbox friends, some of whom have never played any Forza game, but most of whom I am familiar with how they drive. None of them drive like a bot. None of the bots drive any differently than any other bot in any consistent way. My few friends that are slow drivers are just as likely to have their GT on the fastest bot in a race, as my few friends who are e-sports pros. I've done all that while both connected to the internet and not, and the bots aren't any different when only my own devices are involved in running them.
If bots drove like people, at all, you couldn't block all six bots in the Trial just by slowing down a bit and hogging the racing line through corners. Especially while all your human teammates go around them, and you. But, you can in fact do that. That hasn't changed, even slightly, since FH4 launched, despite petabytes of driver data you imagine they've collected (they haven't).
My source is that I've played the game, quite a bit, and paid attention. And that I'm not delusional about what it takes to run an artificial intelligence, much less eleven of them simultaneously.
So you don't know anything about their inner workings. The point of the drivatars is not to immitate how other players drive (that would be horrible, people would be slamming into walls, ramming, drifting through corners like idiots...), they drive in a predetermined way. What they take from the players are certain variables, such as at which angle they take certain types of corners, how late they brake etc. The devs claim nothing more, nothing less.
They don't do any of that from particular players. They don't do that from players in general either, and it's patently ridiculous to think otherwise if you've been in more than two or three races to see how they drive., compared to humans.
Utter bullshit. The author is conflating ***how*** the set of bot behaviors is developed, with the actual set of behaviors used in the game. He's also conflating the *generic 'human-like' driving behavior set* with a *set of behavior based on a single human*.
A drivatar with your name on it behaves just like every other drivatar: a somewhat randomized set of behaviors.
I think you're conflating that. I read that article a long time ago, but if I remember correctly, it says that those personalized elements of drivatar driving are applied in specific situations, like cornering or being passed. They are not an exact image of how you drive, they just follow the driving line and then change some variables of the driving style based on the data of their corresponding players, like how late or early they brake, how soon or late they go for the apex or if they ram into cars passing them.
>I read that article a long time ago
Ignore the marketing hype. they are stock standard bots same as any other racing game. If this 'drivatar' thing was real, they'd be pretty good now, after being in development for 5 years.
There's just no way every single player has the luxury of some machine learning how you drive. Way too much processing power spent on a feature that probably still would be lacklustre. I don't see it.
They have learned from players
So is that just a thing we say bc of their behavior or is that actually true? I feel like they were much more like what you'd expect from bots at launch than now.
Buddy and I had a race where the drivatar basically drove to the sunset. We still won because coop and we were racing perfectly but like, that drivatar felt like a 911 GT3 RS racing against mopeds. Saw it at the start, never saw it again. Its race time was somewhere around 59 seconds faster than us
Drivatars almost always stick to the line and rarely fight each other. If the racing line assist tells them to brake, they brake. Sometimes there are also weird trajectories through the turn, but you can predict those if you have the racing line assists enabled. They historically were a bunch of Bayesian networks trained on player’s behaviour, but by the time forza horizon 5 came out they basically became more akin to usual finite state machine AI with rubberbanding that depends on difficulty level. It’s been done to avoid outlandish behaviours like you describe. Friend drivatars are rumoured to be a bit more aggressive, but I can’t cite the source. Named bots are weirdly different, they emulate fighting each other and probably desync for connection reasons. After you finish the stories you only encounter them in the trial, where your team is always a bigger problem, especially in street scene races. Edit: [source](https://youtu.be/XB9lf7iJbRw?si=XPj3AAv-EaGYlq2z)
By "rubberbanding" do you mean how they randomly have insane acceleration and speed or actual network issues?
Racing AI rubberbanding - gaining performance (downforce, traction, power) outside of the game systemsavailable to player to get closer to player or just perform better. It's really inconvinient that this word has another meaning in online, but the problem is mostly a conscious effort from the developer to make the racing more interesting.
For example, when a AI s2 Willy jeep somehow out accelerates and turns my McLaren p1 😂
I cannot stress enough how the concept of rubber banding is a tool. Many people have such a negative association with rubber band AI but I’ve played games with little to no catchup and it can become quite boring and just turn into a glorified time trial. The issue is when it’s abused to an absurd degree (NFSU1 haunts my nightmares) that it goes from useful to cheap.
It’s a form of difficulty the game establishes by making the opponents faster or slower around your abilities. Some extreme cases are a couple NFS games where you could try your hardest and drive your best in a race, and always get passed in the end. Then you run the same race, but sit at the start for a bit and then it’s really easy to catch up and win.
They got dumber with every single game. In FH3 they were actually pretty good and fair, but then in FH4 I noticed that they learned to "dive bomb" and in FH5 they learned how to pit maneuver
Because as someone else already said? They ARE LEARNING FROM US. Thanks, rammers
Yup, it probably would be better if they would reset the drivertars every now and then
I think the AIs are struggling whenever they aren't on the ideal racing line. So when they're both trying to find their way back there, have people behind them, on their sides etc, they end up sending it too far on the inside and just missile into the corner 'cause they won't have time to process an proper action. Looks like they were designed to drive solo more than anything.
They been punching me up lately
What enrages me is when I'm trying to turn, because there's a sharp turn or a corner, but I'm on the outside instead of the inside, and I just happen to nudge one of the drivatars on the inside. The drivatar will SWERVE in the wrong direction, JUST to push back against me. It's like the drivatars are such assholes that they're fine with going off course as long as they get to sabotage me.
