This is my first Forza. I’m sad to say I’m not loving it for two very specific reasons.

First, difficulty. With drivatar AI set to ‘average’ every race is a walk. If it’s a circuit with multiple laps I’m first by the end of lap 1 and then alone for the rest of the race. So I bump the AI up to ‘above average’ and I never get near the lead cars of the same race. I’m coming in 6th or lower every time. Neither of these are any fun.

The other thing is that every race gives me the choice to go ‘pvp’ and every single one has timed out without a single other player joining.

Any advice on either of these issues cos they’re killing the game for me at the moment.

Have you already unlocked the festival? Horizon 4 does a dumb thing where you have to go through every season before you get access to the real game with more packed lobbies.

Also, if above average is too hard I'd suggest removing some of the assists instead of raising the difficulty. Maybe turn off rewind or set the driving line to turns only.

I'll check later but I think the pvp option for each race is inviting the people who are in your horizon life, not all available multiplayer. Most of the time, they're doing their own thing and only come together during forzathon events(and sometimes not even then.)

I think Above average is a fair difficulty. Make sure you're looking at the stats of the car. An overall rating won't help that much if your car isn't that fast.

Yeah, team adventure is the actual multiplayer. I just tried it, really fun. 12 people within a couple of seconds(also lots of quitting but new people join).

I agree with you that the multiplayer could be integrated better. I've started about a dozen multiplayer routes and never get more than one guy join out of twelve people.

AI difficulty's been strange in Forza games but you get used to it. I think the logic there is that you're not supposed to finish 1st in every race, unless you play with easy drivatars... yes the way they stay in front is kind of arbitrary and unfair -- I'm sure it's all caused by some messed up rubber banding. If you're not losing because of driver mistakes, you might want to find a more versatile car, or just take the losses like I do (you still get plenty of money and influence)

Not noticed this difficulty issue myself, but previous games I got hit by weird step up in difficulty problems. However, this is the first game where I finally accepted that I can't tune a car for toffee so have been using community setups. It might be that just getting an optimised tuning helps. I have found if I can't catch the leading pack, a change in set up or car is the answer. Maybe the devs were looking to push people into not just using the single car?

@stantongrouse: where do you find community set ups? Do you look online or are they integrated somewhere that I must have missed?

Anecdotal, but I went back and played Forza Horizon 3 since I barely touched it when it came out, and certain circuit races (one in particular) would be impossible for me to win on expert AI. The lead AI racer would always be just out of reach in the 3 laps despite me never fucking up. I reseted several times just to see if I could win; never did.

I had no issues with expert 93% of the time.

In game, look in the Garage, on the right is the 'Upgrades and Tuning' box. Tunes will be shown for the car you're in at that moment.

And as an FYI, the 'tunes' are really upgrades and tuning in one, so if you choose one, you have to pay for the parts. After that the tune is locked, you can't check anything, and if you open it(haven't done this yet), it says it'll be erased or deleted, forget the exact wording. I have applied one tune so far for my drag racing Nova and it works quite well. The game will prompt you to 'like' the tune at some point too. Each tune shows the tuner's review ratings and tuning lvl for clues to the quality, but before choosing, check all the differences in the compare screen to your car's current performance stats to guesstimate how expensive it'll be, the class you want it to end up, and if it'll meet the needed performance categories you're looking to improve.

@agentzigzag: You can try and find a sweet spot in the difficulty by adjusting your assists. If average AI is too easy for you, take your assists down a notch or two and see if it's more of a challenge then. Or then try and race against harder AI with more assists.

I bet this is more than an anecdote. There were specific tracks in Forza Motorsport 7 on which the AI were simply better than others. It's totally reasonable to believe the same sort of thing happens in the Horizon games.

If you're having trouble with the lower difficulties 99% of the time the problem is that you don't know how to modulate braking and accelerating. Instead of holding down the trigger put your fingertips on LT and RT and get used to being light-fingered. Try a half pressure brake before a turn and then a half pressure to full pressure acceleration out of it. Look at where you want to turn, don't focus on the car ahead of you.

Most of your overtaking into first place will be during the sharper turns. The AI won't run over the checkpoint flags so stay close to the inside during these turns, you can go from 4th to 1st by braking correctly and cutting as close to the inside as possible. And don't get discouraged if you're in 7th halfway into the race. You only need to be in 1st for the finish and your final placement will often be decided in the latter half of the race.

This game will punish you for having the Need For Speed hold-down-the-gas mentality. You need to learn how to brake to be fast.

Yeah, it's a bit clunky with changing them and although adjusting the tuning is locked it seems that the upgrades you purchased are permanent. So, any subsequent tuning downloads are significantly cheaper afterwards.

Also, as a side note, I've found much better setups suited to my needs by using the keyword filters rather than going for the recommended ones that show up as default. It's been helpful for me to get into car types I usually avoid due to not ever optimising them when upgrading. I've never been very good with muscle cars in sim-racing games, but I certainly find them more fun to drive once I got them set up by someone who knows what they are doing.

@stantongrouse

Haven't tried filters yet, but I'll check that out for sure. Bought a recommended B700 tune for the Suby 22B barn find yesterday from a very experienced tuner and it made the car much better in every way, only 20K. You can look at the tuner's creative hub, and this guy had several hundred tunes, designs, and vinyl groups along with a lot of blueprints, and hundreds of thousands of downloads.

I agree that the tunes are the most helpful w/cars that need much better handling, like the older cars, muscle cars for sure. I've gone through the tedious trial and error, and actually managed to successfully tune a few cars on my own in previous Forza Motorsport games after downloading some disappointing ones. Don't have the patience anymore. I'll be buying tunes in FH4 and hopefully they work as well as the two I've applied so far.

The game is easy on the hardest difficulty with no assists. Due to the nature of the tracks.

The AI doesn't know how to think like a human, to "cheat" and cut corners etc.

For "above average" (which I've been playing on) I found you don't really need custom tuning. But upgrading parts will definitely help for certain cars; you can have Forza just "auto-upgrade" to the best it can within a class (annoyingly, you can't do this from just anywhere and particularly you can't do it during the pre-race setup, it has to be done from the garage AFAICT).

+1 to turning off some of the assists too, IMHO the assisted braking / accel is pretty handholdy. But I do keep ABS & traction control on. Consider turning off the driving line as well.

And as @giynny said, if you're willing to get dirty you can cheese the AI in most tracks. And if you're not willing to get dirty, you can still abuse "rewind" to get/stay ahead of them on the critical corners.

I just meant the game is designed for casuals. So if you know how to trail brake and drive properly. Even attempting to drive cleanly. It can be done.

By corner cutting I meant in the style of how F1 drivers do on their circuits. Stealing even a car width of track on the inside and outside can gain you lots of time.

The AI is programmed to race in a robotic and formal manner. The tracks are too complex for them to adjust like this and cheat.

I think its easier to get difficulty, or at least more fun difficulty from turning off assists - far as I know the AI mostly causes them to 'cheat' and go faster than their car's grade should allow.

Since there are no strict stay-on-the-track rules like in F1/real world disciplines for corner cutting, you can abuse this fact and get past any of the AI cars because the most efficient path is not the racing line. I think the only thing really forcing you onto the line are checkpoints.

My problem is usually getting out of the habit of precision braking, since most of the racing games I play between Horizon games are things like Mario Kart where you're usually slamming the gas and brake. I stopped buying the Motorsport games because I never really got into them, but if the next one is on Game Pass I might have another crack at it.