Any thoughts on the Chat situation?

As of right now, in game chat just doesn't work correctly. In general you can only hear half of the lobby and in race who you can hear and talk to seems to rotate around it's weird.

Last race near the end as the lobby dropped enough we moved to the party system which does work as intended although there is no trivial way to do it without manually adding each user.

Hopefully they fix in game chat, I hope.

Have they even acknowledged the problem? Or is it "lalalala business as usual" from the Turn 10 camp?

Given that party chat only works when the lobby's dwindled later in the night, we'll just have to stick with the in-game chat. It's kind of spotty, and I want to look into tinkering with my connection to see if there's any correlation in regards to chat quality, but for now there's no good option other than just putting up with it.

I may have mentioned homework last week. Here's what I want from you for this week's Race Night:

Take one or both of these vans, and upgrade it to C class:

• 1983 GMC Vandura G-1500
• 2011 Ford Transit SuperSportVan

THE SUPER SERIES IS COMING. PREPARE THYSELVES.

Yep, we're going to race them. You know how we do. I've also updated the second post in this thread with a few more details on all of this Super Series stuff. Trust me, if you don't know what the Super Series is, you'll want to be a part of it. It's the best.

@dethfish: Awesome video man! Loved all the formula e cars crashing right at the drop.

Cool, no idea what the super series is but I'll be there clueless and spinning donuts in 19th place.

I really want to do a BTCC series as well. We need to make that happen.

Gt: TheDew

Would like to get in to play tonight if y'all are racing :D

Great races tonight, I appreciated starting near the front a few times so I could mostly avoid the first lap.... issues that occur. :)

I was checking the thread for assignments up until shortly before you posted the assignment, so I missed it. I'll make sure and have a van for next week. I'd also appreciate some details on the Super Series, as I was only hearing parts of conversations due to the Forza chat being its silly broken self. Obviously longer races with silly themes, but there was something about a social media component?

Agreed, fun racing last night. Bummer chat sucks so badly, but that's just part of the charm I guess.

I need to read up and figure out how to export/edit some video, I have some great replays of a few of the races.

Dewar - that race where you got helicoptered up in the air by the transit van gangbang, I had a great first hand view of that. It was AMAZING from my angle.

I'd like to sponsor Rorie but I'm not good at art. "Rorie's Salty Puppies" would be my first pitch.

Yo, can we maybe try to tone down the saltiness over the voice chat not working well? I personally found the constant complaining about it far more annoying than the actual issue itself. It's unfortunate and the increased player count exacerbates the issue, but it's nothing new to Forza multiplayer. No matter how many goats @Trace sacrifices at the altar of Greenawalt, that bug just isn't going to be fixed.

@chaser324: Sadly your right, I just checked the T10 forums and there is multiple threads about lobby chat. Also, the game prompts to use party chat which is kind of unforgivable.

@cbyrne: the prompt to use party chat makes me think that in game chat will never work right.

I didn't think it was going to help at all, but I was able to hear nearly everyone after the lobby was re-made. There was also like 7 less people, so that could be why too.

@dethfish: Yeah, given that people reported this issue in previous Forza games, I think we'll just have to live with it. I also think it's a "more broken when there's more people joining" thing, so in a few months when there's new games competing for everyone's attention and it's back to diehard Race Nighters, it might help the chat a bit.

@slowbird: Anecdotally it seems better than it used to. I jumped into one FH2 Race Night after I finally got my Xbone, and chat was so bad that I ended up muting everything and just racing deaf with you guys - and there wasn't that big of a crowd. Just a bummer that parties and chat seemed so bulletproof on 360, and so bad now.

Unrelated - any thoughts of a Jeff Bakalar team for the Super Series? Or are we already flirting with too much dilution with too many teams? I'd love to dabble in logo creation, but its likely to turn out very poorly.

I don't know if @Trace wants to use this as the official team ryckert name/logo/design, but I uploaded a few different designs that people can use if they want. I took the numbers off so you can add your own.

Realistically, and if I stick to the rules for the sake of the Super Series, I'm going to defer to whatever buzz_clik puts together as the team logo for his Wipeout-style futuristic teams. If he doesn't make a logo for someone, they're not an eligible team. However! I might be willing to make an exception for this Ryckert logo, should Dan not have a team in the "traditional" sense before we're done testing for the Super Series. The designs are certainly rock solid for whatever Dan's logo is going to be, regardless.

