The Forza Motorsport reboot is a mess. What needs to be fixed for the game to have a redemption arc worthy of its fans?

WATCH: Everything That NEEDS To Be Fixed In Forza Motorsport

“This game is a mess. And I keep booting it up. And driving happily for hours.”

This post by u/kappaway on the r/forza subreddit perfectly sums up how I feel about Forza Motorsport right now. Yes, the game is riddled with bugs and glitches, and is straight-up broken in places, but at its core, the racing experience is top-tier.

It’s clear the game was released before it was ready, and in the eyes of some fans, the game still has a long way to go before it’s a true, fully-fledged Forza title.

As a fan of the series myself – and of racing games as a whole – I’d love nothing more than to see Forza succeed, so with that said, let’s dive into what needs to be fixed, the features that need a second look, and the changes that need to be made to take Forza Motorsport to the next level.

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Bugs & Optimisations

Forza Motorsport’s biggest downsides right now are its bugs. If I listed every bug the game has, I’d be here for far too long – so let’s focus on some of the more major ones that need to be fixed asap.

In multiplayer, slow loading times at race starts – sometimes over 5 or even 10 minutes long – need to be addressed. Some players are also reporting being unable to take race starts entirely, loading into race starts like they’re in a practice session, or the most bizarre one I’ve seen: starting the race in the replay camera view.

Also in multiplayer, on occasion, the game forces you into a loading screen once you’re in the pre-race intermission – and if this happens, you can’t change your tyre compounds or your race fuel. Starting a 12-lap race on Soft tyres with 2 laps of fuel is a bit of a bummer!

On release, for whatever reason, you could switch the car you’re driving after qualifying. This could break the class restrictions for a race, meaning that Class X cars could enter a Class B lobby, for example. Today, I’ve seen a lot less of that – but it does still pop-up from time to time, so we hope Turn 10 can find a permanent solution.

Odd loading behaviour also affects the wider game. This ranges from minor issues like the wrong graphics loading in the Builders’ Cup menu or liveries failing to load to problems that require a full restart to fix, such as being unable to pause when in a Race Replay.

Oh, and lastly for the outright bugs – Turn 10: please fix the multiplayer replays on PC!

Onto gameplay optimisations now, and whilst an on-screen radar or a spotter would be a huge help, a quicker solution would be to optimise the proximity markers. Tailoring them to each camera view, and making them clearer – perhaps with different colours rather than brown – would be awesome. Speaking of clarity, a proper rear-view mirror would be fantastic, especially in cockpit view. Just pin it to the top of the screen, and I’m sure we’d be seeing a lot less Turn 1 carnage!

For PC players, the optimization isn’t great. If you’re running a 4090 and can’t push over 90 frames per second – even after two game updates and two new Nvidia drivers – then something isn’t right. My trusty 3070 Ti can hold the fort at 60fps, but I’d be lying if I said the game didn’t look pretty bad at times – just look at those textures!

There’s clearly a long way to go before there’s performance parity across both Xbox and PC. I wonder if that’s part of the reason why multiplayer is locked to 60 fps?

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Handling

In my previous video on the cars, tracks & updates coming to Forza Motorsport, I said that the game feels “pretty terrible on a wheel right now”. A few of you – okay a lot of you – said that the game feels really good on a wheel, so I gave it another go and… I don’t know. For me, it’s not quite there yet.

I’m using a Moza R12 on PC, and I’ve tried a whole bunch of different FFB settings – both before and after that video – and I still haven’t found what’s right for me. In iRacing, I feel a real dialled-in connection with the car – I’m not expecting Forza to match that, but I’ve yet to find something that gets me close enough. I’ve seen quite a few Moza users complain of light and disconnected steering when playing Forza Motorsport, and Moza have only just fixed some compatibility issues for Horizon 4 and 5, so it could just be a Moza-specific issue that will get sorted with time.

Nevertheless, I’ll keep trying out new settings and I’ll keep you posted if I find something that works. If you’re using a Moza wheelbase and have found some settings that work for you – especially if you’re using an R12 – let me know down in the comments!

With that said, the way that high-downforce machines – such as GT3s, prototypes and F1 cars – feel to drive doesn’t quite mesh with Forza’s handling model. These cars should deliver their best performance when balanced right on the limit of grip, but in Forza Motorsport, it feels like setting a car up to be loose and oversteer-y leads to better lap times, no matter what you’re driving.

