Turn 10 acknowledges Forza Motorsport criticism and promises changes to Xbox racer

Turn 10 says it will make big changes to Forza Motorsport's car progression system, AI, and Forza Race Regulations after listening to community feedback.

Sean Carey

Published 10 Jan 2024

After launching in October last year, Forza Motorsport proved to be quite divisive among players. While some enjoyed the new car progression system, others found it too dull, restrictive, and time-intensive to level up their cars. Now, Turn 10 says it is "exploring changes" to car progression in Forza Motorsport and in other areas of the game.

In a community update, Turn 10 announced plans to improve three key areas in Forza Motorsport: car progression, Forza Race Regulations, and AI.

On car progression, Turn 10 called the system a "divisive topic" among the Forza community and has been gathering feedback from a variety of sources to get a better picture on how the system is sitting with players.

"It is clear from looking at feedback that while many of our players are enjoying the system as is, for many others it isn’t delivering the upgrade experience that they expect from Forza Motorsport," Turn 10 said. "To address this, we are exploring changes to the system. Our goal with these changes is to retain what is working for those that enjoy it, while resolving the issues many of our most dedicated players have with the system.

"Addressing this feedback is a top priority for the team going into 2024, however it will take some time to properly evaluate options, make the necessary code changes, and thoroughly test those code changes."

Forza Race Regulations, a system that involves penalizing players for cutting a corner of the track or ramming into other drivers, is also set to be tweaked as it is not "working as intended" in some situations.

"We are aware that Forza Race Regulations are not working as intended in some situations," Turn 10 said, "We have heard about inconsistent or unfair penalties in instances of intentional ramming, being pushed off the track, and spinning cars pushing drivers off the track.

"We have also heard that high speed collisions sometimes have no penalties while low speed collisions have mild penalties. It’s important that we capture all the data that we can about a race when FRR rulings happen in error, so over the next few months, we will be working with some long-time competitive Motorsport players to gather direct telemetry from them while they’re playing. They will be capturing these instances and feeding data to our team so that we can issue tweaks to make FRR more accurate and reliable. We appreciate your patience as we work on improving the system."

As for AI, Turn 10 has acknowledged feedback about the AI's driving behavior in Forza Motorsport, namely "abruptly braking and slowing down; not accelerating out of exits, braking too hard on mild corners, and following racing lines too strictly."

Turn 10 says it "understands how important it is to have fair and competitive AI in Motorsport and are our top priorities in early 2024 are addressing overly aggressive AI, while also getting a cleaner race start into turn one where many of the issues above most severely manifest and impact players."

While it's good to see Turn 10 taking on board player feedback and willing to make changes to Forza Motorsport, we'll have to see if the changes the studio implements pay off and improve the experience for all players. Perhaps we'll also get a fix for those buggy Forza Motorsport achievements, and we can then move it up the grid in our list of the best Xbox racing games.

More Forza Motorsport stories:

Xbox Series X|S Windows

Written by Sean Carey

Avid Xbox and achievement fan, Sean has committed to playing the best RPGs, racing games, and first-person shooters Xbox Game Pass and his precious free time will allow. Prior to joining TrueAchievements, Sean gained a degree in journalism from Solent University.