So last Friday/Saturday I played Forza for nearly the entire time I was awake for the OCTOBERKAST. I've been playing today while listening to the Bombcast and will watch Tested live later, and my left finger STILL hurts from last week. So much Forza... But at least I'm up to level 53 now, and more importantly, have 5M credits already. M3 GTR, you will be mine.

Some bad news.

In attempting to set the rules for Clunker Pushing, I've learned that multiplayer only permits a maximum of four teams. This is a shame, yes, since it forces us to turn Clunker Pushing more into the Cat & Mouse event in disguise that it is.

However, I'm simply going to say one clunker and up to three pushers per team will lead to a new and exciting version of our game mode.

I call it Super Sloppy Clunker Pushing. Look for it tomorrow.

@mfpantst: Generally, in the past and present, we've run Car Soccer with no class restrictions whatsoever. Fast four-wheel-drive vehicles with good launch tend to do the best, but the new Car Soccer balances out the choice even more by making it so that faster cars just end up throwing the ball behind them if they try using too much speed. Only once have we banned a car for being too good (the Bugatti Veyron in Forza 3).

We'll also sometimes have games where the teams can only use one car make/model, but that's not as common.

@PsEG: That's good to know, playing against hummer in a moderaltely quick 4wd car was not fun.

I was nosing around the Turn 10 forums, and... I'm not gonna go on a rant or anything, but yah know what? The idea, nonetheless implementation, of unicorn cars is totally fucked when you think about it.

hey i was wondering if for Car Soccer tomorrow we can try a game of all Fiat 500 Abarths.

@ShaggyChu said:

I was nosing around the Turn 10 forums, and... I'm not gonna go on a rant or anything, but yah know what? The idea, nonetheless implementation, of unicorn cars is totally fucked when you think about it.

Always has been. It's a bit confusing they seemed to expand on the concept further without offering additional means to obtain unicorns. At least it's a good way to discover users who are engaging in credit fraud when they're bidding an insane amount of money in the auction house.

Receiving one unicorn at driver level 150 or 51 (or both)? That'd be nifty.

wait level 150? is that seriously the level cap?

@PsEG: I'd got for 51 :) Probably get there by friday and a unicorn would be a nice gift.

@pakx: I like this. I do think there should be some authentic car soccer. Of course that means aigos, but I mean what I mean.

@pakx said:

hey i was wondering if for Car Soccer tomorrow we can try a game of all Fiat 500 Abarths.

Yes please. Also the Chevy Volts were pretty fun too.

@PsEG: Well, I think everyone knows at this point I'm pissed about the M3 GTR being behind an inaccessible wall for absolutely no reason. Turn 10 boasts about having loads of cars for everyone, and after three games (well, only two that I've played) and hundreds of hours I finally found my favorite car. A car that I never would have before thought I would like in any special way. And now I can't have it because Turn 10 arbitrarily decided it's special.

I'm going to keep saving my credits, but that's probably a crap shoot. Eventually I'm going to have to break down to going onto the Turn 10 forums and using the unicorn cars I do have in order to barter for an M3 GTR.

I kinda want to write a review of Forza 4, just so people know how amazing and totally fucked this game is at the same time.

Oh man 10:30pm is when I have to leave for work on Thursdays :(

@PsEG: Happy Race Night birthday, fearless leader! expect a birthday car in your inbox today when you boot up forza.

10:30 pm ET , jesus , thats 4:30 am in the morning here in swedenland.

wouldnt be a problem if it wasnt in the middle of the week though.

are there any giantbomb races going on at my side of the pond? or perhaps a bit eariler than 10:30 pm ET?

@ShaggyChu said:

@PsEG: Well, I think everyone knows at this point I'm pissed about the M3 GTR being behind an inaccessible wall for absolutely no reason. Turn 10 boasts about having loads of cars for everyone, and after three games (well, only two that I've played) and hundreds of hours I finally found my favorite car. A car that I never would have before thought I would like in any special way. And now I can't have it because Turn 10 arbitrarily decided it's special.

I'm going to keep saving my credits, but that's probably a crap shoot. Eventually I'm going to have to break down to going onto the Turn 10 forums and using the unicorn cars I do have in order to barter for an M3 GTR.

I kinda want to write a review of Forza 4, just so people know how amazing and totally fucked this game is at the same time.

Some say he already has three BMW M3 GTRs in his garage, and that he is definitely NOT Falcon 304. All we know is, he's called The Stig!

i seem to have one of these BMW M3 GTRs in my garage... i think?

so for Laz's birthday i've given him a copy of my current favorite car with my setup for it: the A Class Cosworth.

i also gave it a special paint job before i gifted it to him:

Happy Birthday, Laz!