Pad handling should absolutely be the priority – and Turn 10 have nailed it – but it’d be great to have a more realistic experience on wheel in these high-downforce cars to really push the immersion, and the fun, that little bit further. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, GT7 is a completely different beast on a wheel, and I’d love for Forza Motorsport to give me that same feeling.

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Drivatar AI

My first impressions of the AI were pretty positive. Whilst opening laps are utter chaos, the speed of the frontrunners can be a challenge, especially in the higher difficulties, and as you can choose your difficulty and grid position for each race, finishing in 1st isn’t a guarantee – a refreshing change of pace when compared to the AI in other racing games.

A few weeks in, and boy has the novelty worn off.

Don’t get me wrong, Forza Motorsport’s AI is still far quicker than in other mainstream racing games, but it’s also some of the most infuriating I’ve come across. They’re quick, but they can’t race.

Aside from Lap 1 – which is its own whirlwind of chaos – the most frustrating aspects of the AI can be demonstrated in three scenarios that happen in virtually every race; going side-by-side on a straight, overtaking on the inside, and when you’re defending after an overtake.

If you get close enough to the AI to run side-by-side on a straight, they have a strange habit of briefly driving into you. They don’t change their line in clean air, but it’s like there’s a magnet attached to your car if you get close. This isn’t the worst thing in the world, but it is a peculiar oddity that breaks the immersion – I’d love to know why the AI does this, but more importantly, I’d love for Turn 10 to fix it.

Heading down to the next corner, if you have a whiff of your front bumper on the inside, the AI gives you all the room in the world to make the overtake. Sometimes, they’ll even drive straight off the track to get out of the way. The AI should be much more combative here, keeping up their speed and sticking to the racing line as much as possible. They should give you racing room – but not a 3 car-wide gap, and they certainly shouldn’t be driving off the circuit.

The AI’s most egregious moves are their divebombs. We’ve made a pass on the straight and are taking the racing line into the next braking zone when all of a sudden, the AI you’ve just overtaken dives down the inside from 5 car lengths back, giving you a hefty whack that slows you down if you’re lucky, or puts you in the gravel if you’re not. It’s as if the AI are tuned to be far too passive in defence, but far too aggressive in attack.

The AI also struggles to race itself. If it’s close to another car, it’ll often brake in the middle of a flat-out corner, and if it’s approaching the back of another car on a straight, it’ll brake and stay behind them rather than driving around for the overtake. On Lap 1, there’s all kinds of action, running 2 or 3-wide through areas such as Sector 1 at Suzuka. Beyond that, they rarely engage in battle (making races feel like a procession), and seem to slow down once you’ve caught up with them (making overtakes that much easier).

Will the AI give you more unpredictable races than the norm? Yes! Are these races more fun? Not really. Forza Motorsport has replaced boring single-player races with frustrating ones, where restarts and rewinds become a necessity rather than an aid.

Speaking of rewinds, after you resume from one, the AI seems to briefly forget where it is or what it’s doing, often driving straight off the track – especially if they’re entering a fast bend like the final corner at Maple Valley. Just look at this!

Are the drawbacks of the AI due to how it’s tuned, or the track maps it follows? There’s certainly particular corners where they’re painfully slow – the bus stop at Watkins Glen, Turn 4 at Grand Oak Raceway reverse, and Spa’s Eau Rouge-Raidillon sequence spring to mind – but there’s certainly core issues with how it drives, how it battles, and how it reacts to the cars around it that need to be fixed.

The gold standard for AI in a racing game is in iRacing – but let’s be realistic here. If Turn 10 can make the opening laps a little more palatable, increase the AI’s consistency and dial down the extreme aggression and extreme passiveness, Forza’s single-player could make a huge step forward.

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Builders’ Cup

Turn 10 have stated that they will be adding more Tours and single-player content to the Builders’ Cup in Forza Motorsport, but beyond these plans, here’s what we’d like to see.

A huge portion of the game’s 500+ car roster simply isn’t used in the Builders’ Cup, including any pure racing cars, open-wheelers or Class X machines. I’m sure Turn 10 will plug this obvious hole over time, but the Career mode is in desperate need of some variety sooner rather than later, especially as more and more players – including myself – have completed all the content currently on offer.