That should be the extent of the rule-bending around here -- I'd rather not ruin the spirit of the Super Series by just adding random people to the series through random logos.

As for the questions regarding the Super Series in here, the social media portion is something we'll get into shortly before the races start, but even without the details finalized, it's basically this:

1. You make noise about your team through awesome pictures, video, or other creativity, and share this on Giant Bomb or through social media like Twitter, hopefully so your chosen staff member sees it.
2. If the staff member you represent amplifies that noise, your team earns points. Viral is good.
3. If your team earns the most points in a race week, that equals a small driver's championship points bonus. It also goes towards winning the team championship for your representative's honor. This is how we decide who's the coolest at Giant Bomb, of course.

...and regarding the racing, I might have a clip to demonstrate:

It's a shame we don't have access to the Smart Fortwo right now -- that car was difficult to drive well, which is partially why it was the Elite class. I suppose Super Series III could be nothing but Pro heavyweights, but I have hope we can find a suitable and tiny Elite car to join the fray.

@Trace: I don't have a problem using a buzz_clik logo if I can recreate it and get it to work with my overall theme and design. Having to re-do all of it would probably bum me out.

Those videos are terrible btw. What horrible person would put dubstep over serious racing clips?

@dethfish: That's kind of going to be the biggest pain of all of this, now that vinyls and designs aren't giftable in a post-4 world. We may have to have design czars for each team to create alterations for the main designs on request, or just accept that designs will have to work around the downloaded logos and give specs on where to put all the striping for team consistency or whatever.

It's all such a mess, despite good intentions.

@Trace: Great video, and good points about logos, etc. Thanks for making it easy Turn 10.

Have any of you ever driven a Smart Fortwo in real life? That's the car of choice of the impromptu car rental company in Portland (I think it was Car2Go, you set up an account, and just walk up to one with your membership card and you get charged by the minute while you use it, park and walk away when you are done), and they are a blast to drive. The automatic transmission feels like a converted manual transmission (there's a clutch working, but no pedal), and if you are so inclined you can certainly drift one around the off ramp of a freeway. I gained a lot of respect for my brother's driving abilities that evening, and all for the better part of $6.

@Trace: Making 1 or 2 official designs for each team would make it easier, but then people don't get to make their own thing and that seems less fun.

I do think that old Abarth might just be a decent Smart stand-in...it's small, rear-engine, and might be a bit twitchy in a tuned-up state.

@dethfish:Yeah, I'd much rather let people do their own thing -- at no point am I ever going to force anything for a team requirement other than displaying the team's logo prominently on the car. Having a design or two for each team out in the shared designs might not be a bad idea for those who could be jumping into a Super Series race with minimal preparation, but that sounds more like one of those good idea for recruiting teammates rather than a requirement.

I'm hoping. Once we've run enough vans to confirm the Vandura and Transit are equal enough in C, I'd like to bring the Pandas up to that level and see how wild they can get.

Was a ton of fun again last night. Liking the fiats versus the van matchup a lot. Leaning toward the Ford van, I can't control the Vandura. But man that A-Barth is a blast.

Gonna miss next week going on vacation so someone will have to get a VW van with the Minion livery to ram slowbird with.

Oh right, I have some random notes written down from last night. Let's cue the cat.

• Vans are (thankfully) competitive! Super Series III shows serious promise from our test races last night.
• ...however, narrow street circuits like Long Beach are a bit chaotic when a huge vehicle ahead chunks it into tires and blocks the entire road.
• We'll wait until the next car pack and potential patch next Tuesday before pondering this option further, but I'm considering a "first 12 get into party chat" rule. At the very least, maybe the other 12 still in-game can have more luck talking to each other that way. ...I'm not sure if it works that way.
• "...and on your left, you'll see a Dead Beef Daddy." -Overheard on the Daytona track tour
• PS4: So much fan, it'll blow a bullet away from your skull into a nearby wall
• Fords are slow and underpowered. FACT
• Terradynes at 75% power deficit: Slooooowwww. EXCITEMENT IN RACING
• BOOGITY BOOGITY BOOGITY, INSIDE JOB, BOYS

Hopefully everybody had fun last week. I think next week, as I continue to work on replicating buzz_clik's GB Wipeout logos into Forza 6 for the Super Series, we'll test the Elite class Abarth/A-Barth. You know, the old one. It's wild in C class. Suspension setup changes might fix that, but I've not tinkered with it enough yet to know if that's a correctable hazard.