So the AI makes R2 and R1 class races stupidly difficult. I'm not so much saying the AI is always harder in these races. They're the same the have been throughout the game (in other words, pretty fucking terrible). It's... a combination of things. To start off,

1. You get placed in the middle or back on the starting grid
2. Cars in front of you are slow on the front stretch off the line, or straight up crash in front of you

The combination of these two things make the highest class races harder than they should be. Why? Well, the obvious one is that I'm being held up in a big way by these fucking stupid, shitty AI cars in front of me. I find myself needing to restart multiple times in order to get a good start and around the slow AI before the first turn.

This then causes another problem. In the R2 and R1 classes, the chances of me and the top three AI racers using the same car (or a similarly spec'ed car) is nearly 100%. Combined with the fact that I'm slowed down at the start, I can't catch up very fast because my car is identical to fucking Rossi (or whoever the Asian or European driver is).

Also, the top two AI is fucked on a scale that I haven't taken notice to in the previous two Forza games. First off, catching up to them is insanely difficult. Make jokes all you want, but I'm a competent Forza racer, and there's absolutely no pressure in single player. But on multiple occasions now I have needed to literally dive bomb the second place car in order to catch up (I'm so good at it now that I almost never damage anything internal). I might not have this problem if I didn't have a shitty starting spot, AI in front of me slowing me down, and the top two AI being set on perfect (something I can't change because Turn 10 has needlessly taken this option away from the player).

But what sets me over the edge is that once I have passed the second place car, the first place car pretty much moves over for me a few turns later. WHAT HAPPENED TO BEING SO PERFECT?! After I've passed both of them, THEY'RE NOWHERE TO BE SEEN. I get that far out ahead of them.

TLDR; The AI in Forza 4 is fucked in a way that I have never seen before.

@ShaggyChu: @mfpantst: I think the adaptive AI has a huge amount to do with how people experience these races. I'd have to ask if either of you use rewind or re-start races where you've made a mistake and will lose a considerable amount of spots because of it. The AI ramps up significantly after season 2, and then seems like it tries to adjust more aggressively toward your skill level in subsequent seasons. From what I read there are about 20 different skill levels associated with world tour difficulty, and as you win the skill level increases based on how far ahead you were etc. By judicious use of rewind some people may actually get the skill level far beyond their own actual skill.

I've kept all assists including rewind off from the beginning, and I rarely restart unless I smash my car up in the first corner and don't want to drive 5 more laps with a busted motor. I'd say at least 1/3 of my races I have not finished first, with a large chunk of those not even finishing on the podium. this lets the AI back off a bit because they're running lap times I can't really catch in some cars. It also makes the game a bit of a see-saw on difficulty because it's constantly tweaking skill up or down, which I don't mind. In addition R2/R1 are so evenly matched, you can easily come off a decent win and have AI one step tougher than you were anticipating.

As an added note, the world championship races with 2 heats have improved AI every time, so they're always a bit more difficult than every other race. My only real AI complaint is their aggression at holding their racing line when you're trying to pass. I understand it sometimes, say when you're trying to pass for 1st on the last corner of a race. But mid race overtaking for 6th I get a little annoyed that I have to muscle my way past even after out braking the AI, they will not give up their line unless you are past door-door with them in many cases.

Is the AI not adaptive if you just pick races to do from the event list? That's what I've been doing, rather than Season Play.

@matt_wickstrom: From the event list, the AI is simply whichever of the (i think) 5 levels you pick in your difficulty settings. world tour is where adaptive AI kicks in

@Renahzor said:

@matt_wickstrom: From the event list, the AI is simply whichever of the (i think) 5 levels you pick in your difficulty settings. world tour is where adaptive AI kicks in

Thanks. Looks like I'm gonna have to start playing World Tour now. I had been playing with the AI set at Professional difficulty, but I'd still run away from them every race.

@Renahzor: @mfpantst: I do use rewind whenever I please, so maybe that's my problem. For the way I drive, I like to have it when I end up fucking up a turn or ram into an AI that braked way too much for a turn (or rammed into me because they decided it would be a good idea to dive bomb me, but are terrible at it, and overshoot into me).

As for the AI holding it's line. I still think that's a by-product of the AI being terrible. The AI isn't aware of where you are, so they're stuck on their set track around the circuit. If you're in the way of that track, too bad.

