Hi all. Hoping someone can help answer a question I have that I haven’t been able to find an answer for in any of the reviews I’ve checked out.
Are there private multiplayer options and if so what are they?
I’m thinking of picking up the game for me and my wife but that hinges on us being able to play together.
As I understand it in the free roam online other players can’t interfere with another another unless they group up, is it possible to just form a 2 person group?
My wife hasn’t really played much in the way of racing games (Mario Kart and Rocket League which she is both very good at would be the closest games she had played) I want us to just be able to drive around and do stuff together without having to worry about what other people are doing and just enjoy the game as we wish at our own pace as it were.
Is this possible and any info I should know about?
There is definitely options for this! I wish the reviews would go on this more. For me, this is what makes Forza Horizon really stand out!!
The main option is to team up in convoy together-
Essentially you’re just playing with your group. Your cars can bump into each other and all that fun stuff, but during Speed Zones, Drift Zones, and Forzathon Live events you’ll still ghost through cars. Additionally the other players will ghost through your car too. This means you’ll still see the other drivers around the world, which has been a lot of fun for my group because we end up seeing people do the same jumps or go after the same boards, which is pretty cool!
However when you go into race event such as Street Scene, Cross Country, Road Racing, Story, Showcases, and most other activities it lets the convoy leader decide if they want only the Convoy or to open the activity to players on the map to join in.
Now this might come across a bit confusing, but try to follow because this is the best part… for all these instanced/private events, the people in your convoy are actually on a team together! Each Drivatar (AI Driver Avatar) you’re ahead of at the end will get points for your team, each opponant that finishes ahead of you get points for their team. Combine the convoy score vs the combined score of the AI, and the team with the most points win.
This means even if your team struggles a bit, you can still pull out ahead because its a group effort! AND, you can go through the ENTIRE GAME like this! It’s SOOOOOOOOOOOO wonderful!
These games have been such an awesome experience because I absolutely LOVE co-op and really don’t care much for PvP
Agreed, I’ve watched a few review videos, read a few reviews and watched an official multiplayer gameplay video and none of which really made clear exactly how multiplayer worked beyond the fact that it was open world but you ghost through players that aren’t in your group or doing the same event as you and that there were group events where everyone is on the same side as it were. None of them really went in to the mechanics and what, if any, group restrictions were in place. It seemed to me that most reviewers were assuming the audience had previous experience with the Forza Horizon series and focused more on how 4 differed to prior iterations.
I’ve played plenty of driving games myself over the years but never having played a Forza Horizon title I didn’t want to assume I instantly knew how the multiplayer mechanics would work or that the terminology used in Horizon was what I thought it would be, ‘convoy’ being a great example, reviews mention ‘convoys’ but the ones I read/watched didn’t actually bother to explain what a convoy was or how it actually worked, to me it sounded essentially like an XBox party group but I didn’t want to spend 2x£79.99 assuming that I thought I knew what the reviewers were talking about.
For sure! Basically anything in the ‘open world’ is shared content. So that means certain activity like Speed Zones (Drive fast to hit a certain speed threshold), Drift Zones (Drift through to secure points for a certain score threshold), Impromptu Races (you can race against anyone if you hit X and then the other player accepts), Boards to smash, Forzathon Live (a series of mini events like drift zones, etc that occur every hour on the hour) — All of that (and more) is in the shared open world. So there are loads of activities both just cruising around and instanced race (and games like Zombies, Flag Capture, etc).
As for content, well… you won’t be disappointed. The whole game becomes a playground! Enjoy!
Class is important in a convoy-- Try to stay with the same car Class. For example, A, S1, S2, etc. If your convoy chooses the same class cars on events, all the AI will also be in that class type.
Tune your cars-- New Vehicle > Goto house/festival > Garage > Upgrades & Tuning > in the lower left will be Auto Upgrade
-This feature will let you easily tune up a car to squeeze out some power and put it towards the top of that preferred class, and it’s pretty easy to get into without actually knowing how to min/max your own tunes with different parts. I suggest doing this with any car you’re going to drive even for a little while.
Create Blueprints-- When you pull up to a new event there is an option to “Create Blueprint” from here you can select the type of car for the race. For ease of use I usually set it to “ANYTHING GOES” then I can jump in with a goofy Jeep or Muscle car in the same race that my friend is using something else.
The good and bad part of Horizon is there are SOOOOOOOO many options, so it can be a bit overwhelming at first. You do need to play a good bit (hour, hour 30?) to get to a point where you can team up together in a convoy.
Also, for someone coming from fun racers like Mario Kart, the cars may take a little while to get use to. I play so much Forza that it didn’t even occur to me until I had a newbie friend join and they just couldn’t control the car. However, once they spent a little bit of time with it, you kinda get the physics and muscle memory takes over.
Hope this helps, and feel free to ask me to clarify anything!
Just thought I’d mention that you don’t have to buy the game twice. Because you own Xbox Gold you can share any game you own, I own the ultimate edition and my son and I both can play it at the same time. Make your wifes Xbox your home machine, Buy FH4 on it and then sign in to the other Xbox and you will both be able to play. There are more detailed explanations online but that is the jist of it.
