League Review

I generally hate racing with kids and I’m not a 1% speed demon, so I haven’t done much online racing in the last couple of Forza releases and hadn’t tried it in FM7 at all until this past week. I don’t think Leagues were active in FM6 before I lost interest in that game. Offering locked cars as League rewards was really the main reason I even tried this time. I’m having the most fun and frustration with the Exotic GT racing with full damage. Ghost racing has as much thrill as hotlapping.

I had hoped homologation would better even out the field. For the Hot Hatch Icons I tried a couple of my own cars, but ended up just downloading a Civic tune to see how a leaderboard Civic was put together, and tuned it myself. In my opinion the aspiration swap is unbalanced and resulted in the ’97 Civic being the only viable Hot Hatch Icon when you do ghost racing. Turn 10 could do some PI adjustments to fix this, but probably never will.

In the first series I never got comfortable in a hypercar and mainly stuck to the ’97 Civic series. Here I could at least be competitive in Grassroots. I picked up some wins and several podiums. I would get bumped up into Enthusiast and spend the next several races losing points back into Grassroots. Do a Grassroot race and I’m back into Enthusiast to start losing points again. The point scoring really needs adjustment. With Ghosts it’s just hotlapping, so nothing matters but scoring points. The best way to do that is start at the back of the grid and overtake as many places as possible. This leads to gaming the system and shitty racing. The grid is arranged by best time in the previous race with clean laps arranged before the first dirty lap. The design encourages never setting a clean lap and cutting corners whenever you can get an advantage. Turn 10 designed the system, so I’ll play along.

For the second series I thought sim damage would be the worst experience ever, but I’m finding I like it better than racing Ghosts. The Sport Coupe is more my speed than Exotic GT, but at Enthusiast level Ghost racing I’m just losing points. Sim damage is a completely different beast. Finishing well even if you don’t podium is much more satisfying. It needs a different skill set to drive in traffic and I found I can be competitive. I haven’t worried about gaming the system to try and move out of Enthusiast.

I’ve been bouncing around between Enthusiast 3-5. Sunday I picked up a few wins, 2 due to no one in the lobby being able to drive in rain. First time ever where I was running 2 seconds faster than the rest of the field and another because the leader was lapping a backmarker that ran himself into a wall and took her out as she went by. I saved a replay of that one to see what happened just because this girl was fastest in the lobby by a wide margin,

If I start at the front I can finish near the front as long as I don’t get punted off by an idiot. That’s the frustrating part, finding a room that races clean enough to not get punted every race. From what I’ve seen most collisions are caused by poor driver skill. It’s not just over aggressiveness with no racing etiquette (but that happens). I’ve been surprised at the just absolutely poor car control being exhibited by some in the Enthusiast Level. You see guys that can barely keep their car on a straight, much less navigate turns, or race cleanly. To my relief, I’ve only had one case where there was a griefer intentionally taking out people. He took me out on the last turn of a race that caused me to DNF, but I finished 4th anyway a lap down on a recovery drive following a mid race stop, that entire race was a shit show for most of the grid.

With sim damage on I prefer to start near the front, but with it’s hard to set a clean lap because of drafting tripping the dirty lap flag. If I have to pit and have some open track, I work to set a clean lap to at least start the next race at the front. If I start near the back, I hang back on the start and try to pick my way through any shenanigans. I’m not aggressive, but I’m patient. I wait for the other guy to screw up instead of forcing my way through. One of the last races I did I went from 18th of 20 to 2nd on the first lap in Dubai because half the field were taken out in the tunnel and the rest ate barriers before the first lap was over. I picked my way through without contact. The only one to escape was the leader who was 2 seconds a lap faster than me, and I gave up 2nd place before the end to another guy that was also running a lot faster than me.

Sunday I spent several races in a lobby with a couple of Lambos and a One-77. None had Forza aero bits or throttle control. Every race these asshats created problems. One of these took out the race lead in the race I mentioned earlier. I watched the replay and the guy was accruing tranny damage on half of his shifts besides spinning off a wall all by himself. If you have that little skill, go back to career and learn to drive your car, don’t subject the rest of us to your shit. If I was in front of them I was usually faster than them. I’ve seen a mix of cars in Exotic GT, but every Lambo driver I’ve seen has been a low skill moron.

Also what happened to the courtesy of using a mic and apologizing for unintentional contact?  I’m not seeing very many people with a mic at all.

Finally, Turn 10, fix your networking layer. After 7 releases, can’t you figure out how to do stable online racing. This evening it took 20 minutes to connect to a lobby and I routinely get left behind in a lobby at race start after just a few races.