This is just a long rant about accolades and the HoF leaderboards.
The last update fixed the last unattainable accolades, so I could finally get the job done to get them all.
As a completitionst (earned 1,035 of 1,036 Forza achievements) and Forza Veteran, I liked the idea to add accolades to FH5. Combined with a leaderboard to challenge the world in who can complete all accolades first. It was right up my alley and accolades became an obsession.
During early-access times I found myself competing with players like DJS, my all-time high was Rank 4 of 9,000,000 players back then. Sadly the competition was quickly compromised by people using glitches.
Before the very first update certain accolades just didn’t stay completed which was a little annoying, sadly people used this bug excessively - completing the accolades, restart their game and complete them again. It was quickly patched but damage was done already, and the effects are still visible to this day.
Of course people discovered new ways, there still are 31 accolades that can be repeated and give score (around 7,450 points) one time a week. Due to lack of information from PG it’s unknown if this is intended or not. The issue has been brought to their attention via support tickets though.
But PG fixed another bug: Weekly Forzathon used to give 250 accolade points per chapter, and 250 for completing it. Again this worked only one time a week. The fact they fixed it shows, that it was not intended to work that way - like the other 31 accolades maybe?!
Let’s add some numbers:
1,992 accolades that combined give a score of 1,013,500
of 25,314,269 players there are 7,539 players above that score
HoF Top10 ranges in between 1,392,000 and 1,667,550
Since release there have only been a handful of players who cheated excessively (i.e. 2 billion accolade points and other obvious manipulations). They got removed from the leaderboard.
Time passed and people completed more and more accolades. Now people’s scores were the result of how many times they repeated the broken early-access accolades, and how actively they repeated the Accolades that give score one time a week.
I monitored the HoF leaderboard actively and right now 50% of the Top 10 players made implausible gains from time to time. We are talking like 20k - 30k points randomly.
In November a few new players took the HoF lead by storm, we are talking like 100k - 200k in a matter of 1-2 weeks. To me there is no legit explanation for this. Only theory would be that those people used the early access bug a lot, stopped playing for a while and now returned to complete the rest of the accolades.
To me those anomalies make me conclude that the HoF leaderboard is compromised and lost now.
The fact PG stays silent and doesn’t try to clear things up make me wonder if they even understand their own system properly.
I always thought it would have been a good idea to make this leaderboard about who completed the most accolades, rather than who gathered the most score. The leaderboard would definitely look much different that way.
Catch you around soon I hope.