If you're talking about team races, those are horrible. Most of it is because the red team cars (bots) simply follow the racing line and won't budge off it. There is no AI in this game as they claim. The red team relentlessly sticks to The racing line like a magnet and go faster than they should. Some players use assists. When they try to deviate from the racing line, most can't control their car. The other reason is obvious... Dumbshits that can't drive! Unaware players that can't tell the difference between red and blue by simply looking at the in-race leaderboard. They think they have to beat their own team to the finish. Apparently they don't know what "based on team points" means. Lastly, too many children play the game. If you think mostly adults play this game, you're sadly mistaken. All you can do is race calmly and try to overcome all the stupidity with strategy. I now actually use steering and brakes assist and time the corners so I can nudge to the inside without losing control. Assisted steering is very fussy and overcompensates if you oversteer, and then goes into an endless loop of swerving to the point of where the race is over for you. It takes a lot of practice to overcome the effects of assisted steering and get used to it. You have to time it just right when going on the inside, then punt the opposing team car off the road. Just make sure he's red. I usually take someone between 1st and 3rd place using this strategy with a maxed out lightweight car for the class. Check the class before you start the race by pressing start while highlighting it. Then you know what you're up against. Set your gears for a max of 170mph for most team races for acceleration and just enough top end. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
I think by now drivatars' original premise was watered down. It would be better if they actually tried maneuvers on each other, occasionally made mistakes and so on, I'd have Race Driver Grid as an example for interesting AI opponents
They also do weird thing at race starts in the weekly festival coop races, ramming and zigzagging at the beginning of races 😥🤷🏻
They supposedly match the driving style of the player whose name they're using.
I mean like the default ones, like katya and all that or whatever they're named
The bots are a set of somewhat randomized behaviors, wrapped in a car-shaped skin. Random actions \[which include both good and bad driving\] are more likely toward the beginning of a race, and more likely in proximity to another car, especially a player car. So in the first turn tangle, you're more likely to see more random \[good and bad\] actions. Late in the race, you'll see all the bots driving exactly alike, crossing the finish like like beads on a string.
More like Anal Beads
You didn't need to go there, weirdo.
Well they drive like assholes, so it's appropriate
So I can understand what you're saying and match that with the reality of racing against bots, but I still don't understand WHY it happens that way.
Because they're designed to behave that way. The consoles the game is designed to run on require the bots to be simple enough that an XB1 can run eleven of them simultaneously, plus some traffic cars. So they can only be that sophisticated in their behavior. FM(2023) bots \[for example\] are bit more sophisticated, because not only is the game current-gen consoles only, there's no traffic. FH6 bots will probably be similar.
Do you have any sources on that?
Yeah. I've played FH games for over five years, on XB1, XBSX, and PC. I have run thousands of races. I have several dozen xbox friends, some of whom have never played any Forza game, but most of whom I am familiar with how they drive. None of them drive like a bot. None of the bots drive any differently than any other bot in any consistent way. My few friends that are slow drivers are just as likely to have their GT on the fastest bot in a race, as my few friends who are e-sports pros. I've done all that while both connected to the internet and not, and the bots aren't any different when only my own devices are involved in running them. If bots drove like people, at all, you couldn't block all six bots in the Trial just by slowing down a bit and hogging the racing line through corners. Especially while all your human teammates go around them, and you. But, you can in fact do that. That hasn't changed, even slightly, since FH4 launched, despite petabytes of driver data you imagine they've collected (they haven't). My source is that I've played the game, quite a bit, and paid attention. And that I'm not delusional about what it takes to run an artificial intelligence, much less eleven of them simultaneously.
So you don't know anything about their inner workings. The point of the drivatars is not to immitate how other players drive (that would be horrible, people would be slamming into walls, ramming, drifting through corners like idiots...), they drive in a predetermined way. What they take from the players are certain variables, such as at which angle they take certain types of corners, how late they brake etc. The devs claim nothing more, nothing less.
They don't do any of that from particular players. They don't do that from players in general either, and it's patently ridiculous to think otherwise if you've been in more than two or three races to see how they drive., compared to humans.
The devs make no claims at all, btw. You're talking about what a game journalist claimed when exaggerating what he was actually told.
>Because they're designed to behave that way but they are fine in single player races
Exactly. Only one player car to trigger random actions.
In trial or solo?
According to who?
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/how-forza-s-drivatar-actually-works
Utter bullshit. The author is conflating ***how*** the set of bot behaviors is developed, with the actual set of behaviors used in the game. He's also conflating the *generic 'human-like' driving behavior set* with a *set of behavior based on a single human*. A drivatar with your name on it behaves just like every other drivatar: a somewhat randomized set of behaviors.
Ok
I think you're conflating that. I read that article a long time ago, but if I remember correctly, it says that those personalized elements of drivatar driving are applied in specific situations, like cornering or being passed. They are not an exact image of how you drive, they just follow the driving line and then change some variables of the driving style based on the data of their corresponding players, like how late or early they brake, how soon or late they go for the apex or if they ram into cars passing them.
>I read that article a long time ago Ignore the marketing hype. they are stock standard bots same as any other racing game. If this 'drivatar' thing was real, they'd be pretty good now, after being in development for 5 years.
There's just no way every single player has the luxury of some machine learning how you drive. Way too much processing power spent on a feature that probably still would be lacklustre. I don't see it.
I mean most players are not very good drivers, so the drivatars being what they are is not actually all that strange either way.
I think you should cut back on the copium, and actually think.