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hootOS
@hootOS

Turn 10 tried to listen to their fanbase and implement a meaningful progression system that made you build each car you buy from the ground up. It's been an issue in recent Forza titles where you can just buy a car and build it without a second thought, making car builds feel rather meaningless. You don't really build a relationship with the cars you're tuning.

Forza responded to this criticism with their half-baked progression system, and I'm not saying that in a mean spirited way either. Their car leveling system is a smart idea; in theory it sounds like a great way to create a relationship between the player and their cars. Unfortunately, its current implementation feels half-finished.


In my opinion, the best way to fix this is to separate singleplayer from multiplayer. Your garage in singleplayer would be separate from your multiplayer garage. In multiplayer, all cars you buy would be free of leveling restrictions; just buy the car and now you have it. The money you earn in multiplayer stays in multiplayer, and the same goes for singleplayer. This creates two separate progression systems that can be fine-tuned for each implementation, allowing players to build cars for specific situations in multiplayer while still offering progression in the singleplayer where it was previously lacking.

There can be issues with that implementation too, but let's go over them.

  1. Garage Synchronicity
    Let's say you buy an MR2 in singleplayer, you build it up and you really like it. You like it so much you want to bring it into your multiplayer garage, but you don't own that car in multiplayer. No problem! Save your tune and livery in singleplayer, race in the multiplayer to build up enough cash to buy it if you dont have enough already, then load the tune and livery onto your multiplayer car. bingo bango, you're ready to go. However, if you have a car you like in multiplayer but you wanna bring it over into singleplayer, it ain't that easy. Liveries can be loaded between MP or SP, but you need the appropriate level in SP to import a tune over from MP. If you dont have the car level in SP for it, then you gotta drive the car more before you can load that tune up. That functionality is already there anyway; you can't load a tune for your car that uses parts you haven't unlocked yet, nor a tune that uses more car points than you have. Better yet, have any car you purchase in singleplayer transfer over to multiplayer, but not vice versa. That way, your SP experience feels separate and unique without getting rid of that feeling of progression, but if you like a car in SP you can pull it over to the MP sandbox.

  2. That's literally it.
    That's it. That's the only issue this could possibly present, and it's only a mild inconvenience to the player that can very easily be overcome. Forza's new multiplayer system and the new car leveling system are somewhat at odds with each other at the moment, with spec series events automatically dumping parts onto your car whether you have the levels required or not for the sake of Balance of Performance between the available cars. In the open series, you're basically stuck leveling cars to make them competitive, only to realize after 25 laps around a circuit that the car isn't fun to drive at that level. So you have to start the grinding all over again with a new car until you find something you like.

Offering a more sandboxy approach to multiplayer would be fine in FM23 because the multiplayer can stand on its own; you have a skill and safety rating, and you're rewarded with closer, theoretically cleaner racing if you keep your pace up and your car clean. Meanwhile, the singleplayer mode can still feel fresh and direct with its own progression and garage system, allowing each format of racing - single and multiplayer - to feel fun and engaging on their own. This would make the full package feel more complete and fun than it currently does.

Rivals would be considered multiplayer; all cars are automatically given max car level, allowing you to build monsters for each specific track and stay competitive with your friends and all the other players. At first it seems more intuitive to tie Rivals to singleplayer so players are forced to build a car from square one to be competitive in Rivals, but if somebody surpasses you and you realize your car can't achieve that level of performance, having to level a new car from scratch just to get to the same laptime you had in your previous car can be frustrating. I mean, I'm literally typing this post out as I use full driver assists to let the car drive and level up by itself (pictured at the top of the post), because I was falling asleep at the controls trying to level it up manually. It's boring to drive a car that doesn't have the performance I want, just to try and beat a friend's lap time after my old car proved itself incapable.

Like, the most frustrating thing to me about this progression system isn't the grind, but the fact that Turn 10 listened to the community's issues with progression and genuinely tried to fix that, but ended up falling short in execution. If this system was given just a little more thought and a little more time, I'd probably fall in love with the new car leveling system.

But as it stands now, it's more of a love/hate relationship. I love what it's trying to do, i just hate how it's going about it.


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in reply to @hootOS's post:

The entire time I've played Forza 2023, I have been wishing I was playing Gran Turismo (polyphony please bring gt7 to pc). I have done multiple half hour long races at Homestead Miami just to be able to improve my boat of a Ford Falcon.

yeah it's unfortunate that this is the situation. when i first dug into it i was like "oh this is a neat system!" and then the flaws started to present themself pretty quickly

Actually, you know what? I think we can simplify this further. We don’t need to have any separate progression system for Featured Multiplayer, whatever the private custom lobby thing we did on Tuesday or something is called (I just woke up I can’t remember), and Rivals. We just need to have no level and CP restrictions in those specific game modes, and also have that be a custom lobby option. Driving a car in those game modes still advances your progression with that car in singleplayer because, I mean, you are driving it. When you save a setup and try to apply it on your car in Singleplayer but you don’t have the CXP for that, it just tells you. Like, hey, you need this car level if you want to use this setup in the Builder’s Cup. There’s also a game mode called Test Drive, but I guess we just need T10 to put their foot down and explicitly say what kind of Test this means, as in test drive with your currently available parts, or with all parts available.