I forgot to save the replay of that Daytona race. I hope someone captured the moment @rolyatkcinmai murdered @beef_daddy.

@Trace: Any chance of encouraging two smaller chats rather than the one 12 man one? The couple races I was the 13th guy definitely changed the tone of the race - kinda like playing with really good yet unpredictable Drivatars.

LIMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I'm going to give the game chat another try after this week's patch, but I'll be honest about splitting chats: I'm going to assume it'll be a hard sell. It's like when we tried to split Race Night into two separate lobbies back when there were legitimate and persistent space issues: Everyone always wants to be in the main group, not the secondary group. Granted, chat won't be as big an issue as a game lobby, but I imagine we'd run into some of the same complications.

Hopefully chat works better this week, regardless.

Hype Train!

Oh, right! I have a few notes from last Thursday.

CUE THE CAT.

RACE NIGHT #310: LEGIT PRO LIMOS

• RACING LINES ARE FULL OF POLIO. I mean, you can use them, but just be aware of this.
• All hail the Kevin Harvick Harvick Harvick Harvick limo. So beautiful.
• Jokes aside, I had a really aggressive note here that I'm going to taper back. Yes, voice chat is still busted. No, you do not need to announce every time you can't hear somebody or start hearing somebody again. It's not important, we're all aware of the bug, and quite frankly, endlessly bitching about it is going to drive people away. Just accept it's a part of the experience, and if you're missing out on part of the experience, someone will likely relay for you. Relax.
• Limos with right front wheels that lift are amazing. Hells yes. They still can't go three-wide at the Nurburgring.
• Slowbird's Ghost Threepac pun crashed Forza for me. STOP IT, SLOWBIRD.
• In 11 hours, I'll be allowed to race. We...had some interesting bugs, needless to say.
• Wixom water and Tom Raper RVs. Michigan's a quality state.
• Race Night 1, Peace Egg 0

I need to get some more decals and details together, but the Super Series is getting closer. Trust me on that. Until then, I'll see you next Thursday for more of the same!

Whole lotta bug-fixes here, but I'm not sure if any of these were affecting us per se.

http://www.trueachievements.com/n21863/forza-6-fixes-unobtainable-achievement-in-patch.htm?nlid=120

@slowbird: The AWD Fiat 500 is a very interesting bug, I wondered why I thought my 500 was BOSS. Guess I have to retune it.

Let me just drop some notes in here before I forget.

Cat.

RACE NIGHT #311: BIRTH OF THE BARRICADE

• "Xbox, Unsnap. I don't have a Kinect." -The future of Xbox One users
• Irish Xbox users would be very offended this week, for reasons marginally related to the above point.
• The cops have turned on society! Barricade mode is evil!
• So yeah, we put together a new mode: Barricade racing. Think of it like Cat and Mouse, except the cats don't give a shit who wins. It lead to some absolutely vicious and evil moments.
• Thankfully, my Lamborghini punches holes in cops barricades. You can't pit me!
• Barricade racing + Daytona at night = NIGHTMARE MODE. You ever see Hummers and Broncos bound wildly at you at over 180 MPH? It's genuinely unnerving.
• Nobody notices when I take 30% HP from a Formula Ford! Amazing how that works. It's almost as if people lower their expectations automatically.

With the new "experience" rolling out in waves tonight, are we cautiously optimistic that Race Night will happen tomorrow night?

@j3ffro919: As far as I know there have been multiple members using it already. The only way Race Night doesn't happen is if XBL is completely broken (which has never happened).

I finally got my Xbox sorted out... keen to jump into some of these sessions with you folks.

GT: IAmKhann

@khann: hey you

@slowbird: hey

@khann: @slowbird: who are you people

Monsters. That's who they are.

Much Blood Will Be Spilled in the Hot Hatch Wars

Really enjoyed the GB100. Sorry for bumping a few folks around a bit, still having trouble using a gamepad for close racing :(

@trace: hey do you guys still do the drag lobbies on forza 6 if so please add my gamertag iambsmooth i also have fh3 so if you race their im in aswell