Opinion: Corner cutting exploits have already made a sham of the Forza Racing Championship - Team VVV

News Opinion: Corner cutting exploits have already made a sham of the Forza Racing Championship

News

James Allen

Writer

Posted on

Game: Forza Motorsport 6

Platform: PC, XBox One

Publisher: Microsoft Studios

Release Date: 15/09/2015

Anyone who's familiar with Forza Motorsport 6 will probably be aware of how track limits are imposed and controlled in the game. For one reason or another, it appears to be the case that not only is it far too easy to abuse the confines of the circuit, but that it's possible to essentially cut or extend corners without invalidating the lap time by 'dirtying' it.

It's something that's been discussed to death by FM6 community members on the official Forza Motorsport Forums and on YouTube (with user JSR Devon being perhaps the most prominent person to take up the mantle on the latter platform), and I've come incredibly close to elaborating on the subject in an opinion piece on Team VVV for some time now. But it's the issues that surround the new Forza Racing Championship that have finally tipped me over the edge on this topic.

As we detailed in our original article, the Forza Racing Championship will be split into 'Open' and 'Elite' categories, with entry to the latter only being granted if you can set one of the 128 top times in a qualifier Rivals hot lap event. In principle, this is a suitable way to regulate who gets access to the higher tier series; in practice, the corner cutting issues in Forza Motorsport 6 have made the whole thing a disgrace that Microsoft and Turn 10 Studios should be absolutely ashamed of.

Because the Autodromo Nazionale Monza track that's been chosen to 'host' this inaugural Forza Racing Championship qualifying round allows players to either cut corners (most notably the Ascari, Rettefilo and Roggia chicanes) or 'extend' the corner by using run-off area (the exit from Ascari on the straight to the Parabolica being perhaps the most obvious example of this), it's possible to set times on this Rivals event that are impossible to match if you stick to the legitimate track limits. This is in spite of Turn 10 Studios making changes to the track limit detection system on the Monza track as recently as July 2016 in order to "prevent corner cutting" and "more accurately distinguish between clean and dirty driving lines".

All of these little niggles have snowballed into a scenario where what is supposed to be a qualifying event for an 'elite' racing series has been set up… and now the only way to set a time that'll get you into one of the 128 places is to drive in a way that would have you disqualified in any other sanctioned real-life motorsport event.

Worse still, there's even alleged evidence that Turn 10 employees have used this tactic when setting their own times. Admittedly, this claim does come from a Facebook user comment, so we can't officially verify the assertion or the video said accusation is associated with, but – if this is genuinely the case – it's a truly deplorable display of affairs. Seeing players making the most of Forza Motorsport 6's incompetent track limit implementation is horrible enough, but seeing Turn 10 employees exploiting these issues makes the whole situation truly disgusting.

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All in all, Turn 10 and Microsoft should be absolutely ashamed of this whole debacle. As stated earlier in this piece, it's irritating enough that corner cutting is still a valid tactic when setting "competitive" lap times (even though track limit issues in Forza Motorsport 6 have been highlighted pretty much since the game was released nearly 11 months ago), but to see such brazen tactics being made acceptable and essentially encouraged takes it to a new and even more reprehensible level.

With support for Forza Motorsport 6 expected to be drawn to a close with the launch of Forza Horizon 3 next month, it's highly unlikely that we'll see any additional fixes for FM6 – which will almost certainly mean the "finished" product will still be essentially broken for players who invest their time on the game in the online modes. As a result, it's now up to the Forza community to push hard on Turn 10 to ensure the track limit controvery that's plagued Forza Motorsport 6 won't rear its ugly head again in Forza Motorsport 7.

Editors note: this opinion blog represents the personal views of the author and not the overall views of TeamVVV.

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