I don’t know if this thread is still alive, but, I came here because I just got FH4 and yes I also do not have xbox live gold because I don’t want to be spending too much money on gaming (adulting), heck, I only got the standard edition when it was on sale this April (I missed the ultimate edition sale at mid-March).
At first I was bummed out to find out that there are certain cars I wouldn’t be able to get because I can’t complete 80% without Xbox Live Gold but I think online multiplayer is really the direction games are going to in the future. However, upon looking up on previous festival rewards, there are great cars you can get at 50% completion (Huracan P, 488 Pista, 599XX Evo to name a few) which you can achieve by playing just the single player events (correct me if I’m wrong but I read you can get past 50% on single player).
So reflecting to this I guess this is the best compromise that Playground Games can do for its players. The rewards rotating at either 50% or 80% allows XLG and non-XLG players to get the cars/rewards. If you missed that series/season then you can go to auction house and try to buy it or snipe it (If it’s super rare). For me it’s a great balance.
I guess if there are things that Playground Games should fix or look into with Forza Horizon 4, its those auction house bots and the players who uses it should get banned or punished in some sort of way. And also the servers because auction house for me loads so slow.
That’s all, cheers.