@ShaggyChu said:

@Renahzor: @mfpantst: I do use rewind whenever I please, so maybe that's my problem. For the way I drive, I like to have it when I end up fucking up a turn or ram into an AI that braked way too much for a turn (or rammed into me because they decided it would be a good idea to dive bomb me, but are terrible at it, and overshoot into me).

As for the AI holding it's line. I still think that's a by-product of the AI being terrible. The AI isn't aware of where you are, so they're stuck on their set track around the circuit. If you're in the way of that track, too bad.

Yeah, especially when you're on a straight and they nose into your rear end and spin you out. I think it's way more hilarious when you ram into one of them on a straightaway and then rewind and then they proceed to stop dead in the middle of the track despite not having been in an accident.

@mfpantst said:

@wrathofconn: That happens? i need to check the rewind out every once in a while.

Yeah, it's pretty awesome. A lot of times they'll immediately miss a turn that they nailed the first time too.

When PsEG was doing his four-hour races over the weekend, I think that was breaking the AI as well. I don't know if it was because they were too dumb to pit or if it was bugging out on our end, but cars were just stopping on the track after that final hairpin at Infineon.

6 and a half hours till the race night, better get cracking on the world tour. I'm a good 3 seasons away.

@ShaggyChu: On the contrary, the AI knows exactly where you are, and they want to run you off the road so you can't win. XD

@slowbird: FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

I'll be on tonight to join in on the race night fun. I've been having some internet troubles recently, so if I begin to lag or cause any problems, I'll happily leave and try to get everything sorted out for next week. I have plenty to do in Career so if I can't race with you guys I'll still at least have something to keep me busy.

@mfpantst said:

@wrathofconn: Cool. I did notice the AI has trouble with longer lap races. On a 15 minute race on one of the small ovals in R1 Audis, the first time through after like 8 laps all hell broke loose and cars started flipping and running into walls and the race went to shit. The second time i ran that race everything went fine except like 2 cars lost it in the last few laps.

Oh god.. that race was horrifying.

On like the 10th lap I came across about 8 of them overturned or creeping toward the pit to repair lol, watched the replay and they rode the whole wall on the bend coming up to the finish, ended up on their side then slowly slid down to the inside on their sides, taking out any other cars that were passing

I was looking forward to race night tonight.

When I got home from work, my Xbox said that my live account needed to be recovered.

When I recovered it... someone had been playing Fifa 12 and all my MS Points were gone (1999 of them because Bestbuy had just reimbursed me for not giving me the LCE I ordered)

Everyone, call Microsoft and tell them you want to get your credit card dissociated from your account.

@MrRedwine: That suck man sorry to hear, been happening to a lot of people I hear so you should be able to get them back off MS

Hey all. I'm new but I am online if there is any room tonight. I am friends with the GB forza account so you should be able to find me my GT is the same name as here.

@PsEG: I accepted the invite but it didn't work. I have no idea how to contact you on XBL so I guess I will try again next week.

man one shot and I'm screwed because of a network error.

Someone isn't a fan of dead baby jokes...

Did it get ugly after I left? I couldn't get into the new lobby and 5 am comes early. Good times tonight, though I feel a bit outta my league. Sorry to whomever got hosed near the end of the timed race with stock cars, I had previously wrecked and was trying to get out of the way.

That was fun even though my sleeping pattern will be fucked for a few days, Especially clunker. Shame about the futball and Tag messing up.

I can now finish my book: 1001 uses for dead babies

Thanks, and sorry for not talking much(at all)

I was looking at the Fanatec forums and found a thread with a reason and solution to the no money wheel glitch. Don't know if any of you have already see or tried this but here it is anyway.

FM4 "no rewards" issue UPDATE: Solution

So when coming out of turn 2 on Indy, off to the right outside the track there's there neat working fountain that you can see. I thought that was cool.

Sweet! I'll just drive wildly out of control like I always do and I won't get the wheel glitch! :D Still gotta find a place to mount it >_<

@slowbird: *Obligatory Race Night joke about your mom and mounting.*

@wrathofconn: I'm giving you a round of applause for that. *applauds*

@slowbird: You could always buy the Fanatec Wheel stand if its not to much money for you.

http://www.fanatec.de/webshop/new_usa/product_info.php?cPath=29&products_id=88&osCsid=b034550d1d0fc5efa1cc39f56a404f95

Looks like Turn 10 totally fucked up on sending out the pre-order email cars. You should probably bug them about that if you don't get them by next week.

In other news, after their first game with devs event, the M3 GTR is still not out in the wild. Hopefully there aren't too many douches on the official forum, and I can just throw two or three of my unicorns at someone for a GTR when they do show up.