How about a pre-1950’s Grand Prix series, a modern hypercar series, or a two-make series for the ‘88 McLaren and 1990 Ferrari F1 cars? Forza Touring and Forza GT are the two staple multiplayer spec hoppers – why not introduce players to these cars in the Builders’ Cup?

Moving on to the nitty-gritty of the Cup itself; it doesn’t fit in well with the CarPG system. Right now, you spend 5 to 6 races building up your familiarity with a car, getting it to around level 20, and then never driving it again. The only place they can be used – outside of maybe the Open Tour at the end of the Builders’ Cup, and that’s a push – is the Class-based open hoppers in multiplayer, which is only relevant for a select few cars. We’re spending plenty of time with these cars in the Builders’ Cup – why not make that more meaningful, for example with a Vintage Hot Hatch multiplayer hopper, or a JDM Legends spec race?

Update 1.0 did fix the worst of the grind (the speed at which you gain Car Points notwithstanding), but as most cars now gain their final upgrades at level 25 – outside of engine and drivetrain swaps – the only benefit of levelling beyond that is to work towards the manufacturer discount for maxing 5 cars from the same brand. That’s fine for some of the more popular multiplayer machines, but is a bit of a letdown for your Builders’ Cup cars. As I’ve said before, I don’t think they’ll scrap the CarPG system entirely – or make another change as big as we saw with Update 1.0 – but it’d be great to make hitting Level 50 really mean something more than just a token discount on some of your future showroom purchases.

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Multiplayer

Right now, Forza’s new Driver and Safety Ratings don’t seem to mean very much – and they spoil an otherwise fantastic multiplayer experience.

The S-tier Safety Rating is far too easy to obtain, with many drivers getting it after their three intro races, and as Ratings fluctuate wildly from race to race, one good race from a rammer puts them into the top split, whilst one bad race from a good driver sends them into the doldrums. This leaves it down to luck whether your next lobby is full of solid racers looking for fair wheel-to-wheel action, or full of drivers looking to imitate a demolition derby.

As a driver, you’re also not very well connected with what your Driver and Safety Ratings are. In the post-race classification, you don’t see either of these ratings, or how the race you’ve just completed has affected them. How is my Safety Rating calculated? Did I go up or down a tier? Have I gained or lost Driver Rating? The only way to find out is by heading back to the multiplayer menu and scrolling to your ratings tab, whereas it should really be front-and-centre of your multiplayer experience.

GT7, ACC, iRacing – all three do Driver Ratings and Safety Ratings slightly differently, but all three have a system that works. With a bit of tuning to make higher Driver and Safety Ratings more difficult to achieve and harder to keep, Forza Motorsport can certainly have a system on the level of its racing game peers.

Humans will be humans, and before long, you’ll come across a driver being toxic on the mic or in chat. A solid reporting system is the backbone of a healthy community – but Forza’s seems like a bit of an afterthought. Rather than a simple in-game menu, to report a player, you need to scan a QR code, sift through support pages and submit a detailed report. That’s way more effort than it’s worth for most, and if Turn 10 are keen for the multiplayer community to be sustainable long-term, simplifying this reporting process needs to be up there as a priority.

Other than the Driver & Safety Ratings and the lacklustre reporting options, there’s really not much that needs to change with multiplayer. It’s got off to a cracking start, with a variety of fun spec and open hoppers, and if Turn 10 continues to deliver the right car and track combinations, I’m sure many of us will keep coming back for more.

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Final Thoughts

Turn 10 certainly has the talent and resources to fix all of Forza’s issues – and it appears like they’re listening to community feedback. At its core, Forza Motorsport is a game that delivers a superb driving experience, and so if Turn 10 takes the same approach to fixes as KUNOS did with ACC and Polyphony did with GT7, there’s still plenty of time for the game to become a shining example of the very best Forza can be.

Turn 10 describes Forza Motorsport as a “live, connected, and ever-changing racing platform that will evolve with our community”. Are they serious about living up to that mantra? Only time will tell.

There we have it – everything that needs to be fixed in Forza Motorsport! What’s your biggest gripe with the game so far? Are you still playing, or have you moved on – and what would it take to bring you back? Let us know in the comments below.

If you’d like to hear our thoughts on Forza Motorsport so far, check out our review here, and for the lowdown on the cars, tracks and game modes that are likely to come to Forza Motorsport in future, check out our video here. If you want to follow my Forza Motorsport multiplayer journey, come along for the ride by clicking here!